Harte-Hanks, Inc. (NYSE: HHS), a worldwide direct and targeted marketing company, announced today the release of an e-commerce platform designed to provide small and emerging technology marketers and sellers easy access to technology contacts across North America, Europe and South America. The new site, http://www.citdb.com, allows technology companies with small marketing budgets to search and select contacts from the Harte-Hanks Ci Technology Database (CiTDB), a source of rich installed technology content from 700,000 business sites on three continents.

CiTDB.com users can focus their search on a very specific geographical area or market sector, and rent a list of contacts they want, entirely online by credit card. The data made available are name, company, mailing address and telephone number based on the user's query, but without the location's technology profile information that is only associated with a full CiTDB subscription.

Spam nuisance 'can be combated'

Consumers are becoming increasingly angry about rampant SMS and email spam, but what they do not know is that the law is on their side and that there are ways to stop and even prosecute persistent spammers. This was the message from Cape Town-based privacy lawyer Brendan Hughes, of Michalson and Associates, in a presentation on data privacy legislation to Durban businesses last week. Hughes, a member of the appeals panel that adjudicates complaints for the Wireless Application Service Providers' Association (Waspa), said that direct marketing using consumers' personal information was "big business". However, Hughes said businesses that continued to send marketing material or spam to consumers who had asked to be removed from mailing lists could be criminally prosecuted under Section 45 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act of 2002.

'ASR Records Adds to Team

'ASR Records formally announced the addition of Roxann Stout and Jahmal Brown to the label staff. Ms. Stout will direct and develop initiatives related to the label's Booking Department. Mr. Brown will provide the label with specialized Internet Technologies skills related to the label's online portal.

Roxann Stout will be working with qualified talent buyers toward booking 'ASR Records Artists at festivals and events worldwide. She is a trained musician, studying classical piano for 12 years, classical voice, and saxophone for 7 years. She was a state champion vocalist and won the Women's Federated Competition for 2 straight years. Her promise as a vocalist was so impressive that Ms. Stout was awarded a vocal scholarship from the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston.

Watch List (July 15-21): More Aggressive Loans, More Defaults

In this week's issue we report: that commercial loan defaults should start increasing soon; that the outlook for subprime backed bonds has also turned decidedly negative; and update you on the mounting cost of the alleged fraudulent Penland project in North Carolina and the forced bankruptcy of an office campus owner in Philadelphia. Plus we give you news you'll find only here and the latest facility closures, mass layoffs and properties on The Watch List. Office Loan Defaults Likely To Rise Loan defaults for U.S. CMBS are likely to begin ticking up as deals issued over the last few years contain larger concentrations of interest-only (IO) loans and loans with a higher amount of debt, according to the latest CMBS loan default study by Fitch Ratings. Though CMBS loan defaults fell 15% by balance last year to $1.57 billion, cumulative CMBS loan defaults increased to $13 billion (3.29% of Fitch's default study universe).

Auto insurance without car

You might not have a car, but that doesn't mean you don't need auto insurance.

Take Sandy, a Baltimore resident who occasionally rents a car but finds insurance from rental agencies cost-prohibitive.

She writes in an e-mail: "I usually rent a car about twice a month for a day or a weekend, sometimes longer. The loss damage waiver offered by the car rental companies often costs as much as the rental fee - and sometimes even more. I know that many credit card agreements provide insurance coverage for car rentals, but this does not always mean full coverage. Is there a policy available from any insurance company that would provide coverage on a yearly basis for people in this situation?"

Customer Surveys: A Powerful Link Building Tool

One of the most effective link building tools I use is a customer survey. Surveys are usually written from a customer service standpoint: companies want to know the opinions of the people who buy from them and crave feedback on how they're doing. Honorable intentions for sure but in today's link marketing, it's less about where customers stand and more about where they're going.

In the past, I provided a general questionnaire to the company that contracted my linking services, then pulled demographic information from the site's web logs. Using web logs is still a viable tactic but I've come to understand that today's Internet is different and I need to adapt what I do along with it. The explosion of Web 2.0 and social media type sites is changing the way we work and the way I market for links.