Written by: Jody Monaghan

Hello again. Well following the excitement of last week’s site release the office seems to have returned to its normal pace but everyone here is so happy with how smoothly the changes went. I hope you have all had a good nose around the site and tried out some of the new features, personally I think that OpenID is great. I have to say that being here for the site release was a great experience, firstly of seeing how exciting it is when a team works well together, but I also feel that I am learning a lot about online activity and how social networking works. The site is continuously growing so be sure to invite your friends and family on and feel free to add me as a friend, would love to connect with you all.

In other news this week some more of the adverts that I came up with concepts for have started to appear on the homepage and once again I have to say that the graphics team done a brilliant job. I particularly like the first advert for real change, I think it looks fantastic. I wanted to highlight some of the great causes that use ammado so I hope that the advert does that through the inclusion of multiple logos. I am also really delighted to see the great job that the team done on the Christmas adverts. The Christmas concepts were straight forward enough, I wanted to highlight the benefits of giving ammado giving vouchers as Christmas gifts this year. The first advert with the batteries came from when I was younger and I always remember getting great presents but the batteries were never included. You couldn’t enjoy your presents until the shops opened again. Very disappointing. The second Christmas advert works on the idea of a break from tradition; I don’t know about you lot but every year I seem to end up with lots of scratch cards, socks and aftershave for Christmas. Now not to sound ungrateful but those are not very imaginative gifts, I would honestly prefer to receive the less traditional gift of giving vouchers and plan how I could spend them on a worthy cause. It makes far more sense than me never winning anything on a scratch card and having to re-gift my aftershave later in the year. Anyway take a look at the adverts and please let me know what you all think of them, I would love any feedback good or bad...be brutal.

I am still updating the facebook and twitter messages but so far haven’t had much contact with you guys. At the moment these pages are acting more as an update of what’s new or going on with ammado, which is great. But I would also like to take the opportunity to invite you to use the pages to your own advantage too. There are almost 1,500 members on the facebook page so why don’t you guys chat to each other there about the causes that you are passionate about which feature on ammado. If you feel strongly about a cause leave a comment on the facebook page and see how many people get back to you. If you want to bring our attention to any causes which do not yet use ammado, post a link on the page and I will be sure to let you know what we think. The facebook and twitter pages are a great opportunity for you guys to interact with me and the ammado team in addition to making your own connections and really engaging with the causes that you are passionate about so please feel free to join in and start livening things up. Hope to hear more of what you all think over the next week.