Chakra Communications, with offices on Ellicott Street in Buffalo and in the Binghamton area, is a business that is moving itself and its customers from traditional print catalogs and handbills to modern Internet communications and sales. For now, explains Terrence Sember, Chakra's vice president for Internet and technology, the firm has a foot planted securely in each world.

"We've been making a three-year effort to bridge traditional print-type marketing with Internet approaches," Sember said. The company's offerings include Web site design; adding an e-mail component to direct-mail marketing; providing the means for companies to instantly update their catalogs, menus and contact lists; mine all of the above for customer trends, desires, ideas and contacts; and to standardize the look of everything from invoices to business cards across all of a company's branch offices.

Chakra's Youturn service allows a business to post a printed book, catalog or other publication online, just as it looks in the print version, allowing the reader to turn the pages with the click of a mouse. It even makes a page-rustling sound. Effective Internet marketing, Sember said, means more than high-tech tricks. He said his firm has to keep helping its clients to realize — and reminding them, as well — that the Internet is always hungry for new, up-to-the-minute information, lest would-be customers get bored and look elsewhere.

"You've got to be prepared to dedicate the resources to provide quality content," he said. "If you used to update your catalog twice a year, now you've got to do it daily — continuously."