Little time this week for posting commentaries to this blog, sorry to say. Trying to balance business and home life is always tricky and especially so this week. Something had to give and my blog was it. A semblance of usual service will resume at the weekend, and fully back up to speed early next […]
Month: August 2005
Interview: Constantin Basturea – August 10, 2005
In this edition of For Immediate Release podcast interviews, Shel and Neville enjoyed a 45-minute conversation with Constantin Basturea, the man behind The New PR Wiki and Global PR Blog Weeks I and II. About our conversation partner: Originally from Romania, Constantin Basturea (pronounced BahshTUra) came to the US when his wife opted to pursue […]
Grin and bear it
As soon as I arrived at Heathrow airport this afternoon and saw the lines of TV trucks, I knew things did not look good. Over the past 24 hours, the news has been full of reports of the cancellation of all British Airways flights out of Heathrow. My flight back to Amsterdam isn’t until 8pm […]
Homeward bound
So I’m sitting in the departure lounge at Heathrow Terminal 4 waiting for my BA flight back to Amsterdam. After being stuck here for the past 24 hours (in the UK, not at the airport itself), it will be good to get home. Looking good that the flight will actually get way, in about 20 […]
The Hobson & Holtz Report – Podcast #58: August 11, 2005
Content summary: Listeners’ comments discussion (ID3 tags, an open-source RSS tool for audio, Skylook, copyrights and podcast music, pocasting librarians, "Advertising by the Government of Canada," and Free Government Information); Hill & Knowlton UK’s employee blogging initiative; Neville’s new computer; Neville’s new blog, the redesign of Desirable Roasted Coffee; our interview with Constantin Basturea; the […]
Gmail now 3 gigs
This may have been in place for a while but I noticed it just now – Gmail now provides 3 gigabytes of email storage: […] To celebrate our one-year birthday, we’re giving everyone one more gigabyte. But why stop the party there? Our plan is to continue growing your storage beyond 2GBs by giving you […]
The spammers win for now
I’ve been resisting this for weeks, but I’ve succumbed – this blog now has moderation in place for comments and trackbacks. This is now possible to do on a TypePad blog as a result of the service enhancements introduced by Six Apart last month. The final straw for me was having to spend over an […]
Pay-for podcasts look likely
iLounge: Piper Jaffray senior analyst Gene Munster expects revenue from Apple’s 20 iTunes Music Stores to account for 5 percent of the company’s revenue in 2006. "Assuming 133 million iTunes downloads in the June quarter and applying that across the reported 6.2 million iPod shipments, Apple is averaging 6.1 iTunes downloads per iPod (based on […]
The Hobson and Holtz Report – Podcast #59: August 15, 2005
Content summary: RSS, Atom and phonetic alphabet; listeners’ comments discussion (global Hill & Knowlton blogging; registering podcasts with iTunes; Yahoo’s Blog for Hope); suing anonymous bloggers; finding new voice talent; French PR firestarter; big issues for British Airways and Gate Gourmet; Unilever monitors blogs; the war against blog spammers; Blog Business Summit; challenges with trackbacks […]
How reliable is the Top 500 blogs list?
The Feedster search engine has just introduced a monthly listing of the Top 500 blogs. It’s an interesting list, which I find especially remarkable as one of my blogs is included. At number 221 in the list, NevOn Experimental appears: Flattering but remarkable. That blog is one which I post to quite infrequently, on average […]
Interview: Pete Blackshaw, Intelliseek – August 16, 2005
In this edition of For Immediate Release podcast interviews, Shel and Neville enjoyed a 36-minute conversation with Pete Blackshaw, Chief Marketing and Customer Satisfaction Officer of Intelliseek, Inc, the company behind Blogpulse and Brandpulse. Topics and themes discussed include: consumer motivation and word-of-mouth marketing; measurement metrics; comparing blog search tools and what may develop in […]
Great resources for communicators
One blog that’s in my RSS reader and which I regularly scan is Adverblog by Martina Zavagno. A great resource always full of interesting news and info about campaigns and on the global advertising and marketing scene. Martina’s put up two useful lists – one that lists advertising and marketing blogs, and another that lists […]
Plans progress for London podcasting event
PodcastCon UK next month is looking good to be a success as new UK internet service provider Be signs up as the first major sponsor. Participant sign-ups have now reached 90. If you’re interested in podcasting, either as a podcaster or from the business communication perspective, this first podcasting conference in Europe looks very attractive […]
A great conversation-starter
I’ve just ordered another batch of business cards featuring one of Hugh McLeod‘s satirical cartoons from gapingvoid. I’ve quickly gone through over 100 of these cards since my first order earlier this year. In my experience, they are a terrific conversation-starter. I’ve yet to encounter some one who doesn’t ask about the cartoon when I […]
Blogging books on sale
Congratulations to Shel Israel and Robert Scoble for getting Naked Conversations out the door (their door, that is) and available now for pre-ordering from Amazon. Congrats equally to Jeremy Wright for completing his book, Blog Marketing, also available on pre-order from Amazon. Each book will be available in January 2006 and December this year, respectively. […]
More than ego-stroking the Top 500
ClickZ News: Feedster is floating a new top 500 list of blogs, ranked according to their accumulation of inbound links. Media buyers say they’re watching the list, but they disagree on its value as a consideration tool for ad placements in blogs. The “Feedster 500,” which challenges the long-standing Technorati 100 list and claims to […]
What price British Airways’ reputation?
In last Monday’s edition of The Hobson & Holtz Report, Shel and I spent a good 15 minutes in the show discussing the communication and employee relations challenges facing British Airways and Gate Gourmet following last week’s flight cancellations fiasco. The broader consequences of that fiasco will be pretty far reaching, starting with financial aspects […]
Hurdle-jumping with Linkedin
Two thought-provoking posts this week by two bloggers whose opinions I value have got me thinking about the pros and cons of connecting via business-focused social networks, and mirror some experiences of my own with LinkedIn. Last weekend, Renee Blodgett wrote about how some people abuse the linking process in Linkedin, quoting a view by […]
The Hobson and Holtz Report – Podcast #60: August 18, 2005
Content summary: Listeners’ comments discussion (blog comment moderation; alternatives to British Airways; FedEx the new ‘blogger Satan’; iPod display; news about Furl; why Hill & Knowlton started employee blogging; spicing up web pages; Skype for business calls; cool Jyve; smart Segway; Audacity and ID3); new audio recording equipment; no credibility for anonymous blogger; Cruisebox kick […]
Rupert Murdoch’s long tail play
Financial Times: Rupert Murdoch has put two more internet companies on News Corporation’s list of desired acquisitions: Blinkx and IGN Entertainment. […] Talks to buy video search engine Blinkx are under way. IGN, a video gaming company considering an initial public offering or a sale, is also under consideration and could be valued at up […]