Via Elizabeth Albrycht, news of an event that’s just made for anyone involved in communicating or collaborating online – Online Social Networks 2005: OSN2005 will be a summit for all those interested in working with social networking processes, tools, and media. In addition to attending many workshops, panels, and presentations by leading experts and practitioners, […]
Category: Communication
Upholding PR standards starts with the small things
"Will you join with me and other PR bloggers in a grassroots blogging campaign to help raise the perception of the public relations industry?" asked Steven Phenix of The Alliant Group in Austin, Texas, in an email yesterday. Happy to, I replied. PR’s been getting a lot of, well, bad PR lately, as illustrated by […]
Separating reporting from propaganda
CNN: The US Department of Defense plans to add more sites on the Internet to provide information to a global audience – but critics question whether the Pentagon is violating President Bush’s pledge not to pay journalists to promote his policies. This will undoubtedly be a lively and protracted debate. My question would be: Where […]
Search engine to acquire Bloglines
Search engine Ask Jeeves is rumoured to be buying Bloglines, the online service for searching, subscribing, creating and sharing RSS feeds and blogs. Two things make this news interesting from a communication viewpoint: The formal public announcement apparently isn’t due to be made until Tuesday, but was scooped by Mary Hodder in a post on […]
The Hobson and Holtz Report – Podcast #6: February 7, 2005
Show notes for February 7, 2005. Welcome to our weekly podcast, a 46:41-minute conversation recorded live via Skype from Concord, California, USA, and Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Download the file here (MP3, 21.4MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital […]
Firefox NYT ad poster delays
As one of the contributors to the ground-breaking Firefox double-page ad in the New York Times in December, I ordered the poster version from the Mozilla store expecting to receive it in early January. A couple of emails in early January reported on delays finalizing and shipping the poster as corrections were being made (name […]
Skype has a problem with SkypeOut
My wife is a big user of SkypeOut, the paid-for part of the Skype internet phone service. Using SkypeOut for making international calls to normal phones saves a small fortune on our phone bill (see this example). We have family and friends in Costa Rica, so using SkypeOut to call there makes great sense for […]
Wiki repository of PR and related knowledge
I had the great pleasure of meeting Constantin Basturea at the New Communications Forum 2005 conference in California last month. Constantin writes PR Meets the WWW, his online learning journal with a focus on public relations and on how new technologies are changing PR practice as we know it. We have much in common on […]
GM experiments with podcasting
Not only is General Motors still at the leading edge with executive blogging by a Fortune 100 company, with their GM Fastlane Blog, but they’re also out in front in trying out other new communication channels. In a post yesterday GM offers two podcasts about the launch of two new car models at the Chicago […]
Clarity in communication
Here’s a plain-speaking description of a blog commenting policy that no one could possibly misunderstand: I appreciate everyone who takes the time to comment on the articles I post on this blog. Please understand that unless your comments get read and reviewed by me, they don’t get posted. Some days I literally receive hundreds of […]
Use VoIP and go to jail
Last week, I posted commentary on problems using SkypeOut, the paid-for service offered by the Skype internet phone service. I used the example of my wife’s unsuccessful efforts to call numbers in Costa Rica, where we have family and friends. Since that post, something happened. All of a sudden, calls to the numbers concerned have […]
Business podcasting is taking off
It’s been interesting reading some of the reactions by business bloggers to General Motors’ first experiment with podcasting last week. This Technorati list has lots of blog commentaries, mostly positive, although most don’t discuss the podcasts from the specific communication point of view. Quick recap: GM produced two MP3 files that they mentioned in a […]
The Hobson and Holtz Report – Podcast #7: February 14, 2005
Show notes for February 14, 2005. Welcome to For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, a 46:43-minute conversation recorded live via Skype from Concord, California, USA, and Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Download the file here (MP3, 18.7MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with […]
Testing time for Sarbanes-Oxley
Judgment day is fast approaching for US companies grappling with the most complex and expensive provisions in the Sarbanes-Oxley accounting and corporate governance legislation. The Financial Times reports that up to 5,000 large and medium-sized public companies must give detailed summaries about the state of their internal controls in forthcoming annual reports. The reports must […]
Blogging and RSS make the event
Ian Betteridge, Technovia: Demo is getting a vast amount of attention because [there] are a vast number of bloggers there, all pouring what must amount to thousands of words onto the Internet about it. I don’t know what the organisers have done to encourage this, but there’s a lesson for a lot of companies – […]
Yet more signs for podcasting growth
BBC News: One in 10 adult Americans – equivalent to 22 million people – owns an MP3 player, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. […] MP3 players are still the gadget of choice for younger adults. Almost one in five US citizens aged under 30 have one. […] People are beginning to […]
United Nations Foundation starts a blog
The United Nations Foundation started a blog last week: UN Dispatch is a blog intended to promote thoughtful discussion about the UN, and to provide an outlet for important news and views on the UN. It is administered by Peter Daou, author of the Daou Report, and will feature frequent posts from knowledgeable guest contributors. […]
Intel COO blogs with employees
While some big companies have already taken a step into the public blogosphere with executive blogs, Intel isn’t one. At least, not yet. But they do have an internal executive blog, introduced in December. The San Jose Mercury News reported yesterday that Intel’s President and COO, Paul Otellini (who becomes CEO in May), began an […]
The Hobson and Holtz Report – Podcast #8: February 17, 2005
Show notes for February 17, 2005. Welcome to For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, a 37-minute conversation recorded live via Skype from Concord, California, USA, and Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Download the file here (MP3, 18.7MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with […]
The shift in the balance of power
It was quite an eye opener to read this comment by Steve O’Keefe to Elizabeth Albrycht’s post on Monday that kicked-off this week-long IAOC blog fest: Most blogs that are truly open don’t work, because most people don’t want to participate in a discussion – they want to push an agenda or advertise. Most blogs […]