Nearly all the reporting I’ve seen in blogs and mainstream media during the past 24 hours about Microsoft’s support for RSS has tended to be rather techie in its focus, including my own post. Here’s all most people really need to know about it, from a BBC News report last night: Microsoft’s next version of […]
Category: Communication
The Hobson and Holtz Report – Podcast #45: June 27, 2005
Content summary: Listeners’ comments (on wit and wisdom from FIR; being stunned by Tudor Williams and Angela Sinickas; the heroes from Siemens USA); nice London hotel: blogging the IABC conference; bad press for the EC and the waste of the EU; the PR, blogs and press releases mashup; MIT surveys blog usage; Todd Cochrane’s podcasting […]
Podcasting is no fad
A tip from Constantin Basturea led me to the new travel podcast site from airline Virgin Atlantic, launched last week. Produced for Virgin Atlantic by Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R and Manning Gottlieb OMD, and created by podcast producer Loudish, the first topics in a series of podcasts – guides to New York – is available […]
Future Tense and the confluence of forces
Congratulations to Elizabeth Albrycht and the team at Corante for the latest thought-leading resource – the Future Tense blog which, Elizabeth as editor notes, is now live. What will we expect from Future Tense? From Elizabeth’s introductory post yesterday: […] It is [a confluence of forces including technology, science, population demographics, globalization, education, society and […]
Blogs are about interaction and influence
Great article in The Independent newspaper yesterday about blogs and the business benefits by James Cherkoff, the advocate for open source marketing. It’s a good overview of what’s happening and makes the case well. None of it will be news to anyone in the business blogging community, but will be a great starting point for […]
The new trust changes everything
Last month, when Fredrik and I advertised in our respective blogs for freelance writers to join us in a communication project we’re jointly working on, we were taking the next steps in a Big Experiment we’d started. This Big Experiment is to do with collaborative working and the role of blogs, and what that means […]
The Hobson and Holtz Report – Podcast #46: June 30, 2005
Content summary: Listeners’ comments (on iTunes 4.9 and bandwidth, IABC Cafe posts, blogging the Nortel AGM); podcasts and Polish sausage; the launch of iTunes 4.9; Virgin Atlantic’s New York podcasts; PR Week UK talks about blogs; IABC International Conference; IABC Fellows; FIR celebrates 50 shows on July 14. Show notes for June 30, 2005 Welcome […]
UK focus on blogs from PR Week
PR Week UK published a feature on blogs in this week’s edition of the PR industry’s magazine, out today. It’s the first real focus on the medium in the UK from a PR perspective. Entitled Blogs cast a shadow, the feature should be a big help in raising awareness of blogs as a business communication […]
The Hobson and Holtz Report – Podcast #47: July 4, 2005
Content summary: Listeners’ comments (positive opinions about podcasts; negative opinions about Virgin’s New York podcasts; sans-serif fonts and the new generation; is open source marketing open?; a suggestion for FIR #50; mixing a genuine CEO blogger with a fake Toyota Yaris blog); Six Apart upgrades TypePad; call for ideas for blogging IABC’s next conference; Steve […]
Blog censorship and the impact on doing business in China
The many conversations in recent weeks about blog censorship in China won’t lead to any meaningful conclusions, I reckon. While the first amendment rights to free speech that many bloggers passionately post about is a US concept (and hardly likely to make inroads in China any time soon), it is something I also strongly believe […]
It’s all happening in France – Part 3
Business Week, 11 July edition: […] Turns out, smoke-filled cafés aren’t the only places where the French like to spend hours in existential debate. France has become a nation of bloggers. An estimated 5% of residents have set up blogs, a far greater percentage than in most other countries, including the U.S., where an estimated […]
EDS keeps blogging guidance simple
As more companies start blogging – and the list is gaining ground – more are also making publicly available their guidelines on blogging, primarily focused on what the ground rules they have put in place are for employees who blog publicly so everyone knows the boundaries. Good recent examples include IBM, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Hill […]
The Hobson and Holtz Report – Podcast #48: July 7, 2005
Content summary: The London bombings; communication plan for new media available for download; listeners’ comments (on mixing a real CEO blogger with a fake blog; explaining open source marketing; critical analysis of Virgin’s New York podcasts; political PR in the US and EU; a new podcast browser); report on raising awareness in the UK about […]
Ballmer interview turns communication upside down
Watching Robert Scoble’s video interview with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is the confirmation for me that formal, pre-planned and carefully-controlled organizational communication has now reached an evolutionary end point. Traditionally, planning and managing communication in organizations is a function managed by people skilled in particular areas of communication (corporate, marketing, PR, investor, internal, etc). So […]
Dell isn’t listening
If you’ve been following Jeff Jarvis’ interesting experiences in his dealings with Dell, the PC maker, in trying to get his laptop repaired, Christopher Carfi has a great commentary in his latest podcast that extends this story, looking at what Dell’s done with their US customer support forums. It seems to me that Dell has […]
Ketchum can’t spin it either
PR Week published a Q&A interview last Thursday with Adam Brown, director of eKetchum, as a sort of analysis of the brouhaha that blew up following Ketchum’s announcement in June of their launch of a new media practice, Ketchum Personalized Media, and the derision with which the news was greeted by the online PR community. […]
Evangelize that!
I couldn’t resist grabbing the last line from Tom Murphy’s highly-readable post yesterday to be the headline for my post today. With an added exclamation mark. This is the best response I’ve read to a laughable post by Russell Beattie last week in which he said that PR people are morons and where he whinges […]
The Hobson and Holtz Report – Podcast #49: July 11, 2005
Content summary: Listeners’ comments (on credibility, trust and relationships; bloggers should ask first; get over show length; speed up the blog; iTunes and subscribing to the show); iTunes, podcasting and RSS concerns; countering a view that podcasts are a fad; the London bombings and the milestone role of citizen journalism; what African bloggers say about […]
Blogger waging war on Land Rover
Yesterday I wrote a brief post about customer relationship issues and Dell and how an influential US blogger had vented his spleen on his blog detailing his negative experiences with the PC maker. I noticed a trackback ping to that post from another blogger who’s waging a war in a blog on car maker Land […]
An opportunity for Land Rover
It looks like all’s well for Adrian Melrose that ends well. Adrian’s the blogger who’s been waging war on Land Rover. In a post this morning on his war blog, Adrian says that he struck a deal with Land Rover yesterday on a replacement Discovery. While the main point in all this – Adrian’s desire […]