CNET News: PeopleSoft’s board of directors has approved a takeover deal with Oracle worth around $10.3 billion, ending a long-running and bitter battle and creating a major software maker. CNET News | Oracle buys PeopleSoft for $10 billion So while the acquisition endgame is in sight for investors and shareholders, a great deal of work […]
Category: Communication
The FUD begins in Oracle and PeopleSoft deal
Creating fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) about your competitors in the minds of their customers is a tactic common in the enterprise software industry, especially when you see a significant event like an acquisition that will upset the fine balance of players in a mature and consolidating market. It’s all part of the friendly business […]
20 questions and blog writing skills
Steve Rubel wrote yesterday about Stowe Boyd’s efforts to find meaningful answers to 20 questions about blogging and the blog that’s been set up to facilitate the answering process. The answers to those 20 questions will form part of the content that Stowe’s company, Corante, will use in a seminar in January. Most of the […]
Delisting in the US because of Sarbanes-Oxley
The costs of compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act are leading some international companies to delist in the US, with others not bothering to apply for stock market listing. A report yesterday in Business Week Online said that the tough corporate-reporting regulations passed in the US in 2002 after the wave of financial scandals have many […]
Firefox NYT ad appears
Today the much-heralded Firefox full-page ad in the New York Times appeared. Except it’s not a full-page ad – it’s a two-page spread: As explained in a post today on Spread Firefox: […] Thousands of us rallied together in 10 short days to pull off the largest open source fundraising campaign in history. And today, […]
Interview: Raising blog awareness in Norway
In October, I was interviewed about blogging for an article in the Norwegian business publication Kommunikasjon, published in Oslo, Norway, by Kommunikasjonsforeningen. The article’s now been published. It’s not online, only in print. And it’s in Norwegian. But thanks to translation help from Fredrik Wackå, I have the text in English. There’s increasing interest about […]
Fired Delta employee crusade lacks credibility
The story of the Delta Airlines employee who was fired for breach of company policy regarding some photos she posted on her personal blog is taking some interesting twists and turns. Here’s the quick story overview. Ellen Simonetti was a flight attendant at Delta Airlines. She writes Queen of Sky, a personal blog, in which […]
Microsoft ramps up the FUD
Following the announcement of Oracle’s acquisition of PeopleSoft on 13 December, I wrote about the outbreak of fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) that began with comments by an SAP executive. Now comes news about moves by Microsoft seeking to lure PeopleSoft customers away. Microsoft-Watch reports that Microsoft didn’t waste any time in trying to win […]
Understanding RSS from the non-tech view
A friend in the UK asked me for some thoughts and info about RSS and how she could create and syndicate her company’s own RSS feeds for things like press releases and product information. She wanted a non-technical view, something she could easily understand herself so that she’d be able to have a sensible discussion […]
More Ned’s tips on IABC accreditation
We had a few emails following this blog’s conversation with Ned Lundquist about IABC accreditation earlier this month. Most of them were wondering what warm beer and a vintage MGB had to do with it. So Ned and I got together again in cyberspace to demonstrate how effective we are at clear communication. Ned, I […]
Podcasts for communicators to launch in January
Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, the new podcast weblog by Shel Holtz and I: Starting in January, Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz – two communicators who think they have something to say that you might find worth listening to – start their weekly podcasts. Shel’s in Concord, California, and Neville’s in Amsterdam in The Netherlands. […]
The Number One Hot Prediction for 2005
I’ve resisted the temptation so far to make a list of blog-related predictions for 2005. Everyone does lists and I’m sure what I might say wouldn’t be that different from what I see many communicators and others saying. But, catching up with scanning my RSS feeds last night, I read Media Guerrilla’s 2005 Predictions by […]
Top ten reasons for using RSS
I came across a very good post today about the benefits of RSS that neatly complements what I wrote the other day about understanding RSS from the non-tech view. Marnie Webb at Extension 337 writes about the ten reasons why non-profit organizations should use RSS. Valid indeed, and which I think will apply for any […]
Journalists and bloggers can learn from each other
Two very thoughful articles by Steve Outing of PoynterOnline explain in some detail what journalists can learn from bloggers, and vice versa. US focused of course, but every practical point Steve includes in his articles is valid for any blogger in Europe, too. Take a look: What Journalists Can Learn From Bloggers: Blogging isn’t just […]
FT highlights example of blogs for internal communication
Today’s Financial Times has a report on corporate blogging that includes an excellent example of a European company using blogs for internal communication: Some companies, uncomfortable with the openness of public blogs, use them as an internal communications tool. Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, the German investment bank, has set up about 120 internal blogs to promote […]
Music for better decision-making
In its January issue, Wired magazine reports on a new technology that transforms stock market data into music-based sound to communicate meaning: Abstract snippets of clarinet and harpsichord waft from their workstations. But the financial advisers at Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, and Credit Suisse First Boston aren’t listening to Philip Glass. They’re the earliest adopters of […]
Podcasting and vlogging: It’s all about the distribution
Media reports on two rapidly-emerging communication tools – (audio) podcasting and video logging, or vlogging or vblogging: BBC News on podcasting, featuring pioneer Adam Curry: An Apple iPod or other digital music players can hold anything up to 10,000 songs, which is a lot of space to fill. But more and more iPod owners are […]
Three success measures for podcasting
Wired News: In October, a Google search would have returned fewer than 6,000 results for “podcasting.” Today, that number is 744,000*, and it seems nearly that many podcasts are available. But as with blogs, a sharp divide exists between the relatively small number of good podcasts and the vast number of bad ones, or at […]
The web to play a bigger role in public offerings
The Wall Street Journal reports that communication among investors, Wall Street stock underwriters and issuers are in for major modernization, if plans by the US Securities and Exchange Commission are approved this year. The Journal reports today on proposals by the SEC for enabling greater use of the internet to faciliate the dissemination of information […]
The Hobson and Holtz Report – Podcast #1: January 3, 2005
Show notes for January 3, 2005 Welcome to our first podcast, a 43–minute conversation recorded live via Skype from Concord, California, USA, and Amsterdam, The Netherlands! Download the file here (MP3, 19.85Mb), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For this, you’ll need an ipodder, software that lets […]