Content summary: Listeners’ comments (employee monitoring and performance; don’t write off podcasting; time-shifted podcasting, cars and home PCs; more on VNRs and responsibility, and audio search; smoking the podcasting dope down under); political scandal in Canada and media muzzling; update your crisis communications plans; Pew’s lost credibility; Macaw Nederland’s employee bloggers; IABC Café launches. Show […]
Category: Web/Tech
More Skype and more MSN
Internet phone service provider Skype has released a new update to version 1.2 of its desktop application for Windows. The new version offers enhanced user benefits including a centralized contacts list (meaning you can access your list of contacts from any computer you use to connect to Skype, not just the one you usually use), […]
BBC Radio launches tech blog, sort of
The BBC moves in mysterious ways regarding blogs, it often seems to me. Earlier this week, one of the BBC’s UK domestic radio stations, Radio Five Live, introduced a blog on the Up All Night radio show website. It’s called the Technology Blog with the strapline "Keep up with the latest gadgets, games and gizmos." […]
Broadband in the UK leads the world
Daily Telegraph: [In the UK,] Southern Railway and T-Mobile will unveil details [this] week of the world’s first train wireless broadband service. The T-Mobile HotSpot service will allow up to 8,000 daily commuters on the London to Brighton route to access the internet. It will be launched in the summer. This item in a Daily […]
Microsoft’s Channel 9 and cultural rules
Channel 9, the social networking blog and wiki for Microsoft’s developer community and the outside world run by ‘5 guys from Redmond’, celebrated its first birthday last Wednesday. One of those 5 guys, Robert Scoble, deserves much credit in driving Channel 9 to its current prominent success level as a one-of-a-kind place that video showcases […]
The Hobson and Holtz Report – Podcast #23: April 11, 2005
Content summary: Listeners’ comments (podcasters’ and bloggers’ credibility on reporting information; what’s your favourite tool for conductng a communications audit and why?; on not liking listening to Catholic Insider; another perspective on the Gomery inquiry in Canada); blog aggregators, attribution and copyright; video news releases re-visited; organization turf wars on who owns branding; General Motors, […]
The future of radio arrives
BBC News: DJs Paul Gambaccini and Tony Blackburn are backing a new website offering radio shows for digital audio players. Podshows will offer shows to download to iPods and other players for between 49p and 99p each. Gambaccini, Blackburn, Steve Penk and former Radio 1 DJ Wes Butters are among the hosts lined up. Last […]
VoipBuster and free phone calls
My online friend Uri Levanon called me today from Israel. He called to my SkypeIn number. That’s in itself isn’t remarkable. What is, perhaps, is that he called that number – which is a normal landline number in London – from his internet phone service. Not Skype this time. Uri was calling from The VoipBuster. […]
Blair and Prescott take to the web in election campaign
With election campaigning now in earnest as the UK general election on 5 May fast approaches, I’m not surprised to learn how the Labour Party is now using its website as an active element in campaign communication. Prime Minister Tony Blair has a dedicated area on the Labour Party website called Tony Blair’s Campaign Diary. […]
Podcasting: ‘Significant growth by 2010’
Now that Pew Internet’s data on how many people listen to podcasts has been roundly trashed as untrustworthy, would you trust any numbers from anyone else on projected growth in podcasting? Well, Forrester Research is widely regarded as a trusted source for IT industry analysis. In a press release yesterday, Forrester included this forecast on […]
The Hobson and Holtz Report – Podcast #24: April 14, 2005
Content summary: Listeners’ comments (on open source marketing and the interview with James Cherkoff and Johnnie Moore; podcast tags; on Rupert Murdoch and the internet; where will co-creation take us?; world’s first train wi-fi in UK – not; on video news releases and FCC clarification; blog post republication without attribution will grow; on GM, the […]
Blogging and messaging at 36,000 feet
Late last evening, my Skype desktop app dinged, and there was a chat message from Loic Le Meur. Nothing unusual there – except Loic was on a Scandinavian Airlines flight to the US at the time. He’s blogged his experiences from the flight. Not only that, he moblogged a couple of photos, uploaded a little […]
The Hobson and Holtz Report – Podcast #25: April 18, 2005
Content summary: Listeners’ comments (on syndicating your RSS feeds and what a church is doing; Technorati search on your name can turn up unknown aggregated content; on keeping up the good work; more on professional journalists vs bloggers; thanks for the mention and the cool show; considering joining IABC and is MyComm any good?); intranets, […]
Scoble’s boss moves to Skype
Via Constantin Basturea, news that Robert Scoble‘s boss at Microsoft, Lenn Pryor, is leaving the company to join Skype. In a post in his blog yesterday, Pryor talks about his reasons for leaving Microsoft and what he’s expecting to see at Skype. He concludes his lengthy post with these words: […] I can’t wait to […]
Firefox blush at browser protection ad
CNET News: The Mozilla Foundation passed on using a condom-themed poster to tout its Firefox browser, but volunteers want to revive the ad to emphasize the software’s security features. And here’s the Firefox poster that isn’t going to run, at least for now (click on it for larger image): Why isn’t it running? Because it […]
Microsoft seeks input on Longhorn development
In a post yesterday on the Longhorn developer blog, Microsoft asks for customer input on some networking features Microsoft is considering including in Longhorn, the next generation of the Windows operating system: […] The Microsoft network product team is investigating ways of resolving peer-to-peer connectivity problems in Longhorn, and we would like to get customer […]
Kick-starting a broadcasting revolution
New Scientist: Twice a week, Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson co-host an internet radio talk show. No big deal. What is a big deal is that Holtz lives in California while Hobson lives in the Netherlands. And neither has access to a radio studio. Yet with a couple of PCs, a broadband connection and a […]
Do people hate Oracle?
In an analysis in The Register, Philip Howard of Bloor Research discusses the database market and how vendors like IBM, Computer Associates and Microsoft are targeting Oracle and seeing weaknesses in the latter’s marketing (among other things). He says: […] Is it because [competitors] (and others) see weaknesses in Oracle? I don’t see how Oracle […]
Volkswagen monitors auto industry trends with blog tool
Techdirt has published a case study on how they have worked with the Electronic Research Lab of car maker Volkswagen to provide them with a customized, private blog of news and analysis concerning a variety of technologies and trends that impact the automotive industry. VW need to stay on top of all kinds of new […]
Anything could happen today
About to head off to Blognomics, a half-day conference on how new media channels like blogs can play a significant role in marketing, communication, PR, business and product development. It’s taking place at the RAI conference center here in Amsterdam, just a 10-minute bike ride away from my office. And it’s a gorgeous day today […]