2005 – The IT year in quotes A Little Sleuthing Unmasks Writer of Wikipedia Prank Baffled by the beauty adverts? So is a Nobel prizewinner Big Pharma Seeks an Image Cure Boards seek to keep tabs on activists Campaigning for Blog Awards – Is This Ethical? Can This Man Reprogram Microsoft? CitySlickrs Podcast show no. […]
Category: Web/Tech
Cool Nokia N70 is the business
Yesterday was a rare day, a day during which I enjoyed playing around with a gadget purely for the sake of it. Getting to know it a bit, trying things out on it to see how it works. Generally, just having a great deal of fun with it. The gadget is the Nokia N70 smartphone […]
This podcasting dope is addictive
News of what two big companies in entirely different industries are doing with audio as part of their communication is a great example of imaginative ways to use this communication medium. First up is health care products manufacturer Johnson & Johnson who is using podcasts as part of a campaign to promote its Acuvue contact […]
The Hobson and Holtz Report – Podcast #93: December 12, 2005
Content summary: Yahoo! acquires del.icio.us and teams up with Six Apart to offer Movable Type; IABC adds new media categories to Gold Quill Awards; Irish government uses RSS to deliver budget information; the Wikipedia class action lawsuit website; Nokia’s blog relations campaign for the N90 smartphone; listeners’ audio and email comments (from Geneva to Zurich; […]
New software hits and misses
Three of my favourite software apps launched new or upgraded versions recently. Only one definite hit in this group, unfortunately. WindowBlinds 5.0. The latest version of the add-on for Windows XP that lets you completely change the look-and-feel of your Windows is just great. The major improvements I can see in this version over the […]
FIR Interview – Rick Klau, VP Business Development, FeedBurner – December 13, 2005
In this edition of For Immediate Release podcast interviews, Shel and Neville enjoyed a 53-minute conversation with Rick Klau, Vice President of Business Development for FeedBurner, the RSS service. Download the conversation here (MP3, 21MB), or sign up for the Interviews RSS feed to get it and our future interviews automatically. For automatic synchronization with […]
A standard symbol for RSS?
One of the topics Shel and I discussed with Rick Klau of FeedBurner during our FIR podcast interview with him on Tuesday was about the challenges of helping ‘normal’ people understand what RSS is. The acronym itself and the little orange icons with ‘RSS’ or ‘XML’ you see everywhere really are not helpful to the […]
Yahoo! hammered by users over poor successor to Konfabulator
In my post on Monday about software hits and misses, I gave the new Yahoo! Widget Engine 3.0 a definite ‘miss’ verdict for the moment as this version for Windows really doesn’t appear to be worthy of unleasing on an unsuspecting public as this growing comment thread in the support forum clearly indicates. When I […]
The Hobson and Holtz Report – Podcast #94: December 15, 2005
Content summary: Personal video uploads at YouTube.com: the new ‘Flickr for video’; self-destruct SMS messaging; the Structured Blogging Initiative; are Nielsen TV ratings headed for extinction?; Wikipdia gets high ratings for accuracy of science entries; listeners’ comments discussion (PR and propaganda; show format and length; Nokia N90 blog relations campaign; emotional links; working with IT […]
Getting back up to speed with TypePad
A welcome sight for every TypePad customer – you can access the TypePad service again and you can update your blog to reflect accurate content. (Quick jump: I’ve included some tips below on how to republish your blog and how to make a backup of its post content.) If you didn’t visit this blog at […]
Six Apart: Perceptions and the role of communication
This is clearly not a good time for some companies offering blogosphere services. Last week it was Six Apart’s nightmare with the TypePad service outage for almost a full day. Now it’s the turn of del.icio.us which is still suffering in the aftermath of a power failure at their datacenter last week. If you try […]
TypePad’s indelible record
Noodling around the web and the blogosphere in preparation for tonight’s podcast discussion about Six Apart’s TypePad outage last Friday, I noticed that in the majority of blog posts I scanned, the bloggers concerned were apologizing for their blogs being offline. “Indelible record” is the phrase that immediately springs to my mind. All those hundreds […]
The Hobson and Holtz Report – Podcast #95: December 19, 2005
Content summary: Latest survey on corporate blogging; the declining trust in corporations; Google buys AOL stake; Pheedo study on ads in RSS; Gmail on cell phones; Topix.net accepts user content; Steve Rubel quits Across the Sound; Lee Hopkins’ report; listeners’ comments discussion (why blogs and wikis are so good; a Christmas list for communicators); does […]
Biz-Tech-News: Headlines 20-Dec-05
Australian Daylight Savings Changes for Microsoft Windows for the Year 2006 Happy Web 2.0 holidays from Google Heathrow gets third hotspot option iPod headphones may damage hearing Jeff Jarvis officially has more influence than Dell does On Mac, Skype Sucks CPU Outage Update and Keeping Updated Paris Metroblogging live Quick thoughts on the Google/AOL Deal […]
Looking to the next billion internet users
The internet is growing at an annualized rate of 18% and now has one billion users, says web usability guru Jakob Nielsen. A second billion users will follow in the next ten years, mostly in Asia, bringing a dramatic change in worldwide usability needs. Nielsen’s latest Alertbox report yesterday is packed with useful information and […]
Write and post to your blog from Performancing for Firefox
This is very nice indeed – Performancing, an extension for Firefox 1.5 that enables you to use write a post and publish it to your blog just by using Firefox. It may be just an extension but it’s a pretty powerful one. It’s a full-featured editor that presents you with the kind of editing interface […]
The angels of the north ride again
Following the success of last month’s one-day conference at the University of Sunderland on RSS, blogs and other new media tools, the event is going on the road with another conference in February. Delivering The New PR – How Blogs, Podcasts and RSS Can Work For You (PDF) will take place on Wednesday 15 February […]
Video publishing and other cool things
Interesting developments with video, blogs and mobile phones. Videos of the panel sessions at Les Blogs 2.0 in Paris earlier this month are now available from Vpod.tv, a new video publishing venture from entrepreneur Rodrigo Sepúlveda. You can stream the video (amazing quality) or download the files (big, +/- 200 megs each). (Now’s your chance […]
Salesforce.com and Six Apart outages: What’s the difference?
The anger and frustration over the TypePad service outage last week was an interesting phenomenon. Bloggers are passionate and opinionated! So when I read an InfoWorld story about Salesforce.com’s service outage yesterday, I wondered what bloggers were saying. A quick Technorati search on the term “salesforce.com+outage” turned up just 10 posts. In contrast, a Technorati […]
FIR Interview – Andy Abramson, CEO, Comunicano – December 21, 2005
In this edition of For Immediate Release podcast interviews, Shel and Neville enjoyed a 58-minute conversation with Andy Abramson, CEO of Comunicano, the PR agency behind the blog relations campaign for the Nokia N90 smartphone. Download the conversation here (MP3, 23MB), or sign up for the Interviews RSS feed to get it and our future […]