Content summary: Nvidia and its PR agency are accused of unethical viral marketing; follow-up to Google’s removal of BMW from its search; Gallup assesses the importance of blogs to web users; your value decreases the longer you’re unemployed; NPR opens the podcast floodgates; new services from Odeo; a report from Dan York; listeners’ comments discussion […]
Category: Web/Tech
The Firefox upgrade and plugins dance
Mozilla released an update to the Firefox browser earlier this month which, the release notes say, provides improved stability, improved support for Mac OS X, fixes for several memory leaks and several security enhancements among other things. Notwithstanding the security fixes, I’m not upgrading to this latest version 1.5.0.1 yet. The reason? If I do, […]
Beta view of what start-ups look like
Click on the image to see the slightly larger (and better in-focus) original on Flickr. And take a look at the comments there to get a sense of who’s missing from this visual list. I love the creator’s response to some comments: “the logo map’s a beta, too.” A number of these logos are of […]
Engaging podcasts from IBM
I’ve been subscribed to IBM’s investor relations podcast series "IBM and The Future of…" since IBM started this series last August. Eleven podcasts so far, each one providing a worthwhile learning experience on wide-ranging topics relating to society, business and technology. The latest one, IBM and The Future of Privacy, is a great example of […]
QumanaXP public beta launched
For the past few weeks, I’ve been trying out the closed beta versions of QumanaXP, an offline blog editing tool that is available in versions for Windows and Mac platforms. While I’ve not been using it for every post I’ve been writing to my blogs – I’ve been mixing and matching between ecto for Windows, […]
The richness of blogs
One of the best articles about the value of blogs that I’ve read in a long time was posted by Robin Good yesterday. Information Overload: Blogs As Content Navigators, Information Filters, Trusted Niche Guides provides a good perspective on one of the curses of modern life, which isn’t how to find information – it’s how […]
WindowBlinds workaround for Windows Vista
John Peddie’s TechWatch: […] Over 600 million PCs shipped in the last 3 years, and are still in service. These are the ones that are most logical to upgrade with the new Vista operating system. However, because of the low graphics performance of integrated graphics chips found in most of the PCs, they would not […]
Orchant insights continue at ZDNet
If you’ve been a follower of Marc Orchant‘s insightful commentaries over at The Office Weblog about all things to do with office productivity, cool tools, gadgets and Microsoft Office, note that he’s moved house. From the beginning of February, Marc’s now blogging at ZDNet with the new Office Evolution blog. Sign up for the RSS […]
The New PR in Manchester
Just finalizing preparations for my participation in a terrific conference taking place in Manchester, England, this week, which sees the Angels of The North team reunited again – Philip Young, Chris Rushton, Tom Murphy, Elizabeth Albrycht, Stuart Bruce and me, Neville Hobson. Delivering The New PR – How Blogs, Podcasts and RSS Can Work For […]
Daily Telegraph’s new media expansion
Another indicator of how some mainstream media see podcasting as a big opportunity – The Daily Telegraph is advertising for two Podcast Reporters/Producers: […] We are looking for two individuals who are capable of creating high quality and engaging Podcasts that feature comment and opinion from both internal and external sources. The successful candidates will […]
The Hobson and Holtz Report – Podcast #111: February 13, 2006
Content summary: Low ethics pay-for-placement PR; Luke Armour’s PR paper; RSS software converts content into spam blogs; Eric Schwartzman interviews The New Yorker Magazine’s Ken Auletta; Coca-Cola sends bloggers to Torino; NBC’s The Office character blog; Lee Hopkins report; are there libel concerns with using coComment?; listeners’ comments discussion; preview: potential new FIR intro music; […]
Ridiculous wifi charges
Sitting in departure lounge 3 at Schiphol airport, waiting for my flight to Manchester. As is natural at times and places like this when you have a spare sixty minutes or so, I connect to the net to pick up email and to see what’s going on. I tell you, Schiphol’s wifi pricing is about […]
The Hobson and Holtz Report – Podcast #112: February 16, 2006
Content summary: Steve Rubel and Micro Persuasion move to Edelman; approaching communication issues using new media; delivering the new PR in Manchester; has PR figured out podcasting yet?; Technorati and the Magic Middle; Dan York’s report; listeners’ comments discussion; the music; and more. Show notes for February 16, 2006 Welcome to For Immediate Release: The […]
New FeedDemon beta released
Beta 2 of FeedDemon 2, the RSS aggregator for Windows, was released this week. If you’ve been testing FD’s development versions since release 1.5, this latest beta is worth getting. I’ve just installed it and the first thing I notice is how much faster the application seems to be overall compared to beta 1. The […]
Imagine if Chevron had used a blog instead
Listening this morning to a BBC World Service radio interview with Peter Robertson, vice-chairman of the Chevron oil company, I was struck in particular by his commentary about a website where the public can join Chevron in an online discussion about the future of energy. Overall, I found it a fascinating interview, with its discussion […]
The Hobson & Holtz Report – Podcast #113: February 20, 2006
Content summary: Luke Armour’s PR paper download; New Communications Forum 2006; announcing IABC conference podcasts; what we’ve been up to this past week; the Techcrunch party; IABC Communication Commons launches; influential authorities on business blogging – survey; WELS goes to the next level; the Guinness UK marketing blog; Donald Rumsfeld’s call for better US government […]