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. […]
Interview: James Cherkoff and Johnnie Moore on Open Source Marketing – April 12, 2005
In this first of our new series of For Immediate Release podcast interviews, separate from our "Hobson & Holtz Report" bi-weekly podcasts, Shel and I enjoyed a 35-minute conversation with James Cherkoff and Johnnie Moore about open source marketing. Download the conversation here (MP3, 14.6MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it […]
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 […]
Nike breaks new ground in communication transparency
Communicating on corporate responsibility doesn’t get more transparent than this. The Financial Times reports: Today Nike breaks a three-year silence on social reporting as it publishes its 2004 corporate responsibility report. This is Nike’s first report since a 2002 California supreme court ruling that the company could be sued by Mark Kasky, a labour rights […]
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 […]
Just one of those days
‘Harried’ would be a good word to describe my day today. Sorry for the absence of new, original and/or intelligent content in this blog today. So, for today, I’m going to be purely a connector. I’d like to offer you a half-dozen places to go and content to see that I’m sure you’ll find interesting. […]
The thirst for knowledge in Europe
So this time next weekend, I’ll be in Paris for the Les Blogs one-day conference on 25 April organized by Loic Le Meur of Six Apart. That event is a sell out, with 257 participants signed up. It’s interesting to see where people are coming from – Loic has a breakdown which shows that people […]
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 […]
It’s not a blog but the BBC News editor’s site is a good read
I wrote a critical commentary earlier last month about the BBC News website and how its editor, Peter Clifton, had started writing commentaries that "look back at the week in the newsroom – and tackle some of your questions." My commentary focused on what I think the BBC could have done with this new idea […]
Blueprint ethics code for the profession
One thing I’ve frequently commented about in this blog is ethics in the communication profession. Or, rather, about the lack of an authoritative and cohesive voice that speaks on ethics on behalf of the profession. I’ve taken my own stand, so to speak, in castigating our professional associations – notably, IABC and PRSA – for […]
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, […]
Just because you could doesn’t mean you should
Are character blogs – a topic that’s producing lots of discussion at the moment – worthwhile or not? It seems to me that a polarization of strongly-held views is emerging on something that isn’t really worth spending that much time on unless everyone is talking about the same thing. For instance, the link above is […]
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 […]
GM blog stays on track
Yesterday, General Motors announced its financial results for the first quarter this year, reporting a net loss of $839 million compared to a net profit of $1.2 billion for the same period last year. It’s interesting to see the focus in media reporting about yesterday’s announcement – “GM posts worst results in 13 years”, “GM […]