Congratulations to Mike Manuel at Media Guerilla – voted Best PR-Topic Blog in the "10 Best Blogs for 2005" contest organized by MarketingSherpa. Congratulations, too, to Marco Derksen of MarketingFacts here in The Netherlands – voted Best non-English-Language Blog. Well deserved, Mike and Marco! See the full list of all winners for more info.
Now 3,600 internal blogs at IBM
Fredrik Wacka posted a great snapshot report yesterday on internal blogging at IBM: Through the central blog dashboard at the intranet W3, IBMers now can find more than 3,600 blogs written by their co-workers. As of June 13 there were 3,612 internal blogs with 30,429 posts. Internal blogging is still at a stage of testing […]
The next wave in video communication
I received a press release in my email overnight from Stuart Jacobson at Santa Cruz Networks announcing vSkype, what looks to be a very cool tool for holding video conference calls via Skype. Skype Journal has the scoop on the story, though, with a detailed post last night by Bill Campbell: Today Santa Cruz Networks […]
Corporate responsibility reporting enters the mainstream
International accounting firm KPMG has published the results of its latest survey on corporate responsibility reporting. The survey report shows continuing support for corporate responsibility and open communication by the leaders of many of the world’s most successful and biggest companies: Corporate responsibility (CR) reporting in industrialized countries has clearly entered the mainstream, with Japan […]
The Hobson and Holtz Report – Podcast #42: June 16, 2005
Content summary: Listeners’ comments (on the ROI of intranet blogging, on vidcasting and file storage, Firefox tabs, organizing podcast thoughts, PRs who don’t focus on what’s happening online); sans-serif or serif fonts?; what if the novelty of blogging wears off?; is a corporate blog an oxymoron? Business Week integrates online and print; PR gaffes #2 […]
vSkype rocket
Launched in beta just three days ago, the vSkype video conferencing plug-in for the Skype internet phone sevice has certainly grabbed the attention of an awful lot of people. From an email conversation last night with Stuart Jacobson, vSkype CEO: […] You might be interested to know that we have had ~50,000 downloads in 36 […]
A pretty cool place to work
If you ever wondered what the workplace environment would be like if you worked for Microsoft, wonder no more. If you want a glimpse into the types of colleagues and others you’d likely mix with in some Microsoft locations, what kinds of really cool equipment and gadgets employees can get their hands on, even what […]
It’s worth hanging out in the IABC Cafe
It seems a distant memory now that, after the IABC Chair blog launched last October, it quickly reached a nadir in expectations, engagement, involvement, leadership, worthwhile content, you name it. That changed when incoming Chairman Warren Bickford took over as chief blogger and relaunched it as the IABC Cafe. And what a change! The Cafe […]
Ride the podcasting long tail
According to new forecasts from The Diffusion Group, a US-based consumer technology research consultancy, demand for time-shifted digital audio files – that’s ‘podcasts’ to you and me – is expected to grow from less than 15% of portable digital music player owners in the US in 2004 to 75% by 2010. The firm says its […]
FIR Interview: Josh Hallett, Hyku – June 17, 2005
In this edition of For Immediate Release podcast interviews, Neville enjoyed a 40-minute conversation with Josh Hallett, CEO of Hyku LLC. Topics and themes discussed include: consulting on blogs and other new-media channels; how blogs are being used in Florida, eg, in education, local government; mainstream media and blogs; working with PR and marketing firms; […]
Ketchum dissected
Poor Ketchum. After all the derision in the PR blogosphere during this past week to their news about their new-media service offering, they might have been hoping things had died down now. Not so. Today, Constantin Basturea posted an excellent dissection of Ketchum’s offering and the variety of commentaries from PR bloggers. Recommended reading. Especially […]
New podcast on tech media
Sam Whitmore, of Sam Whitmore’s Media Survey and occasional guest co-host of For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, has just launched Tech Media This Week, a weekly podcast: Each Friday we’ll spend between eight and 12 minutes discussing what went down in tech media during the previous seven days. TMTW also will feature […]
Simply a gorgeous day
Today’s one of those city days when the weather is just perfect. Wall-to-wall sunshine, 25 degrees C (about 77 F), about 50 percent humidity. For this part of western Europe, it doesn’t get much more pleasant than this in a city. Here in Amsterdam, it’s been pretty dismal during the past few weeks. A couple […]
Wireless internet on board ship
First, it’s wireless internet on your plane journey. Now, it’s coming to the sea. From an InfoWorld report on more deals for Boeing’s Conexion service: […] The deal with Teekay Shipping [press release] marks Boeing’s first success in the maritime sector. Teekay will install the broadband Internet service on 50 of its ships. The maritime service […]
The continuous alarm bell for telcos
BBC News interviewed Niklas Zennstrom, the CEO of Skype, on Friday. The wide-ranging interview includes commentary on Zennstrom’s early venture with Kazaa and discusses Skype and its impact on traditional telephone services. The most interesting part of the interview: […] He believes Skype will take away revenue from phone calls, which is the bulk of […]
Carnival of the Capitalists connects you to great content
Wayne Hurlbert at Blog Business World is hosting this week’s Carnival of the Capitalists, the weekly aggregation of links to posts by a wide range of different bloggers that provides a unique focus on them for further developing conversations. For this week’s carnival, Wayne has assembled an enormous quantity of links – 71 posts spread […]
Talking about podcasting on BBC Radio 4
A couple of weeks ago, I was interviewed by BBC News senior reporter Jonty Bloom for The World Tonight, a news and current affairs radio programme broadcast every weekday evening on BBC Radio 4 in the UK. Jonty came over to Amsterdam and we talked about podcasting. The interview was included in the programme which […]
The Hobson and Holtz Report – Podcast #43: June 20, 2005
Content summary: Listeners’ comments (on Bluetooth headsets; +1 isn’t just the US; how could it be bad for a CEO to blog internally?; on Wonkette; on fonts and fads; all the laptops were in Copenhagen; webinars about blogging produce good results; no politics in show #38; what about the LA Times wiki?); the LA Times […]
Podcast Awards contest accepting nominations
Shel and I don’t get into much self-promotion, shameless or otherwise, for For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, our twice-weekly business podcast. Yes, we’ve had a bit of attention in recent weeks from mainstream media – from PR Week and from the BBC – which is very nice indeed and which Shel has […]
BBC blogs the G8
Newsnight, the BBC’s flagship news and current affairs TV programme in the UK, will be blogging the G8 summit in Scotland on 6-8 July. Actually, that’s not strictly true. Although Newsnig8t (that word really needs to be in colour so you can better spot the "g8" in there) clearly is a BBC-approved blog, it’s run […]