I've been reading what a lot of bloggers are predicting for 2007. If only a handful of these things actually happen, it will be a phenomenal year for people, for business and for Life As We Know It! While I didn't plan on making any predictions for 2007, I just reviewed a post I wrote on Jan 5, 2006 that was sort of a non-prediction but ended up as an actual prediction. I think my concluding paragraphs are still valid: [...] It's not hard to see the enormous and further-developing impact … [Read more...] about Prediction 2007: A great year for communicators
Archives for 2006
Naked conversations
Where else would you read about a survey like this but in The Sun? - NEARLY half of Brits regularly chat to friends and family on their home phone NAKED, a survey has revealed. The poll showed 49 per cent of 600 people questioned were happy to use the phone in their birthday suit. Women are more likely than men to go au naturel - 40 per cent of men bare all while chatting, compared to 57 per cent of women. Beats blogging in your pyjamas, that's for sure :) (Couldn't resist grabbing your … [Read more...] about Naked conversations
Growing pains for Second Life
I managed to connect to Second Life this morning for the first time in two days. The virtual world - generally known as the grid - was completely offline since Thursday as developer Linden Lab grappled with a combination of a hardware failure plus database issues. Downtime due to infrastructure problems have plagued Second Life during the past few weeks, obviously frustrating for the developer and for SL users. Whatever was the precise cause of the issues that led to the downtime, one … [Read more...] about Growing pains for Second Life
The Hobson & Holtz Report – Podcast #201: December 28, 2006
Content summary: Two new interviews and a book review posted; ethics Skypecast is on Jan 13; Lee Hopkins eulogizes on FIR; Mitch Joel's international 6POS podcast; the ways PR agents piss off journalists, and a few companies that do it right; what is the value of professional PR bodies?; PRSA elects new president; Robert Scoble on the US presidential election campaign trail; Text 100 presents a Second Life view of the new publics; Microsoft PR issues: the Vista laptop give-away (Bribery? No, … [Read more...] about The Hobson & Holtz Report – Podcast #201: December 28, 2006
The great PR cock-up
The phrase "damned if you do, damned if you don't" seems to be an appropriate idiom to describe a developing kerfuffle surrounding Microsoft's latest blogger outreach campaign ahead of the launch of Windows Vista at the end of January. Concisely, here's what's happening: 1. A few days before Christmas, Microsoft (or Edelman - the lead PR agency for the launch of Vista - depending on which blog post you read) emailed a number of influential US bloggers to ask them if they'd like to receive an … [Read more...] about The great PR cock-up
Finding the real aphrodisiac
It's been said that we now live in an attention economy, what I equate to what everyone used to call 'information overload.' It addresses a situation where there is so much to which you could give your attention that the only way to deal with it all is to divide your attention and share it among many needs. I've been calling this a 'partial attention economy,' which is what you get when you cannot give your exclusive attention to so many different things. I don't know about you, but I've … [Read more...] about Finding the real aphrodisiac
Two new FIR podcast episodes
Shel was busy during Christmas producing two new FIR podcasts which he's posted to the FIR site: FIR Book Review - “Citizen Marketers: When People are the Message,†by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba, authors of the Church of the Customer blog. 14 minutes. FIR Interview - Chris Heuer, Silicon Valley entrepreneur and social media guru, about the social media press release, a concept Chris has been shepherding. 31 minutes. Great podcasts, definitely worth listening to and giving your … [Read more...] about Two new FIR podcast episodes
A Christmas characterization
Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday characterized chiefly as a time for getting together with one's family, spreading goodwill, feasting, and exchanging presents - Wikipedia definition. That's as good a definition of modern Christmas as any I've seen, and it accurately reflects how my family spent Christmas Day - lots of goodwill, plenty of feasting and exchanging cool gifts. We had three generations of us in our little cottage: seven of us for lunch in total. Our cottage is, let's … [Read more...] about A Christmas characterization