Three stories from the blogosphere

Being on the road and mostly disconnected from blogs and RSS feeds for the better part of last week provides a great opportunity for an hour’s quiet reviewing today of what’s been happening recently in the PR/tech part of the blogosphere.

Three stories in particular that caught my attention:

>  Around the world in 20+ days. ‘Naked Conversations’ co-author Shel Israel and Canadian VC Rick Segal are embarking on a whirlwind global tour in August to “[…] meet smart people with ideas and dreams and aspirations. We want to have as many interesting conversations as we possibly can cram into this marathon junket. We want to start conversations that will continue beyond this field trip survey.” The trip kicks off in Tokyo on August 12 with the European leg starting in Amsterdam on Sept 5. Some very interesting people here for Shel and Rick to meet with. Pity I won’t be here that day (I’ll be in Stockholm) as I’d love to have a conversation with them all.

> The 25 worst tech products of all time. These products are so bad, says PC World, that they belong in the high-tech hall of shame. Some of these bring back some great(?) memories. My three ‘favourites’ – RealNetworks RealPlayer (the “phone home” player); the Iomega ZipDrive (I still have a mid-90s first-generation one plus loads of useless 100-meg disks: Click-click-click. That was the sound of data dying on thousands of Iomega Zip drives”); and Windows Millennium Edition (yep, I bought it: the “Mistake Edition”). Top of PC World’s list is AOL. I never used that service although if I had, it would undoubtedly be top of my list. What are your ‘favourites’?

> Are journalists ready for the social media press release? Love it or hate it, the banal, unhelpful, cookie-cutter press releases of yore have outlived their pre-internet usefulness, says Todd Defren. I couldn’t agree more with Todd in that the press release could fulfill a far more effective role as a communication medium if it were interactive. One step already in this direction is PR Newswire‘s adding RSS and del.icio.us links to the press releases they distribute in the US (see this example – look at the icons at the top right of the release). So Todd’s idea of the social media press release (PDF) is a good one. But is the media ready for it? I doubt that presenting information in a press release in a different way is likely to get journalists’ attention unless 1) it contains news, 2) they want it this way and 3) it makes it easier for them to use it to write their stories. Most PR bloggers seem to like the idea. Haven’t seen any journalists’ opinions yet, though.