I've been watching with interest, and some dismay, as a real kerfuffle has broken out in the WordPress community over the past few days surrounding the matter of copyright. At issue is interpretation of the GNU Public License (GPL), the "copyleft" license under whose terms WordPress software is released, how developers of premium themes offer their product, and also honouring the GPL. Among the many posts that have appeared with commentary and opinion on the issue, The Next Web … [Read more...] about What is community worth to you?
Archives for July 2010
No, the press release is not dead
Four years ago, Silicon Valley blogger and ex-FT reporter Tom Foremski famously declared, "Die! Press release! Die! Die! Die!" Central to Foremski's passionate argument that the demise of the press release would be welcome - indeed, should be encouraged - was a simple journalist's view: [...] Press releases are created by committees, edited by lawyers, and then sent out at great expense through Businesswire or PRnewswire to reach the digital and physical trash bins of tens of … [Read more...] about No, the press release is not dead
FIR Book Review: Open Leadership by Charlene Li
Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead is the new book by Charlene Li, founder of Altimeter Group and co-author of Groundswell. FIR co-host Shel Holtz and TWI Surveys president Ryan Williams set out to produce a short review of Charlene's book, but the conversation turned into a longer discussion of leadership. Given that Ryan earned his master's degree in leadership, the review explores various leadership theories and how Charlene has applied them in the … [Read more...] about FIR Book Review: Open Leadership by Charlene Li
Hard to ignore the iPhone 4 design flaw
The influential US consumer advocacy magazine Consumer Reports released a report about the new iPhone 4 yesterday with the bottom-line conclusion: "We can't recommend the iPhone 4." The magazine, which has more than 7 million subscribers and an annual testing budget of about $21 million, tested the iPhone 4 to see whether reports of poor cellular reception in certain conditions - as in, incorrectly holding the phone in your hand - were to do with a fault in the phone or not. Consumer … [Read more...] about Hard to ignore the iPhone 4 design flaw
XP: The OS that won’t die
Microsoft announced yesterday that a public beta of the forthcoming service pack for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 is available for download. In his post yesterday, Brandon LeBlanc, Windows Communications Manager at Microsoft, said that after only 7 months in market, Windows 7 had nearly a 14% share of the global operating systems market; and Windows 7 has become the fastest-selling operating system in history with 150 million licenses sold so far. Terrific metrics. As someone who … [Read more...] about XP: The OS that won’t die
The Hobson and Holtz Report – Podcast #555: July 12, 2010
Content summary: The new FIR iPhone app and a contest for free downloads; new FIR interviews posted; review of 'Open Leadership' book coming this week; listener comments and Friendfeed FIR Room round-up; 5 minutes on... Google Street View cars back on the road, social media phobia, Reader's Digest launches part-free iPad app, the end of the web as we know it?; News That Fits: Pepsi agitates the science blogging community, Dan York reports on iPhone 4 mobile video and more, the Media Monitoring … [Read more...] about The Hobson and Holtz Report – Podcast #555: July 12, 2010
New FIR iPhone app launched
If you were a fan of the iPhone or Android app for the For Immediate Release podcasts that we launched in February, you may have been as dismayed as we were when both apps stopped working properly not long after the launch. The developer, iSites, didn't respond to email so we kind of left it all in limbo. Such a pity. Now, though, we hope you'll be pleased to know that we have a new FIR app for the iPhone that does work properly in that all-important area of actually playing episodes on … [Read more...] about New FIR iPhone app launched
FIR Interview: Jennifer Cohen on Uni-Ball Facebook campaign
The recent Uni-ball campaign in the US to give away 10,000 pens a day via Facebook launched a round of criticism of companies that concentrated efforts on Facebook to the detriment of their own websites. eConsultancy's Patricia Robles wrote a post that listed five reasons companies should stay focused on their own sites. At Marketing Pilgrim, Jordan McCollum offered her own objections. And though he generally praised the campaign, Steve Rubel had problems with the way many organizations have … [Read more...] about FIR Interview: Jennifer Cohen on Uni-Ball Facebook campaign