PR Communications

Red Sox vs. Yankees

Oh, a major problem has occurred on the web today, something so serious I can hardly bear to mention this to my readers. It appears the New York Yankees are beating the Red Sox.  I was reviewing the RSS feed search engine IceRocket and looked at their handy tool for comparing different keyword phrases, while overall the Red Sox have more references, there have been a few times this month where the New York Yankees beat the Red Sox.  As I live in Boston, I’ve been caught up in the Red Sox nation fever; I actually watched the World Series games last year.  Though if anyone asks, I tell them I’m a Mariners fan, as I used to live in Seattle.  Check out IceRocket’s search engine and tools very useful.

Blogumentary

I really do think that blogging is creating a new blogging economy, why well self-publishing is giving customers new ways to consult with fellow customers and compare good and bad experiences with products, social issues and politics.  Chuck Olsen’s new documentary blogumentary touches on these issues. The film will be screened on November 5^th.

Is skype Shype!

A local systems administrator contact here in Boston, was doing some network analysis on their network and discovered some unusual traffic attempting to get through their firewall.  They identified that Skype was the cause of the traffic.  Skype is a peer-to-peer system.  Similar to the setti project, skype will use the processing power of member’s computers to route call traffic for other users.  This is all explained in the users license when you sign up for skype.  When a corporation has a firewall skype will attempt to access a member's computer but will get blocked.  I was wondering how many companies are using skype as their system administrators may be concerned about giving access to unknown computers outside the company firewall, and using up network resources such as bandwidth.  While skype's p2p model makes sense for the company, and the product has become very successful, it relies upon unsecured computers to route traffic. 

I was thinking that skype might give corporate users the option to access the skype network by abstaining from the p2p network, and maybe paying skype a fee to set up a server to cover traffic from the company.  The value of skype is the number of people who are using the system.  I think there is a problem if more companies want to use the system but IT departments will not let the software through the network, I was wondering what skype's plan was to address this issue?  Build their own network of servers, etc.  Any thoughts?

Continuous Computing

Continuous computing, is a term coined by Wade Roush Technology Review's senior editor and San Francisco bureau chief, I don’t know Wade, to me social computing would be a better term.  The phrase “continuous computing” conjures up memories of “network computing” from the 1990’s. 

I did like your section here:

”People can use their personal continuous computing field not only to pull information about anything, anytime, from anywhere, but increasingly to push their personal presence back into the infosphere, where they can self-publish on an unlimited scale and join communities that form and disband rapidly around shared work and shared interests.”

It’s the self-publishing element that Wade mentions is the critical element.  Wow, you mean we can actually write, with links and everything!  I don’t think people realize just how easy it is to publish content yet.  Collaborative projects will be the next big push I think.  Maybe using wiki’s to answer local and community questions.

Freeconference.com

Freeconference.com is a great site, the company lets you make telephone calls without charging a set up fee, and their business model is to charge each of the callers.  I am using this for my local chapter of the American Marketing Association in Boston.

Forum Sites

Blogs may be popular, but the grandfather of the Internet and communities are bulletin boards or forums.  Here’s a great site that lists a number of forum software companies.

Blog Top Word of the Year

Blog is the top word of the year according to Dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster's list of the 2004 "Words of the Year."

I believe blog has become an important word so fast because blogs are so useful for engaging an audience.  The people who run blogs are often the most active in their respective community; they are leaders and teachers to the rest of their public.  But they also learn at the same time, through the social interaction of their audience by commenting and emails.

Autonomy, Another Search Engine

Autonomy, Google on steroids, this search engine learns about the information you are looking for, goes and gets the information and brings that information to your desktop. Over time the search engine learns and brings related information.

The Web Is Changing

Heather Hamilton commented on my post from last week on "what does a corporate blogger have that a corporate website doesn't" Here is an edited version of the e-mail I sent back to Heather in response.

I am thinking that blogs are really pushing the envelope of what is currently acceptable. I also think that blogs are much more like the real world in that you can interact with a human and probably expect a response. A blog is often represented by a person, a corporate website is not. A person will respond because they feel accountable, on a corporate website, people may or may not be accountable.

Another question for bloggers out there. Do you think that corporate websites are changing, do you think your experience with blogging gave you any different insight into what might go into a corporate website?

I might be wrong on this, but I think that we are going to see some major changes to the way the websites are developed, information is presented and who is represented as presenting that information. And I think companies like Microsoft, Macromedia and Jupiter Communications are at the forefront of this change. It's only been 10 years since the web started, we are still learning how to use this medium called the web.

Is blogging journalism: BloggerCon

BloggerCon was held at Harvard University in Cambridge yesterday. Jay Rosen made some comments about whether blogging is journalism or not.

* Blogging is not journalism, but some journalists are natural bloggers and some bloggers may be natural journalists.

* Blogging is not journalism, but bloggers now filter and edit journalists, and journalists read blogs. (Both facts are new.)

* Blogging-- hey, it's not journalism. But when journalists blog they have to depart from normal practice if they want to tap the weblog's strengths. These are an author's voice, the art of linking, the immediacy and person-to-person tone, the comments section, the conversation with other blogs, tools like Technorati and RSS, none of which shone through in Web Journalism before the weblog's rise.

* Blogging is not journalism, but whereas journalism is on the Web, blogging is deeply of it, and so bloggers are ahead of journalists in learning what the Web is for, and how its ecology works. (To say nothing of its social psychology.)

* Blogging ain't journalism, but more of it should be, if we're serious about "advancing" this form. (Doc Searles says so in a pre-BloggerCon post.)

* Blogging is not journalism. But the blog sphere has a better memory for journalism than most hustling journalists, who are better at forgetting and moving on to the next thing. (What bloggers call their archive, newspaper journalists call the morgue.)

* Blogging is not journalism, but it is journal-ing; and there's a connection at the root there that has to do with recording events through time, then using that record to become fuller creatures of our time. (Thus Dave Winer's probe: Journalism is "an independent view of a series of events," a definition he built for bloggers, so use it if you can.)

* Blogging is not journalism, but as Breslin said, journalists are writers and so are bloggers, which leaves reporting (the strength of journalism) and linking (the weblogger's art) as two differences bound to make a difference.

* Blogging... just don't call it journalism. It's what happens when the readers of journalism turn into writers, and the audience into a talking public. That's a shock to the body of "mass" media, and even if it's only a tiny shock, we can still say it's electric.