Global Neighbourhoods

Addendum: eJamming

I thought we were out of here, but I missed eJamming and that would be a mistake.  This was tres cool.  A young guitarist came on the dais and collaborated musically over the Internet and produce CD quality music to share, sell or audition..  With ejamming they can collaborate with their online software from as far away as 200 miles. This is timely.  one of the hoaxes du jour was recently on YouTube where it appeared musician from all over the world assembled to back up a singer spontaeously.  It never really happened.  This was a good close out when founder Gail Kantor closed out with a Jopliesque rendition of Piece of My Heart. I like this one.

Demo in the afternoon

I liked the afternoon considerable better than the morning sessions, as did the people sitting near me. Perhaps that goes along with my personal interest in social media and end user products.  But an energy that seemed flat in the morning, was stronger in the afternoon.

Support.com's  Solutions Toolkit tunes up a PC in about five minutes over the Internet. A completely automated system.  Cleans up your desktop, optimizes the disk and lets you shut down your Windows-based computer faster than a speeding iceberg.  Provides a "non-geek" language report so you know what they actually did.  I know a couple of car mechanics that should use it as well.

Sailpoint Technologies, my favorite of the enterprise presenting companies address the $27 b spent on compliance risk management and reporting.  Product is Compliance IQ, which eliminates all the spreadsheets and database reports and produces a single screen Risk scorecard, letting the manager figure out where the greatest problems exist.  He or she can drill into the information to get more and more information as needed. Contains tons of data that can be accessed in seconds. This may be a huge solution for a major corporate headache all of whom need to manage measured risk situation.

Panjea introduced Panjea TV. It pulls clips from YouTube or Google and remixes them into a personal Panjea channel. Was the 9th presenter to say "it's really that simple," but as Dan Farber, sitting next to me said--no it's not."  This product to me seemed promising but not quite ready for prime time.  The uneven presentation was also not quite ready for dress rehearsal.

Magnify.net  of NYC, lets you keyword search for videos. Had audience shout out keywords and came up with 1000 in about ten seconds.  Went to weather video channel.  Lets you discover video all over the web and integrate it into your own site. One of the favorites among salty media folk sitting near me. This was a favorite of people I asked.

Yodio, is an online destination community for for audio and video sharing.  Demo called in an audio to the community by phone to recommend his visit to Big Sky Montana. This was a second strong demo in a row. They also can geocode all content that comes in. So somebody can call in from Paris and Yodio can sent that person geographically relevant content, almost instantly. They also said they accet Paypal tipping.  My tip: Buy low. Sell high.  These guys had good energy and just talked to the audience.  this was a personal favorite.

Live Square--Media 2.0 security companies.

Ink2 Corp.  of Emeryville is old-fashioned print shop, who I also consulted on their presentation  introduced a web-based service that produces print on demand cards, calendars and other items you select from affiliate web-based content providers. CEO Mark Rinella showed how he created a greeting card from an online vintage comic book cover.  He then entered a personal message to a friend, selected a stamp and mailed it off, all within 24 hours. It was well-received.

VuVox--let's customers pull in video, audio and photos.  Let's you choose a whole bunch of styles.  using artists around the world for special unique looks. Goes into a teen room and creates an MTV like  screen.  Did it in seconds. You can create a visual environment, then publish it on your own site or on a Vuvox channel and share it with friends on MySpace. They are a potential competitor to my client Scrapblog and their presentation was well received. Vuvox was among the day's favorites.

Splashcast--is a multimedia syndication platform that let's people creat and syndicate  and syndicate online channels of mixed media content.  Far and away one of the day's best technologies and presentations. Among Sharpcast team members is Marshall Kirkpatrick, formerly of TechCrunch.

SharedBook, Inc.  let's you collaborate online to jointly create a hardcopy book for personal publication.  Company is doing this with several API partners. Demo showed how a Soccer mom would create a team book. It can be ad supported for a business.  No bad.

OurStory--Andy Halliday, founder and a former client of mine, let's you tell the stories of family members with photos and text.  At anytime you can download it into a book.  A key feature is the timeline.  You drag and drop photos and text onto the timeline and they automatically arrange chronologically. Show photo story of family members and use as a Christmas present. Can also make video entries.

Mixpo of Seattle, whom I consulted for DEMO, can combine media onto a single card that can replace a small business website. Describing the service  for "everyday people,"  Glenn Pingul described how a destination travel agent, a designer and a restaunteer could all use the "mixcards," to create always current multimedia displays.

It's half time in DEMO land as far as the dais presentations go. The winners of the day from where I sit, were Vuvox and Magnify. The other gods selected today, will be of a lesser level or so it seems to me.

I'm now doing the other yhing people at DEMO doing lots f.  I have a series of three private meetings, before a dinner for members of the press and DEMO sponsors. I look forward to the free meal part of it.

DEMO opening presenters. Corpspeak on the dais

The session opened with a potpourri of 15 consumer, small business, enterprise, online, on-computer software and hardware, about half from large public companies.  No one hit it out of the park at least from where I sit behind home plate.

Speakers seemed to me to be generally less well-prepared than in recent demoes, some reading from Index cards.  There was also a notable incursion of the dreaded "corpspeak," using overworked cliches such as, "really it's that simple."

Still, there were several winners in my view, and many of them in tech categories where I spend little or no attention.

A few of them:

Qtech, Inc. reQall.  Notes to yourself can be stored on a phone.  Sort of letting you send voicemail to your self.  It makes a nice list that you can call in to hear.   Very simple, easy and useful product. It reminds me of something I was ... but I forget.

Eyejot of Seattle is a video messaging platform. Extremely easy to use. You can take a clip from camera photne or dig computer.  Send it off to anyone else on the eyejot network. Can watch it on your iPod via iTunes, MySpace.  Consumer apps, but is also compatible with mobile devices for the business user. Trying to combine video chat and email. 

Honeypitch of San Francisco gave a somewhat goofy presentation that shows how you can create an almost instant customized, personalized proposal for clients.

Mission Research, of Lancaster, PA,  who already produces successful CRM software for nonprofits announced a simpilar on-computer software for small business called SalesWorks. CRM is not my personal favorite app, but this seemed incredibly easy compared with the Salesforce demos that I have suffered through in the past.

Ceelox  introduced Scram which lets you send encrypted messages for greater security. You can send it not just by email but also via Instant Messenger.  It can also send ads that when downloaded have special messages behind them.  These could be sweepstakes numbers, etc.  The Ceelox folk say they turn spam into Scram. I am not so sure.

Symantec introduced their Identity Initiative, which the company says will allow users to use their identity online more securely. The company claims that "security 2.0" protects both identity and security.  Used old cartoon of a puppy on a PC, boasting that on the Internet, no one knows your a dog." Let's you check out unknown vendors online before you give them you credit card info.

Jaman.com, showed 25 award winning film synpses, none of whom made it into general distribution.  They offer a growing library of such films online to subscribers.  Uses compacting technology to send you full screen video in "better than DVD quality." Lets you have in-movie commentary and discussion--or without them if you choose.  Still in beta, they have 200 films available, with 1000 more coming.  Charge $1.99 to rent and $4.99 to buy.  This was my runaway favorite in the segment.

Total Immersion, the French Virtual Reality advertising firm who in 2004 gave my lifetime favorite Demo of  a helicopter that wasn't there hovering over attendee heads when they inroduced D'Fusion. They were back to show  their mobile and consumer   version, which this time did not work on the first two tries.  The third time we watched a video car chase with Thomasville type cartoon charaters running about.  This was actually just a cardboard model brought to life.   Then we saw a cartoon charater popout of the presenter sweatshirt. Then the speaker's head got replaced onscreen by Arnold Schwarzennegar. Despite the glitches, it unquestionably brought  the most favorable response of the day. Extremely cool.

DEMO Opening Session

NOTE: I forgot my camera-to-PC wire.  I'll add photos later.

Zink Imaging--Name stands for Zero Ink.  Demo person takes a picture of Shipley sends wirelessly to ZINC printer, which is about the size of a Blackberry.  Device can be embedded into digital products. Uses a scifi-type process of melting microscopic crystals to produce colors for seemingly vivid output. The prints are also heat resistant and waterproof which is pretty cool.Seems to me this is the Polaroid Camera for the Information Age.  Partnering  with companies to make mobile printers, digital camera with ZINK printer built directly into them.

Shipley kicks off DEMO

Chris Shipley has just walked onto the stage.  She comments on the great energy in the room. "We are at the center of an exciting shift," she tells us, and in this shift the individual is becoming all powerful.  She has struggle with terms to describe it but the right words have eluded her. Web 2.0, she tells us, has traction for the term.  "It is a condition in the marketplace, and has become a trendy presence.

Chris wants to shift to a model that puts people at the center rather than the technology. We've moved beyond consumer generated content.  Tools that allow us to customize & personalize our own experiences ar now coming into the workplace. This is not just consumer, but includes empowered individuals in the enterprise as well. User want usability and ease even when interacting with enterprise data. The enterprise, too is being driven by individual influence.

The theme for DEMO this year?  The user is at center and consuer/enterprise definitions are getting less relevant.

Then she moves into the opening segment with 15 companies representing a mix of enterprise and consumer companies.

MIXPO: Sitting & Hoping at DEMO

[Mixpo's Glenn Pingul and PR VOIP Maven Andy Abramson at DEMO reception]

Mixpo is one of three companies I coached for DEMO.  My pal, Andy Abramson brought me in and I had a ball working with them. Mixpo, is designed for small business users who want to take advantage of social media very easily, to create modern web pages, portfolios, resumes and other professional materials.

This morning when I staggered down for an early morning shot of Starbucks I found co-founders Glenn Pingul and Anupam Gupta, huddled on a couch, going over theri presentations, tweaking their technology and looking like a couple of kids awaiting Santa Claus on New Year's Eve. It was 5:45 a.m.

You could tell they were just tickled to there.  They showed no signs of fatigue.  As I chatted with them, I looked around the lobby of the JW Marriott here in Palm Springs. There were at least another dozen pairs of entrepreneurs doing the same thing. I'm sure in rooms throughout the hotel, there were dozens of others doing the same thing, not to mention a few of us insomniac bloggers.

Now it's 7 a.m., time to get ready for the breakfast and opening remarks by executive producer Chris Shipley. Then, it's showtime folks.

Experts: Don't upgrade to VIsta

One thing I love about DEMO is that I get to rub elbows with some of the world's savviest tech press.  All the product guys are here. Hanging out in the lobby with them yesterday, I asked the question that is on the mind of 90 percent of all computer users:

"Should I upgrade my computer to VISTA?"

I received a resounding "NO!" in three-part harmony.

It seems that Vista is great if you are buying a new PC, but right now there are all sorts of incompatabilities with legacy software, the stuff that's already in your computer. This will get worked out, one app at a time, over the coming months, they speculate. But chances are you should just wait to have Vista in your next machine--and the one I have right now works just fine, thank you very much.

DEMO reception is energy charged

[DEMO Mob. Photo by Shel. Additional DEMO photos available here.]

In the years that I reviewed conferences for Conferenza, I always used the opening night reception to gauge the mood of attendees, and almost invariably that gave me a sense of what we would be in for at the conference.

If last night's DEMO reception is any indicator, we are in for one Hell of a high energy time. Originally planned for a casual outdoor industry schmooze, the threat of rain over the Palm Spring Desert drove 600 people into the overly intimate JW Marriott lobby lounge where we rubbed elbows at extremely close range and shouted greetings toward each other. Remnants of the party were still going on when I crawled off to be after midnight, about five hours ago.

What dominates this conference are the start up teams, 67 of them, who have invested a good deal of money and time to be here.  They thought they were here to meet the media, investors and big company dealmakers.  At last night's reception, they found each other.  They chatted and realized they were not alone in the extraordinary effort that goes in to succeeding at this conference.

As I went for an early morning Vente coffee from Starbucks, the lobby was sparsely populated with young people typing on laptops, chatting intensely.  Many of them will present this morning.  They will stand on the dais in front of 700 people from all over the world.  Several of us bloggers will report to the world not in attendance as these companies present. A few stars will be born here. 

Other will go back home, take a couple of days off to relax and reintroduce themselves to spouses and have painful meetings of how their companies need to adjust course. Most all of these companies will be changed after havingg had their first shakeouts at this conference.

Gawd, I love this show.

I'm at DEMO, my favorite conference

I'm at DEMO where 67 companies, mostly startups will be strutting their stuff for six minutes each tomorrow and Thursday.  It is my favorite conference.  I see people who I only get to enjoy at this conference, twice each year. I get the big picture on what is happening in innovation.

I'll be blogging as much of it as I can over the next few days and beyond.  I'll also be linking to other bloggers who are here.  If you are blogging from or about DEMO, please send me a link and I will post it.

I am using the tag demo07--unless a different tag is named from the dais.

Krypronite 2: a new twist to the Lance Dutson story

Back when Robert and I were writing Naked Conversations, we wrote about the Kryptonite lock mess. It seems you could pick a Kryptonite lock with a 19 cent BIC pen and bloggers had something to do with making this information public. The 23 employees at Kryptonite stayed steadfastly mute on the topic--until we posted about it some nine months later. Then Donna Tocci, Kryptonite's PR person spoke out with passion and credibility about the company's side to the story, one which made many of us rethink our perceptions of the blogosphere's role, and one that changed what we wrote about Kryptonite in our book. 

Had bloggers been vigilant or vigilantes?   The question remains unanswered and still debated. Forbes magazine called us a lynch mob. Many of us consider blogs a way that the people can speak up. But is that what happens when a blogger takes on people who are clueless on blogs and what to do about them.

Now comes the story of blogger Lance Dutson who took on the Maine board of tourism and it's advertising and PR firms.  He was tireless in charging wrongdoing, nepotism, arrogance and lack of response.  he was threatened by a lawsuit, he reported on how his wife was intimidated on her job. He kept blogging atnd the other side kept silent, until this morning.
.
For more details, including the who's who of it all, check out Jim Turner, an extremely thoughtful blogger, who points out much of the history along with how bad organizations opposed to Lance looked to those of us who investigated.

This week end, while I was blogging ardently about the need for greater blogger ethics, I learned from Lance that Dann Lewis, the director of the board of tourism had been fired.  According to Lance this was because of Lewis' attempts to intimidate him through litigation.

Now, just like the Kryptonite saga, nine months after it began, the other side has now decided to speak out in the form of Sherry Lewis, who charges Lance Dutson "is a liar" who got away with it because he caught the other side by surprise, and like the Kryptonite folk, this other side was clueless about how to deal with the blogosphere.

In a lengthy comment on my earlier post, she wrote this morning :"...the dozen or so individuals involved had no idea what had hit them. The attacks were becoming relentless and very personal. After the meeting with Cone, Dann made it clear that engagement was the only way to go.

'Talk WITH us.'

Dutson could not handle such an approach."

In short, Sherry Lewis contends, Dann did not want to sue Dutson and had nothing to do with it. She further charges that Dann wanted to engage Dutson in conversation, and when the met, it was Lance who was accompanied by a lawyer and it was Lance who got up and inexplicably got up and left the room after about five minutes. (BTW, the "talk WITH us," line is an apparent reference to Naked Conversations book's promotional material.)

So who should I believe?  I haven't a clue.  In this case, I've tried to just be a reporter.  I've been speaking with Sheri by email for the past couple of days and she seems pretty creditable. It took her two tries to successfully post her email, which implies she may be new to this communications form. She was forthcoming in revealing she is Dann's spouse.I think I would enjoy meeting her.

The trouble is, I found Lance to be creditable as well. I was diappointed not to meet him when I canceled a trip to Maine last October.

I imagine that the absolute truth lies somewhere in between the two versions. I lon ago learned that even those who were in the room have sincere differences of opinion what transpired.

Bloggers are also less experienced than traditional journalists in managing the  hearsay of "he said/she said" reporting.

My lesson in all this is that in the future I will be more conservative in covering disputes that do not directly concern me. I will remember that most people in the world still don't get blogging, how it works and the power it holds.

We bloggers have become a powerful lot. But we are inexperienced with that power and we need to learn that with it comes increased responsibility.

Teachers Use online twice as often as newspapers, 4 times local TV

Reuters is reporting on a "Future of Journalism"survey taken last fall of over 1250 teachers in Grades 5 through 12 showing that 57% of them regularly use online resources. Only 28%, or about half use daily newspapers and a mere 13 percent refer students to local TV news.

"Students do not relate to newspapers," one teach is reported to have said.

Boy, this has happened fast.  I wonder what the numbers were five years ago. What do you think they will be, moving five years forward.

This, of course, reinforces a central premise of Global Neighborhoods. If you want to understand what the business world will look like in a few short years, look at the generation that will be coming in to it and replacing the boomer generation.

Montreal Blogger Dinner Set for Feb. 21

Marc Snyder has been kind enough to organize a blogger dinner for Feb. 21 during my upcoming visit to Montreal. The details are posted on his blog
If you live or will be in the area, I really hope you will join us. If you can make it, please tell us by leaving a comment on Marc's blog.

It has been over 20 years since I have been in Montreal and I am really excited about it. I'm there to serve as keynote speaker for an Infopresse Web 2.0 conference.

The only preparation I have to make is finding a scarf, hat and gloves. We Californians get wimpy when we go to Canada in Winter.  I am not a lover of cold weather.  I was raised in New England and I left for three reasons--December, January and February, not that March and April were so great either.

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AllFreeCalls adds Antartica and 8 more countries

Pat Phelan has announced AllFreeCalls is available in eight additional countries, plus Antartica, which is a very cool place--but it's a continent and not a country.

Pat says that his goal is to make free calls avialbe in all countries and you can expect him to keep announcing new service in more places about once every week.

I'm still waiting to get a Roam4Free SIM card that let's me call Pat cheaply from a cell phone so I can tell him he needs to pay his fabulous American consultants more money.


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Jeremiah's Customer Reference Manifesto

Jeremiah has posted a thoughtful, massive and important piece on the Impacts of social media on corporate customer reference programs.
Please read it slowly and think through what he has to say.  He has obviously been working on it for some time and it will take some time for this piece to generate the discussion--and recognition it deserves.

In many ways this could be called Jeremiah's Manifesto.


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Nortel CTO starts a blog

Mark Evans points me to a blog by John Roese, CTO of Nortel, which is pretty well written and interesting.  Mark has interviewed me a couple of times and both times challenged me to name a blog by a major Candadian company executive.

He has apparently found his own answer.

Corporate blogging has not caught on as fast as Robert and I thought it would when we wrote Naked Conversations.  But it has caught on and it is instigating the sort of fundamental change we predicted. It reminds me of Ethernet, when it's inventor Bob Metcalfe went around for years extolling it's virtues, closing his talks with, "And I predict this years, as I have predicted for the past six years, will be the year of the computer LAN."

No one quite knows which years actually was the year of the computer network. It just happened steadily.  At the time, it seemed adoption was painfully gradual, and then we looked back and it was so obvious that it would happen and the time it took did not seem that long after all.

In fact it really wasn't.













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Lance Dutton's revenge. They fired his attacker

You may recall I was among the many strident supporters of Lance Dutton of the Maine Web report who took on the Maine board of tourism and it's smarmy ad agency a while ago.  To silence Lance's persistent charges of wrongdoing, Dann Lewis, the state tourism director tried all sorts of intimidation tactics, including calling up Lance's wife's boss.

Lewis also decided to try the most lethal way to pressure a small independent guy--litigation.  This is being used against bloggers more often than you may think. But Lance stood his ground.

Against him, were political powers and an aggressive ad agency.  Behind him were a handful of sympathetic bloggers who believed in him.


In the end, lance did not get sued and has been pretty much vindicated as the voice of truth in what became a very ugly dust up. The sweet revenge came this week, the kind of culmination that usually only happens in Hollywood movies.

Dann Lewis has been fired by the Maine board of tourism. And it couldn;t have happened to a more deserving person, if you ask me.

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Scoble as you've never seen him!

[Scoble Reclining. Photo by Shel]

Jeremiah has already reported on our evening at the Scoble's new, beautiful home in Half Moon Bay. But he failed to mention the provocative posing did on this new red couch. Some of you may recall, that Naked Conversations was originally called "The Red Couch" and it remains our URL. This was not what we had in mind.

Constantin Uses Grazr to make NC more searchable

Constantin Basturea has taken the initiative to make Naked Conversations more searchable by using Grazr as his tool. This is very cool and we appreciate your doing this Constantin. Thanks.


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Hillary on Iraq: 'Let George do it.'

I keep trying to keep out of politics, but the upcoming presidential campaign keeps drawing me in. So from time-to-time I'm going to jump in and say something. If you don't want to read what I have to say on the subject, please skip anything you see here under the category of "politics."


According to the AP, Hillary Clinton says she thinks President Bush should pull all troops out of Iraq before the next president takes office. She argues it would be irresponsible for him to leave the mess for the next president to clean up.

I find what she has to say surprisingly lame.  If a candidate for president wants to talk about Iraq and irresponsibility, there are far better topics than suggesting Bush tidy up the mess as a courtesy to how successor. And in fact, most Americans, on either side of the aisle, seem to understand that the US has stepped into a lobster trap of a situation.

A lobster trap is something that is very easy to get into and nearly impossible to navigate out of.

I for one, hope this roblem is solved soon.  Extremely soon. But for Hillary to say, "Let George do it," makes me doubt that she has a clue what she will do if she inherits the situation. As the NY Times says in their finest editorial language: "We are not impressed."


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Bloggie Awards Announced

I just spent the last 90 minutes surfing the wonderful weblogs nominated for Bloggies.  I'm thrilled to say that I was familiar with less than half of them, I would guess less than 40 percent. On first walkthrough I found reason to subscribe to 10 new blogs.

This is wonderful.  Discovering new blogs that are interesting or useful to me is more fun than reading the ones I know as well as I know my own. All 10 blogs I picked are from outside of technology and outside the US (I think).

The five nominated for best new blog are all new to me, and all worth checking out. So what are you doing here, reading this tired old stuff?  Go check them out.


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Wanted: A good gossip blog

Time was when just about everyone in Silicon Valley read the San Jose Business Journal as fast as fast as they could get their hands on it. Strange for a business journal, but there was a specific reason and that was the gossip column begun by Greg Zachary who eventually went on to the Wall Street Journal.  He was followed by Cordell Koland who now owns SIPR, the PR firm that I founded.

Both these guys were digging reporters.  They found appropriate dirt under the manicured fingernails of tech executives. They built enormous networks of contacts who were willing to leak confidential information on:

• Deals being discussed but not yet finished.
• Execs in trouble about to lose high profile jobs
• Products under development that were out-performing or under-performing.
• Smarmy financial dealings.
• What startup was about to run out of money or have the investors pull the plug

The gossip column was hard news  Not every rumor actually panned out, but enough did to give the old Business Journal a great deal of credibility. You just had to read it to know what was going on. It was nice to get access to information that powerful people would rather withhold from you.

I don't get this sort of stuff from any blog, although one positions itself that way.  I'm really not interested in what executive is dating an employee or smarmy comments about people.  I want information that is either useful or interesting.

Currently I cannot get that anywhere.  I hope someone somewhere improves and existing blog or starts one that provides it. Am I thinking about Valleywag? I wouldn't dare say that. I made similar comments on a podcast over a year ago, and Nick Douglas responded to what I thought was constructive criticism my taking multiple personal chea shots at me over the following year.

Blogging Blackmailers & Death wishers

This is a week in which I saw and heard many dark moments in the blogosphere, some of them much darker than what the press release of the future may or may not look like. Several incidents seem to me to reveal bloggers starting to abuse the very real power that we are acquiring. 

Let me give you four examples of what I'm talking about.  I am going to withhold the names of the people involved.  I will say that my sources are in each case, people I know and trust.  In no case did I ask the other side for their perspective on what occured.

• One of the people I respect the most in the tech industry called me.  This person has a 20 year history of being credible with me.  It seems a blogger very much wanted something that my colleague had previously said he might do, then decided not to.  The blogger threatened to publish old email showing that my friend had reneged on a deal.  The key message was "Either you do what I tell you, or I'm going to use my blog to make you look bad." This smacks of extortion to me.
• A blogger I hold in pretty high esteem got into a pretty nasty dispute with a vendor and posted about it. That's fair game.  But then it accelerated into a campaign of asking bloggers who are no involved to join in.  Multiple posts seemed design to hurt the vendor, but added no additional news to the situation. This is not extortion in my view, but it moves from writing to warn others of shoddy products and services into the area of personal vendetta.
• A friend of mine owns a company whose businesses involves appropriate use of confidential and discreet information. On Friday, his firm extended an offer to a bright young woman to join as an administrative assistant.  She said she needed the weekend to think it over. She was chosen from several candidates and the firm held off on talking to other finalists until the top choice decided one way or the other. On Saturday, she posted on her personal blog, naming the company and publicly anguishing that she and her husband were planning to move out of the state and she didn't know whether she should take this new job that paid better than her current one.  My friend wanted to know whether this blog would justify  them withdrawing the offer for its clear indiscretion. In my view, this applicant has a death wish that should be granted. My answer: Of course they should.  Blogging should give employees, and potential employees a voice.  But there is nothing about the social media that allows employees to embarrass their employers.

I'm a big believer in social media giving people a voice. It has become increasingly clear that blogger voices are being heard.  Any blogger.  Back in Naked Conversations we talked about EA Housewife who made the world aware of abusive rules in her husband's workplace.  Jeff Jarvis coined to phrase Dell Hell and it resonated because so many of us were already unhappy Dell customers.

How are these two examples so very different from the four situations I learned about this week? In these two cases, bloggers took action o right a wrong.  In both cases they got some level of results. In three of these new cases, my perception is that bloggers were trying to use their voice to intimidate other parties. In the fourth case, a potential employer was afraid that not hiring the blogger would give her cause to further embarrass the company by future postings. I'm sad to say their is legitimacy in the concern.

I guess this sort of stuff was bound to happen.  It makes me sad, that four cases in one week would imply that they are happening with great frequency. It seems to me important that bloggers understand they have a great emergent power and they need to use it wisely.

If not, we collectively, lose that power as our credibility swirls around then gets sucked down the drain.

Farecast offers insurance on their Air Ticket predictions

I have mixed feelings and have experienced mixed results in predictive technologies over the years. One that I like however is Farecast a site that predicts whether airfare is heading up or down to a particular between particular destinations in a given date range.

But now, for $9.95 Farecast is offering insurance that their predictions are accurate, or they will pay you the difference between what you paid and what you could have paid.

I'm no number cruncher, but Mike Fridgeon, VP marketing told me that Farecast has been hitting it right about 75% of the time.I think they're betting that they'll just keep getting better over time.


In any case, for 10 bucks, it seems worth checking out.

Technorati Tags: farecast

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Lessons from SLAC

[Bebo White, SLAC tour guide and author of the first web page. Photo by Shel]

"Don't let any of these guys tell you they saw what was coming.  They didn't. Maybe Tim saw it, but to be honest I don't think so," our tour guide at the legendary Stanford Linear Accelerator Center  (SLAC) told us.  He should know.  Our eloquent, passionate guide was Bebo White, who wrote the first web pages. Tim is Tim Berners-Lee, his colleague, who invented the World Wide Web.

My visit to SLAC was arranged by Marc Weber curator for the Web History Center.  Located inside the Computer History Museum, Marc's charter is to archive the robust and relatively recent history of the Web. I've accepted a role as an adviser to the organization and, in return, Marc hooked me into this SLAC visit previously arranged by coincidence for some guy named Robert Scoble.  Scoble and I have met before.

Bebo excorted us through this somewhat funky campus that serves as home to many of the world's most brilliant and accomplished physicists, a campus where six previous residents became Nobel Laureates; a campus where the first American node for the Worldwide Web was built.

The main attraction is the two-mile long linear accelerator, a very complex tube of tiny diameter. Simplistically speaking, sub-atomic particles are placed in two ends and are hurled at each other, virtually at the speed of light.  The collision transforms the particles into energy just as Einstein said they would.  Studying what happens we were told has been a significant factor in ushering in a current Golden Age in Particle Physics. It also gave the world microwave ovens.

Scoble video recorded 90 minutes of interviews with some of the most accomplished of the SLAC administation who told rich anecdotes of what has happened there over the years. I think his challenge will be in choosing what to edit out for the Scoble Show.

While everyone we met treated us to a fascinating story, Bebo overflows with them.  We had run out of time before we got to visit the linear accelerator itself and will have to come back for the 90 minutes that will, which I'm sure Bebo will stretch to3 hours and make it worth our while.

[Paul F. Kunz, architect of 1st American website. Photo by Shel]

A particular highlight--and the lessons of the day--came from Paul Kunz, who told the story of how, in 1980, he built the first American web site, on a NEXT workstation one afternoon after the guy assigned to do it flaked on the job.  Over at CERN, Tim Berners-Lee needed it for a  demo he was planning for a fast-arriving conference presentation in Paris.

Kunz, echoed Bebo's earlier warning. He had no idea what they were unleashing in the world with this web thing. Berners Lee was demonstrating how hyertext could be used for online research collaboration.  The first project was t show how researchers could all access one important database, thus sharing valuable information.

"Before that presentation, maybe 20 people knew about what Tim was working on," Kunz recollected. "Then at the conference, all 200 people were really riveted. They got it immediately. They each went home and told 10 people.  So we went from 20 to 2000 people in a week all through word of mouth.

For me, this was the big takeaway.  It reinforced two points that keep coming up in everything I'm doing:

(1) There is no marketing force as powerful than the natural force of word of mouth. There is no corporate program that can does the shoes of credibility of the natural peer-to-peer enthusiasm that propels word of mouth to be fruitful and multiply.

(2) Vision is rarely the builder of great things. I've been working with entrepreneurs since 1979.  Most fabled success stories begin with: We put this together because we thought it would be cool and we wanted to share it with friends." What appeals to you and your friends just might appeal to a great many people.

This latter point is all-too-often overlooked.  I think its in part the fault of many VCs who want to hear about millions and billions and they do not understand the power of natural peer-to-peer.  They don't understand that humans are collaborative by nature and we spread product information to benefit friends not companies. This is what Berners Lee did.  This is what so many others have done.

One parting thought. The guys I met at SLAC seemed to display an attitude that I have always found the most compelling.  Each was humble, but proud. Each seemed a bit surprised and very pleased with what they have accomplished. Perhaps this strikes particularly well with me this week.  I have met a few people who have a good deal of strut about thing they think they will achieve in the nearterm future.  It seems to me they should wait longer to strut and let their stuff do it for them--if it is worthy of a strut.

Roam4Free Reviews Coming in Favorable

Conor over at Argolon was among the first to order a SIM card for cheap international calling from Roam4Free.  He got it the next day and he explains why he finds the service to be slicker than Jajah's competing service.

I can't wait until Roam4Free comes to the States so I can call up Pat and tell him to give me more money as his consultant.




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NC is Now in Eight Versions

[From left, Korean, Indian, American and Japanese versions of Naked Conversations. Photo by Shel]

Robert and I really love the international reach that our book has found. So far, our publisher has sent us the four version shown above. The Korean version comes bundled under shrink wrap with a small handful of post cards.  I don't know why.  The Japanese version has unquestionably the raciest cover.

Wiley also informs us that versions have been printed also in Turkish, Russian, Korean and for India. We don't currently know how sales are going.  Nor do we know much about Turkish blogging. We are also told that deals have been cut for both French and Italian versions, which would bring the total to 10.

If you happen to come across one of these editions, please send us a photo of it.

We'd love to see it.

The new PR practitioner

As I've written and said too many times, I am a recovering publicist. One day, I scrawled on a restroom mirror, "stop me before I pitch again." I've joined Hypers Anonymous, and attend meetings once weekly.  I have not pitched in over five years.

Well none of that is not exactly true.  In 2001, I sold SIPR, my PR agency to employees and went home.  The main reason was not a disaffection with the profession but that a bubble popped in my face.  My choices were to lay everyone off and start all over again, or to turn the keys over to everyone else and go home.

I opted for the latter.

What is true however, is that PR as I had learned it Regis McKenna, Inc. the legendary tech PR agency had changed significantly during my tenure and I did not think it was for the better. At Regis we were taught to be trusted sources of information for the press and analysts who could most influence our clients relationships with customers and prospects. The press loved speaking to us, because were industry insiders.  We knew what was going on in this new place called Silicon Valley.  We were active particpants in conversations.  We were facilitators for our clients. We knew which editor wanted what story and we helped them get it, sometimes pointing them to companies that were not agency clients.

As an aside, the press release was considered an almost superflous document in the Regis process.  He used to say that he didn't care if it was just a series of bullet points. After all, we were not in the news writing business.  We were more relationship facilitators than anything else. While many were cute, Regis hired people because they were smart. many of us were aggressive, perhaps overly so, but some of us did quitre well by being slow, methodical and thoughtful.

Much has passed from then to now, but I am not the only observer who believes the early 80s were a Golden Age in tech PR.  It was a respected profession then.  Editors, for th most part, valued us.  We were translators of the complex into terms that people could understand.  We had special knowledge worth sharing.  Our clients were often engineers who wanted to tell you how hard it was to accomplish  something.  We simplified the story.  Simplified it and facilitated its distribtution to people who made a difference.

It seems to me we have come full circle because of several factors, particularly the rise of the internet and the reduced relevance of traditional media. Back in the Regis days, we played active roles in the conversation--not as client boosting hypesters, but as knowledgeable resources. We eroded into roles as smilers and dialers.  Now because all that smiling and dialing has become increasingly ineffectual, there is a  great opportunity for the PR professional to once again join the conversation.

PR people have a future  as the same kind of trusted resources we were back in the days of Regis McKenna. except now we can use blogging and social media.  We get to establish our own credibility over time and when we discuss our own clients on our blogs, we are trusted sources of information relevant to our audiences.

There are all sorts of people doing this today. They may get hung up n small matters such as the social media press release, but that is not relevant.  What's relevant is that we know them  from an ongoing series of conversations  held on the Internet. I may disagree with Shel Holtz about  the social media release and whether we are in a new phase of a PR continuum as he believes or at the beginning of a social revolution as I believe. In the large sense such issues are no great matter.

What is a great matter, if you are in the PR proffesion is that you will not succeed if you focus on smiling and dialing a media list of strangers, if you are intent in inject hubris into what you have to say or write.  If you think you can succeed by being just cute or clever, you are living in the wrong Era.

Today, you need to join the conversation. You are part of the news distribution system, not just for your clients, but for the community where your clients would like to flourish.

This to me is very liberating.  The PR people I know and respect are all interesting people and great story teller.  They often know so much more than their clients allow them to express.  We are now in a Conversational Era.  It looks like we will be in this Era for some time to come, and the best and brightest of the PR professionals will join in that conversation, while others will just be left behind.

WiFi on Boeings will have to wait

The Boeing 787 "Dreamliner was going to have a WiFi network that allowed great digital entertainment and non-intrusive computer connection inflight. The project is being scrapped, the company announced, because the system will add too much weight to the plane and because some countries refused to allow it access to spectrum radio waves.

Too bad. I can think of nothing I would like more to wile away my flight time more than WiFi connection.  Then again, I read at least 10 complete books a year while flying, and that isn't so bad. If everyone did that, I could probably sell more books.


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2000 blogosphere faces

Through Frank Gruber, I was pointed to Tino Buntic's collage of 2000 bloggers. Actually, I found one duplicate--a woman in a bright red blazer about half way down, so the total may only be 1999. Then there's another woman, who shows us only the back f her head, but now I'm getting pretty picky.

I'm impressed with this project.

It illustrates our diversity and the sheer mass of bloggers.  As Tino pointed out there are 55 million of us and we all think. That's powerful.


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NC on syllabus at Johns Hopkins

My book is getting in where I could not.

I just discovered the Naked Conversations is among several books required for a course at Johns Hopkins University called Introduction to Digital Age. The nice touch is this is one of many fine universities that rejected my application to attend.


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BBC announces virtual world for kids

The BBC is starting a virtual world for children.  Planned for 7-12 year olds, the virtual world would give children access to the characters and resources on CBBC, the BBC's children's channel. But it would also be more interactive, with children choosing avatars and being able to create and share content.

According to a BBC spokesperson, "It will give children a chance to move around a safe,
secure world where they can not only interact with familiar characters
but have an opportunity to make that world a more fascinating place
with their own imaginations."

One big difference from SecondLife.  There will be no LindenEuros.


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Miami Blogger Dinner Feb. 7

Alex de Carvalho, the Scrapablog Community Guy is putting together a blogger dinner near the University of Miami on Feb.7.  Jeremiah Owyang and I will be in from the West Coast and David Parmet will be down from New York.  We will be in David and I will be there to help launch Scrapblog at WeMedia the next day and Jeremiah will be the PodTech roving cinematographer--as if any of us needed an excuse to be in Miami in February.

Please join us.  Details are on the Scrapblog site.

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Social Media release: Lipstick on a Chicken

If all the great writing that I've seen on blogs about the social media press release went into the actual press release, then maybe those of us who receive them without requesting them would not ignore them so completely.

For me and a growing number of reporters, any form of press release is like lipstick on a dead chicken.  No matter how you try to pretty the thing up, it's still a pretty homely bird.

But Shel Holtz and others is right.  Press releases are not dead.  I helped Pat Phelan write one for Roam4Free yesterday. I've been working with David Parmet on one for Scrapblog who goes live in a few weeks. There are some traditional reporters who may pick up this release and write about my clients because of them. 

The release is still worth doing.  But it is less relevant today than it was yesterday.  And it will be less relevant tomorrow than it is today.  It is not dead, but it is dying.  The people who use them are fewer.  The people who ignore them are more. The people who want to make money writing them seem to remain about the same in numbers.

If you want to get me to write about you, and if I want to get the people who are most relevant to Roam4Free and Scrapblog to write about these clients, I don't pitch them.  I don't send them email attachments.  I don't call them up on the phone. I join their conversations. We get to know each other.  Hopefully, in many cases, we will get to know and trust each other.  When my audience is interested in what a PR practitioner is talking about it, I write about it and thus accelerate the conversation.

If you are in the PR profession, I think you need to stop pitching and start becoming part of the conversation relevant to your market and your client. The blogosphere is becoming more relevant to your clients and the traditional media less so. If you wait until your client has an announcement then try to come barging in here shouting for attention, I, and other bloggers, will simply ignore you.

If you stay too loyal for too long to lipstick-smeared chickens, then you will end up biting the bird.

Roam4Free goes live

My client, Roam4Free has finally gone live after a long and arduous course.

The new service allows mobile phone users calling each other between countries to bypass steep roaming charges. Just go here to sign up . The service can be used in 115 countries on three continents calling people in any country. Pat vows that the service will expand to  include the US and other countries  over the next few months.

If you use Roam4Free your international calling costs will be cut by well over 90 percent. The way it works is that they send you a SIM card that you  either slip into your mobile phone, or you buy  a cheaP dedicated handset to use when you travel. The SIM card acts like you are in one country when you are in another.
For example, if someone in France received lots oif calls from Ireland, he or she would insert a SIM card into a cell phone that was attached to a European mobile number. Then, any calls received from Ireland would be treated as a local number. Instead of paying over a dollar a minute, you'd be paying a penny or two.

The SIM card costs you 20 euro or about $26. This includes a 5 euro credit for making calls.  When you burn through that, you can top off at the Roam4Free site again.
There are lots of new "cheap talk" systems rapidly coming onto the market.  I like the ones that let you be untethered from your computer.  I think the race today is not just for lower prices, it is for simplicity in the services provided. I think this one is pretty neat.
Of course, I'm rooting for Pat in this increasingly competitive field. But, I'm also thrilled to see all this competition being offered up.  After decades of everyone getting screwed by government-protected carriers, we seem to be enetering an era when the user wins.

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Tara on Chronicle Front Page

Tara Hunt is on photographed and interviewed on the front page of today's San Francisco Chronicle. Is it because she's co-founder of Citizen Agency, a cool new consulting firm that helps companies work with online communities? Nope. Is it because she speaks at more events thena candidate for the Democratic presisdential nomination? Nah.
Did  one of her many Web 2.0 clients, get acquired for a million zillion dollars? Not yet, I'm afraid.

Tara is among many city people I know who uses ride share services to avoid the pain of having to own a car in an urban setting. So there she is, slipping behind the wheel of a Nissan Versa. Sometimes, you just gotta be in the right place at the right time on a slow news day.

Montreal Blogger Dinner?

I am speaking at an event sponsored by Inforpresse on Feb 21.  I'm not yet certain where it is. I will be coming in to town the day before and would love to meet any bloggers.

Are any of you out there? I'd love to hear from you.

Had a ball at the Sacramento Photowalk

[Model train whizzes over bridge.  photo by Shel]

I had an absolute ball at the Sacramento Train Museum Photowalk co-hosted by maestros Thomas Hawk and Robert Scoble. More than 20 people came, not counting assorted wives and children.

This was a visually rich experience and you can see all my photos here and by morning there should be hundreds of shots posted.  The one problem is there was some confusion for what photo tag to use.  I went with "photowalk trains," and I hope that's what other people use.

Here's what Scoble and Hawk did and it is simple and brilliant.  First they started walking around with cameras taking pictures f things they like, the Golden Gate Bridge the Japanese Tea Gardens, etc. Then they decided to invite anyone who wanted to come out.

So now we have people, who meet on line, getting together to share a creative experience, then post together online again.  It's a bit like blogger dinners, but seems to go a step further.

Here's another of my favorites:

These are two docents.  The guy on the right is 87.  In the 1930s, he worked building refrigerator cars that brought food from San Joaquin Valley  to the coastal cities.

This is the posh corridor in a dining car from the late 1880s. In a nicely appointed forward room you ate food on fine china, made to order from this kitchen:

In any case, I have three recommendations:

1. If you are anywhere near sacramento, visit this museum.
2. Watch Thomas and Robert for announcements on the next photowalk.  You'll have a blast.
3.  If you don't live in the Bay Area, start a photowalk of your own. Thomas and Robert will not claim any rights to the concept, trust me. All you need is a blog, an online photo account and a venue that inspires people to point and click and click again.

Passing the torch of leadership

[Note the post that used to be in this space has been taken down because some felt her privacy had been invaded. It saddened me to remove it but her friendship is important to me.]

Photowalking with Scoble & Hawk

I will be joining Robert and Thomas at the California State Railroad Museum at 1 pm tomorrow. I hope to see you there. I love trains and photos and I'm very interested in things starting on the web, moving into real life for a shared experience and then going back onto the web in the form of photo archives.

It's sort of like stepping on and off of the Holodeck.  I just someone would bean me over to Sacramento to save me gas and time. Guess I'll have to wait a year or two for that.


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Focusing my new Book

The experience I have had interacting with the blogosphere on this book, particularly the Overview and TOC sections has been amazing so far, and this journey has just begun. I also continue to get as much feedback as I can from professionals, authors and people knowledgeable about this book writing business.

One is an agent, who may or may not become mine.  But whenever I talk with him, I walk away thinking he has helped me write a better book.

He looked over my TOC and Overview and felt that I had a lot of book contained in it. This is not necessarily a good thing.  The most successful books usually have a single, simple idea with powerful repercussions. This is what publishers love best, particularly from new guys like me. It's what you have in The World is Flat, Freakonomics, Blink and Wikinomics, not to mention The Long Tail and my personal favorite Naked Conversations.

Global Neighborhoods is about a great many things that relate to social media. It has many ideas that can be expanded upon at great length. In fact, this expert, suggested it has too many books.

Publishers, like so many institutions, like products that fit into boxes. In their case, those boxes are the sections on a bookstore shelf, such as Business, Technology, Biography, etc. If you are selling the book into Barnes & Noble, you would talk to a diffeent buyer to get your book onto the Business shelf, than you would onto the Computers & Technology shelf.

Global Neighborhoods, as I have summarized it fits partly onto too many of those shelves and squarely onto few of them.

I've been reflecting on what this guy had to say and the fact is that he is absolutely right. I'm covering too much ground to try to cover any ground very well and I need to do some rethinking on that the book is about.

At the heart of the book I want to write is to write about how the world changes pretty significantly when the online generation comes of age and replaces  the  Boomer generation in the marketplace and at the helm of most businesses. What I need to work on is: do I want to write a sociology book, an economics book, a business book or what.

I open this question to you.

Remember, pick one--just one.

I think most of what I have gathered will still be usable.  But the emphasis and structure will change according to what single point I hope to drive home to millions of inquiring minds.

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Flickr: Up close and personal

When I was a cub reporter at the Fall River (MA) Herald News, and got an assignment to go cover someone or write his or her obit.  The first step was to go to the newspaper library, commonly called "the morgue," and pull out a yellow envelope filled with clips and photos of the person I was covering. That seemed really cool back then and the Morgue helped me ask better informed questions than I otherwise could have.

By the late 90s, I found it remarkably cool to Google people before I met them. I often impressed people at how well-informed I appeared to be about them. Until everyone started to do it, I could appear incredibly well-informed about what others had written about the person I was meeting.

When Technorati came along, and i could read people's blogs, my world started changing.  Through the words of the person I was about to meet, I could see what he had been passionate about yesterday or perhaps a few hours ago.  I could taken a quick visit into the person's mind. I still do this all the time, and it often let's me slide into an comfortable conversation with someone only minutes after we have met. We can understand what we have in common before we have a face-to-face meeting.

Lately, I have been going to Flickr before I meet someone.  I look up that person's photos.  I look up the photos that other people have taken of the person.  I see him working and playing.  I see freeze frames of random things this person saw and got to record and post. I see his or her family members including pets. I know whether they sail, soar, sip or play sports. I see visual sampling of their lives. Nowwhen I sit down to meet this person, I have know more than I can, even from just reading the blogs.  Now I have the ability to be up close and personal.  It is a remarkable enhancement to the irreplaceable first meeting.

I don't know what comes next.  perhaps it's a video clip.  I don't know if anything needs to come next.  We have the ability today with the tools we have to speed up personal and business intimacy. We also have he visual evidence we need to choose not to make a first touch acquaintance with someone.

I'm much better now

Thanks so much to all the well wishers regarding my being sick.  Those of you who envy the recent wait loss, the bad news is that it is only temporary. I'm now fully recovered. I have been back and firing on full charge since Wednesday, but I've had to focus on helping companies that I consult and issues regarding the book before I could get back to the blog.

If you wrote something interesting, brilliant, articulate, controversial or really lame on the blogosphere, I look forward to catching up with it over this week end.

I will start posting new stuff later today, provided I can think of something worth saying. I know what some of you are thinking. You are thinking that has rarely stopped me before.

Lighter Blogging, lighter me

I have only been minimal blogging for the past few days and it's likely to continue for a couple more. Paula, her mom just home from the hospital with a broken ankle and me, have all have a special gift this year, called norovirus.

It doesn't last long, but it has about the same devastating effect on the body that Katrina had on New Orleans,  except recuperation is a lot faster. I lost seven pounds in about 30 hours.  I also slept about 14 of those 30 hours. This is two days later and I feel fine once again.

There is very little advice I can give on how to avoid the disease.  Stay out of hospitals and off cruise ships.  Don't kiss or sip other people's water.  wash ... You probably won't follow this advice, nor would I.

But in any case, blogging will be slow over here until I get caught up with some client and book work. I look forward to getting back up to speed and talking more with you.

BTW, the weight loss is only temporary. I've already gained three back.  Try jogging more and eating less.

Scrapblog's Mystery 'Community Guy' unveiled

He is Alex de Carvalho, one of the most passionate people I know when it comes to the issue of blogging an online communities. He speaks five languages and from what I could make out, is current on what just about everyt blog I know has to say.  He knows what's happening on the major social networks and is totally in love with the Scrapblog product.

Where I think he has just made history, however, is in becoming the first person to ever have the official title of "Community Guy." Carlos explains it best in Alex job description:

"The title of “Community Guy” corresponds to the new imperative of  building and maintaining authentic relationships with and among members of a service. The user rules. And, collectively, the community of users is the authority in defining and directing the continued development of a service."

There was never any plan to make Alex a mystery guy.  We held back announcing him only to give the lawyer time to cross t's dot i's and charge exorbitant fees. The specultation started when I wrote some ambivalent mention of the position after meeting Alex for dinner with Carlos in Miami.

Well, now the core team is intact.  All we gotta do now is plan for a splash at the WeMedia Conference in Miami and take the product live.  Not to worry.  We still have over three weeks. (Yikes.)

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How Scrapblog picked David Parmet to do PR

Carlos just announced to my great delight that he had chosen David Parmet to be the Scrapblog PR guy. In fact, this follows the second time that I had suggested David was the right guy to Carlos.  This time, my tactic was simple. I told Carlos to go read  David's  blog. Carlos did, and he came back with a succinct comment:  "I like him," Carlos said.

Hmm.  He read some postings and felt he actually knew the guy.  How very different than if David had sent some sample press releases down in a fancy folder. How very different than if David had been required to come down with a PowerPoint deck to demonstrate "thought leadership" or "best practices" with three case studies selected from his work over the past 20 years. David was never asked to use a few mirrors and some smoke to try to make Carlos believe that both Robert Scoble and Walt Mossberg were sitting around waiting for David's next phone call.

In fact, the blog, and a previous telephone talk was enough to make Carlos feel enthusiastic about the thought of David having conversations on behalf of Scrapblog. That's what PR is now about.  The PR guy needs o be a trusted participant in conversations.  These conversations can help a client only if the person bringing that client into a community is already a trusted resource.

David is not alone.  There are lots of PR people who get this.  They tend to know and respect each other and enjoy each other's company.  They will compete against each other if they have to, but in fact they would much refer to collaborate.

This is the first time I'll actually work with David.  In writing this blog, it has slowly dawned on me that I don't really know him that well. Our relationship started when I was writing about English Cut for Naked Conversations and Hugh MacLeod told me I just had to speak to the PR guy. So I dialed him up and found myself having this wonderfully transparent conversation with someone I had never seen, whose blog I had not read until that same day and when I hung up the phone, I felt like I had gained a few paragraphs for the book and had made a new and lasting friend.

That's what blogging does.  It lets you see a real person before you actually talk to that person. Blogs facilitate relationships and in fact, the new PR guy needs to be a facilitator as much as anything else.

Meanwhile, Carlos has done a Hell of a good job in aggregating conversationalists.  In the last week he signed up David and me, not to mention our soon-to-be unveiled mystery community guy. He's got an ongoing relationship with the Citizen Agency folk.  It's getting kind of clear what sort of people Carlos wants to have on his team and I'm just tickled to be part of it.

Looking for educational anecdotes

The Global Neighborhoods process is going to go a bit slower than I would like until I select an agent and a new publisher. Until then, I need to consult for food and mortgage money.

I am going to focus on one issue at a time. Right now the topic is social media in education.  I was blown away by what I saw in little Scotland during my visit there in October and I am circling back to interview several more people there.  These will be posted over the next several weeks.

But what is happening elsewhere in the world.  I am looking for examples of social media being used in secondary and college education. I'm looking for evidence that some educators are starting to use social media in a way that improves the classroom experience, and the expands the perspectives on children using social media in education.

If you have a case study for me, or a lead that points me toward one, then this is a great time to starts sending me those cards and letters, via comments to this post. or email me at shel@itseemstome.net

Hugh MacLeod's Random Notes on blogging

http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/003641.html

Please read Hugh's deceptively wise comments only after you've completed reading Naked Conversations.  Otherwise, Robert and I may lose the sale. OK, only after you've BOUGHT the book. You don't actually have to read it.


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AllFreeCalls now usable from anywhere to anywhere

Pat Phelan reports a smart hack discovered by Vinay to let people all over the world use VOIP to make free connection from anywhere in the world to anywhere in the world via allfreecalls. Pat says he had over 40,000 people on the site in the first day and only seven complaints.

I wonder how many people used the test of calling the US Embassy in Warsaw.  The Embassy could tell you, but then they'd have to kill you.


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BlogTalkRadio gets a big customer

Scott Baradell has announced that BlogTalkRadio, a client of his, has just announced its first really big deal with HR Block, a very taxing organization. I was just interviewed earlier this week for his Media Orchard Podcast and have to say I like the added interactivity that BlogTalkRadio adds to it.

They are one of a few technology services that is enabling call-ins. It always has disturbed me that Podcasts, may allow a couple of people to talk and for listeners to time travel, but for the most part, it has remained closed to the public.

BlogTalkRadio brings podcasting to the talk radio level. They are not alone.  Waxxi introduced a similar service months ago, but they do not seem to be very active anymore. Skype has a service, but I have not yet used it. BlogTalkRadio's was both elegant and smooth and I think it's popularity will only increase moving forward.


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The Multicutltural Phelan

I received the following email from Pat Phelan a short while ago.  It doesn't matter what we were discussing.

"LOL

No grasshopper

U de man"

The first line is IM shorthand. The second is a refernce to Kung Fu, a 1980s TV saga about a Chinese man wandering the American old West and the third is a bit if inner city Ebonics."

This all from a guy who lives in Cork, Ireland. "It's no small wonder that the wee people don't bang your tongue on the Blarney Stone, Patrick. Will there be no end to you sounding like all the languages of Babble in one wee email? Top of the marnin' to ya anyhow and Sholom Alechem.:

'tis a wonder how we are all bcoming so multi cultural.