Presto Vivace Blog

New to me local marketing blogs

2011-12-26T18:31:00.003-05:00

Merry Christmas

2011-12-23T12:45:00.007-05:00

New to me local tech blogs

2011-11-28T14:14:00.008-05:00

Appian Insight, all about BPM

Webs.com blog, with a good post about SOPA.

Identika, video production, social media, and web development

The AKG Blog, all about SharePoint

Essential Share Point from Susan Hanley

From the Library of Congress: Inside Adams, science, technology, and business.

Jim Bland, about all things tech, business, and economic.

Micro trends, the small forces behind tomorrow's big changes

2011-11-07T12:14:00.003-05:00

I have just finished Mark Penn's book about how small groups can have a big impact on our culture, both from a political and commerical point of view. Penn is best known for his work for first Bill and then Hillary Clinton. I was delighted to discover that Penn shares my admiration of V.O.Key Jr.

I love how this book eviserates sterotypes, such as the anti-social engineer. Penn documents how technology culture is super social. (As an aside I would suggest that this socialbility predates the internet, the technically inclined have always had their clubs and hobbyist groups, it is just that no one paid attention until the Internet became popular.)

Penn also demolishes the stereotype that most annoys me, that women are not an important factor in technology. Penn points out that women outspend men on technology 3 to 2. That is quite a gap, and I am grateful to Penn for pointing out that technology marketing has yet to adapt to this. Even in such basic matters and product design and testing, women are invisible. For example it seems that the first video conferencing systems were not calibrated to pick up the voices of women, we were literally invisible.

Penn's book deals with mass market products; but I would point out that women are also ignored by companies in the enterprise technology sector. Even though women have played key roles in the procurement of technology in the federal government for decades, and even though there have been women editors directing reporting on enterprise computing for decades, marketers for these companies persist in acting as if we do not exist. Why?

I find Penn's writing about politics less persuasive. I certainly concur with his suggestion that our elites are hoplessly out of touch with popular opinion. Indeed, I would love to know what Penn makes of the Occupy movement. Where I part company with him is in his discussion of swing voters. Penn continually conflates independent voters (actually non-affiated is a better and more accuarate term) with Independent voters. Penn capitalizes Independent and this creates confusion. Independents are actually a political party in several states, including Connecticut. It is true that the Independent party of Connecticut did not nominate anyone for US Senate in 2006, the year that Penn was adivisng Lieberman, but it is a significant force in Connecticut with many elected leaders at the town level.

Penn's book was written in 2008, which may account for why he has failed to pick up on the growth of emergent parties as a crucial micro trend. In 2010 Elliot Cutler, an independent candidate for Governor of Maine, came in second with 30.9% of the vote. In every state emergent party candidates have been gaining support. While they have yet to win at the state wide level, political observers ignore the emergent party vote at their peril.

Women will love this book. Penn understands that women exist, that we have opinions, that we have both purchasing and political power and that the powers that be ignore us at their peril.

Financial Services PR FAIL

2011-10-18T17:33:00.006-04:00

So who is advising the financial services industry on their public relations, Lord North? Marie Antoinette? Wile E Coyote? The collective reaction to the Occupy movement has been a study in thud and blunder.

First we have the spectacle of the swells sneering from the balcony at the protesters on the sidewalk. Then members of the CBOT thought this gesture would be cute.

Here in Washington, DC we have been treated to the antics of a agent provocateur so stupid that he did not know better than to write a magazine article bragging about his crime.

A CEO asks his reporter friend to check out Occupy Wall Street to see if they are dangerous. Obviously they are not dangerous. Demonstrators have been pepper sprayed, beaten with batons, assaulted by a plain clothes officer, and run over by a police motorcycle. In spite of all this their non-violent discipline has held. If they were going to be violent, that would have happened by now.

And why has Mayor Bloomberg decided to play the part of a twenty first century Bull Connor?

There have been the comparisons to the hippies of the late 1960's. Take it from someone old enough to remember, there is no resemblance. The coalition of people supporting these protests is wide and deep, witness all the pizzas that have been ordered for the demonstrators and the donations, both in kind and monetary that have been made. That never happened in the 60's. Witness of the small acts of support, such as cab drivers who turn off their meter when taking riders to the demonstration or the sanitation workers in San Francisco who returned personal items to demonstrators after the police had tossed them. Such things never happened in the 60's.

The incident at Citi Bank was the first incident I have head of where a customer was arrested for trying to close her account; but it seems there have been previous incidents of this. Why police departments go along with it I will never know.

Anyone who thinks that the Occupy movement bears any resemblance to the Tea Party is encouraged to read this post by Peter Daou.

Certainly the financial services industry has been ill served by their trade press, take this unfortunate editorial in Investment News. While it concedes the demonstrators have a point it characterizes them as misguided and attention seeking.

With over 1,549 demonstrations in this country, and hundreds more around the world, the Occupy movement is already a very serious movement. Its impact will go way beyond electoral politics.

So here is my advice for anyone in the financial industry who would be interested:

Reexamine your business model.

Do nothing inflammatory in the present environment. For example, on November 5th protesters will be closing their bank accounts. DO NOT call the police and have them arrested. DO NOT think that you can control this story. Almost every protester there will be carrying a video phone, do not give them anything to film. Have extra staff there to handle the additional traffic and close the accounts as fast an efficiently as possible. Anything else will generate a storm of bad publicity that will haunt your company for decades to come.

Listen to the protesters in their own voices. This Twitter list follows protesters from all over the world.

Read the following reality based economics blogs:
Mosler Economics
Naked Capitalism
New Economic Perspectives

Above all recognize that you are in a new environment and that the old rules do not apply.

Edit -
Slightly off topic, but I thought that Jonathan Bernstein had an interesting take on Margin Call.

New to me local tech blog

2011-08-25T20:50:00.001-04:00

Emergent, a blog about security.

Fall of the House of Hubris

2011-07-17T22:35:00.006-04:00

Few things are as satisfying as watching a bully go down. I have been following Murdoch since I read Rupert Murdoch: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Media Wizard. It was pretty clear years ago that News Corp was breaking the law. There is no legal way News Corp properties could have gotten access to phone conversations of members of the royal family. Once the royal family brought a suit it was just a question of time before the discovery process would begin the great unravelling.

Of course what changed the tide was the revelation that News of the World reporters had hacked the cell phone of a murdered girl. All of a sudden ordinary British people began to realize that secret police journalism did not just apply to politicians, members of the royal family, and celebrities. Suddenly they realized that they could be spied on by News Corp operatives.

I really don't see how the Murdoch family survives this. Now American celebrities are bringing action against News Corp and the FBI has begun a preliminary investigation. The investigation has taken on a life of its own.

Those of us who were in Washington, DC the summer of 1973 recognize all the signs of a great implosion. At first it seems incredible that such a bully can be brought down until it seems inevitable.

Major kudos to The Guardian, who has been with this story from the beginning and persevered when everyone else was too intimidated to touch it.

Mark Steel has a hugely entertaining take on this, but I have to disagree with this part:

So the newspaper will investigate itself, the police will investigate themselves and the politicians will be investigated by an inquiry set up by themselves. They are all keen on stringent law and order so maybe this is their plan to speed up the justice system. Instead of costly trials the accused will be told to hold an inquiry into themselves, and come back in three years and let us know if they did anything wrong or not.

No, not this time. As I said before, the investigation has taken on a life of its own. As I write this advertisers are fleeing, investors are dumping stock, institutional investors are questioning the role of members of the Murdoch family. And that does not even allow for News Corps' continuing legal troubles. This is somewhere between Watergate and Enron. I can't see the corporate survival of the Murdoch family and I would not be surprised if the corporation itself is broken apart, unless if falls apart.

FounderCorps

2011-07-06T23:37:00.003-04:00

Tein Wong alerts us to a new organization for entrepreneurs:

Managed by experienced technology entrepreneurs for the benefit of entrepreneurs, FounderCorps has already assisted a number of community groups and Universities in business formation and mentorship activities, including George Mason University, George Washington University, University of Maryland, Startup XLR8R and others.

This sounds very exciting and I am going to try to find out more.

Happy Fourth of July

2011-07-04T11:34:00.001-04:00

How not to recruit your sock puppets

2011-05-19T15:24:00.004-04:00

First of all, don't use sock puppets. Cultivate your human online supporters.

Second of all, don't use Craigslist. You will get caught.

Use LinkedIn, Plaxo, Facebook, Twitter, etc. That is what they are there for.

Also, don't use sock puppets, human or bots. It is just pathetic.

The problem with conference sponsors

2011-05-09T13:41:00.001-04:00

Dustin Marx

One of the most significant stories leading up to last year's JavaOne was Google's withdrawing from participation. Although the conference turned out to be a huge success in terms of quantity and quality of technical content, this content would undoubtedly have been enhanced by the availability of Google-led presentations.

This is the first I have heard of this and obviously do not have any opinion about it; save that it illustrates one of the difficulties of working with sponsors.

Congratulations Scott Pelly

2011-05-03T14:01:00.002-04:00

CBS: Scott Pelley named anchor of "CBS Evening News"

From Scott Pelly's interview with Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke:

Asked if it's tax money the Fed is spending, Bernanke said, "It's not tax money. The banks have accounts with the Fed, much the same way that you have an account in a commercial bank. So, to lend to a bank, we simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account that they have with the Fed. It's much more akin to printing money than it is to borrowing."

"You've been printing money?" Pelley asked.

"Well, effectively," Bernanke said.

That, right there, captures the essence of Warren Mosler's book and Modern Monetary Theory. With any luck, Pelley will have a chance to develop that on CBS Evening News.

Federal IT miscellany

2011-04-28T13:10:00.002-04:00

Netspectives on my favorite subject: How Adoption of Open Standards Can Benefit Federal Agencies

Grant Gross reports that the FCC should deny AT&T spectrum buy, groups say

James Staten: AWS and OpenStack: An Interesting Contrast Worth Considering During Cloud Selection

Enterprise 2.0: E2 Santa Clara 2011 Call for Papers Now Open!

Via Fedspere

New to me local tech blogs

2011-04-07T14:41:00.004-04:00

Learning .NET, from Christopher Steen

Privasoft FOIA Blog, Through software and services, Privasoft transformed the way information disclosure teams, like FOIA & ATIP offices, comply with legislative, regulatory and internal requirements.

The MurkyGrey blog, Survive and thrive in software startups

Project Performance Corporation, part of the AEA Group

Sharing documents with Google Docs

2011-03-30T12:43:00.004-04:00

Until this past month I was a great believer in Google Docs. I use them extensively, they are ideal for collaborating on press releases and similar documents.

And then this past month I started having troubles with the share function. When I send email permissions to share documents, the recipient cannot gain access. This is true even for recipients with whom I have previously shared documents.

Anyone else having similar difficulties?

Call for speakers and the day's Health IT news

2011-03-24T20:15:00.003-04:00

The Healthcare IT Guy: Speakers needed for Business Intelligence & Analytics for Healthcare Conference & Exhibition (July 11-12 in San Diego)

Medgadget: Pathogen Covered Scrubs Bring Style to Your Clinic

EMR and HIPAA: Operating System of Healthcare IT

Healthcare Technology News: Direct Project Specifications Achieving Widespread Adoption: Could Positively Impact Care Coordination Soon for Millions of Americans

Via HITsphere

Aeolus String Quartet

2011-03-11T14:01:00.004-05:00

The Aeolus String Quartet will be preforming works by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Bartok on March 20th at 2 PM at The United Church.

Be there or be square.

Today in Federal IT

2011-03-07T14:17:00.003-05:00

Mark Amtower has some thoughts on defending your marketing budget in hard times.

Tom Temin finds out how his broadband service measures up courtesy of the FCC.

John Zyskowski gives us a wrap up of the recent RSA conference.

William Matthews: CIA blames 'technical difficulties' for website crash

NASA Now: Solar Storms.

Via Fedsphere created by Netspective.

Effective book promotion?

2011-03-02T11:57:00.003-05:00

Clients From Hell is running a contest; retweet their book promotion and you have a chance to win a MacBook Air. They are getting plenty of retweets, and I suspect traffic to their site; but is it translating into interest in the book?

If it does we may be seeing more opportunities to win a MacBook Air.

Assessing credibility

2011-02-28T13:39:00.003-05:00

I must dissent from Jim Horton on this one. Mere anonymity, or the more common pseudonymity, does not necessarily detract from an author's credibility.

As a reader I ask myself does the writer offer a basis for their consclusions? Are their sources on the record? Do they refer to documents that are publicly available? These are the kinds of things that weigh with me.

Health IT blogging, HIMSS edition

2011-02-28T13:06:00.003-05:00

David Blumenthal addresses HIMSS Interoperability Showcase

ePrescribing, incentives and penalties

Lab Soft News: When to send out health alerts; it's complicated.

Fierce Health IT: HIMSS Analytics survey shows uptick in hospital readiness for meaningful use

Neil Versel: Video: athenahealth’s Jonathan Bush at HIMSS11

eHealth: Social Media at HIMSS

HISTalk: HIMSS wrap up.

From HITShpere, via Shahid Shah.

Cheap shot dot com

2011-02-25T12:32:00.004-05:00

The Guardian

A new website promises to shine a spotlight on "churnalism" by exposing the extent to which news articles have been directly copied from press releases.

The website, churnalism.com, created by charity the Media Standards Trust, allows readers to paste press releases into a "churn engine". It then compares the text with a constantly updated database of more than 3m articles. The results, which give articles a "churn rating", show the percentage of any given article that has been reproduced from publicity material.

First of all, congrats to the PR team at Churnalism for such a great story placement.

There is nothing wrong with using a press release in a news article. The test should be the information in the press release news; that is, is the material accurate, new, interesting, relevant, and compelling. If so an editor should use it; it not an editor should discard it.

UPDATE: Shel Holtz said this so much better.

Prank phone calls

2011-02-23T11:36:00.004-05:00

It seems a pro-union activist, pretending to be David Koch, called Gov. Scott Walker and recorded the result. How much of an embarrassment this will be I cannot say; but it demonstrates the range of activities open to online activists and the sort of thing we need to prepare our clients for.

I believe that it is illegal in Maryland and a few other states to record a phone conversation without the consent of both parties.

The power of social media and the Internet

2011-02-22T16:41:00.003-05:00

Clearly social media is extremely powerful, otherwise the Egyptian government would not have cut access to the internet, neither would the US government put out solicitations to subvert it.

Honestly, astroturf is for amateurs.

Marylene Dosse to play the high romantics

2011-02-15T19:19:00.002-05:00

French pianist Marylene Dosse will preform works by Franz Liszt, Schumann, Rachmaninov, and Chopin on March 4 at 8 PM at The United Church.

I am looking forward to it.

New to me local tech blog

2011-02-10T19:39:00.001-05:00

Arxan CTO Musings, Discussion on the latest application security developments and issues, including piracy, code protection, application hardening and cybersecurity.

Well done Google

2011-02-10T13:52:00.002-05:00

Quick Google Analytics Tip: Chrome debugging tool

Google recently launched the Google Analytics Tracking Code Debugger, and a new debug version of its JavaScript code, ga_debug.js. The good news is, that Google has also put together a nifty little Chrome extension for the tracking code debugger, which uses the new script so that you don’t have to re-tag any content.

Well done. Google's strength is its responsiveness to users and developers.

Layer 7 blogs

2011-02-09T20:01:00.003-05:00

Layer 7, a software development company (XML, cloud computing, SOA, and so on) has a whole flotilla of blogs:

Layer 7 company blog

Scott Morrison

Adam Vincent

Francois Lascelles

Well done Layer 7.

Dan Snyder's image problem

2011-02-05T13:00:00.007-05:00

Dan Snyder, owner of the Washington Football team, has a very serious image problem. By a series of ill advised actions, Snyder has cast himself in the role of the rich bully.

Most recently, in response to this farcical article in the Washington City Paper, he threatened to sue the paper, calculating that the cost of litigation would force the paper to fire the reporter. It has backfired on him in a big way.

To their everlasting credit, the owners of the Washington City Paper, Atalaya Capital Management, has refused to back down. Public opinion is overwhelmingly on the side of the paper and a legal defense fund has been established.

As Bob Somerby teaches us, reporters develop narratives and follow scripts. Even before this latest blunder, Dan Snyder had cast himself in the role of the sports owner bully that everyone loves to hate. His suit does not appear to have merit and pressing it will have a devastating impact on his reputation and the franchise. If there is one thing the news media hates, it is the misuse of libel law to force a publication to fire a reporter. Dan Snyder is now in a no win situation.

It does not have to be this way. Dan Snyder does not have to be the bad guy. But in order to turn this around he needs to take dramatic action to change the narrative that has been developed around him.

In my opinion he needs to drop the lawsuit. That will not change his image, but it will end the current controversy. Beyond that, he needs to make a series of dramatic gestures to indicate that he has heard the publics's concerns and is taking them to heart.

First of all he needs to change the team's name. That would be the sort of big gesture that changes the narrative overnight and would force both the news media and general public to take another look at him. Next he needs to look at his present charitable contributions and look at ways he can communicate his commitment to his favorite causes. In addition to his present contributions, he could participate in any of the many walks for cure for breast cancer, or any other cause dear to his heart. This would show a personal commitment over an above the ability to write a big check.

Most of all someone close to him needs to explain you don't need to win every battle, just the big ones. Or, as the Rolling Stones once put it, "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need."

KM World: Call for Speakers

2011-02-04T11:51:00.003-05:00

KM World 2011

November 1 - 3, 2011
Washington Marriott Wardman Park
Washington DC

By co-locating with Enterprise Search Summit Fall, Taxonomy Boot Camp and Sharepoint Symposium , KMWorld 2011 provides attendees with all the essential pieces of the information engine that powers today’s effective enterprise— including knowledge creation, publishing, sharing, finding, mining, reuse, and more. Well implemented and managed, these work together to enable business problem-solving, innovation, and achievement.

No comment

2011-02-03T20:07:00.000-05:00

Kenneth Cole on Twitter.

New to me local tech blogs

2011-02-01T19:38:00.007-05:00

Spider Strategies

Simply RFID

Aptela

Intellitrack; Inventory & AIDC Software Blog

Lawrence Wilkes on SOA, EA and AM, Commentary on Service Oriented Architecture, Enterprise Architecture, and Application Modernization

David Sprott's Blog, David Sprott is founder of CBDI Forum, a think tank specializing in practices for SOA and architecture led software delivery and management.

Sara Daneshpour

2011-01-23T21:04:00.004-05:00

I saw Sara Daneshpour in concert at the United Church. She opened with Haydn's Piano Sonata in F major. She played with the sparkle, delicacy, and elegance that Haydn requires. Dressed in a long black jacket with a white blouse with a great ruffle, she was perfectly dressed for 18th century music. With any luck a record label will give her a contract for all of Haydn's sonatas.

Also on the program was Chopin's famous Sonata no.2 in B-flat minor. She played the third movement's funeral march with the haunting emotion that it requires. The final Presto followed perfectly from the third movement, and the selection of Chopin's Etude op. 10 no. 12 was in C minor was the perfect choice to follow the famous Sonata no. 2.

After intermission we were treated to Schumann's ABEGG Variations, which was played with the caressing warmth you want to hear in Schumann. She played Frank with wonderful emotion, if you like Frank, which I don't.

She finished with a riveting, disturbing, and compelling performance of Prokofiev's Toccata.

Clearly we will be hearing more from Sara Daneshpour.

In defense of boring corporate blogs

2011-01-22T15:10:00.003-05:00

I am coming across more and more boring corporate blogs. The blog posts consist of new hire and promotion announcements, new products and product upgrades, contract awards and similar fare. The prose is written in the style of classic impersonal corporate press release.

These blogs would be interesting to prospective customers checking up on the company, reporters who were looking for background and similar readers.

In other words, these blogs provide useful information to individuals trying to find out more about the company.

These blogs also help with search engine visibility by continuously providing fresh content.

There is a great deal to be said for "good enough" business writing.

To have a truly excellent blog, the kind that drives traffic to your web site and establishes thought leadership, you really need to work at it or hire an expert. But to simply communicate your news and enhance search engine visibility, good enough is good enough.

The man who lied to his laptop

2011-01-22T14:44:00.003-05:00

I recently read the most delightful book, The Man Who Lied to His Latop. I hope that it becomes a of business and technology classic, because it certainly deserves to be.

The central thesis of the book is that human beings are social creatures and that we react socially even when dealing with machines. It also seems that our social relationships with our computers teach us a great deal about our social relationships with out fellow human beings.

I especially recommend the chapter on teams and team building. It seems all those expensive trust building exercises would be better replaced with a weekly pizza party for teams who met their goals.

Professional communicators will be interested in the final chapter on persuasion. Nass talks a great deal about expertise and trust and how, of these two, trust is by far the more important factor.

Slashdot discussions here.

Mozart

2011-01-22T14:41:00.001-05:00

January is Mozart month on WETA. I love classical music, Mozart, Haydn, and the composers of the 18th century. It has a delicate clean sound that is so relaxing.

Thank you WETA. Can we get a Haydn month?

What tech Washington reads

2011-01-20T23:57:00.001-05:00

I have a new reader survey. Please take it, it is very helpful in my work.

Click here to take survey

When and why to create a Facebook page

2011-01-20T15:31:00.006-05:00

It was recently suggested to me that I create a Facebook page for my company as Facebook has more users than Google.

That, by itself, is not a reason to create Facebook presence. For example, if someone wants to research me or my company, they would do a search on a search engine, not Facebook. Typically Facebook is not used for research.

If you are a consumer goods company, you could use your Facebook page to offer discounts, send out announcements, and otherwise connect with your customers.

If you are a political candidate or political cause, you definitely need a Facebook page. In general, I think that Facebook is an excellent tool for non-profits.

A software company might want to use Facebook to run their user group community, although I don't think it would be the best choice.

But for a small PR agency, a Facebook page just does not make sense.

Just because a tool exists, does not mean you should use it.

Edit -
Jim Horton has written great surveys of corporate use of Facebook and Linked In. He notes that most corporations are failing to integrate their use of social media, that is, link to their Twitter feeds and blogs from their Facebook and/or Linked In page. He also shares my view that it is not necessary for a corporation to have a site on either network.

Business model's and today's Healthcare IT news

2011-01-10T14:41:00.002-05:00

Shahid asks what kind of buisness model do you have for your bright health IT idea.

Medgadget has the report from CES 2011.

Fred Pennic has the latest Android App.

HTN blog has Atul Gawande on The Colbert Report.

All courtesy of HITSphere.

Mobile advertising

2011-01-10T13:37:00.003-05:00

The Adzookie tell me that they have a new pay-per-click mobile advertising service. I have taken a look at it and it seems like a good service. Readers, if any of you try this, let me know how it works for you.

My congratulations to the Adzookie people for being an early mover on this and good luck with their business model.

There is no doubt in my mind that the future of communications will be centered on the small screen.

New to me local tech blogs

2011-01-03T14:28:00.003-05:00

ODIN News and Blog

Ciena Insights

Cellcrypt Security Blog

PR blogosphere

2010-12-23T14:58:00.004-05:00

I miss the sense of ocmmunity we used to have in PR blogosphere. When I first started blogging there were only a handful of PR blogs and it was possible to read all of them. As our numbers swelled, Constantin Bastura created a Blogdigger Group of all the PR blogs that he knew of. It was great, the most recent entries floated to the top, so you had a sense of the PR zeigeist. You could so a search on a topic so you could see what your fellow PR bloggers were saying about it.

There was also a PubSub listing of top PR blogs, which created a lot of competition in both good and bad ways.

Now there is the Advertising Age list of Marketing Communications blogs. It is useful for research purposes, but does not build community the way the old Bloggdigger list did. The closest thing we have to community nowadays is the For Immediate Release FriendFeed Room. Pleasant, informative, but not the same.

New to me data visualization blog

2010-12-17T14:04:00.001-05:00

Data-Wunder, from Switzerland.

Well done Microsoft

2010-12-09T18:36:00.003-05:00

Deirdre Blake reports that Microsoft's IE9 will offer a Do Not Track feature. (More from IE blog). There is some talk that this is a response to the FTC's recent report on consumer privacy.

There is an interesting discussion at Slashdot, with a sly comment as to why we may not see a similar move by Firefox.

It is great to see a company innovating in response to customer need rather than game the system to see if they can simply find another way to add on a fee for the same product.

Well done Microsoft. I have always said there was a fortune to be made by the compnay who enables us to use the Internet in a way that preserves our privacy.

Vigilante virtual riot

2010-12-06T13:47:00.004-05:00

Hackers Target WikiLeaks Foes

"The reason is amazingly simple," said Anonymous member Gregg Housh. "We all believe information should be free, and the Internet should be free," said Housh, in an interview with The New York Times published Monday.

You are attacking sites in the name of an open Internet? Isn't that a little like destroying the village to save it?

Edit -
It seems the anonymous group has decided on much smarter tactics.

The future of communications is mobile

2010-12-06T13:36:00.003-05:00

Federal Computer Week has an article on the mobile revolution, pointing out that, "Annual shipments of smart phones matched desktop PCs two years ago and are on their way to doubling to about 250 million units by the end of this year, according to market researcher IDC."

Communicators are going to have to adopt our messages to the small screen and speed up our response times.

Politics on Twitter

2010-12-02T15:29:00.003-05:00

Twitter is a wonderful tool for political campaings. But one thing that greatly troubled me during the last campaign was the way that some candidates for office encouraged their supporters in destructive online behavior. It is so obvious when something is coming from a campaign, when you see the exact same phrase over and over again. I had to ask myself, would the candidate in question hire anyone who posted such sentiments online? Why would you egg your supporters on in conduct that you yourself would never tolerate in your own employees? And if you do prevail in the election, are you going to use your power to uphold online free speech? I just don't care for the spectacle of candidates manipulating their supporters into doing things that might have bad consequences for the individual supporter's life to say nothing of poisoning our national discourse.

Today in Fedsphere

2010-12-01T13:08:00.003-05:00

Temin likes Droid, but he needs a phone that works with a Mac.

Information Week gives us the to 20 government cloud service providers.

Mark Amtower informs us that Deltek bought Input.

ComputerWorld gives us a round up of IT compliance news.

All from Fedsphere, courtesy of Netspective.

It pays to advertise

2010-11-27T15:37:00.012-05:00

Managing Warren Mosler's Senate campaign was my first experience with buying advertising for a client. Because of budget limitations, we confined ourselves mostly to online advertising. Mosler ran for office as a way of promoting his message of jobs and prosperity and driving traffic to his website seemed like the best way to do that.

Traditionally, online advertising links to your home page, but as ours was a campaign of ideas, I decided to link our advertising to the issues page. So far as I know, nobody else has done this. It was my view that as an Independent candidate, Mosler would not have the immediate "brand" identity that a Democrat or Republican would have. Therefore it was necessary that voters have the opportunity to learn about his proposals.

At first we advertised with four media companies, the Hartford Courant, Journal Inquirer, Waterbury Republican American and the Connecticut Media Group. Monitoring our site statistics, I was surprised by the results. Most of our money was spent on the Connecticut Media Group, which owns several newspapers in southwest Connecticut. This gave us the worst results, fewer readers clicking on our ads, and not spending much time on our site when they did click through. Why was this? Was it because of the placement? Or was it because southwest Connecticut has never been receptive to Independent candidates? In 2008 Nader got his best votes in the first, second, and fifth congressional districts. Voters in the third and fourth voted overwhelmingly for Obama, with McCain at a very distant second, and Nader hardly visible. So maybe readers of the Connecticut Media Group were not clicking on our ads simply because they are not interested in Independent candidates. We later bought ads on just two blogs from the Connecticut Media Group, Ken Dixon's Blogorama and Brian Lockhart's Political Capitol. We spent $128 for our placement on these blogs and got almost as many hits as buying 150,000 impressions across the entire newspaper group.

We bought a space on the homepage on the Waterbury Republican American. This also preformed very poorly for us, which stunned me (Mosler would get his highest vote in Waterbury). Waterbury is the home of the Independent Party of Connecticut, they have several elected local officials. I expected this to be our best placement, but we got fewer hits than our other venues. Why? Was it because Independent voters are not online?

My experience with Independent activists is that they are not interested in blogs. Some are active on facebook; but otherwise they do not seem interested in social media. They were more interested in talk radio and public access cable television. There are several Independent public access cable TV talk shows, they have been very active in taking advantage of this medium. But they have not been active online. Indeed, it was only at my suggestion that they put up an Independent Party web site.

We did do two advertising inserts in the print edition of the Waterbury Republican American, in a Saturday edition and another on the Sunday before the election. This was possible because of the donated labor of Connecticut's celebrated graphic artist and Photoshop genius, Carmine Capobianco. Judging by our site statistics, it was a success, generating a nice spike coming in on organic search.

We also puchased 100,000 impressions on the Journal Inquirer site, a group of newspapers located mostly in towns across central and northern Connecticut. The Journal Inquirer did very well for us, bringing in a steady flow of clicks by readers who stayed on our site a minute or more. We also did better in towns where the Journal Inquirer has newspapers than other towns. Whether this is because their readers were online looking at our ad, or whether it was from our phone banking effort into these towns I could not say. Our phone banking effort was directed to reinforce our advertising.

Our best results came from our advertisements on two of the Hartford Courant's blogs, Capitol Watch and CT Confidential. Not only did we receive a steady stream of hits, readers from the Courant blogs stayed two and even three minutes and looked at several pages. However, for a fraction of the cost of the Courant blogs, CorrenteWire supplied a stream of clicks of readers who also stayed two or three minutes. On a per-click basis this works out to $6.47 per click for the Courant blogs compared to $1.48 for CorrenteWire. Obviously the blog represented better value, except that CorrenteWire's readers are spread out across the country, whereas almost all the Courant's readers are in Connecticut.

Is this because blogs are a better venue for political advertising, or because CorrenteWire is a blog that supports emergent party candidates?

We also bought print advertising in Connecticut Cruise News. This was an excellent fit for us as Warren Mosler makes the world's coolest car. Connecticut has a vibrant cruise culture and Mosler went to many of their events, reaching out to a very non-political group and recieving a warm reception.

We did some radio advertising on a Carribbean station in Bridport. If I had it to do again I would skip advertsing in the Connecticut Media Group and put the money into advertising on talk radio, where the Independent base is to be found.

Normally I would not discuss the details of a client's advertising campaign, but all the details have been filed with the Federal Election Commission. Political budgets are not confidential.

Today in federal IT

2010-11-16T11:35:00.003-05:00

Federal Times reports on an Executive Order establishing "controlled unclassified information."

Computer World reports that the National Telecommunications and Information Administration has fastracked 115MHz of spectrum for commercial use.

Microsoft's Bright Side of Government blog announces the winners of the Azure Application Development Contest.

Federal Computer Week's Circuit blog reports that Gary Bass is leaving OMB Watch and that Soraya Correa is moving up at the Department of Homeland Security.

Enterprise 2.0 blog is reporting that Infomation Week Analytics are conducting a survey on Enterprise 2.0 applications.

Via Netspective's Fedsphere.

The problem with site analytics

2010-11-10T19:50:00.003-05:00

If, like me, your blog uses eXTReMe Tracking, Site Meter, and Google Analytics, you already know what the problem with site analytics is; the three different services give you three different sets of numbers. Clearly site analytics is as much of an art as a science.

This was brought home to me as manager of Warren Mosler's US Senate campaign. My duties included analyzing our web site statistics to, in addition to other things, judge the effectiveness of our online advertising campaign. Where was our traffic coming from? Which advertisements sent us the readers with the highest level of engagement? And how to account for the discrepancy between the reports sent to us by our advertising venue, and our own site statistics?

We need more information by the providers of site statistics and analytics as to how they detect hits and referrals and measure engagement.

What is a Statement of Work?

2010-11-09T15:17:00.002-05:00

Why Clients should take a closer look at SOWs

One very important aspect of successful project management is the creation of a Statement of Work (SOW). A Statement of Work can be defined as a narrative description of the products and services to be provided to a client under contract. Basically the SOW tells “what” needs to be accomplished rather than “how” it is to be accomplished, and clearly defines the scope of the project. Getting everyone to agree on the scope of a project at the very outset is important because it helps in minimizing scope creep. Scope creep occurs when new functionalities or requirements not envisaged in the SOW are introduced into the project plan.

I remember a presentation on software process improvement wherein the presenter said that he wanted to write a play wherein the contract officer slew the dreaded feater creep.

It is so easy in technology to become so absorbed with how that you forget what and why.

Warren Mosler

2010-11-04T18:49:00.004-04:00

Although this is not a political blog, I would like to talk about what I have been doing for the past four months. Last spring I attended the Fiscal Sustainability Conference and saw Warren Mosler speak about Modern Monetary Theory.

Mosler points out that, as a fiat currency, the United States can never go broke. That is not a case for unlimited spending, merely that the whole debate about the deficit is based on a fallacy. Unlike countries in the Euro zone, the US controls its own currency and we cannot go broke. The federal budget is a spread sheet.

When I learned that he was running for US Senate from Connecticut, I offered my services and found myself running his campaign. I learned a great deal and plan to blog about some of it. I saw online advertising from an entirely new angle and looked at social media in an entirely different way.

As campaign manager for an Independent candidate, I saw our two party system in a new and not very flattering way. The cards are truly stacked against Independents. (I capitalize Independent because Mosler was the nominee of the Independent Party of Connecticut.) Independents are not included in political polls, editors ignore your events, and when the League of Women Voters included us in their debate, the Democratic and Republican candidates refused to come. As far as the press is concerned, I really don't think I can improve upon what Ken Dixon wrote about the gubernatorial debate.

I encourage everyone to check out Warren Mosler's blog, Center of the Universe. You will find it as informative as it is entertaining. I also encourage everyone, especially members of Congress, to read his short but brilliant book, Seven Deadly Frauds of Economic Policy.

Recently President Obama has talked about the possibility of enacting one of Mosler's economic proposals, a full payroll tax holiday. Just doing that alone would pour trillions of dollars into the economy and give everyones sales a much needed boost. I hope that our President and members of Congress will take this much needed step to jump start our deeply distressed economy.

As for everyone else, if the Democrats and Republicans fail to nominate anyone to your liking, check out the other candidates, you might be pleasantly surprised.

To the people of Connecticut, thank you, I had a great time in your state.

On leave

2010-07-05T11:16:00.003-04:00

This blog will be on break while the author takes a leave of absence to work on the Warren Mosler for Senate campaign.

Back in November with all the news about IT standards and governance, information sharing, PR, social media, and all things tech, PR, and government marketing.

See you in November.

In observance of the Glorious Fourth

2010-07-04T12:41:00.001-04:00

The Declaration of Independence

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

The 56 signatures on the Declaration appear in the positions indicated:

Column 1
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton

Column 2
North Carolina:
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton

Column 3
Massachusetts:
John Hancock
Maryland:
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton

Column 4
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean

Column 5
New York:
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark

Column 6
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Massachusetts:
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott
New Hampshire:
Matthew Thornton

What everyone in the software industry needs to understand

2010-06-26T10:13:00.002-04:00

George V. Hulme:

Grow up. Business doesn't exist for IT, it's the other way around.

This cannot be said often enough.

Starbucks bows to market pressure

2010-06-14T18:40:00.003-04:00

Rob Pegoraro reports that Starbucks has bowed to market pressure and will be offering free wifi. Since all its competitors were doing so, I could not imagine how Starbucks could continue to insist we buy those cards which are good for purchases.

Not only will Starbucks offer free wifi, it seems they have decided to sweeten the deal:

Starbucks chief executive Howard Schultz also said the company's U.S. locations will begin offering "a new online customer experience," the Starbucks Digital Network, this fall. Set up with Yahoo, this will provide free or expanded access to such news and entertainment sites as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, USA Today, Apple's iTunes and AOL's Patch.

My favorite place remains the Luce Center, and failing that, Au Bon Pain in the morning, when they play classical music.

What PR can and cannot do

2010-06-07T09:19:00.005-04:00

It seems that Arizona has discovered that its papers please approach to immigration has given it a black eye. So they have decided to spend a bundle on a public relations campaign for the state.

I think so many clients have this idea that our profession can develop some sort of combination of advertising, favorable press, and social media that can magically transform their image without regard to what they are doing.

I suspect that Arizona will discover that their PR program, whatever it turns out to be, will be a giant waste of money. The boycotts will not only continue but even multiply until the law is changed.

There is a limit to what even the most comprehensive PR campaign can do for you.

The digital mob

2010-06-04T14:21:00.003-04:00

Shel Israel is calling for Mark Zuckerberg to step down. I have heard this sentiment expressed elsewhere and I don't understand it. Sure, Zuckerberg failed to appreciate the privacy controversy until it had reached the firestorm stage, but in terms of CEO misconduct others have done so much worse.

For example, why do any of the CEO's who were TARP recipients still have their jobs, never mind their bonuses. Why does the head of BP still have his job?

It is difficult to understand why one CEO becomes the focus of digital anger and not others.

Why I founded Presto Vivace PR

2010-06-01T16:05:00.004-04:00

I started Presto Vivace PR for editors like Dan Beyers:

Someday someone will explain why so many businesses in the area want to make it so hard for regular folk like -- say, me -- to figure out what they do.

I've also sat through endless briefings about enterprise solutions and information assurance support environments, server virtualizations and system integrators and ... well, you name it.

And that's the problem, we need to rename it.

Clients so often see tech speak in industry publications and their competitors' press releases that they just assume that all those buzzwords serve a purpose. You have to work very hard to get clients to understand that jargon filled press releases, even if you can kid an editor into printing them, will never attract readers because no one can understand what you are talking about.

I think industry analysts are partly to blame. Coining terms and buzzwords that only they understand is a way for them to look like experts. It is also a status thing, understanding buzzwords is an indication that you are a member of the tech priesthood. Except it just gets in the way of customers understanding how your software could help them.

I use a copy editor who does not have a tech background. If my copy editor cannot understand what I am talking about, I start again from scratch. Even the most technical of concepts can be written in plain English.

Stratfor on the Israeli attack on the relief flotilla

2010-06-01T10:43:00.003-04:00

George Friedman writing for Stratfor:

Where knowledge is limited, and the desire to learn the complex reality doesn’t exist, public opinion can be shaped by whoever generates the most powerful symbols. And on a matter of only tangential interest, governments tend to follow their publics’ wishes, however they originate. There is little to be gained for governments in resisting public opinion and much to be gained by giving in. By shaping the battlefield of public perception, it is thus possible to get governments to change positions.

In terms of new product launches for independent software developers, this does not have much relevance. But it lies at the heart of most public affairs PR and lobbying.

Federal acquisition wiki

2010-05-30T10:20:00.002-04:00

Alice Lipowicz reports that GSA is testing a Better Buy wiki.

I knew that once the civil service was given the chance they would enthusiastically adopt social media. Collaboration is what government service is all about, so it is just too useful not to be used.

DC Hackathon

2010-05-28T19:56:00.001-04:00

RHoK #1.0 – RHoK’s First Global Hackathon

Random Hacks of Kindness is going global! On June 4th through 6th, 2010 RHoK, in collaboration with the Crisis Commons, is hosting its second hackathon. This event is going to be a global gathering of hackers in many locations around the world, coming together in real time for a marathon weekend of coding around problems relating to natural disaster risk and response.

The Main Stage for RHoK #1.0 will be in Washington D.C., where events will kick off with a June 4, 2010 reception at the Department of State, followed by forty-eight hours of hacking madness at the Microsoft offices in Chevy Chase, MD. Simultaneously, hackers will be coming together on every continent for five global satellite RHoK events in Sydney, Australia; Nairobi, Kenya; London, England; Jakarta, Indonesia and Sao Paolo; Brazil.

This international group of hackers will be working on problem definitions contributed by Crisis Commons, The World Bank, the State Department and teams on the ground in Haiti. Don’t miss RHoK’s inaugural global hackathon. Register below for one of RHoK #1.0’s six global locations.

New to me local marketing communications blog

2010-05-15T12:02:00.001-04:00

rp3 Agency

Is Facebook more trouble than it is worth?

2010-05-10T08:56:00.004-04:00

I am beginning to think so. Everyday brings more stories about Facebook's ever changing privacy policies and the ever more complicated steps users must take to opt out of Facebook anti-privacy default settings.

The most annoying thing is that you have to keep an eye on this and continually adjust your settings to maintain the level of privacy you want. It is very difficult to do business with a company that continually alters their policies.

And that doesn't even include Facebook's continuing problem with security vulnerabilities.

In my industry I am more or less expected to maintain a Facebook account in the event that a client wants my company to build a Facebook site. Otherwise I would probably pull my account. As it is I have taken to posting every Facebook privacy breach story that I see on my facebook account. It is just my little way of telling Facebook that they have a problem.

Note - Pip.io has better privacy settings. If it catches on I am moving my material there.

Edit -
Richi Jennings has an excellent run down of the controversy.

New to me local tech blog

2010-05-07T20:03:00.001-04:00

Thinking Clearly, a semantic web blog from Clark and Parisa

Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders' meeting

2010-05-01T11:52:00.002-04:00

Dan Gillmor makes a good point:

Is there another big public company whose top people sit and take questions like this? #brk2010

My congratulations to their investor relations team who must have spent weeks preparing for this.

Also, some seriously good reporting by Gillmor with pithy comments at 140 characters at a time. Not so easily done.

Records management blogging

2010-04-26T19:37:00.002-04:00

Via Digital Landfill we learn that AIIM has launched a Records Management Community.

Ethical organizations do not traffic in stolen property

2010-04-21T14:15:00.007-04:00

I am with Jeff Bercovici, Apple has grounds for suing Gizmodo.

It seems that one of Apple's engineers accidentally left his new iPhone at a restaurant and the person who found it rather than than return it decided to sell it to Gizmodo. This is not the relationship of a news organization and a source, it is the relationship of a fence and a thief.

We have seen this over and over again. News organizations would seem to think themselves above the law. Truly shameful.

Edit -
It seems that the Superior Court of San Mateo shares my view that news organizations are not above the law.

Scott Adams comments as only he can.

Uh-oh, San Mateo law enforcement may have overplayed its hand.

Oh my goodness, it appears law enforcement might have had a conflict of interest.

New to me local tech blogs

2010-04-08T15:24:00.001-04:00

The DLT Blog

Managing Experience, John Whalen's ideas on User Experience, Social Media, and Persuasive Design from Washington, DC

Everybody is managing editor

2010-04-07T13:34:00.003-04:00

John Byrne has a post about how those of us who read news online do not have a favorite news organization. That is certainly true of your humble servant. I have favorite reporters. I even have favorite sections of certain news publications. But I don't have a favorite publication.

I have an RSS reader with feeds from all my favorite reporters, bloggers, etc. I suspect others are the same way.

Every time I go anywhere, I always ask people what their favorite source of technology news is. I am struck by how often they tell me that they simply have a handful of Google News Alerts on the topics that interest them the most and read whatever comes up that day. Press releases are considered very reliable, readers are interested in what companies say about themselves.

Readers have been empowered by the Internet and news organizations have yet to come up with the right business model to profit in the new environment. Those of us in public relations must hope they find a profitable model soon.

My unvarnished opinion

2010-04-03T10:01:00.003-04:00

From Thursday's For Immediate Release we learn about Unvarnished, a social media site that lets anyone say anything about anybody. Create an account, create a profile on any acquaintance, and say what you want.

Did someone create a profile about you that was derogatory? Well, just create an account and refute what was said. Persuade your friends to create accounts so that they can defend you. What a terrific business model, what a terrific way to build site traffic.

It would be nice to think that this would be a way for Dilbert, Wally, and Alice to tell the unvarnished truth about their pointy haired boss. It is just as likely as to give the pointy haired boss a chance to trash the reputations of Dilbert, Wally, and Alice so that they can't get jobs at better companies.

Let me bring my very Washington, DC perspective on this; this will quickly degenerate into a cesspool of partisan smear jobs which will go much further down the food chain than is presently the case. I mean if you can damage the careers of every precinct captain of the rival party, or at least the ward chairs, you can go a long way to destroying most of your prospective opposition candidates before they even think about running for office.

The possibilities of dirty tricks are endless. Are you a company who has been attacked in the press? Just create a profile of the reporter and allege that he is the office boor. Is your company being threatened with a product liability suit? Don't just smear the lawyer and the plaintiff, smear all the potential witnesses in the case.

Are you an oil company? Is there an assistant professor at some community college somewhere getting locals all riled up about global warming? Create a negative profile and prevent him from getting tenure.

Are you a hostile intelligence agency? Is there an engineer who is working on a breakthrough weapon that your country is not ready to counter yet? Create a smear profile on Unvarnished and see if you can get his security clearance yanked.

Did someone create a negative profile on you? Presto Vivace's advice would be to create an account and use the facts to refute the negative remarks that were made. Then ask your online friends to write something nice about you, on their blogs, relevant Ning communities, any online community that would be visible to your professional milieu and ignore Unvarnished. Don't give it more online visibility, don't build its site traffic. With any luck the site will fade away as one of those Web 2.0 projects that just did not work out.

Edit -

Todd Defren has a somewhat different perspective, but takes a very similar view of Unvarnished.

Wasily Kandinsky Animation

2010-03-29T17:39:00.000-04:00

18 marketing agencies who should hang their heads in shame

2010-03-18T17:36:00.005-04:00

YouTube's response to Viacom's lawsuit:

For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately "roughed up" the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko's to upload clips from computers that couldn't be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt "very strongly" that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube.

I am just going to assume that Google would not make such a claim unless it could prove it six ways to Sunday.

In which case we have 18 marketing agencies from the sock puppet school of marketing. Sigh.

Surely all of Viacom's shows have fan clubs; most likely Facebook pages. That is what fan clubs and Facebook pages are for. Before a show you send out Tivo alerts; after a show you send out the links to online video on your own site. You put social tagging on your site, and then you just let nature take its course.

Edit -
It seems that Viacom has unearthed some incriminating internal Google emails.

New to me local PR blogs

2010-03-06T21:29:00.003-05:00

bwfpr; the official blog of Brotman•Winter•Fried Communications

CRT/tanaka Blog

Feds launch Smart Grid blog

2010-02-23T14:13:00.002-05:00

EETimes reports that NIST has decided to launch a blog to give the public a chance to comment on standards for home-to-smart-grid interface. I trust people will look at it, because now is the time to comment.

State of deployment of IPv6

2010-02-20T11:53:00.000-05:00

Command Information has an informative post on this complete with spreadsheet.

Today in content management

2010-02-19T16:38:00.004-05:00

Rutrell Yasin reporting for Government Computer News:

The Health and Human Services’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information is looking to deploy cloud-based customer relationship and project management software over the next six weeks to its Regional Extension Centers.

The Labor Department is making similar moves.

How to migrate your blog to SharePoint.

Lora Bentley of IT Business Edge interviews Patrick Eitenbichler, director of marketing for information management solutions at HP.

Welcome to the Real Story Group; also on Twitter.

All from Presto Vivace's Google News: Content Management Systems.

The Kneber botnet and the day's Gov IT news

2010-02-18T12:29:00.002-05:00

Jaikumar Vijayan reporting for ComputerWorld:

Security researchers at Herndon, Va.-based NetWitness Corp. have unearthed a massive botnet affecting at least 75,000 computers at 2,500 companies and government agencies worldwide.

The Kneber botnet, named for the username linking the affected machines worldwide, has been used to gather login credentials to online financial systems, social networking sites and e-mail systems for the past 18 months, according to NetWitness.

Congratulations NetWitness for a job well done.

John Foley of Information Week interviews Casey Coleman, CIO of the Government Services Administration.

William Welsh for Washington Technology: GSA, DISA launch commercial satellite solicitation

WFED's Max Cacas reports on AFFIRM's meeting on cyber security.

William Jackson for Government Computerter News: Second draft of Smart Grid security architecture released for public comment
If you have an opinion about this, now is the time to comment.

All the day's government technology news on the Presto Vivace's Google News Government IT section.

New to me local tech blogs

2010-01-23T15:10:00.014-05:00

On Queue, from agencyQ
Bethbeck's Blog
Alliance Interactive
Co-OpTek
Community IT Innovators
Aptify CEO Blog
Spider Bytes, from Spider Systems: an informal mix of whatever is on our minds. We write about all kinds of things, ranging from new product features for our customers to technical tips for other software developers.
QSM, The Intelligence Before Successful Software Projects
Inventory & AIDC Software Blog
Attensity Company Blog
Inside Intellectual Property, from Legal Advantage
Franconnect
Enterprise Content Management - the Indigo Arc Viewpoint: Discussion about Content Management strategies, tools and issues; the overlap between Enterprise Architecture and Content Management.
CYNCZ, your contacts anytime anydevice

There is a limit to what PR can do for you

2010-01-10T09:29:00.003-05:00

Banks Prepare for Bigger Bonuses, and Public’s Wrath

Those worries aside, few banks are taking immediate steps to reduce bonuses substantially. Instead, Wall Street is confronting a dilemma of riches: How to wrap its eye-popping paychecks in a mantle of moderation. Because of the potential blowback, some major banks are adjusting their pay practices, paring or even eliminating some cash bonuses in favor of stock awards and reducing the portion of their revenue earmarked for pay.

Some bank executives contend that financial institutions are beginning to recognize that they must recalibrate pay for a post-bailout world.

Of course we are not really in a post bail out world, otherwise Congress would not have prepared the ground for an additional $4 trillion bail out.

Angry citizens are already moving their money. Things can only get worse if banks continue to award outrageous bonuses to management so out of control that they require multiple trillion dollar bail outs.

Happy New Year

2009-12-30T16:03:00.000-05:00

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Following the Twitter Zeitgeist

2009-12-28T08:00:00.003-05:00

Mark Ramskill

Is the person I’m following bringing any real value to me? The million dollar question. It’s very easy to follow someone just because everyone else is, or because you they have a job that gives the assumption that their tweets will be useful. Often this couldn’t be further from the truth.

- Is the person I’m following tweeting unique information and links or are they mainly retweeting stuff I’m already getting from other sources?

- Does the person I’m following follow me and if they do, do they ever communicate with me or retweet what I put out there?

Ramskill has some very good advice. Twitter should be fun, and not taken too seriously (unless you are handling customer relations on Twitter).

For my part I don't really follow any one person. I follow almost everyone in the Potomac region who works in technology. I am interested in the stream of coversation rather than individual people.

Huh?

2009-12-26T10:15:00.003-05:00

From J. Timothy Sprehe's opinion piece in Federal Computer Week:

So what does the agency do to achieve integrated information management? It conceptualizes the solution as one of standardizing on a single ECM system toolset.

I have been working in content management since 1994 and I have only a vague idea as to what he means by that. If I don't understand it, there is a good chance other readers don't understand it. The struggle against IT speak is a constant one and sooner or later we all succumb; but if you want to make your point to the general public, or at least policy makers, you have to make your prose more accessible.

Merry Christmas

2009-12-23T16:23:00.001-05:00

Botanic Garden Christmas Display - Washington, DC

New to me local writer's blog

2009-12-18T10:25:00.001-05:00

Thinking Like A Designer, A site for authors who want advice on preparing to work with designers, and for designers who work directly with authors.

Soros proposes way to fund to fight global warming

2009-12-15T15:29:00.002-05:00

Reuters

"I've found a way for someone else to pay ... to mobilize reserves that are lying idle," Soros told Reuters on the sidelines of the December 7-18 conference that will end with a summit of 110 world leaders meant to agree a new climate pact.

Hungarian-born Soros said green loans to poor nations backed by International Monetary Fund gold reserves could total $100 billion.

"This $100-billion fund I think could just turn this conference from failure to success," he said, admitting there were several legal and practical hurdles to unlocking the cash.

From Soros' email annoucement:

In September 2009, the IMF distributed to its members $283 billion worth of SDRs, or Special Drawing Rights. SDRs are an arcane financial instrument but essentially they constitute additional foreign exchange. They can be used only by converting them into one of four currencies, at which point they begin to carry interest at the combined treasury bill rate of those currencies. At present the interest rate is less than one half of one percent. Of the $283 billion, more than $150 billion went to the 15 largest developed economies. These SDRs will sit largely untouched in the reserve accounts of these countries, which don't really need any additional reserves.

I propose that the developed countries--in addition to establishing a fast start fund of $10 billion a year--should band together and lend $100 billion dollars worth of these SDRs for 25 years to a special green fund serving the developing world. The fund would jump-start forestry, land-use, and agricultural projects. These are the areas that offer the greatest scope for reducing carbon emissions and could produce substantial returns from carbon markets. The returns such projects can generate go beyond reducing carbon; there will be non-carbon related returns from land use projects, the potential to create more sustainable rural livelihoods, enable higher and more resilient agriculture yields and create rural employment.

This is a simple and practical idea. There is a precedent for it. The United Kingdom and France each recently lent $2 billion worth of SDRs to a special fund at the IMF to support concessionary lending to the poorest countries. At that point the IMF assumed responsibility for the principal and interest on the SDRs. The same could be done in this case.

I am very curious about what it must be like to handle a major figure like Soros and one of my life's ambitions is to meet Michael Vachon.

Play by the rules

2009-12-11T13:34:00.003-05:00

Buzz Bin as a good post on the new FTC rules for bloggers.:

While we don’t have a Sarbanes-Oxley-like law that codifies much of this for “endorsers,” the FTC has greatly expanded the things over which it will exercise influence. Endorsers (and influencers of endorsements) beware!

Beware indeed. Failure to observe the new rules will bring a Sarbanes-Oxley-like law down upon our industry's head.

Adobe GUI FAIL

2009-12-09T15:44:00.002-05:00

Simply blacking out information in a Portable Document Format file won't keep data from prying eyes.

TSA officials posted what they thought was a redacted version of the TSA's airport security operating manual on a Web site used by private contractors looking for government work. The problem: the officials didn't actually delete sensitive parts of the document—they just blacked them out using a graphics tool.

That method left the underlying words intact, and they were exposed when readers cut and pasted pages from the document, "Screening Management Standard Operating Procedures," into a new file. The vulnerability isn't technically a bug in Adobe's product, but its existence shows how those handling secure information should be fully trained in the software they're using.

The end result of the foul-up was that highly sensitive information about TSA screening methods, interviewing procedures, X-ray machines and other terrorist prevention tools became easily available to millions of people on the Web.

This is just another case of the user failing to distinguish between a graphical blackout and deleting information. There have been many such incidents and Adobe invariably blames user error. But the Adobe design is completely counter intuitive. Adobe needs to correct this before someone gets killed.

Great moments in timing

2009-12-03T14:04:00.008-05:00

The cover line: "10 Tips Obama Can Take From Tiger."

You have to feel for the editors of Golf Digest. Under normal circumstances this would be a fine article for a golf audience. The Golf Digest website makes no reference to their ill timed cover.

I think International Management Group bears some of the blame for the PR fallout. When you create an image for your client that is as odds with reality, and when maintenance of that image is dependent upon the press turning a blind eye to the obvious, it is only a question of time before the whole thing implodes. It would have been much better to give the public some inkling of your client's feet of clay. Then they would be prepared when his weaknesses became obvious.

A pyrrhic victory for the financial sector

2009-12-03T11:56:00.003-05:00

The return of the plutocrats

So the plutocrats, it seems are going to win. They had a nasty couple of years, by plutocrat standards, and in a handful of companies operating under de facto state control they don’t quite have the free rein they would ideally like. But the system as a whole hasn’t changed, and those who thought that it might can’t quite believe how naive they were.

Arming Goldman With Pistols Against Public

Dec. 1 (Bloomberg) -- “I just wrote my first reference for a gun permit,” said a friend, who told me of swearing to the good character of a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker who applied to the local police for a permit to buy a pistol. The banker had told this friend of mine that senior Goldman people have loaded up on firearms and are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank.

Any victory that leaves you so fearful that you feel the need to pack a weapon is no victory worthy of the name.

Do I have any readers who do not understand that this is a tragedy waiting to happen? What happens if some jittery banker shoots some homeless person who shouts at him? How is the public likely to respond to the spectacle of a banker shooting an unarmed homeless person? putting aside the resulting prison term.

What if an entire office panics at the sight of demonstrators and opens fire? Because that worked so well for the guards at the Bastille.

Goldman Sachs, and any other financial institution going down this dead end, needs to put away the guns and hire themselves an experienced conflict resolution team.

Happy Thanksgiving

2009-11-25T16:20:00.001-05:00

Bernman Fine Art

The difference between telling and showing

2009-11-24T12:48:00.003-05:00

This post is a text book example of how not to write a post for a public affairs blog. Americans are bombarded with the world is going to end rhetoric. In order to be credible you need to show rather than tell.

In the case of net neutrality, you need to explain example by example what the practical consequences would be if the point-to-point architecture of the Internet were to be compromised. You need to cite specific examples of Internet Service Providers limiting access to demonstrate that this is a serious issue. Most of the time Save the Internet does this. This post fell short of their previous standard.

Tom Gutnick at CPCUG

2009-11-21T15:46:00.003-05:00

Tom Gutnick gave a most informative tour of open source application software. One thing that interested me was his characterization of ubuntu as open source for humans, by which I took him to mean that ubuntu was the best Linux distribution for those of us who are not technology experts.

A complete list of the software his discussed is at his web site. I am thinking of trying the open source office software, as well as GNU Cash, and possibly the project management software.

How to get your company noticed

2009-11-20T10:30:00.003-05:00

Newspaper ad sales fall again

With the depressed state of the overall economy, newspaper ad sales fell 28 percent in the third quarter.
Ad revenue totaled $6.4 billion, according to figures from Arlington-based Newspaper Association of America. It was a narrower decline than the previous period.

With advertising at an all time low, the surviving advertisers stand out. An ad that runs now will capture far more attention than an ad running in boom times which has to compete with all the other advertisements. Futhermore, an ad that runs in hard times automatically creates an image of financial strength.

Simple test for search engine visibility

2009-11-18T15:15:00.003-05:00

Do a search on your company's name. Does your web site come up in the first page of results? If not you are in trouble.

Fixing this is very easy, but you do need to fix it. More and more customers are finding companies by searhing on the Web. If they can't find you, they can't very contact you.

I am constantly surprised by how many well established companies fail this simple test.

Chosing free beer over free speech

2009-11-18T14:27:00.003-05:00

The post could also have been entitled he who pays the piper calls the tune.

More and more I see it suggested that musicians look to corporate sponsors to fund their tours and not even try to make money from recording their work.

In such a world corporate sponsors will have even more power to determine who is a star and who is a starving artist. Where will the next Bob Dylan come from? Who will write the songs which speak truth to power if everyone is auditioning for their corporate sponsor?

The future for the individual preformer never looked worse.

Recording Potomac tech events

2009-11-18T12:05:00.002-05:00

Ross suggests that we find a way to record local tech events and put the result online. I think it is a great idea, but am not sure what I can do to advance it, save link to it.

Part of what I have tried to do with this blog is highlight local tech events. I think our local tech scene is greatly under valued and our contribution to technology goes unrecognized.

New to me local tech blogs

2009-11-13T15:33:00.002-05:00

the agile approach, Phase2's insight on the buisness of web

Bojanglin

Publishing Transformation Blog, A Blog created by David Case, Business Development Consultant at Apex CoVantage. Thoughts and news about Publishing Transformation through workflow engineering and technologies.

The method in Murdoch's madness

2009-11-10T14:35:00.007-05:00

I wrote off Murdoch's latest threats to remove News Corp feeds from Google News as so much blather until I read Boing Boing:

So here's what I think it going on. Murdoch has no intention of shutting down search-engine traffic to his sites, but he's still having lurid fantasies inspired by the momentary insanity that caused Google to pay him for the exclusive right to index MySpace (thus momentarily rendering MySpace a visionary business-move instead of a ten-minutes-behind-the-curve cash-dump).

So what he's hoping is that a second-tier search engine like Bing or Ask (or, better yet, some search tool you've never heard of that just got $50MM in venture capital) will give him half a year's operating budget in exchange for a competitive advantage over Google.

He may, in fact, get a taker. And it will be a disaster. A search engine whose sole competitive advantage is "We have Rupert Murdoch's pages!" will not attract any substantial traffic. The search engine will either go bust or fail to renew the deal.

The problem with the deal to give Google the exclusive right to index MySpace is that it cheats the users whose postings create the value of MySpace. If I am a musician who is obliged to give my music away for free on MySpace to presuade fans to come to my concerts, I want the widest exposure possible. As Google is by far the largest search engine, I might overlook this limitation, or I might not. I might find a place to post my music that was visible to as many search engines as possible. Murdoch simply does not understand the online economy.

Edit -
Looks like Microsoft will to oblige NewsCorp.