In observance of the Glorious Fourth

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

Mika Brzezinski, a heroine for our time

Search engine saboteurs

Search engine saboteur at work.


Jim Horton alerts us to this article in Forbes:

The Saboteurs Of Search

Those rules, at least for major search engines like Google and Yahoo!, are based largely on the number of links from other pages to a given site: The more links, the higher that site ranks in Google and Yahoo! results. But this system of link-based ranking invites cheating. Search engine optimizers can use software that generates thousands of links to their site, pushing its ranking artificially high. In response, Google and Yahoo!'s search algorithms now automatically punish sites that game their algorithms by pushing the offending pages deep into the unseen layers of search results. (See "Condemned to Google Hell.")

That filtering strategy keeps search results relevant to users despite the meddling of Web spammers. But Scott and other search marketers say it also makes possible a powerful form of negative SEO. Search marketers claim they can frame certain competitors as cheaters by posting thousands of links around the Web, making a competing site look like it's engaging in "link spamming," a tactic that draws the disfavor of major search engines. In SEO circles, this technique of setting up a competitor to be punished for link spamming is sometimes called "Google bowling."

"If a new site gains half a million links over the course of a weekend, it looks suspect from Google's point of view," Scott says. "So you make someone look naughty, and then get them caught."

And what if Scott gets caught? Think that sort of tactic cannot be traced back to you? Think again.

I am not very keen on search engine sabotage, but if you feel called upon to play that sort of game, it is easy enough to use social tagging sites to raise the rankings of negative material.

Rather than pay for Scott’s sabotage service, it would be far more cost effective to buy a group of sponsored links on the relevant user groups, increase your search engine ranking along with building actual good will.

ReputationDefender defends its reputation

Having been on the receiving end of negative story in the St Petersburg Times, ReputationDefender has very sensibly placed a positive story in The Washington Post. My compliments to their PR department.

Sadly their methods include setting up astroturf blogs for no reason save to catch Google's attention. Building online Potemkin villages is not the way to serve clients. The way to turn such things around is to use social tagging sites to increase the rank of positive material and to place positive stories on legitimate blogs.

New to me local tech blog

Management Training of DC

Added to the Tech on the Potomac RSS reader.

The fight for Net Neutrality

IP Democracy informs us that the FCC has released a densely written report on Net Neutrality. When a federal agency releases a lengthy and densely written report, that is usually a sign they are hoping no one will read it. Therefore, we would be well advised to read this report with close attention that we may discover whatever it is they did not want us to discover.

Clearly opponents of Net Neutrality are feeling the heat. John Kneuer, the assistant secretary for communications and information, completely lost it and lashed out at proponents of Net Neutrality at Supernova 2007.

Small companies are the one of the main beneficiaries or Net Neutrality. Small companies, especially Web 2.0 companies, are usually a-political and don’t have significant public affairs efforts. This is not a time to be silent and we must all hope they will understand the necessity of defending their interests.

Save the Internet

New to me local marketing blog

Miscellania from Josh, Random meanderings on blogging, technology, and e-marketing. I work in online marketing for Discovery. All thoughts are my own, of course

Added to the Tech on the Potomac RSS reader.

Petabytes for the people

With 20 petabytes of storage, and more than 280 teraflops of computing power, TeraGrid combines the processing power of supercomputers across the continent

June 26, 2007 (Computerworld) -- A unique federally funded computing effort is making it easier for corporations to access the largest-scale computers on the planet. Dubbed TeraGrid, the effort spans nine different academic and government institutions and has reached a critical mass this year.

The notion is to combine the largest supercomputers into a global processing and storage grid to tackle the thorniest computing problems. "We want to make available high-end resources to the broadest community," says Dane Skow, who is the director of the Grid Infrastructure Group and performs the operational coordination of TeraGrid from the University of Chicago's Argonne National Lab. "We want to leverage our top-of-the-line equipment for people who don't have the skills to do it themselves."

This is how the Internet started. It will be interesting to see where this goes.

How to make a four year old story blow up in your face

If you wake me up, you will regret it.


Will someone please give reputationdefender a clue?

Candidate: Story on me is wrong

Back in October 2003, the Princeton Union Eagle wrote that Cheri Yecke, then Minnesota's education commissioner, explained in "advance publicity" for a public hearing that "schools could include the concept of 'intelligent design' in teaching how the world came to be."

Big news? Apparently not. The line was buried in the 22nd paragraph.

Yecke hired reputationdefender to handle this for her, and what does reputationdefender do? Ask that the offending material be removed; but since Yecke has no evidence she did not say such a thing, the paper very properly is standing by its reporter.

If you have been in public life for more than fifteen minutes there is negative material about you on the internet. The proper way to handle that is to bury that information with positive material, generating positive stories and tagging them. You cannot control the internet, but you can move the positive material to the top of the search results.

Open Letter to APCO and Cassidy & Associates

It is time to embrace transparency and engage the blogosphere on a consistent basis. I have not had a chance to read the now famous article by Ken Silverstein, I will be saying more when I have had a chance. Right now I want to talk to APCO, Cassidy & Associates, and all those who have not worked out that the rules of PR engagement are shifting. The era of front organizations and astroturf is over. The era of crony journalism is ending. Only those who make change their friend rather than their enemy will be able to protect their clients' interests.

This is a good thing, and should be embraced. Money not spent on crony journalism and crony politics is money that is freed up to do legitimate community outreach. This is a good change for our industry and our clients.

As for Ken Silverstein and Harper's, I can only say that what goes around comes around. If you do not want to live in a world where Matt Drudge or some similar character can insert a mole into your organization for the purpose of collecting information with which to embarrass you, then it would be better not to sail under false colors.

The coming controversy over federal contracting

Systems integrators fall from grace, but many doubt that government can run without them

Major setbacks for the Coast Guard’s $24 billion Deepwater program are casting a shadow over the use of lead systems integrators on other large federal contracts and could result in a reduction in that contracting approach.

Clearly federal contractors are going to come under increased scrutiny and changes are going to be made. My advice to federal contractors is to make change your friend, not your enemy.

I would also advise primary integrators to increase their public relations efforts including new media strategies.

The late, great, Potomac Tech Journal

We used to have a terrific local tech weekly called Potomac Tech Journal. It folded after the Dot.com crash. No other publication, before or since, had done as a good a job of covering the commerical side of Potomac Tech culture. The government contracting sector is well covered, mergers & acquisitions are covered, but technology trends in the commercial sector are currently ignored.

Tech journalism is under a great deal of stress and bad news for tech reporters is bad news for tech flacks. I wrote an article for The Daily Dog about the problems faced by content providers, and why this is a problem for our industry as well as society. It should run sometime in the next few weeks.

Affordable public affairs advocacy

Learning From Microsoft's Error, Google Builds a Lobbying Engine

When it comes to lobbying, Google does not intend to repeat the mistake that its rival Microsoft made a decade ago.

Microsoft was so disdainful of the federal government back then that it had almost no presence in Washington. Largely because of that neglect, the company was blindsided by a government antitrust lawsuit that cost it dearly.

Mindful of that history, Google is rapidly building a substantial presence in Washington and using that firepower against Microsoft, among others.

Want to protect your interests but lack Google’s largess? There is another way.

First of all, join your relevant trade association and find the time to get active. Don’t let the big players co-opt the organization. You have overlapping, but distinct interests. Make sure your trade association is responsive to your company’s concerns.

Encourage your employees to be active in their local political committees, not just the ones who agree with you, everyone. That way, no matter who wins the election you will have an effective advocate on the inside. Politicians respond to votes. They need money to win those votes; but votes trump money. If someone on your staff runs the database for the local committee or serves as webmaster, they will have a kind of access to local elected officials that is not for sale at any price.

Public Policy blogosphere

Save the Internet
Google Public Policy Blog
National Journal’s Technology Daily
Verizon Policy Blog
CDT Policy Beta
The Technology Liberation Front
ACT
EFF Deep Links
IP & Democracy
Public Knowledge
IP Central
Progress and Freedom Foundation

All added to the Tech on the Potomac RSS reader. If you know of other tech oriented public policy blogs, which are locally based, please send me their URL’s and I will add them to the reader.

Earn money by inspiring hatred

World's Most Hated Blogger

Financial exhibitionism, coupled with a lack of penitence for stiffing his creditors, has transformed the 24-year-old resident of this sleepy Sacramento suburb into a celebrity among fellow bloggers. But unlike other online celebrities, Serin's stardom comes from a unique source: "haters" who patronize his blog solely to learn what financial missteps he's made today.Since launching his web site last September, Serin has discovered that it can be profitable to outrage and annoy the thousands of people who visit his blog every day. He estimates he was making up to $1,000 a month through Google ads and believes he's on track to make even more through Yahoo's ad network. His notoriety has led to appearances on Suze Orman's and Robert Kiyosaki's advice shows, and he says he's working on a book and advice packet that he'll sell online.

Get the feeling we are looking at Dick Cheney's retirement plan?

Playing defense with domain registrations

Do you know where your email is?

Chris Abraham on Search Engine Marketing

Domain Name Strategy

• Register domains for multiple years
• Private registration of domain names
• Register all domain extentions (net, com, us, org, etc)
• Register many variations of the domain
• Register misspellings and mistakes
• Domain Forwarding and Masking
• Register domains that counter brand

Chris is more correct than he knows -

Greg Palast: I have Karl Rove's emails

Palast: I know because I have Karl Rove’s emails. No kidding. He and his team aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer. They sent copies of their plans to GeorgeWBush.ORG instead of GeorgeWBush.COM addresses — and, heh heh, they ended up in my in-box. Who says this job ain’t fun?

Has an investigative reporter registered some variation of your company's name? Are you a financial services firm? Is some con-artist receiving your customers misaddressed mail? Are you a security contractor? Is some really ugly customer receiving your company's communications?

This is a perfect example of why you need to hire someone with experience in new media strategies.

Online reputation management for federal contractors

3-D Map of the World Wide Web

Reading Chris Abraham’s posts about search engine optimization, Promotional and Defensive SEO and Your Online Marketing Strategy Requires More than SEM, got me to thinking about how this applies to the world of federal contractors.

It is no secret that the next two years will bring increased scrutiny to federal contractors. The time for online promotion is before controversy strikes. Here are some simple things contractors should be doing:

Encourage your employees to blog. Don’t have a corporate blog, have lots of blogs. This has worked well for Sun and Microsoft, and is something that should be emulated.

Some of your subcontractors and consultants are already blogging. Build an aggregator and link to their blogs. Encourage your other subcontractors and consultants to blog.

Encourage your employees and contractors to use social tagging sites. Don’t tell them what to tag; just encourage them to use tags. Each time an article about your company is tagged, it becomes incrementally more visible to search engines. It is very difficult to move an item to the top of social tagging sites; but it is quite simple to use social tagging to give favorable web pages a tiny kick of Google juice.

Link to discussion groups relevant to your industry and encourage your employees, subcontractors, and customers to participate in them. Don’t worry about negative posts, disgruntled individuals will find such sites on their own. Promoting these sites within your company will increase the chances of favorable posts, and help build community.

Consistent application of these methods will insure that the first page of search engine results reflects favorably upon your company.

Industry Analyst blogosphere

Helzerman alerts us to Technobabble's Top 50 Analyst bloggers. Is Technobabble a great name for a blog or what?

Washington's own Trend Watch did not make the rankings even though its Technorati authority is 275 and has 33 subscribers on Bloglines.

It seems to be modeled on Todd And's Power 150 Marketing blogs. Even though any such ranking will be flawed, this sort of thing requires a great deal of work and helps to build community.

The latest from Chris Abraham

He is now blogging at Marketing Converstation and has a excellent post about online reputation management.

Marketing Conversation is now added to the Tech on the Potomac RSS reader.

White house email and the Presidential Records Act

Where have all the e-mails gone?

Waxman's staff report notes that the Presidential Records Act requires the president to ensure that all "activities, deliberations, decisions, and policies that reflect the performance of his constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties are adequately documented ... and maintained as presidential records" and charges that White House officials used their RNC e-mail accounts "in a manner that circumvented these requirements."

Using email accounts on the Republican National Committee server to conduct official government business could be judged as a evasion of the Presidential Records Act.

Additions to Tech on the Potomac RSS Reader

Digital Influence Mapping

Personomies

Private Sector Development Blog

World Bank President

IFIwatchnet


Tech on the Potomac, PR, marketing, public policy, and tech blogs of the Greater Washington, DC area

The World Bank discovers social media

Salon has a fascinating story about the World Bank’s discovery of social media. Under pressure of the crisis, they built themselves an aggregator. Other organizations would do well to do likewise and the time to begin is before a crisis.

Changes in the NIEM model

Crisis-information schema simplifies core elements

The first production version of NIEM appeared in June 2006. It used Justice’s Global Justice XML Data Model as the foundation, but is being expanded to cover other common items relating to criminal justice and law enforcement.

Perhaps the major area of change is the unification of namespaces, a term applied to collections of tags.

The first version of NIEM had two main namespaces, Universal and Common.

Universal components were items that would be common to all parties using NIEM. Common components were items that existed in more than one domain.

If you are building software for the criminal justice market, write towards Universal and avoid Common where possible. It will make it easier to sell and install.

Hunt the slipper, email edition

United States House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

There are several next steps that should be pursued in the investigation into the use of RNC e-mail accounts by White House officials. First, the records of federal agencies should be examined to assess whether they may contain some of the White House e-mails that have been destroyed by the RNC. The Committee has already written to 25 federal agencies to inquire about the e-mail records they may have retained from White House officials who used RNC and Bush Cheney ’04 e-mail accounts. Preliminary responses from the agencies indicate that they may have preserved official communications that were destroyed by the RNC.

Imagine yourself the Chief Information Officer for a federal agency and you are presented with a inquiry from the Oversight and Government Reform Committee for any email you may have originating from the Republican National Committee. How would you know? Where would you look? This is a great content management story.

How important is supply-chain management?

The ODNI's Wal-Mart Approach to Intel

Move aside, HUMNINT and IMINT, we've got contracts to execute! We'll find bin Laden: that's clearly outlined in the scope of service.

e-discovery, evidence recovery, and content management lollapalooza

Interim Report on RNC Emails and the Presidential Records Act

There has been extensive destruction of the e-mails of White House officials by the RNC. Of the 88 White House officials who received RNC e-mail accounts, the RNC has preserved no e-mails for 51 officials. In a deposition, Susan Ralston, Mr. Rove’s former executive assistant, testified that many of the White House officials for whom the RNC has no e-mail records were regular users of their RNC e-mail accounts. Although the RNC has preserved no e-mail records for Ken Mehlman, the former Director of Political Affairs, Ms. Ralston testified that Mr. Mehlman used his account “frequently, daily.” In addition, there are major gaps in the e-mail records of the 37 White House officials for whom the RNC did preserve e-mails. The RNC has preserved only 130 e-mails sent to Mr. Rove during President Bush’s first term and no e-mails sent by Mr. Rove prior to November 2003. For many other White House officials, the RNC has no e-mails from before the fall of 2006.

Obviously there will be several investigations coming out of this. Those investigators will have to sift through mountains of evidence, employ advanced technology to recover other evidence, and generally search for needles concealed in fields of haystacks. Presto Vivace does not currently represent clients who officer that sort of service, but this is a great time to tell those stories.

Slaying the email monster

Lately I have been unsubscribing from a whole series of email newsletters. These are really interesting newsletters, with important news about technology, the sort of newsletters Presto Vivace clients would want their stories placed. But there are just too many of them to read and do the rest of my work.

Patent & Trade Office Peer Review Software Patent Wiki

Federal News Radio had an interview with John Doll, Commissioner for Patents with the USPTO, about the Pilot Project for Peer Review Wiki of prior art. Listen to it on Windows Media.

The Bureau of Prisons

Former White House aide to be jailed

US Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, could be imprisoned within weeks after a US judge ruled he would not delay Libby's prison sentence.

District Judge Reggie Walton's decision will send Libby's lawyers rushing to an appeals court to block the sentence and could force President George W Bush to consider calls from Libby's supporters to pardon him.

No date was set for Libby to report to prison but it is expected to be within six to eight weeks.

That decision will be left up to the US Bureau of Prisons, which will also select a facility.

It is hard not to believe that the Bureua of Prisons has already given this considerable thought. I have no idea what they will do, but I suspect it will be very much by the book.

Trouble in the bond market

Bonds plunge as US debt loses its appeal

Government bond yields in the eurozone and the UK soared to fresh multi-year highs on Wednesday as investors nervous about rising interest rates continued to dump bonds.

A later story is more encouraging:Bonds stabilise as yields draw in investors

Except for this part:

“It’s not the end of the sell-off in bonds, but the market has stabilised and we have seen some buying from pension and insurance accounts,” said Gerald Lucas, senior investment adviser at Deutsche Bank.

Signs of reduced bond buying interest on the part of Asian central banks and other foreign investors has been one factor behind the sell-off. But the sell-off pushed up yields and that attracted investors who favour low-risk investments.

I don't think that our political leadership has done anything to prepare us for what is to come.

1105 government technology publications

Geoff Livingston has an interesting interview with Chris Dorobek where he asks Dorobek to explain FCW’s editorial mission:

BB: Most PR people (unfortunately) don’t understand what an editorial mission is. Can you explain how FCW’s mission guides your efforts on a day-to-day basis?

CD: FCW’s task is to provide people with information that helps them do their job better. That’s the short version. Information technology is in there too, but just as IT is increasingly embedded in just about everything that everybody does, FCW is expanding beyond just IT.

Late last year, of course, FCW’s parent company, 1105 Media, purchased the former Post Newsweek Tech Media, which included Government Computer News, Washington Technology, the FOSE trade show, and Defense Systems. As a result of that, we have reoriented the publications slightly — actually just emphasized the directions that the publications were going already. GCN is now ‘the technology authority.’ Washington Technology focuses on the business aspects, and FCW is a more policy/management focused publication.

This is very useful to know when deciding what story gets pitched to which publication.

PR and the Internet

Angelo points to this brilliant essay by Paul Holmes:

The Internet was about information and education, not promotion, because it gave people unprecedented control over the messages to which they were exposed.

It was about earning attention rather than demanding it. It was about dialogue rather and conversation rather than monologue. And it was about multiple stakeholder groups rather than customers alone.

It is the quality of unlimited bandwidth and reader driven choices that makes the Web different from all other media. You have to earn attention on the Web, which makes it peculiarly a PR medium.

Community Patent Review

Welcome to the Peer to Patent reviewer pre-registration site for the pilot to launch in early June!

Peer to Patent is the the Community Patent Review pilot. You are among the first to join the "open revolution" and sign up to become a Community Peer Reviewer!

To create an account, please provide your first and last name. To foster a sense of belonging and trust within the community, we encourage everyone to display their full names. You may use a pseudonym, if you prefer.

Once the pilot goes live, you will be able to subscribe to specific patent applications and learn more about the Peer to Patent community.

For more information and updates about Peer to Patent, visit the project website http://dotank.nyls.edu/communitypatent.

You can e-mail us with questions or feedback at reviewer@peertopatent.org.

This is the USPTO project I discussed earlier, to use social software to review patents. This has the potential to address many of the problems with the current patent system.

New to me local blogs

2008 Presidential Transition Initiative, by John Kamensky of IBM, who I met at last week's recording of Amtower Off-Center.

Federal Financial Management News Web Log, which has been going since 2005, but which I only discovered after the author was kind enough to alert me as a result of last week's radio broadcast. Just when I think I know all the local blogs I discover a new one.

Both will be added to the Tech on the Potomac RSS reader. While the reader is for PR, marketing, and tech blogs, I also include government oriented blogs, though not political blogs.

Presto Vivace, live in concert!

Friday, July 13 at 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Success in the City Features New Media Nouveaux Conference

New Media Nouveaux Theme Art

Highlighted Links

New Media Nouveux Full Program

Success in the City Web site

FAIRFAX, VA--(Marketwire - June 11, 2007) - Success in the City's New Media Nouveaux conference is the social media conference on how to make your audience fall in love with you, your message and your business.

Success in the City's New Media Nouveaux Conference Features:

-- Insights, tips, strategies, plans, processes and resources for
conquering the new media revolution.

-- Nationally renowned speaker Toby Bloomberg, author of the Diva
Marketing Blog will keynote. Toby's
a national speaker and facilitator of social media and traditional
marketing discussions for organizations like the U.S. Olympic Committee and
SCORE.

-- Second keynote speaker Geoff Livingston, CEO of Livingston
Communications, is a marketing strategist whose book, "Now Is Gone,"
focused on social media will be released in October. Called a local
blogging "guru" by The Washington Post, Geoff's Buzz Bin blog is a nationally recognized public relations blog.

-- Three expert panels focus on businesses using social media, tips and
suggestions on how to engage in new media and what's next.

-- Working lunch will provide attendees access to speakers and panelists
for in-depth discussions about new media strategies.

-- A full program is available online at the Hinge Web site (PDF).

-- Interested parties can register online.

Panelists include:

Futurists Panel: Aaron Brazell, B5 Media; Sean Gorman, FortiusOne; Brian Williams, Viget Labs; and Jody Roth, Redstones as moderator.

Businesses Using Social Media: Jill Stelfox, Defywire; Angela Drummond, SiloSmashers; Cynthia de Lorenzi, Success in the City; and Jen Sterling, Hinge as moderator.

Specialists: Jennifer Cortner, EFX Media; Alice Marshall, Presto Vivace; Qui Viaz, Ogilvy; and Andrea Morris, Write Ideas Marketing as moderator.

When:

-- The New Media Nouveaux Conference will be held Friday, July 13 at 8
a.m. to 3 p.m.

-- Tower Club, 8000 Towers Crescent Drive, Suite 1700, Vienna, Va. 703-
761-4250

-- Cost $295

Presto Vivace Blog, sponsored by

After some hesitation we decided to accept advertising and welcome Top Center Ticket Service as our first advertiser.

You can support the work of Presto Vivace Blog by taking our reader survey. Better yet, you can support your business by hiring Presto Vivace for New Media Strategies.

Blogging for government contractors

Federal News Radio has Friday's show online.

Social Media has taken off, and the most mature aspect of social media is blogging. How is it used in industry for both internal and external communications, for outbound marteting/PR and strategy development? Is Second Life the next generation of blogging? In government, in secure environments, the feds are beginning to share ideas, ask questions and more. The IBM Center for the Business of Government has a blogging study coming out at the end of June: The Blogging Revolution: Government in the Age of Web 2.0. Guest Geoff Livingston has a social media book coming out this fall - Now It's Gone.

We all had a great time recording the show and hope you like it.

Google called a threat to privacy

Watchdog accuses Google of invading the privacy of its internet surfers

When it comes to snooping in cyberspace, internet giant Google is the online world's biggest brother, according to a new report. The California-based company, famed for its enlightened style of management, is painted in a less flattering light in the first attempt to rank internet companies on their respect for users' privacy.

The human rights campaign Privacy International, which conducts an annual audit ranking countries according to how they respect their citizens' privacy, has analysed the world's leading internet companies.

The public isn't ready yet, but privacy is going to be the next killer ap.

Responding to the consequences of privacy breaches is going to become a PR speciality.

Edit -
Search Engine Land blog suggests that Privacy International may have a conflict of interest as it has a Microsoft representative on their Board. This illustrates the importance of such institutions in shaping public opinion.

Setting a poor example

Steal this laptop.

The Indian Monsoon

Indian Ocean regional imagery, 2007.06.07 at 1430Z. Centerpoint Latitude: 13:52:34N Longitude: 77:29:19E.

Why Presto Vivace

A business associate asked me why I named my company Presto Vivace. It is from music tempo markings and it means fast and lively. My idea was to separate my company from the techie acronym names that were fashionable when I launched my company in 1998.

Blogs and search engines

During yesterday’s recording of Amtower Off-Center (to be broadcasted today at 2 PM), I forgot to mention one of the most important reasons for corporate blogging, search engine visibility. Every company should do a search on themselves and the names of their management. What do you see? At minimum,when you do a search on your company’s name, your company should come up in the first ten results.

Blogs can be very useful in that respect. Even a low traffic blog can improve your company’s search engine visibility. Particularly if you use social tagging (del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit, etc.) to boost the effect of a favorable blog post.

This is difficult to explain to clients. A favorable blog post on a low ranking blog with some social tagging seems a very poor substitute for having your picture on the cover of BusinessWeek. But to the unblinking eye of Google, that blog post will be working for you for months and years to come. Moreover, blogs are increasingly driving editorial judgment, so blog buzz often works its way up the media food chain. You can receive a mention on a blog, six months later a reporter could be researching an industry trends story and find that blog post, leading to a mention in a feature article. The effect of good blog post will continue for months, even years, after it is written.

Why sales, marketing, and PR all have to speak to each other

Tom Murphy points to the excellent post by Brian Solis, Why PR Doesn't Work and How to Fix It. My favorite part:

Figure out who your customers are and where they go for their information. This forces PR to mirror sales strategies in order to reach the people that could benefit from said product/service. Different people go to different places for information. First determine where you want to be and then work backwards from there.

I take a certain pride in my background as a sales representative. Most PR pros are trained in communications or have a background in journalism. Working in sales concentrates your mind as to why companies want PR, to increase their market share.

Blogs and selling to the government

I would like to expand on a point I made while recording Amtower Off-Center. Government sales usually involve selling to a committee. Either the CIO, or one of his representatives attends your presentation. Usually, there is a network administrator, project manager, business manager, and a programmer or technical support representative.

All of these people have a say in the purchase, and who has the most say is not always a question hierarchy. Sometimes the CFO will be so desperate for a solution that he will drive the process. Sometimes the technical support representative will see the need for a new system, and bring the others along. Until you get in the room, you have no way to identify the real decision maker. Moreover, before you ever get in that room, many conversations have taken place as to whether an additional capability is needed, and if so, who is the preferred vendor.

Blogs can begin that conversation. Blogs are a store window that prospective customers can “shop.” Prospects have the opportunity to get acquainted in a no-pressure situation. It is for that reason they are such an effective tool for networking.

To hear more about blogging in the government market, tune in tomorrow at 2 pm on WFED 1050 AM in Washington - simulcast on www.FederalNewsRadio.com on Amtower’s Off-Center Observations.

Bloggers and books

Advertising Age has an article about how Timothy Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Work Week, used conferences and blogosphere to sell his book. Ferriess has not made the usual round of TV appearances, bloggers have generated sufficient buzz to propel his book to 123 on Amazon.

Marcy Wheeler, did one better. Her book, Anatomy of Deceit, grew out of her blog. The company which published it, Vastar Publishing, was created by Jane Hamsher and Markos Moulitsas, especially for the book.

Today’s mail brought a review copy of Outsourced, the international thriller about security contractors by R J Hillhouse. I’ve only read a few pages and I am already transfixed. I predict it will be read with close attention in certain circles.

Federal blogs, wikis, and collaborative websites

CDC Chatter

colab wiki

Web-Services.gov

The Ontolog Community

The Information Exchange Package Documentation

National Information Exchange Model

Blogs by Government

Coming attractions, Alice Marshall on Federal News Radio

Amtower Off-Center' every Friday at 2pm on WFED 1050 AM in Washington

The topic this week is Big Bang for Small Bucks: Blogging in the Government Market, with guests Geoff Livingston, Alice Marshall and Debbie Weil.

Dave Perera

I just heard from Dave Perera, formerly of Federal Computer Week and Government Executive. He has launched his own writing shop. Check it out.

Great moments in web content management, DNI edition

Update: DNI Inadvertantly Reveals Key to Classified National Intel Budget

The Office of the Director of Intelligence's PowerPoint presentation has been up and down, on and off the Defense Intelligence site all day. One time it did reappear with new document properties, indicating that it had been saved again today.

Who is running the website over there?

Investor relations nightmare

NEW YORK: Multiple parties are ramping up communications efforts this month in anticipation of the release of Sicko, Michael Moore's new film dissecting the US healthcare system.

Also being considered is a series of screenings for Wall Street analysts and hedge funds who, Lehane said, may want to see the film to help with investment decisions.

A truly novel way to promote a documentary. Michael Moore runs circles around the rest of us.

The State of Search Engine Safety

Study: Music, Tech Search Terms Riskiest

NEW YORK -- Search terms related to music and technology are most likely to return sites with spyware and other malicious code, a new study finds.

This is very clever of McAfee, to put out a study of search engines and spyware. It is a clever way to build their brand.

Who reads Presto Vivace Blog?

Please take my blog reader survey!

Great moments in web content management

Baghdad Embassy Plans Turn Up Online

WASHINGTON — Detailed plans for the new U.S. Embassy under construction in Baghdad appeared online Thursday in a breach of the tight security surrounding the sensitive project.

Computer-generated projections of the soon-to-be completed, heavily fortified compound were posted on the Web site of the Kansas City, Mo.-based architectural firm that was contracted to design the massive facility in the Iraqi capital.

The images were removed by Berger Devine Yaeger Inc. shortly after the company was contacted by the State Department.

You really don't want to be on the receiving end of that sort of phone call.

What Washington reads ii

I decided to redo my earlier informal survey using Survey Monkey. A total of 30 people responded, not a statistically significant sample. The discussion lists I posted this to do not have many civil servants, so that undoubtedly skews the result. Even so, I think it is useful.

Twenty out of 30 respondents are forty years or older. Fifteen are president or owner of their company, five are project managers or leaders of process improvement, the rest are, in descending order, independent computer consultants, programmers, and sales/marketing.

The Washington Post remains the most popular source of technology news, with 41% of the respondents naming it as a favorite source. The New York Times was a distant second, with 33% of the respondents naming it as their favorite source for technology news. In descending order, the remaining favorites were:
CNET
Computer World
Information Week
Washington Technology
Washington Business Journal
Software Development Magazine
The Wall Street Journal
Federal Computer Week
eWeek
MIT Tech Review
Google Tech News
Yahoo Tech News
Government Technology Magazine
Defense News
CNN Tech
Government Computer News
CIO Magazine
Der Speigel
The Pew Internet & American Life Project.

The following sources had a single mention:
The Baltimore Sun
The Baltimore Business Journal
Federal Times
Oracle Magazine
The Register
NewsForge
EPIC/Privacy.

The following sources were volunteered as an other choice:
Wired Magazine
PC Magazine (two mentions)
tech wire
Tech Crunch (two mentions)
Read/Write Web (two mentions)
The Economist
Christian Science Monitor
Potomac Tech Wire
msnbc.com
ACM Queue
PC World
WindowsSecrets.com newsletter,
Scot Finnie Newsletter
Rob Pegararo
z/Journal
Business 2.0
One responded listed various mailing lists.
Most interesting for a PR professional were respondents who listed news releases from software/hardware manufacturers and, as one respondent put it, “and sometimes even Microsoft itself!”

Only seven of the respondents, or 28%, read blogs. I suspect that would have been higher had the sample been a younger group. Of those that read blogs, Slashdot was by far the most popular with Tim Bray’s Ongoing, Jon Udell, and Lou Rosenfeld also being mentioned. Javaranch, Newsvine, Scoble, Joel on Software and Washington’s own CMS Watch were volunteered as other, significant as these were not prompted choices. CMS Watch was the only local blog that was mentioned.

Twenty-two, or 78.6% of respondents participate discussion groups. This is not surprising as discussion groups were the primary way I publicized this survey. DCPubs was by far the most popular discussion group. This either demonstrates the influence of DCPubs, or that their members are more willing to respond to surveys. In descending order the most popular discussion groups were CPCUG lists, DC Web Women (this one surprised me) Netprenuer Ad-Marketing, The Langa List (which is now part of WindowsSecrets.com) Tech Republic lists, and PRSA members and nonmembers. Volunteered in the other category:
Word-PC
Copyediting-l
Wemaster World (two mentions)
HTCC
CFID
HTCIA
www.communitymx.com
Lassosoft's various discussion groups
U2U forums on Adobe.com
Netpreneur Talk the Talk
SIGIA

Only seven respondents use social tagging sites, with del.icio.us being the most popular, followed by Digg, Orkut, and Newsvine.

This sample size is far to small to have any statistical significance; even so it offers insight into local tech culture.

Why journalism matters, Gamaliel López Candanosa

Mexico's Journalists Feel Heavy Hand of Violence

Credibility meltdown of the voting machines

My article in today's Daily Dog describes how a group of online activists and computer security experts destroyed the credibility of the DRE voting machines. It has important lessons for our industry:

So far as I am aware, this is the first online corporate meltdown. It offers several lessons:

• First, pay attention to online critics and treat them with respect—even if they are conspiracy theorists.
• Second, online activists live for threatening letters. Such tactics will almost certainly backfire.
• Lastly, be aware of what is being said about your company and refrain from obviously inflammatory actions. For example, if you are being accused of election fraud, do not sign political fundraising letters—and certainly do not promise to "do all you can do" to deliver a state's votes for your preferred candidate.

Bruce Schneier on the future of privacy

Face-Off: Is Big Brother a Big Deal?

The fear isn't an Orwellian government deliberately creating the ultimate totalitarian state, although with the U.S.'s programs of phone-record surveillance, illegal wiretapping, massive data mining, a national ID card no one wants and Patriot Act abuses, one can make that case. It's that we're doing it ourselves, as a natural byproduct of the information society.We're building the computer infrastructure that makes it easy for governments, corporations, criminal organizations and even teenage hackers to record everything we do, and—yes—even change our votes. And we will continue to do so unless we pass laws regulating the creation, use, protection, resale and disposal of personal data. It's precisely the attitude that trivializes the problem that creates it.

We're not ready for it yet, but in ten years privacy will be the killer ap, and once again DARPA will fund the early research for the solution. Who has to electronically travel around the Internet anonymously? Intelligence agencies and militaries. They are going to come up with the prototype and it will move into the commercial world in much the same way the Internet did. We just aren't ready yet.

Potomac area PR, marketing and tech blogs

There are now sixty-four blogs on the Tech on the Potomac RSS reader. These blogs are chosen because they are from the Greater Washington, DC area, deal primarily with PR, marketing, technology, or government affairs. If you know of a local business or tech blog that belongs on this list, please let me know.

.net DEvHammer

NET Ramblings - Brian Noyes' Blog

360 Digital Influence

Justin Burtch

Amanita.net

BetterECM - russ stalters' Blog on Exploring NextGen ECM

BGNonline Business Growth Network

Business Oriented Design

CaseySoftware, LLC - Supporters & Developers of dotProject - Connecting Developers, Building Worlds

Chris Abraham - Because the Medium is the Message

CMS Watch Trends and Features

CodeSnipers.com - Connecting Developers, Building Worlds

Composibility

Conrad Agramont's WebLog

ConsumerAffairs.Com
CraigBlog

Destination Creation

Dr. Identity (Identity Theft Prevention)
EchoDitto blogs

ECM Industry Watch

Fair And Biased

HighVizPR + Promotion = the new journalism. Politics = Show Biz! News is entertainment?

HITSphere Health IT and Informatics Community - The place to share your ideas, rumors, and complaints about Healthcare IT and Medical Informatics

jaeyeshpatel

Jeet's world

Jim Buie's Blog

Jonathan Cogley's Blog

Ken Yarmosh on Digital Technology's Impact on Business, Life, and Culture.

Kensington Business Solutions

Loosely Coupled Thinking

Luis de la Rosa

MGilly's QA Blog

Mike-O-Matic

New Persuasion


Occam's Razor

One Nomad's Blog

Pensieri di un lunatico minore

Potomac Flacks

Presto Vivace Blog

Serge van den Oever [Macaw]

Shahid's Perspectives

sjoyce@tsinc.com's media

Software Craftsmanship

Technosailor

Ted's Take - The blogging site of Ted Leonsis

The 463: Inside Tech Policy

The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times

The Buzz Bin

The D-Ring: Where the military and new media collide

The Disco Blog

The Healthcare IT Guy

The Idea Ether

The Intelligent Enterprise Blog

The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) Blog

The Tom Kyte Blog

The Webpreneur

Tuvel

Viget's Four Labs

vosi's StumbleUpon Blog

vosi's StumbleUpon Favorites
gregword

PR nightmare in progress

Martin Bosworth

The IRS’ justly-maligned private debt collection program is back in the hot seat—this time courtesy of Brian Ross and the folks over at The Blotter:

Congressional investigators say there have been hundreds of complaints about repeated and abusive phone calls from debt collectors participating in the IRS program. Among those who have filed complaints are people in nursing homes, wives of servicemen in Iraq and low-income taxpayers facing economic hardship…Under the rules of the program, collectors cannot say they are working for the IRS and are calling about a tax matter without first receiving proof of a taxpayer’s identity. This has led to complaints from consumers saying they have received calls that sound like scams from collectors who have pressed them to provide social security numbers without identifying the purpose of the call.

This is not the political environment for that sort of thing. Expect to be called on it.

What are you reading?

I have decided to try a more formal approach to my reader survey. If you are in the Greater Washington area, please take my survey,
What Washington is Reading.

Search engines and hiring decisions

BL Ochman (who always finds the most interesting stuff) alerts us to a case-study-in-progress, We Googled You

Hathaway Jones’s CEO has found a promising candidate to open the company's flagship store in Shanghai. Should a revelation on the Internet disqualify her now?

First of all, how do you know the information concerns the individual in question, is it Alice Marshall PR in New York City, or Alice Marshall of Presto Vivace, or a different Alice Marshall altogether?

Secondly, how do you know it is true? Is everything that has been said about your company on the Internet true? No? Than why should you believe something merely because it is on the internet?

Lastly, and most crucially, is it work related? Is the guy you are considering for the accounting position have a bad YouTube video with the worst karaoke performance ever? How does that relate to accounting?

With the explosion of social software most of us will have something negative about us. If you eliminate all those candidates you will have a very limited talent pool to say nothing of a corporate culture that is not conducive to innovation.

Emerging Trends in Disaster Recovery Services

Association of Information Technology Professionals

THURSDAY, June 14, 2007
6:30-9:00 PM

Manning Dare of SunGard Availability Services will be the speaker.

Market Research Results

Once or twice a year I send out an email to my business associates asking them for their favorite source of tech news. The sample size is far too small to have statistical significance; but I still find it useful.

The biggest surprise is that no one mentioned the New York Times, even though that was one of the prompted choices. Some of the respondents said they no longer read the Washington Post since they gutted their tech coverage.

Most of the other results are much of what you would expect. Although results are not broken down that way, the younger readers consistently preferred online sources, older readers prefer paper, and email newsletters.

Below are this year’s results:

Most popular sources of news among all groups:
Washington Post
Wall Street Journal
Government Computer News
Federal Computer Week
Information Week
Washington Business Journal
CNET
Computer World
Washington Technology
eWEEK
CPCUG Monitor
CIO Magazine

Also mentioned:
Favorite of the Content Management Industry:
eDoc and the Doc 1 e-newsletter

Favorites of tech writers and computer repair consulting:
Info World
CRN
IBM Systems Magazine/Mainframe edition
Computer Shopper
Smart Computing
Brian Livingston's Windows Secrets e-mail newsletter
Tech Republic discussion lists
LangaList
CPCUG discussion lists

Favorites of project managers and process improvement specialists:
ComputerWorld
MIT Tech Review

Web designers and new media specialists:
Full Disclosure Security Discussion
DC Web Women

Programmers favorites:
Oracle Magazine
Teradata Magazine
The Register
Software Development Magazine
NewsForge
CNN Tech
CNET Japan
Der Speigel
Inc. Magazine
Google Tech News
Yahoo Tech News
Slashdot
Groklaw
makezine.com/blog/
bonddad blog
Reddit

Analyst and Education favorites:
The Pew Internet & American Life Project
EPIC/Privacy
Tim Bray’s Ongoing
Jon Udell
Phil Windley
Lou Rosenfeld

The greatest disappointment was that no one mentioned any of the blogs on the Tech on the Potomac RSS reader.

If you would like to participate in this survey,
click here

Memorial Day

Arlington

The coming debate over federal contracting

Connie the Contractor

Unfortunately, another outgrowth of "acquisition reform" was the notion of allowing many agencies (e.g., NASA, NIH, Commerce) to earn commissions based on sales by performing contracting services for other government agencies. This concept is also known as entrepreneurial government. The result has been a tremendous growth in so-called government-wide acquisition contracts (GWACs) and other multi-agency contracting vehicles. Of course, the primary purpose of these contracting programs is not necessarily to get the best deal for taxpayers, but rather to create profit centers for the contracting agencies through commissions earned. Since the "commissions" generated by this approach all come from appropriated funds paid by the using agencies, the incentive structure to get the best deal for taxpayers is completely distorted.

This controversy is only going to grow. My advice to contractors is to make change your friend instead of your enemy.

New to me reference tool

The Business Publications Search Engine

Why journalism matters, Yuri Chernogayev

Uzbek Journalist Charged With Defamation

MOSCOW (AP) - An Uzbek reporter for German broadcaster said Wednesday he faces up to 10 years in prison after being accused of defaming President Islam Karimov.

Yuri Chernogayev said Uzbek prosecutors also charged him with tax evasion and ``illegal dissemination of information threatening public security and order.''

Deutsche Welle freelancer faces up to 10 years in prison

Online damage control that doesn't work

BL Ochman reports that ChemNutra, the company that imported melamine-tainted ingredients linked to the death of many thousands of dogs and cats nationwide, has launched a blog consisting of press releases. The worst part? The comment function doesn't work.

Clearly their PR advisers decided to do a blog, and instead of contracting with anyone knowledgeable about online communications, they went a newsroom and called it a blog. Online communications requires a specialized approach. It is necessary to hire someone with experience.

More evidence that blog buzz drives media coverage

How Blogs Are Affecting Media Relations

• Reporters who don’t know you yet are looking for organizations like yours and products like yours. Make sure they will find you on sites such as Google and Technorati.(Search optimized news releases, social bookmarks and tags on syndicated content will do it for you.)
• If you blog, reporters who cover the space will find you.
• Pitch bloggers, because being covered in important blogs will get you noticed by mainstream media. (Talk to bloggers - don’t pitch them)
• Some (but not all) reporters love RSS feeds. (Bloggers love RSS feeds)
• Personal relationships with reporters are important. (Personal relationships with bloggers aren’t just important - they’re essential. Web 2.0 is about a conversation, not a pitch)
• Does the reporter have a blog? Read it. Comment on it. Track back to it.
• Before you pitch, read (or listen to or watch) the publication (or radio program or TV show or blog or podcast) you’ll be pitching to!
• Once you know what a reporter (or blogger) is interested in, send her an individualized pitch crafted especially for her needs.

It is an error to limit yourself to the high traffic blogs. Blogs with few readers and less inbound links still help with search engine visibility. Multiple links on low traffic can be used to persuade editors in the newsworthiness of your client. It is all a matter of understanding blog buzz.

Protecting citizens' personal data

OMB Moves to Safeguard Social Security Numbers

Federal agencies must review their use of Social Security numbers and come up with a plan in 120 days to eliminate their unnecessary collection and use within 18 months, the Office of Management and Budget said in a memo released yesterday.

Data you don't collect is data you don't have to protect. I hope this will start a trend that will quickly spread to the private sector.

Edit -
White House Data Breach Prevention Guidelines

Litigation PR

Sara Smith has an interesting post describing how TerraCycle is using a blog as part it response to a lawsuit brought by Scotts Miracle-Gro. There is a lively discussion about this at Scotts' online forum.

This is going to be a great case study in the use of online communications as part of your litigation strategy.

Measuring the cyber zeitgeist

Google launches top daily searches as 'Hot Trends'

Google Tuesday launched HotTrends, a new feature on the Google Trends report that lets users see a list of the current top 100 fastest-rising Google search queries in the U.S, the search company said. Users can also select to see what the top searches were on a specific day.

This seems to be a very useful tool for celebrities, national brands, and the very famous. If your client doesn’t have critical SEO mass this tool won’t pick up their web presence. For small and medium sized companies Blogpulse Trend Results remains the better choice.

Sun Microsystems and the GSA

Changes Spurred Buying, Abuses

In February 2005, an auditor at the General Services Administration presented evidence to agency leaders that one of the government's top technology contractors was overcharging taxpayers.

GSA auditor James M. Corcoran reported that Sun Microsystems had billed the government millions more for computer software and technical support than it charged its commercial customers.

If true, the allegation was grounds to terminate the contract and launch a fraud investigation. Instead, senior GSA officials pressed last summer to renew the contract.

This is every federal contractor’s nightmare, a high profile congressional investigation complete with a front-page story in the Washington Post. This is also one of the differences between the private sector and government contracting. If a business thinks you are ripping them off they will simply change suppliers. The last thing they want is a series of articles about how they permitted themselves to be ripped off. Governments are led by politicians who make their careers by exposing fraud, real and imagined. Every detail of your contract could be subject to public scrutiny.

For the civil servants caught up in this, it is a fearsome thing. It is very difficult to defend yourself against an angry committee chairman. The best thing I can suggest is to contact your public affairs officer and get the facts before the public. That is what the news room section of your website is for. Work with the government contracting press, who don’t have to be brought up to speed on the finer points of GSA rules and procedures.

Sun needs to get its story out. There is nothing on their website. I would recommend a straight forward explanation of their side of the negotiations along with a timeline. It would also be useful to document any differences between what they offer their commercial customers, and what they do for their federal customers, in a way that would allow the general public to understand why the federal government is paying a higher price.

There is one point on which I would like clarification:

As it negotiated with the GSA, Sun hired the Washington Management Group, a consulting firm that employs former senior GSA officials, the Waxman memo said. The firm operates the Coalition for Government Procurement, an association of GSA contractors that includes Sun.

I have never heard of trade association that was operated as a division of a private company. I would like to know more about this.

It would be useful if we had a time line beginning with the laws that changed the rules of government contracting. What are those laws and when did they go into effect? Are they just laws or are executive orders also involved? When did the cut backs in personnel overseeing the contracts occur? What areas were affected? We need some charts to show the rise of both the number of contracts and the dollars expended.

Rise in expenditure is not, in and of itself, an indicator of wrong doing. During the period in question every single government agency launched its website. They also completely changed the way they manage documents. These were success stories and should not be treated as suspect.

New to me local tech blog

The Webpreneur

GSA chief violated Hatch Act, OSC report finds

Federal Times

An Office of Special Counsel report has found that General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan violated the Hatch Act, which bars federal officials from partisan political activity while on the job, sources say.

Like we didn't see that one coming down I-95.

There is going to be a lot more like this. The next eighteen months are going to be one investigation after the other, punctuated by the occasional indictment or plea bargain.

It's a great time to be in e-discovery, records management, and litigation support.

The problem with braggadocio

Executive Speech Coaches Beat Al Gore, Lee Iacocca and the Pope

Business psychologist Dr. Larina Kase and coauthor executive speech coach Harrison Monarth were able to add bestselling authors to their resumes over the weekend as their book The Confident Speaker beat out fellow bestselling authors Al Gore, Lee Iacocca, Jim Collins and Pope Benedict XVI for a top spot on Amazon.com

From Amazon.com 5:45 PM Easter Time

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (April 23, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071481494
• ISBN-13: 978-0071481496
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: based on 7 reviews. (Write a review.)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #354 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

The Assault on Reason, by Al Gore

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The (May 22, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594201226
• ISBN-13: 978-1594201226
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #3 in Books

Another reason Potomac tech culture is different from Silicon Valley

Techcrunch

The press side of things is equally nuts. I wasn’t writing a blog in the first bubble so I can’t compare now to then. But entrepreneurs are no longer talking to us just to get our opinion and hope for a blog post and a little discussion. These guys need press to stand out from the scores of startups just like them. Saying no to them isn’t really an option. They show up at our front door with a bottle of wine or flowers. They instruct their PR firms to do anything necessary to get a story.

No Presto Vivace client ever presented wine or flowers to any member of the press. In fact, the local press is pretty strict about not taking swag. In this part of the world hype is reserved for Presidential candidates and the venture firms confine themselves to business plans and presentations.

More content management blogs

CMS Wire


TAWPI Blog

New to me, EMC blogs

Jesse Wilkins informs me that EMC has three blogs:

• Mark's Blog. Mark Lewis is the EVP and Chief Development Officer.
  
• Andrew's Blog. Andrew Cohen is Associate General Counsel and VP Compliance Solutions.
  
• Chuck's Blog. Chuck Hollis is VP of Technology Alliances.

Wilkins has a collection of ECM vendor blogs on his blog roll:

• Alfresco Blog
• EMC: Andrew's Blog
• EMC: Chuck's Blog
• EMC: Mark's Blog
• Microsoft: Michael Gannotti
• Microsoft: MSDN ECM Team Blog
• OpenText: ECM Briefs
• TOWER Software Blog