How not to do damage control

Walter Reed patients told to keep quiet

Soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center’s Medical Hold Unit say they have been told they will wake up at 6 a.m. every morning and have their rooms ready for inspection at 7 a.m., and that they must not speak to the media.

“Some soldiers believe this is a form of punishment for the trouble soldiers caused by talking to the media,” one Medical Hold Unit soldier said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

It is unusual for soldiers to have daily inspections after Basic Training.

Telling your employees to just shut up is not going to work.

For those not familiar with the story -

Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration At Army's Top Medical Facility

Public Relations, good and bad

Our good friend Tom Murphy points to this remarkable video by PR Watch. It is a compelling, if crude piece of propaganda. I think people outside the news industry have this immaculate conception of reporting, as if reporters are just supposed to know what is happening without any sources. Of course companies and other organizations are going to send them material, what’s wrong with that?

Sadly, you can fool all the people some of the time. When that happens, when disillusion sets in, the price you pay is very steep. If you cannot persuade by honest methods, that may be a sign that your message lacks merit.

PR at it’s finest is understanding your client’s role in society, and communicating that both to your client and to the society in which you operate.

Dell, stalling on Linux

Despite consumer demand, company isn't ready to commit to selling laptops with Linux pre-installed

Despite obvious support for the idea last week from thousands of visitors on its new customer suggestion Web site, IdeaStorm, the company said it's not yet building machines with Linux pre-loaded for the consumer and business markets.

Last Friday night, Dell posted a note on the IdeaStorm Web site saying it was listening to thousands of users who had posted messages asking for Linux on its machines by moving forward to certify three of its corporate hardware lines -- OptiPlex desktops, Latitude notebooks, and Dell Precision workstations -- for use with Novell SUSE Linux.

My guess is that one of the Asian manufacturers will be the first to build a Linux PC.

Buy on rumor, sell on news

SEC Sues Company For Using Hacked Information In Trades

The Securities and Exchange Commission is suing a Hong Kong company for allegedly making more than $2.7 million from illegal trades they made by reading corporate press releases before they were made public.

Google goes to Washington

Google Searches For Government Work

The search engine giant showed off its ambition yesterday to expand its business with the federal government, kicking off a two-day sales meeting that attracted nearly 200 federal contractors, engineers and uniformed military members eager to learn more about its technology offerings.

Google has ramped up its sales force in the Washington area in the past year to adapt its technology products to the needs of the military, civilian agencies and the intelligence community. ...

... Google declined to comment on which federal agencies it serves and would not reveal its revenue from government work.

But publicly available data indicate that the nascent business quadrupled in just one year, from $73,000 in 2005 to $312,000 in 2006, according to FedSpending.org, a nonprofit unit of OMB Watch, an advocacy group that tracks federal contracts.

Google is obviously looking to do far more then $312,000 in the future.

Abdel Kareem Nabil

Egyptian Blogger Appeals Prison Sentence

CAIRO, Egypt -- Lawyers filed an appeal Monday on behalf of a blogger who was sentenced to four years in prison for insulting Islam and Egypt's president.

Abdel Kareem Nabil, a former law student at the Al-Azhar University in Cairo, used his blog to advocate secularism and criticize conservative Muslims.

Let's hope Egypt comes to it's senses.

Edit -
Egyptian Blogs Aggregator

New Profiling Program Raises Privacy Concerns

Ellen Nakashima and Alec Klein, The Washington Post

The Department of Homeland Security is testing a data-mining program that would attempt to spot terrorists by combing vast amounts of information about average Americans, such as flight and hotel reservations. Similar to a Pentagon program killed by Congress in 2003 over concerns about civil liberties, the new program could take effect as soon as next year.

I can't be the only one to notice that this administration is far more interested in tracking people than cargo.

US durable goods orders slide

Eoin Callan, Financial Times

There was an unexpected drop in orders of durable goods across industry sectors as demand slid by a record 8 per cent to $204bn in January. The biggest monthly fall ever recorded underlined the continued risks to US economic growth from weak domestic business demand, which has lagged behind consumer spending.

A bad sign. A very bad sign.

Central Banks Diversify From Dollar, Survey Shows

Bloomberg

Feb. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Central banks are increasingly diversifying their reserves, including cutting holdings of dollars, according to a survey sponsored by Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, the U.K.'s second-largest bank.

A bad sign. A very bad sign.

Presto Vivace Blog at 3

It slipped by, but last Thursday marked the third anniversary of this blog. It started out as a way to communicate my ideas about PR and build visibility. It has given me the opportunity to participate in Global PR Blog Week 1 and 2, the original New Communications Forum, and Bull Dog Reporter's PR University. It has also offered me a wealth of knowledge that would otherwise be unavailable.

It's been great, thanks to everyone who reads Presto Vivace Blog.

AHIC privacy co-chairman resigns in protest

AHIC privacy co-chairman resigns in protest, Government Health IT

Paul Feldman resigned on Feb. 21 as co-chairman of the American Health Information Community’s Confidentiality, Privacy and Security (CPS) Workgroup, citing in a letter to Interim National Coordinator for Health Information Technology Robert Kolodner the panel’s lack of “substantial progress toward the development of comprehensive privacy and security policies that must be at the core of a nationwide health information network.”

A bad sign. A very bad sign.

The wisdom of Scott Kirsner

Advice to PR flacks, from other tech reporters interviewed by Media Survey

Scott Kirsner, freelancer
His preference for PR agencies tends toward the smaller or independent PR pro. "The biggest agencies are all horrible, unresponsive and slow to return calls...you have to explain the story you're working on 16 times to 16 different people... The most helpful have been self-employed PR people who have the freedom to tell the client, 'I'm not going to call the Wall Street Journal because they're not going cover it.'"

Via the always enlightening Phil Gomes.

Change management

Los Alamos Warns Employees About Daylight-Savings Impact On Coffee Makers

NovaJUG has a blog

Novajug Blog

Doesn't have a blog roll, which is surprising. You would think they would put all the member blogs on the group blog.

David Bock's Weblog

One Nomad’s Blog

Codebits

Jeet's world

Jayesh's Blog

Tom McQueeney Weblog

The Eclectic Technologist

Composibility

/dev/caffeine

Blog for Hugh Brien

Test Often

bdg's plumtree blog

Chris Bucchere's Blog

Tom Gullo's Blog

Glen Mazza's Weblog

and of course, your humble servant, Presto Vivace Blog

Whither SOA

Joab Jackson, Tech Blog for Government Computer News

The emerging technology special interest group of the Industry Advisory Council has posted a survey about Service Oriented Architecture. If you get a chance, go and fill it out. It should take only 10 minutes or so, promises Greg Hauser, who is the chair for the IAC SOA committee.

Not long ago I was at a meeting of IASA where the speaker asked how many had used SOA in their programming, only a few raised their hands. Cleary we are in the early adopter stage.

Data Security, a question of business practices

Bearing the Cost of Stolen Data

TJX, the parent company of discount retailers TJ Maxx and Marshalls, said Wednesday that the data breach it reported last month is bigger than it first thought.

As my colleague Ellen Nakashima reported yesterday, TJX initially said it was hacked into sometime between May 2006 and January 2007. Now, however, it thinks its computer system was also hacked a whole two years earlier, in July 2005 and on "various subsequent dates" that year.

I think mordaxus has it precisely right:

If Congress wants to do something for consumers, it would be to require lenders to be responsible.

Judtih Miller and Scooter Libby having lunch at the St. Regis

Exclusive photos and transcript.

Proofreaders

Always use one.

Studios, FBI Teach Swedish Cops to Hunt File Sharers

Daniel Goldberg, Computer Sweden

The FBI and the MPAA, with the Swedish antipiracy organization Antipiratbyren, are training Swedish law enforcement officers in copyright and piracy matters.

So the FBI is content to play enforcer for a trade association and the Swedish government is going along with it? Not what you would call citizen centric is it?

Congratulations Fran Allen

IBM-er wins tech's version of Nobel, but few women keep her company

Today, IBM's Fran Allen becomes the first woman to win the most prestigious prize in computing, the A.M. Turing Award.