Thursday, December 20, 2001

>>>> Comcast wins in AT&T bidding war.  That's fine with me, but the deal won't close until the end of 2002.   Why?  Regulators need to review it for anti-trust.  Give me a break.  Put it on the fast track and get it done by then end of Q1 2002.   I need digital cable.  My current analog connect sucks! 3:58:19 PM    Comment_ Trackback []

>>>> A massive list of International press links from Dane Carlson.  3:53:21 PM    Comment_ Trackback []

>>>> WSJ.  Opinion Journal (thanks for the link Omar).  The military needs a better PR policy in regards to self-promotion. "Over the past few weeks hundreds of American pilots have been flying countless missions against Taliban and al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan, scores of commandos have been assaulting mountain fortresses in search of Osama bin Laden, and over a thousand Marines have moved into Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban. Every day millions of Americans must think to themselves how proud they are of these warriors. And yet hardly an American can name one of them--and probably won't well into the future. Instead, Americans stand in jeopardy of remembering Geraldo Rivera, Christiane Amanapour or Ashleigh Banfield as the heroes of the Afghan War. Relentlessly narcissistic and buoyed by cloying network anchors at home, reporters such as these have used dramatic license to heighten the sense of personal danger to themselves and thus tacitly direct their reporting towards the inevitable conclusion--"ain't I a hero?" As the viewing public, we're likely to take them at face value, in part because we know no other Americans who can capture our imagination or inspire us to sacrifices of our own in the war on terrorism. As a consequence we pass our affections on to the millionaire celebrity reporters rather than to the $35,000-a-year Delta Force sergeant crawling around Tora Bora." 3:18:06 PM    Comment_ Trackback []

>>>> What a difference five years makes in the PC industry: "Microsoft has a client shipment base of close to 100 million licenses a year," IDC analyst Al Gillen said. "If you go back to Windows 95, they had a shipment base of about 20 million, and if you added Windows 3.1/DOS, about 50 million. Windows 98 was 73 or 74 million. So you're talking about a very different comparison." 1:37:16 PM    Comment_ Trackback []

>>>> WSJ.   Microsoft reshuffles Windows group following launch.  "The launch of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows XP product has led to a reshuffling of some top executives in the all-important Windows division as well as the company's wireless-software group, which is just starting to gain traction in its battle against Palm Inc. John Frederiksen, one of the high-profile executives who oversaw marketing for Windows XP, has left that position and been succeeded by Rogers Weed, who formerly handled marketing for Microsoft's wireless-software products." 12:42:01 PM    Comment_ Trackback []

Effective PR through K-Logs   This is another post to K-Logs (Weblogs for knowledge management) on Yahoo.  If you like this content, you are welcome to join.   Here is something I have been thinking about that may yield benefits to companies that want to increase the effectiveness of their external PR and marketing.  PR firms take notice of what I am about to say, this is a big deal for your business.   I have seen a lot of movement towards using K-Logs to set up PR or product focused sites.  Here are two examples of product focused sites built using K-Logs (these objective news sites dominate the news on their categories which can greatly impact the acceptance of new products): 802.11b Notice the location on Google: (#1) Segway Notice the location on Google:  (#3) Note:  one of the big reasons that K-Logging works so well here is that the tool is so easy to use.  All you need to do is hit the edit button and type in new content in a WYSIWYG editing box in the browser.    Here is my thinking: 1) One suggestion for PR companies would be to set up a K-Log for your customers to run/sponsor product-specific sites.  I would also suggest having them set up K-Logs on their Intranets to collect contributions from employees on potentially newsworthy events -- or this could easily be done through using categories to route posts to an internal PR K-Log devoted to external PR.  That would allow your clients or you to frequently update their sites with PR data with knowledge of everything that is going on in the company.  2) I would also suggest that your company provide clients and employees with a desktop K-Log tool (the new Radio) that enables them to subscribe to the thousands of news sources that have RSS news feeds.  The news would turn up on their desktops every hour and could be read through a browser.  It is a great way to monitor what is going on across a wide variety of publications.  A desktop K-Log tool would also provide your employees the ability to publish blogs to your extranet with insight they glean from client interactions and annotations to news they find through the news reader.  That way, your Intranet can provide an archive of knowledge as it is created that is both browsable and searchable. 3) You can also use a desktop K-Logging tool to enable clients to subscribe to a private (password protected) news feeds derived from client specific K-Logs you publish internally at your firm.  I know a person who is doing this now in his consulting practice.  He filters news and then annotates it with insight for clients.  His clients then subscribe to the secure annotated news feeds through a desktop K-Log.  This allows him to charge a retainer fee and use the feed to initiate discussions with clients that leads to new consulting business.    If you are at a PR firm -OR- at a company that wants to build a product-specific K-Log and you are interested in this, please contact me at jrobb@userland.com for some free consulting/thinking.  I would like to flesh this out with more real world examples, some of which may be turned into a resource for this group.  12:12:50 PM    Comment_ Trackback []

>>>> Dave is thinking the same thing I am thinking about XP (sales are low).  In order to  boost sales there needs to be something really new that has an upgrade path that can utilize what XP has to offer.  10:49:50 AM    Comment_ Trackback []

>>>> 802.11b news.  EarthLink starts Boingo.  A non-infrastructure wireless network.  This is extremely smart.  EarthLink provides the billing infrastructure (so they get the credit card info -- which is huge), and lets partners set up wireless hotspot infrastructure.  This is akin to the cable roll-up that John Malone did in the 70's and 80's with TCI.  Brilliant and cool.  It's going to catch all the big Telcos by surprise given that this could spread to a national network in under 5 years.  I expect AOL will follow soon (if they know what's good for them).  As a small infrastructure provider, this is a way to generate a franchise for life.  The race is on!! 10:38:20 AM    Comment_ Trackback []