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Consumer Technology UpdateHTC spoils iPhone party iPhone is getting a lot of hype at the moment, with its launch scheduled for the end of this month but did Apple really think that barging its way into the smart-phone market was going to be a simple matter of letting the iPhone ride on the iPod's coat-tails? Established smart-phone player HTC this week unveiled its iPhone spoiler, a cute little Windows based device called Touch. Sporting a stylish new design and next generation touch screen interface, Touch has already won praise from the technology press. You can bet that other manufacturers will have similar devices in the pipeline. Apple may well have conquered the MP3 player market with relative ease, but it's going to have a much tougher time making a name for itself as a smart-phone vendor. Microsoft salutes PacMan designer Microsoft this week announced that a new version of PacMan will be released on its X-Box Live service as a tribute to the iconic game's designer, Toru Iwatani who is retiring from the multi-billion dollar games industry to which he has made such an unforgettable contribution. The new version is the only PacMan game other than the original to be personally designed by Iwatani, and is titled Pac Man Championship Edition, it was originally created to be used in the final round of the Pac Man World Championship contest, held in New York earlier this week. |
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Web 2.0 WatchBy Fiona Blamey PR professionals absent from social media forum Of all the interesting things about this week's Blogs and Social Media Forum, perhaps the most striking was that the PR community was practically absent from the event. Only three of the 110 attendees were in PR roles, and one of those - Mark Monseau, director of media relations at Johnson & Johnson - was a speaker. That left an account manager from JBA Public Relations, and the PR manager of an academic book publisher making up the numbers for the profession. With many blogs having achieved quasi-mainstream media status, and online chatter increasingly influencing public perception of organisations, I found this absence genuinely perplexing. Personally, I welcomed the opportunity to learn how major media outlets are addressing social media, and was heartened to find that even the best minds at these organisations are still uncertain about how to go about it. The BBC's Jem Stone said that the broadcaster no longer expects people to come to bbc.co.uk to talk about BBC content, but admits that 'we don't monitor conversations very well'on the wider internet, and that the Beeb is 'bad at engaging in those [non-BBC] spaces'. This will be partly addressed by a new bbc.co.uk feature that will pull in BBC-related content from the blogosphere to show 'what people are blogging about,' he said. At the Economist, online publisher Ben Edwards is planning to make his first moves into social media by launching a 'publisher's blog' to inform readers of new developments and solicit their feedback. He is also creating a section on economist.com where all readers' letters will be published, and readers will be able to comment on them, form communities of interest and network with each other. Edwards did not say whether Economist journalists would join in the debate. So if PRs were absent, who was there? The delegate list has job roles ranging from knowledge managers to digital strategists, marketing executives and IT folk, from blue-chips, publishers, government, law firms and charities. While UK organisations seem keen to get to grips with social media, it looks like PR might be getting left on the sidelines. |
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Best of the 'NetBy Sean McManus How to reach that tricky teenage girl demographic, now that they're all webbed-up and get their gossip as it happens? National Magazines has launched Jellyfish, which recreates the experience of browsing a paper magazine, but enhances it with rich media. Using Flash, you can turn the pages, play videos, listen to audio streams, view map locations and buy, buy, buy. The shopping lists that explain how to recreate a so-called star's look now take you straight to the retailer's website. That blurs the line between editorial and advertising further even than the print mags do, but it is not a great leap from how Amazon is represented on most affiliate websites. What's missing? The feedback mechanism. There's no forum as yet, so it's all a bit passive. But Jellyfish is still a great design showcase for what could happen when magazines and the web collide. Here's hoping NME, which is this week cover-mounting a 7" single, is inspired by Jellyfish to modernise its readers' experience and more closely integrate the articles and rich media on its website. |
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Tech Toon
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Welcome to another edition of the Prompt Communications newsletter. This week we're pleased to announce the US launch of Prompt Blog Monitor, our new social media monitoring service, designed to help you keep track of your brand reputation in the rapidly evolving world of social media. You can find out more about the service by 
Dow Jones & Co and the Bancroft family are considering Rupert Murdoch's $5 billion offer for the 
Incisive Media's Business Technology Group (BTG) has announced several changes. Lem Bingley is now the group editor in chief which means that he now has overall responsibility for US Address: Prompt Communications LLC, 124 Mount Auburn St, Cambridge MA 02138, United States.