Welcome

Welcome to another edition of the Prompt Communications newsletter. This week we bring news of an internet stupidity filter, robot cars, and amusing cartoons about email spam. Oh, there's something about a possible economic recession and it's impact on the IT industry too, but let's not worry ourselves about that...

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Technology News

Digital music divides and conquers
By Dave Wilby

The digital music revolution appears to be dividing artists while bringing fans together. Whether you believe the internet is a great creative catalyst, freeing acts to market and distribute their work via radical new models, or think it just represents the latest conduit for piracy and royalty theft, music fans all agree that all they really want is thousands of top tracks downloaded quickly onto the sexiest devices available.

Internet monitoring company Comscore claims only 38% of Radiohead fans downloading new album ‘In Rainbows’ were willing to pay, with the average price a mere £2.90 ($6). Meanwhile Prince is threatening to take legal action against fan-run websites unless they remove photographs of him, amid counter claims of stifling creativity and contravening freedom of speech. But none of this is stopping thousands of Brits and Germans queuing outside Apple stores to be the first this side of the Atlantic to get their hands on the much coveted iPhone, despite a growing critical backlash for the device even prior to launch.

Prepare your IT department for recession?
By Dave Wilby

It wasn’t the biggest headline news this week, what with more funky gadgets, sexy online software and scary Trojans being launched than the average techie could perfectly propel a stylus at, but a concise piece of market analysis from Gartner really caught our eye. The firm is urging businesses to create a “recession budget” for IT departments in preparation for recession next year if the worst economic forecasts come true. Gartner believes “recession budgets” for 2008 should be at least 10 per cent smaller than peak spending levels in 2007.

Now of course, this may just be a case of covering its own back should the worse happen, but it’s still worth listening to what Gartner VP and fellow Ken McGee told ZDNetUK: "Although the financial outlook for 2008 remains far from certain, waiting for a clear economic trend to appear prior to taking action is not a prudent option. There is already sufficient concern about the possibility of a business slowdown for next year, from enough credible and independent sources, to suggest that preparing a backup cost-cutting IT budget now is just plain good management."

US Media News

By Tarryn Morley

US

There have been several recent changes at IDG, publisher of Computerworld and InfoWorld. Scot Finnie has been promoted from editorial director to editor in chief at Computerworld. Eric Knorr has been promoted from editor at large to editor in chief at InfoWorld. Finnie and Knorr replace Don Tennant, who has been promoted to vice president and editorial director of both publications.

MarketWatch has appointed Therese Poletti as technology reporter covering computer hardware, semiconductors, telecommunications and chips. She has most recently served as a technology columnist for the San Jose Mercury News. Poletti has also worked for Reuters America, the Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal and Crain's New York Business.

Judith Crown has been appointed senior correspondent at BusinessWeek. She will report for the magazine from the Chicago bureau. Crown was previously a senior editor with Forward magazine.

Diedtra Henderson been promoted to business reporter at The Boston Globe. She previously covered the Food & Drug Administration for newspaper’s Washington, D.C. bureau. Henderson has also worked as a health and science reporter for the Associated Press.

UK Media News

By Tarryn Morley

UK

Janie Davies has joined Computing magazine as a reporter. Davies previously worked for Precise Media, a media monitoring company, as a reader / editor summarising press coverage. She has also served as press assistant for the Cardiff Council.

Caroline Parry has been replaced Sonoo Singh as news editor at Marketing Week. Parry has worked at the publication for five years and has previously served as deputy editor at the publication. Singh has been promoted to deputy editor after seven years with the magazine.

Jason Jenkins has been promoted from reviews editor to editor of CNET.co.uk.

The Times is launching Luxx, a quarterly luxury lifestyle supplement, on November 17th. The 64-page magazine will be edited by Tina Gaudoin and will cover men's and women's fashion, jewellery, accessories, bespoke travel and hotels, design, property and collecting. Luxx will be distributed with the newspaper.

Clvr fliter to privent internet stoopiditee? OMG!
By Duncan Heaney

It’s a very strange phenomenon that’s plagued the internet throughout its life; a comments section on a public website is likely to be quickly filled with aggressive, puerile, and unintelligible gibberish. It seems as if no comments page is complete without illiterate arguments between supporters of Apple and Microsoft, or Linux and Microsoft, or Nintendo and… erm… Microsoft.

Well, rejoice because there is a ray of hope. CNNMoney.com is reportingthat a dedicated team of software developers is working on developing an open-source ‘stupid filter’, a piece of software that will try to filter out illiterate and unintelligible messages. The project is being led by Gabriel Ortiz, a 27 year old systems administrator based in Albuquerque, and the team believes an alpha version will be ready to deploy by the end of the year, and available as an add-on for Mozilla Firefox shortly afterwards.

The stupid filter needs to filter out the stupid comments and leave the rest, but the team is discovering that this is no easy task. For example, the filter is finding it difficult to recognise sarcasm and clever irony, mistaking it for stupidity (which is in itself rather ironic). The team is combating this with special markers. Ortiz, discovered that when being sarcastic, users stretched the vowel as you would in speech, such as ‘Yeeeeaaaah’, whereas in stupid comments the consonants were stretched, for example ‘amazinggggg’.

It’s unclear how effective the filter will be, but it’s certainly captured the imagination of many users. Offers of help to the team are coming in from all over the world. It’s unlikely to stop the online arguments, but if it does work, we can look forward to less of this: “Na, Apple is wikkid cos its got reliable and da iPod. Lance is a stupid n00b”, and more of this: “I disagree with your point friend. I personally find Microsoft to be more suited to my personal and lifestyle needs.”

Move aside Knight Rider, there’s a new car in town
By Duncan Heaney

If you hear the words ‘robot car’ I’m sure many of you are likely to think of KITT, the robotic vehicle from the David Hasselhoff vehicle Knight Rider. But now a new driverless car has hit the scene and its name is Boss.

Boss was entered in a Californian race for robotic vehicles. The race challenged the competitors to successfully traverse an urban environment of 60 miles, without any form of human control. Features of the course included a virtual town created on a disused US Airforce bases, dual carriageways, junctions and car parks. In addition, human driven cars were deployed on track to simulate traffic. 11 automated vehicles entered the contest, but only six finished.

The competitors were followed closely by humans in pace cars, equipped with kill-switches in case the machines started to behave erratically. Or rise up against their masters. There were no major accidents, but a dumper truck, majestically named ‘TerraMax’ did crash into a shop, causing significant damage.

Boss used a variety of technology, including a laser scanner, radar scanners and cameras, to complete the course with no crashes. It did, however, take almost six hours, which rather suggests that Boss isn’t going to be Turbo-boosting any time soon.

KITT is not out of the race yet, however. The word on the internet is that a new series of Knight Rider is in production. The future is looking pretty rosy for robot car fanatics.

Web 2.0 Watch

By Fiona Blamey

Women lack the ‘technical skills’ needed for online journalism


Here’s an extraordinary thing: the head of the Times’s online arm, Times Online, is a woman.

No, that’s not the extraordinary thing. The extraordinary thing is that the head of Times Online, Anne Spackman, said on Wednesday that in future there will be fewer women in senior journalistic positions like her own. And that this is because women lack the ‘technical skills’ to publish their work in new online formats.

Speaking at the Society of Editors conference, Ms Spackman said: “What we need now is a level of journalistic creativity combined with real technical skills. […] We'll see less of those people driven to journalism through their curiosity about other people's lives, and it will be those people at the junction between editorial and technology that will have the exceptional value.”

“The vast majority of those are men, so as a result there will be an industry more full of men than there are now”.

It’s difficult to know where to start with this. Perhaps with some figures: when the Pew Internet research project surveyed 7,012 Americans in 2006, it found that almost half (46%) of Americans who publish a blog are women. Studies by six different research firms agree that there are now more female American internet users than male. Here in the UK, Ofcom’s latest report in August revealed that ‘among 25- to 34-year-olds, women now spend more time using the internet than men’. Using the internet is clearly not a problem for women.

‘Ah’, you might say, ‘but using the internet and publishing content on the internet are different things. Women might lack the technical skills for the latter.’

To which I would say: ‘what technical skills?’ Five years ago, I started blogging because I thought it would help me to learn HTML. Disappointingly, I quickly realised that I hardly needed to know any HTML at all. Nowadays, using a blogging tool like WordPress or Blogger, or a content management system, is barely distinguishable from using a word processor. Taking and uploading a digital photograph is about the easiest thing imaginable. The ‘technical skills’ needed to create online content are negligible, and becoming more so by the day.

That’s not to say that there are no skills involved in creating good online content. There are plenty. It requires strong editorial skills, an understanding of what makes a compelling story, and the ability to tell that story in a way that will make people want to read or look at it online. These are all skills at which women and men excel in equal proportions.

So the sooner we get away from the notion that new/social media is for 'geeks' who 'love technology', the sooner we'll see more journalists - of both genders - embracing the online world and delivering great online journalism. I would have expected someone like Anne Spackman to be doing her utmost to dispel the tedious myth that online publishing is the preserve of techie blokes. Instead, she seems to want to reinforce it. Disappointing.

Website of the Week

By Lance Concannon

Spamusement

For most people spam is simply a convenient excuse to idle away ten minutes in the morning while we clear it out of our in-boxes, but for some people it's an endless stream of free creative inspiration. The creator of Spamusement draws cartoons based on spam subject lines, but if you fancy something a little more arty, try this instead.

We hope you find the Prompt Communications newsletter an interesting read. For any feedback on our newsletter, or to discuss how we can help you with your technology PR, marketing, social media/blogging initiatives, copywriting or surveys, please contact us using the details below. We are always delighted to hear from you.