| |
| 25th May 2007 |
|
Prompt Communications Newsletter
|
 |
|
|
Dear Reader,
Welcome to another edition of the Prompt Communication's newsletter. Wireless network technology made the news in the UK this week, with a BBC investigation arguing that not enough research had been done into the long term health implications of using the hardware. The report was dismissed as ill-informed sensationalist scare-mongering by most technologists, but we have to wonder how seriously the general public takes these kinds of reports, and how much it influences their use of technology.
For any feedback on our newsletter, or to discuss how we can help you with your technology PR, marketing, copywriting or surveys, please email me at hbutters@prompt-communications.com. We are always delighted to hear from you.
Best regards,
Hazel Butters
Prompt Communications
• Read Our Blog • Browse Newsletter Archive • Contact Us
|
|
|
Enterprise Technology Update
By Lance Concannon
Virus attacks all versions of Open Office
Most open source fanboys will insist that viruses are a problem unique to proprietary software, specifically proprietary software manufactured in Redmond, and that open source software doesn't suffer from such difficulties. That myth was shattered this week as the researchers at Kaspersky Labs discovered a macro virus which infects the Open Office and Star Office productivity suits. Although deemed harmless, the virus is a neat little proof of concept which is capable of infecting versions of the software running on any of the major operating system platforms, including Windows, Mac OS and Linux.
Wi-Fi health risks in the public eye
Wireless network technology has become a ubiquitous feature of our everyday lives, both in the workplace and at home, but following a BBC investigation this week, questions are being asked about the safety of the technology. The BBC's Panorama programme claims that Wi-Fi hardware puts out high levels of radiation which could damage people's health, but the UK government argues that the technology is safe. This article in Spiked provides an interesting rebuttal to the programme maker's claims.
Business Intelligence software boosts profits
According to speakers at the Information Builders Summit User Conference in Las Vegas, companies can improve their bottom line performance by providing access to business intelligence tools to a wider number of users. However, in doing so, organisations also risk creating new IT problems for themselves. Ford Motors said that it rolled out a BI dashboard application to 10,000 dealerships to enable them to compare their warranty repair costs with other dealers, which resulted in cost savings for Ford.
• Read Our Blog • Browse Newsletter Archive • Contact Us
|
|
|
Marketing Update
By Elissa Fry, Lisa Facinelli and Sally Forge
Text in to request your favorite song
This week Clear Channel Radio launched its new texting venture for New York City radio station listeners. Forbes business wire reports that this program gives users the ability to text into radio stations in order to request songs, participate in contests, view the last songs played, see traffic reports, and even receive an alert before their favorite song comes on. The application is free and available to cell phones with SMS texting or WAP capabilities. This application is supported by advertising and is designed to keep listeners connected to their radio stations
What's in a (domain) name?
Boo.com has relaunched as a travel marketing site. Looking like a sanitised version of Trip Advisor, and a bit like Twitter, the site provides user forums, recommendations and booking facilities. Marketing Week reports that Hertz is the first advertiser to use Boo's 'dynamic ad' facility, whereby the ads displayed adapt to what visitors to the site are searching for and looking at.
In other domain name news, while porn.com recently sold for $9.5 million a book was published this week about the epic battle for the most valuable domain name of all time: sex.com.
BBC builds customer database
Relying as it does on licence fee income, the BBC has never had to look for customers. However the public funding model may be under threat from on-demand services. Why pay extra to guarantee diversified programming, if most interests and needs can be met through digital channels? So the BBC is busy building up a customer profiling database and also intends to implement customer relationship management technology in the future, with a view that it may in time have to compete with commercial rivals on the same terms.
• Read Our Blog • Browse Newsletter Archive • Contact Us
|
|
US Media Report
By Annie Kasmai
CNN has decided to offer it's CNN Pipeline online streaming news service for free, claiming that this has become possible because of cheaper bandwidth. The service has faced stiff competition, and has struggled with the persistent problem of convincing people to pay for online content.
Ann Moore, CEO of Time Inc. has argued that magazines have a bright future, despite recent layoffs and closures. Speaking at a breakfast arranged by the Magazine Publishers of America, Moore said "You know, everybody stay calm, this is a great business we're in."
According to the latest figures from Mediamark Research, USA Today remains America's most read newspaper with a readership of more than 4.3 million daily. The publication will celebrate its 25th anniversary in September of this year.
UK Media Report
By Annie Kasmai
The University of Nottingham is looking for a journalist to spend six-months embedded in its science, medicine and engineering departments, in order to get a better understanding of their work than is normally possible for members of the press.
Emap has blamed "challenging trading conditions" for poor financial performance which saw its pre-tax profits fall by 13% for 2007. It's not all bad news however, as the company's radio division was able to increase revenues and profits.
The Department of Trade and Industry has asked the Competition Commission to investigate Sky after the broadcasting company acquired an 17.9% stake in ITV. Ofcom and the Office of Fair Trading have both raised concerns about the deal.
Best of the 'Net
By Sean McManus
Roadie Runner
We had Tufty when I was at school. It seems even road safety has gone web-enabled. Roadie Runner is an (admittedly sluggish) implementation of Frogger, in which you have to help one of the Dirty Pretty Things' roadies to collect instruments from the other side of a busy road. There's a serious message behind it: a million people die in road accidents each year, and this game aims to remind young people to stop, look and listen. Because the Dirty Pretty Things can't be there to help them when they need to cross the road.
|
|
Consumer Technology Update
By Sean McManus and Dave Wilby
Sony games console to get video phone upgrade
Sony will partner with BT to offer video phone capabilities for the PlayStation Portable (PSP), according to a BBC report. Using a wireless internet connection, a camera and a microphone, the handheld unit will enable video conversations between PSPs and certain BT phones. At launch, the service will only work in the UK at home or on BT hot spots. This partnership could be a smart strategic move for BT at a time when the margins on voice calls are under great pressure and internet telephony is threatening its core business.
The deal could enable BT to offer a voice over IP service with a degree of exclusivity, so that it can maintain its margins, although wi-fi features in handheld console games have so far been free. BT is expected to announce more details in August and the microphone and camera are planned for release today. Previous attempts to launch video phones (including Amstrad's e-mailer, which at one stage cost just £50 each) have failed to reach critical mass, but there are already 8 million PSPs in use in Europe.
What the Dickens next? Bitesize books for the daily grind
By 1837 Charles Dickens had finished his first major novel, 'Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club', a social documentary of early Victorian rural England. What made 'The Pickwick papers extraordinary was that it was serialised into digestible chunks over 18 months in the pages of The Times and aimed squarely at London's busy urbanites. Now in 2007, DailyLit.com is repeating the trick with a service geared toward commuters that delivers instalments of classic novels every morning designed to be read in less than five minutes.
According to Reuters, Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days comes in 82 parts while Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina could take nearly two years of working days to read at 430 parts. "Our audience includes people like us, who spend hours each day on e-mail but can't find the time to read a book," admitted DailyLit co-founder Albert Wenger.
DailyLit launched commercially this week following an extended trial period, with a list of around 370 titles. Each out of copyright title costs around $5 for the full package of chapters arriving daily in advert free emails or RSS.
Pandora opens up to mobile phone music lovers
One of our favourite web services of all time, Pandora.com, has struck a deal with US telecoms operator Sprint Nextel to bring its popular music service to mobile phones. Pandora is a free online streaming radio service that creates personlised stations by selecting tracks based on user preferences and analysis of musical attributes. Pandora on the Go is offered immediately to Sprint subscribers as a 30-day free trial, and thereafter for $2.99 on top of existing tariffs. "We knew that if we wanted to be radio with a capital 'R,' we have to be everywhere, and not just on the Internet," Pandora founder Tim Westergren told AP. "We knew we had to make it mobile."
• Read Our Blog • Browse Newsletter Archive • Contact Us
|
Web 2.0 Watch
By Fiona Blamey
Female bloggers turn on glossy women's magazines
One of the myths propounded by the mainstream media about the blogosphere is that it is populated exclusively by men.
Last summer, for example, the Independent and the Guardian both ran articles claiming that women don't blog, and, in the case of the Independent, explaining why.
(It's because women are too busy cooking and looking after the kids, apparently. Go figure.)
Sadly for the opinion leaders on the UK's national broadsheets, it was later revealed that women do, in fact, blog in copious numbers. No fewer than 46% of bloggers are women, according to a Pew Internet survey published last July.
This is old news, so why mention it now? Well, one of the reasons for the antagonism between the mainstream media and the blogosphere is that bloggers are increasingly calling their professional counterparts to account. And in 2007, it seems to be the turn of the glossy women's press to come under fire.
This week saw the launch of NYC-based Jezebel, a new blog from the Gawker Media stable. Jezebel's Manifesto lists the 'five lies' that glossy magazines tell women, and says it aims to be "the sort of…magazine that would never actually see glossy paper because big-name advertisers and the publishers who kowtow to them don't much like it when you point out the vulgarity of a $2000 handbag."
But while Jezebel purports to undermine glossy magazines, it still buys into the myth that all women are fascinated with celebrity gossip and expensive clothing. I see more to admire in the UK's defiantly un-glamorous Observer Woman Makes Me Spit blog, whose entire raison d'être is shooting down the self-serving female stereotyping evident in the Observer's monthly women's supplement.
Until recently presumed to be non-existent, female bloggers are starting to bare their teeth - at the very magazines that claim to be on their side, but which are in fact anything but. I like it.
• Read Our Blog • Browse Newsletter Archive • Contact Us
|
Tech Toon
|
|
|
|
