This week Ellie is inspired by the new technologies on show alongside the tennis and strawberries at Wimbledon, Becky wanders down the virtual UK high street to report on retailer Habitat's Twitter misuse, and James basks in the awesomeness that is a new open source project called Puppet.

And of course we have to include the sudden and sad passing of a legend, Michael Jackson. On the Prompt blog we review what the news distribution of Jackson's death tells us about social media. RIP King of Pop.

Meanwhile, Melanie considers Apple's secret communications strategy and wonders whether stealth PR is the best approach when your CEO's health is in serious question.

Our media updates cover Mass High Tech, changes at ZDNet and TechWeb and new consumer title Techlicious.

Enjoy - and remember you can get transatlantic snippets from our teams at Twitter: @promptboston and @promptlondon.

Hazel Butters
CEO
Prompt Communications

Love all: tennis and technology

By Ellie Turner

The Wimbledon 2009 tennis tournament started in London this week, and, along with the much-discussed and shiny new roof on Centre Court, it looks as though the LTA (Lawn Tennis Association) is keeping itself at the forefront of technology.

Wimbledon is steeped in tradition but this hasn't prevented the club from embracing the latest technologies. A high-tech bunker is on site to collect and collate match statistics and provide mobile devices to help spectators navigate around the huge ground. Fans can also get live match updates via the tournament's first official Twitter feed: @wimbledon.

"We collect a massive set of stats," Alan Flack, from Wimbledon's technology partner IBM, told the BBC. "We have tennis professionals sitting on every court, logging every stroke."

As Wimbledon's technology partner, IBM has developed two smartphone apps for the tournament, delivering live score updates and video streams. The "Seer Android Beta" for G1 Android mobiles is a real gem. Users can get information delivered straight to the handset ranging from how long the queue is for strawberries to the location of the nearest toilets. Flack describes it as "the app that can read your environment."

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Apple's secrecy: a PR tactic that isn't so secret

By Melanie Hesketh

Apple has always been known for its innovative products and stylish designs, but it is also famously the most secretive company in the world.

According to the New York Times, the majority of Apple employees hear about launches at the same time as the general public and the company often gives out misleading product plans. The hype that surrounds product launches is legendary, with invitations for tier one publications only, limited press samples, and blogs created simply to discuss potential releases.

Recently, however, the veil of secrecy has slipped somewhat. Product launches have been leaked weeks in advance, removing some of the suspense. Apple's significant decision to handle all its UK PR in-house may be an attempt to regain control of information disclosure. If so, we may see the company becoming even more insular, leaving bloggers and journalists frustrated and - more controversially - leaving shareholders in the dark on material issues including the health of CEO Steve Jobs.

For a company known for its cutting edge technology, and with many companies having to be clever during the economic downturn, Apple's communications strategy seems a backwards step for such a major brand. It is rare that Apple lags behind but this PR tactic is as dated as the floppy disk.

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Reductive Labs controls the strings of Puppet

By James Gerber

Puppet is not only an awesome name for a piece of software, but also a helpful open-source configuration management tool. It allows users to manage the configuration of their web, database and mail servers by writing, enforcing and automating policies.

Right now, Reductive Labs, the company behind Puppet, is in the process of evolving into a commercial entity. It is a story of a company naturally coming together around a useful project, as we have seen many times before.

The company incorporated itself and received $2 million in funding this week from True Ventures, a firm that also funded fellow open source start-up Loopfuse. Puppet has been hard at work developing partnerships with the likes of Red Hat, Fedora and Canonical, and already has 20 paying customers.

Digg gave the software a test run and liked what it saw, performing a task that would have taken several days manually in a matter of hours. Still in beta, and with no other real competition in the open source space, Reductive looks to have a very promising future. It plans to focus on services rather than commercializing software, which is a good approach for the space it is in and it will be an enticing value proposition for organizations that might otherwise have thought of using BladeLogic or Opsware.

Puppet currently supports Mac, Linux and Unix, but its next step to guarantee continued success should be supporting Windows. We will watch with interest as Reductive continues to bring Puppet to life.

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Habitat makes a serious Twitter of itself

By Becky Cheers

It’s been a particularly bad press week for furnishing retailer Habitat, after it was accused of exploiting the unrest in Iran to drive Twitter users to its products.

The company used hashtags (keywords to any non Twitter users) such as 'Iran' and 'Mousavi' in tweet (messages) so that anyone searching for those terms came across adverts for Habitat products.

This dubious marketing tactic - known as 'hashtag spamming' – caused outrage among Twitter users. Search for 'Habitat' on Twitter and you begin to get an idea of how horrified users were

After being questioned, Habitat removed all the offending tweets and said that the use of the hashtags had been unauthorised, later blaming an unnamed "overenthusiastic intern" who is "no longer associated with Habitat".

One tweet which has caused particular offence and been widely re-tweeted across the social networking site said: "# MOUSAVI Join the database for free to win a £1,000 gift card."

The tweets were particularly distasteful to users because Twitter has been used a lot by people in, and outside, Iran to report on the political situation. It has been used to provide eyewitness reports, link to news and organise protests.

A spokesperson from Habitat said: "We would like to make a very sincere apology to any users who were offended by last week's activity on Twitter. The top ten trending topics were pasted into hashtags without checking with us and apparently without verifying what all of the tags referred to. This was absolutely not authorised by Habitat. We were shocked when we discovered what happened and are very sorry for the offence that has been caused."

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By Laura Beynon

The Cool Hunter

The Cool Hunter brings together all things innovative from around the world, whether it's architecture, design, style, music, fashion or entertainment. If you like being the first to discover all creative things, this is the site for you.

I particularly like the advert section on the website, which lists the best creative ads from around the globe, including adverts from Microsoft, Aero and Priorin Shampoo. The Fitness First advert, 'Wait Watching', plays on the concept of guerrilla marketing and was one advert that grabbed my attention. This advert from the Netherlands targets unsuspecting commuters, who are confronted with their weight in bright lights as they sit down on a bus stop to wait for a bus to arrive. I bet it had an impact on people in the local area who were trying to stay away from the weighing scales!

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26th June 2009

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Technology News

Love all: tennis and technology

Apple's secrecy: a PR tactic that isn't so secret

Reductive Labs controls the strings of Puppet

Habitat makes a serious Twitter of itself

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By Hazel Butters

93 percent: Increase in Twitter use in 2009

38: Current ranking of Twitter.com for UK internet traffic

969: May 2009 ranking of Twitter.com for UK internet traffic

$3m: Revenue Dell claims it has generated via Twitter

Source: Hitwise

US

By Laurie SantaLucia

Mass High Tech has announced that it is shifting its print frequency to a bi-weekly schedule and has named James Connolly as managing editor of the paper. Connolly previously served as associate editor since joining the publication in June 2008. Additionally, Jackie Noblett has joined as a staff writer, covering alternative energy, clean technology, defense, robotics and public technology companies. Noblett is also a reporter at the Boston Business Journal.

Ziff Davis Media Inc. has elected to consolidate its editorial operations at ExtremeTech and has parted ways with its West Coast staff. Loyd Case, Jason Cross, Joel Durham, Mike Nguyen and Jeremy Atkinson are no longer with the outlet. Jeremy Kaplan will now serve as the editor of the site.

TechWeb and other United Business Media outlets have made layoffs and changes. Departing editors include TechWeb West Coast news editor Michael Singer, bMighty.com editor Benjamin Tomkins and Byte and Switch editor Paul Travis. Tomkins will continue to work as a freelance writer and Mike Fratto has taken over as editor of Byte and Switch. Meanwhile, David Berlind has moved from editor at large to editor in chief at TechWeb and Fritz Nelson is now serving as executive editor of the InformationWeek Business Technology Network.

As of June 20, NPR (National Public Radio) welcomed Mark Stencel as managing editor of digital media for the network. Stencel most recently wrote for the futurist technology column at CQ Weekly and served as deputy publisher and editor for sister publication Governing magazine.

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UK

By Melanie Hesketh

In recent appointments, Manek Dubash will now be the official blogger on data centres for ZDNet UK. Dubash is an experienced IT journalist, having worked in the industry since 1986. He was formerly editor in chief of PC Magazine UK.

Michelle Price has been appointed business editor of The Banker. Her new role includes conducting high level interviews with politicians, finance ministers and CEOs for major stories and leading the multimedia side of the publication producing online videos. Previously Price was the trading and technology editor and her remit covered hedge funds, prime brokerage and exchanges, retail banking and Green IT.

Andrew Gilligan has moved to the position of London Editor for the Telegraph Media Group. He will cover news, features and regular columns for the Daily Telegraph, the Sunday Telegraph and also Telegraph.co.uk. Prior to joining, Gilligan was a columnist and reporter at the London Evening Standard.

Techlicious recently launched as an online magazine that provides women with information on consumer electronics. Featuring how-to videos, recommendations and tips, the magazine also offers buyers' guides that spotlight a variety of items for many budgets.

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