Morgan McLintic on PR

BusinessWeek on Blogging

The impact of blogging on businesses makes the cover story of BusinessWeek. Need more proof?

News-o-matic - Tech PR news via del.icio.us

I'm piloting a new blog section called News-o-matic. It's a list of links to relevant news, blog posts and sites which communicators in technology might find interesting and useful. The list is generated using the social bookmarking site, del.icio.us. For those that haven't tried del.icio.us, it's a site which enables you to 'tag' or bookmark web content with relevant phrases, so you can easily find them later. It's just like your browser bookmark in that sense. The difference is that others can see your tags, and you can find theirs. So I might bookmark Morgan McLintic on PR with the tag: PR. Others would then be able to find the site by searching on the PR tag.

Taking that a step further, del.icio.us allows you to set up an RSS feed for a particular tag, or for all of your bookmarks. This means if someone adds a new PR tag, it'll show up in your RSS reader. So far, so good.

Several bloggers are now setting up specific tags which are relevant to them - Silicon Valley Watcher uses the tag svw, Steve Rubel is using micropersuasion. So if you want to draw their attention to something on the web, you tag it with their name and it'll pop up in their RSS reader or del.icio.us bookmarks. The advantage of this is obviously that it cuts down on email, if the content is fairly self-evident, such as a fake blog or a news piece.

Having set up the RSS feed for a particular tag, you can convert it into HTML to create a list of links, basically a bookmark list. That's what News-o-matic is doing. I've set up a tag - MMonPR - and taken the RSS feed from that to create a list of links. Posting new links to that list is as simple as bookmarking it in del.icio.us. Obviously that's much faster than creating a separate post when all you really want to do is point to some content.

This also means that you, my dear and helpful reader, can flag relevant news stories which will appear on this site for others to see. It'll also mean that they appear in my RSS reader so I will notice them (as Steve is doing above) and investigate further. Obviously the potential for abuse there is huge, so my apologies in advance if irrelevant or inappropriate content cycles through. That's why I'm testing it at the moment, but thought you might find it useful. I'd welcome your thoughts below or via email, and am indebted to SVW and Steve for the idea.

Bloggers may be interested to know that the RSS to HTML engine I'm using is called Feed2JS.

Phishing via bogus blogs

CNET: Malicious virus writers are attempting to lure people to malicious blogs using enticing e-mails and instant messages, according to a new report from Websense. Once a person arrives at the blog, which can be posted on a legitimate host site, the victim's computer becomes infected with software designed to steal sensitive information, such as passwords and bank account information.

But blog readers can relax for the moment. The report claims that at present there are about 210 active bogus blogs. In a blogosphere of about 9-10m sites, that's about 0.002%. I'd say that's a pretty negligible risk.

RSS like sushi

BBC quotes Dave Winer on RSS news reading, likening it to choosing food from a sushi conveyor belt: "We are still waiting for the killer app though. We are still waiting for someone to produce the software that will switch the lightbulb on for people."

It could be that news providers are in the best position to produce that "killer app" for people. They have a chance of understanding news, but technology companies do not, says Mr Winer.

Google Satellite

Here's a pic of LEWIS SF using Google Maps' new satellite feature. Rumor has it that an April Fool in SF was that the satellite camera was passing over on the first at noon, so people should stand in the street and wave.

On the subject of mapping, check out this neat combination of Google Maps and CraigsList housing classifieds (via Infectious Greed).

In today's newsreader

CNET: The future of bloggers - Wharton legal studies professor Dan Hunter puts blogging right up there with the printing press when it comes to sharing ideas and disseminating information. "This is not a fad," says Hunter. "It's the rise of amateur content, which is replacing the centralized, controlled content done by professionals."

CNET: US blogger thwarts Canadian gag order - Canada's long-standing practice of barring news organizations from disclosing what's happening in certain court proceedings is being tested by Internet bloggers.

Blogrunner's The Annotated Times: An aggregator blog which pulls together articles from The New York Times and ranks discussion of them. Interest here, here and here following Steve Rubel's post yesterday.

Trust MEdia: How real people are finally being heard - nice white paper by Edelman and Intelliseek is proving popular. I'm impressed from my first look. Download your copy here.

Why are PR bloggers so anal? - wonders Pete Shinbach, bemoaning blogging being on the menu of PR blogs most of the time. Meanwhile Has the blogger backlash begun? - asks Mike Manuel at Media Guerrilla. Good questions.

Changing the subject... Pew released figures claiming that 6m Americans had tried podcasting. But then took it back: Pew research director Mary Madden believes the numbers of people actually using the Internet to broadcast and/or download pods is smaller than the 6 million figure cited in the organization’s latest study, however. (from Newsfactor)

Jeremy Pepper releases not one but two articles in his excellent PR Face2Face interviews. This time with IABC bigwigs.

And last, but by no means least, Constantin Basturea et al announce that preparations for Global PR Blog Week 2.0 have begun.

WaPo reviews Yahoo! 360

Washington Post is unimpressed with Yahoo!'s latest social networking, IM and blogging service - Yahoo! 360. My initial thoughts are below, and my first foray is here. If you want an invite, let me know or you can trade invites here.

Theory of Hierarchies of Technology Adoption

I’ve been thinking about technology adoption lately and trying to make a better connection between adoption theory and actual buying behavior. Classic marketing theory suggests that all new technologies go through a bell curve of adoption. While it's a useful idea, marketers hunting for early adopters may struggle to find them. I think that's because early adopters are not a defined, permanent group, and that buyers don't view themselves as early adopters. Instead they have a self-perception of where they feel they should fit in a hierarchy of adoption. And it's the purchasing decisions of those in that hierarchy which drives adoption. Overall, sales volumes may follow a bell curve, but individual buyer behavior doesn't fit into such neat divisions.

Terminology varies slightly but in essence the typical adoption cycle starts with innovators who like the technology for its own sake; then early adopters who see how it can directly help and pay a premium price; the early majority, who follow the lead of the early adopters but are less willing to take the risk and pay such a high price; then the late majority who are more skeptical; and lastly the laggards, who are the most price sensitive and cautious.

Marketing techniques often focus on selling to the first two groups and then building enough critical mass to ‘cross the chasm’ to the early majority. The idea being that many technologies fail to reach that broader appeal and so only sell to a small segment of the market.

But who are these innovators and early adopters? For a long while I considered them to be a distinct group who realized they were innovators and regarded themselves as such: “I am an innovator, and as such happy to buy a Sony PSP,”  - or whatever the latest technology might be.

And I had thought that innovators where consistent in their behavior such that they would buy the latest home entertainment system, use the latest social networking software, buy the latest hardware at work etc. Being an innovator was a trait like intellect, sense of humor or hair color. I felt being an innovator was a universal behavior for that select group, certainly when it came to technology.

But the picture is much more complex. Being an innovator is dependent on attitude to risk and ability to pay. Of course, if you can’t afford the latest technologies (whether personally or corporately) you can’t fulfill demand and are therefore pushed back in the adoption cycle to a later stage.

Attitude to risk though is more fickle. It varies over time as a result of a huge variety of factors, such as personal circumstance, socio-economic environment, political and legal framework. I may be an early adopter now but if the government changes or if the country goes to war, I may feel more cautious. And that means markets may evaporate when targeting these early buyers.

Not only does my attitude to risk change over time, but also by product category. As a personal testimony, I am on paper a classic early adopter – male, technically-oriented, reasonable disposable income, connected, informed, right age-group. In my innovator guise, I helped implement Instant Messaging in my firm when it came out, we adopted Salesforce.com as one of the first European customers, I blog – all innovator proof points.

But in other aspects of my purchasing I’m an early or even late majority customer. It was only this year that I bought a TiVO, I’m still using my first digital camera which I’ve only had for 12 months, I waited for the Click-Wheel iPod to come out before buying one. In short I’m inconsistent in my purchasing. But that’s entirely consistent with consumer behavior.

For marketers this presents a problem – innovators are only innovators for certain product categories and at certain times. It’s a moving target, and in fact, I wonder whether it’s a specific target at all now – are there really innovators out there?

Instead of specific stages of adoption, I think there is a Hierarchy of Adoption. I have friends and acquaintances who I consider personally to be early adopters. Call them what you will (maven etc), but this group influences my purchasing decisions. If they have a technology then so should I.

Equally, I have a group of friends who I consider to be late adopters, these people are beneath me in the hierarchy of adoption from my perspective. If I see they have a product which I’m yet to purchase, then it’s a sign that I’m becoming a Luddite and must catch up. This is commonly called ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ but I think it’s more solid as a buying behavior, not simple jealousy. My innovators and my late adopters are real to me and influence my purchasing decisions.

My hierarchy of adopters though is not the same as yours. You may consider my early adopters as laggards. You may be higher up the overall hierarchy than me. Or below. So our personal hierarchies are nested in a continuum of overlapping perceptions. Your innovators’ purchase drive your own, and that in turn drives mine, and those that see me as an innovator will follow suit.

In a sense then we are all innovators and laggards in our own social hierarchies, which explains the conflicting behavior I describe above. I bought a TiVO recently because an innovator friend of mine testified to how good it was. Until then, none of my network had one. I had no innovator to follow or laggard to push me to purchase. Was he one of the first to buy a TiVO? No, probably about customer 2 million – but to me he innovated. Or in another example, I started blogging and now several people I know are following suit. As a group, we might all be early into the game compared to the general population, but to them I’m the innovator.

So if you can’t find the innovators in your market, it’s because they are not a distinct group. Everyone is an innovator sometimes.

As a marketer this tells me some basic lessons:

•    Always educate – you need to reach out to each innovator in each hierarchy
•    Focus – find the segments where the adoption wildfires might start and light them
•    Evangelize – once adoption starts look for ways to increase the transmission of that adoption
•    Be versatile – different hierarchies might buy for different reasons so adapt your message
•    Move quickly – your market may vaporize or appear suddenly elsewhere, so be ready to act
•    Convince and cajole – use the push from laggards as well as the pull from innovators

Yahoo! 360

Mike Manuel (Media Guerrilla) was kind enough to invite me to try out Yahoo! 360 (thanks Mike). There are already lots of detailed reviews available (here and here via Dave Winer) and I've only had a brief spin round. Here's my humble attempt.

First impressions are that it's a collision of Typepad, LinkedIn, AIM and Flickr. So it's a social networking, photo sharing, instant messaging, blogorama. None of the functions are as sophisticated as the more dedicated sites. For instance, the blogging is basic (no control over image uploads, comments limited to 360 members, no RSS yet etc), the IM offers no voice or video, the photo sharing has no tags, and the networking allows no endorsements from others. But that's also its strength - all of those dedicated sites require separate log in, unique interfaces to master, repetition of basic personal information etc. If you want an introduction to these technologies, this is a great place to start, and I'd imagine for many it will fulfill most of their needs. It can only accelerate adoption of social networking and blogging in particular.

It also has some fun features like a Blog blast, which looks like a way to spark conversations with site visitors by providing an interactive panel at the top of the blog. If that encourages participation, then it's a great idea. And let's not forget it's beta. If you want an invite, let me know.

Commercialization of podcasting

The BBC quotes Dave Winer on the commercialization of podcasting: "No matter how you look at it, commercialising this medium isn't going to make very much money," he says. "Podcasting is going to be a medium of niches, with 'audiences' measured in the single digits, like e-mail or blogs.

"Maybe in a few years, maybe six or seven digits. But it will have to sustain interest beyond the hype balloon."

But speaking of podcasting, I should mention the excellent Hobson and Holtz Report, available at For Immediate Release again. I'm kindly mentioned in passing in yesterday's show (thanks guys), but Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson are really setting the benchmark for PR podcasting. They've had some interesting guest interviews and are producing shows of remarkable consistency, quality and frequency (twice a week - for an hour each time). Anyone who has tried video production or even podcasting, will know how much time it takes and will appreciate the investment that Shel and Neville are putting in - all those behind-the-scenes tampering with sound levels, stitching in other sources, typing the notes, dealing with file corruptions and technical oddities which crop up. The result is great though - and as with all these technologies, you only learn by doing, so I'm sure it's paying dividends.

Papercasting

Papercasting: File under 'Fantastically pointless but hilarious abuse of technology' - write your blog posts on paper, scan them and post up the images. Call it a 'plog' - job done. Great stuff.

Credits: CNET

Ask Jeeves bought for $2bn

The New York Times reports that Ask Jeeves, the fourth largest search engine firm, has been acquired:

IAC/InterActiveCorp, the Internet company headed by Barry Diller, is close to an agreement to acquire  Ask Jeeves Inc., the nation's fourth-largest search engine company, for about $1.9 billion, according to an executive involved in the negotiations.

IAC/Interactive owns a variety of Internet businesses. Its principle holdings are Expedia, Ticket Master, Home Shopping Network, Match.com and CitySearch. The advertising spending on search sites is a rapidly growing business, and experts said last night that Ask Jeeves is well positioned to benefit from that growth.

Remember of course that Ask Jeeves bought Bloglines recently.

While we're at the NYT, it also has an article about Apple's penchant for suing those who disclose secrets around its product launches. A notable quote here is that the Think Secret blog at the heart of the current legal storm gets as much traffic as a typical local newspaper:

One measure of Mr. Jobs's effectiveness as a company evangelist is the Web traffic on Think Secret, the Apple rumor site run by Mr. Ciarelli since 1998. During periods when Apple has product introductions, Mr. Ciarelli said that his site receives as many as five million page views a month. That is a level of Internet popularity roughly equal to that of a typical suburban newspaper.

Yahoo! snaps up Flickr

Yahoo!'s corporate development team has been busy as it extends its services for photos, tagging and blogging, with the acquisition of Flickr. Announced via Flickr's blog (on a Sunday afternoon - there's nothing in Yahoo's press room at the moment). Is this the beginning of the end of formal press releases that a deal is launched through a blog post? Personally I think not, but it's an interesting strategy - one which has gone totally under the radar of the mainstream media thus far.

State of the Blogosphere

Dave Sifry has published the second of two great posts about the State of the Blogosphere. This one highlights the number of posts over time, and Dave interestingly links spikes in the number of posts to key news events. Here's the first post as well, which demonstrates the number of new weblogs being created (or at least the number tracked by Technorati which is highly indicative).

UPDATE - Here's the third in the series which discusses the A-List and the long tail:

As the chart above shows, the most influential media sites on the web are still well-funded mainstream media sites, like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN. However, a lot of bloggers are achieving a significant amount of attention and influence.  Blogs like bOingbOing and Instapundit are highly influential, especially among technology and political thought leaders, and sites like Gizmodo are seeing as much influence as mainstream media sites like MTV.com.
...

This also has implications for enlightened marketers and media companies. There is power in the conversations going on around you, and not necessarily from the places that you'd ordinarily expect. Companies that work in conjunction with the trends going on in the long tail: e.g. fostering peoples voices, listening to and incorporating their comments and feedback, and fostering a community have a tremendous opportunity awaiting them.

Although marketers have for a long time tried to reach hub users and connectors, and devoted much of their marketing dollars to doing so, now there is a way to reach audiences in the long tail more cost effectively. Dave has a chart which shows that while the A-lIst is assuredly influential, so are the other bloggers who link to one another in micro-communities. Now marketers can reach into those communities and impact them in a way which was not possible or economically viable before. This is great news for any company with a niche product or service.

LEWIS launches RSS feeds for clients

Quick update on what's going on in the engine room of my agency, LEWIS. We've just launched a service called LEWIS Wire, which provides RSS feeds of the press releases issued for all clients. We've noticed that many clients haven't yet RSS-enabled their press rooms, but that reporters are increasingly looking for press release feeds. LEWIS Wire is just coming out of pilot testing, but there are feeds for each client or one for all the news issued by LEWIS in the US. We've also provided the code for clients to place the XML image onto their site.

Initial feedback has been good, but there's clearly a lot of education still needed around RSS (as today's BlogAds survey shows). Still I think there is an opportunity for tech companies to demonstrate they are in the vanguard and to differentiate themselves by being early adopters of RSS news distribution to help journalists. I'm sure RSS distribution will be a change as big as the one from post/fax to email, so there are advantages in embracing it swiftly.

Funnily, I thought we might put out our own press release about launching LEWIS Wire (which we'd put on our LEWIS feed of course), but it felt too much like the press releases about launching a website from the nineties. And besides, it's free and I expect many other agencies will do the same soon (if they haven't already).

Continuing an RSS vibe, we've also been culling a lot of the internal email we have by using internal blogs and feeds. For instance, we produce a daily digest of the news called What's Happening which goes out to an email list of several thousand (mail me here to sign up), which we've RSS-enabled here. Feel free to subscribe to that if you only have time to look at a few feeds each day.

And finally, a warm congratulations to my LEWIS UK colleagues for being selected as one of the 'Top 100 Best Small Companies to Work For' by The Sunday Times. There are several other agencies in the list (good to see), and a nice one for the trophy cabinet.

Right enough, or this will look like a plug when in fact it's meant to be an insight into what's going on. I've got some other RSS-based ideas, so I'll update on those once they come out of the skunk works.

Customize Google News homepage

Google News now allows you to customize the homepage layout. The feature means you can re-arrange the sections (Sci/Tech, Entertainment, US, World, Business etc) and introduce new Google News search topics onto your homepage. Good for monitoring company news, trends or topics as you might with the email Alerts. Rather disappointingly there is still no RSS feed - but there are work-arounds for that on the web. Here for instance.

On a related but separate note, today I've discovered a fun variant of the Google egosurf, where you search on Google Images instead of the Web for your name. Thankfully I turn up no results on my full name but my last name reveals some inmates relatives I haven't had the pleasure of meeting.

Technorati: Soon all will be revealed

My apologies for those trying to use the Technorati Searchlet on my site. When you put in a search term it reports this login error saying "Soon All Will Be Revealed". I recall Neville Hobson having problems with his searchlet where it didn't return any results for known search terms. Mine actually worked, but now has this mysterious message. So does Neville's.

Intrigue. Does this mean that the searchlet is coming out of beta?

UPDATE: David Sifry, CEO at Technorati was very quick to respond and has fixed the problem. For communicators, this is a great example of a CEO who is listening to the market, responding quickly, taking appropriate action and then feeding back. It shows passion and personality. Turns a slightly negative impression into a strongly positive one. Thanks David.

Blog readers beware - spyware lurks

Here’s some FUD factor about blogs being a haven for spyware on ZDNet Australia. Seems the baddies are now hiding malicious code in the free tools which many bloggers use to enhance their sites. When readers hit the site, the blog inadvertently becomes a vector for the spyware to download.

Of course if you use Firefox – you’re safe (or safer anyway).

Frigging with the rigging

I managed to get some time this weekend to make some changes to this blog. You can now subscribe more easily using Bloglines and Feedster. I've also added a Directories section with links to all (or at least many) of the leading blog catalogs. Incidentally, while doing that I came across Taylor McKnight's blog which has a veritable button-fest for those wanting to add directories, navigation, humorous or just plain bizarre buttons to their blog.

I've also taken the opportunity to add links to some excellent PR blogs:

Drew B's take on tech PR - who has regular updates about the UK IT PR scene
Jeremy Pepper's Musings from POP! PR - a leading PR blogger with good and frequent insights
Alice Marshall's Technoflack - who gives practical advice about how to 'pitch' bloggers and much more
Tim Dyson - the big kahuna at Next Fifteen (which Tom Murphy highlighted earlier this week)
Todd Defren's PR Squared - who I've worked with before and who now runs a great SF agency

Enjoy.

Commercialization of RSS

The varied approach of publications to RSS is remarkable. The Financial Times and The Economist have only just launched their feeds, and even then both only offer a taster of the content they provide. Both miss the opportunity which BusinessWeek is taking in allowing some content to be accessed for free as a showcase for full subscription.

The online sites of broadcasters such as CNN and Sky News offer feeds, but with a frustrating 'No description' or 'Read full story for latest details' sub-deck. Presumably this is done in order to expose the reader to the banner ads on the main sites, but from a consumer's perspective, I'm more likely to find the story elsewhere, having tuned-in to the headline.

More innovative sites are starting to see RSS as an advertising channel in itself. InfoWorld now includes clearly-labeled 'Advertisement' text into its news items. Boing Boing has been doing the same for the last month or so.

Clearly, RSS presents revenue opportunities. I was asked recently by Matthew Schwartz, editor of PR News, whether RSS will create a whole new industry. I don't think its impact will be that far reaching, it's more likely to transform existing industries, as we are seeing with its impact on publishing. That said, there are companies, such as Nooked.com, the provider of RSS-feeds for communicators, which see an opportunity for an entire business model around RSS.

What we've seen so far are just the first tentative steps into RSS commercialization. Once it is possible to make it more secure (in terms of authentication/authorization and therefore identification of the recipient) and to deliver more interactive content into the feed (such as Flash or streaming video), it will really come into its own.

NYT on Podcasting

The New York Times introduces podcasting in this article with a fun example called Why Fish. Take away quote:

"And as bloggers have influenced journalism, podcasters have the potential to transform radio. Already many radio stations, including National Public Radio and Air America, the liberal-oriented radio network, have put shows into a podcast format. And companies are seeing the possibilities for advertising; Heiniken, for example, has produced a music podcast."

Firefox - 25m can't be wrong

Firefox has been downloaded onto 25m desktops during its first 100 days. If that doesn't include you - perhaps it should. Get it here.

Technologies to watch from DEMO

Wikis, community blogs and RSS technologies galore at DEMO.

I Fail, Carry on

Carly Fiorina's departure (resignation/firing) has been covered everywhere today, such as here, here and here. Dan Gillmor is one of the first to show his disgust at the $21m pay-off. Rather aptly I worked out today that an anagram of her name sums it up quite well - "I FAIL, CARRY ON". I also quite like "I CRY FAIR LOAN" which might be her response to criticisms of the payout.

The future of search rides on relevance

CNET covers the Cyberposium event about search, concluding that its future relies on relevance. This much we know. The key point is that the challenge here is not a technical one.

"(Personalization) isn't an area where the technology isn't ready, where there's a need for a lot of innovation," said Ask Jeeves' Lahiri. "The question is, are people willing to give up (more information) to get a better search engine back in return?"

And so it becomes an issue of trust. Are the risks of providing deep personal information worth the benefits of personalized search results? Personal information can be gleaned from tracking our behavior online (through cookies etc), but that won't give the level of detail required, it won't explain motives which are so key to providing the information people want. Therefore personal information must be given willingly and explicitly. Security is a key component of how search firms earn that trust, so we can expect movements and partnerships in that direction.

The big question is - do you trust Google? If not, what would make you trust it?

Jib Jab v2

Some entertainment from Jib Jab (for those who haven't seen it yet) to counteract Black Monday.

Bloglet and MessageCast

You can now sign up to receive posts from Morgan McLintic on PR via email using this great bookmarklet from Bloglet. I've also enabled those with MSN Messenger and Jabber to get them straight into IM via MessageCast. It only works with MSN at the moment, but from what I can see they'll add AOL (AIM), IBM/Sametime and Yahoo as it develops. Great example of how information can be pushed to different communications channels. I can see some nice potential for internal comms and broader public relations using this technology.

iPod Shuffle already flying off the shelves

Looks like the new iPod Shuffle is already in short supply, with a four-week backlog, just seven days after launch. As a Mac user and technology marketer this product baffles me:

• Creating a low-end product if you are the leader with a premium brand just undermines your own sales. Now all those potential customers who were saving to buy a $300 iPod are getting a $99 iPod Shuffle. I don't think Apple is expanding the market here, it's simply undercutting itself. We're not at the stage of selling players to laggards yet - just go into any Apple store and see all the customers pawing the iPod with green eyes. Jaguar made this mistake with the X-Type - it just sold cheaper cars to its installed base, instead of reaching a new market.
• Technically the iPod Shuffle is basic (just a USB MP3 player) so it limbos under all the great usability and innovation hallmarks of Apple. For instance, is random-play really that much of a differentiator in the flash-memory MP3 market, or really that important for the customer? That feature seems like bloatware in iTunes to me, so it seems an odd lead here.
• The tampon-like design devalues the iPod brand, and reflects poorly on the iPod proper. Why not call it an iStick, or something which maintains the 'snob value' all those who bought an iPod experience?
• If you do go for a high-volume, low-price strategy, it seems a mistake to create demand for a me-too product and fail to fulfill swiftly. Apple could be stoking demand for its competitors - demand which was originally waiting to buy the main iPod. You might argue that the backlog proves otherwise, but that depends on the amount of product available on launch. Apple has a loyal fan-base already who might be creating this initial demand. The iPod Shuffle is aimed at converting new disciples - and they might not prove so faithful.

Voice recognition is xenophobic

Voice recognition is now commonplace in customer service centers. Whether it be booking movie tickets, checking your bank balance, organizing flights or getting technical support, more often than not you get to talk to a computer. Personally, I'm fine with that, especially if the wait to talk to a human operator is 30 minutes - I'll take my chances with the machine.

But I've noticed that voice recognition is rather xenophobic. It just doesn't like foreigners. I'm a Brit. I have a British accent. But when I speak to a VR system, I get locked in an endless cycle of "I'm sorry I didn't understand that, I think you said 'Buy ten tickets to Azerbijahn', is that correct?"

For a while I was stumped by this predicament. I spoke clearly, enunciating each syllable like a stage thespian, but my attempts fell on deaf ears. Then in sheer desperation, I tried my closest approximation of an American accent, which sounds like Hugh Grant impersonating John Wayne. Nevertheless, it worked - and I promptly bought my two tickets to London Heathrow.

So if you catch me murdering an American accent down the phone, I apologize in advance, I'm probably just trying to fix my Tivo.

Email overload

One of the increasing challenges communicators face is email overload. I don't mean spam, I mean legitimate email correspondence. Email which nominally should be read, considered and actioned. Once you start getting over 300 emails a day, all hope of that vanishes. If you assume it takes an average of sixty seconds to read and reply to each email, that's five hours per day on simple email triage.

Many in our profession get way in excess of that amount of mail per day. Much of it is just carbon copy email - for our reference. But the volume of cc-ed fyi email rather prevents its purpose. A useful experiment is to color code email by category of sender - internal, partner, client, media etc. This helps navigate to important email straight away. I'll bet internal email consititutes a large proportion of most inboxes. You don't want to spend the day communicating with your own company.

Email is a great but dangerous tool. The prevalence of the Blackberry and similar email devices extends email time into previous mail deadzones, increasing volumes. But if your Blackberry is also your cell phone, it means you can't escape email's icy finger. The 'winky' red light will always flash its siren call.

It's easy to become email's slave, not its master. Thankfully technologies such as central intranets, internal blogs and wikis have the potential to cut down the amount of email we get on a daily basis. I suspect it'll get worse before it gets better.

Long live the phone call - it's like an interactive email.

IM

Our use of Instant Messaging now seems to be maturing. It's much less used to chat and much more used for its intent - the swift communication of detail. This is a good thing from a management perspective. IM is a hard technology to oversee - and potentially a huge waste of time. It's easy to get into a conversation over IM which takes far longer than a simple catch up call. There will always be those who abuse communications tools like email and IM through extended personal use at work. Believe it or not, I've seen personal email account for about half of an individual's sent items. This person was great at PR, just lacked self-discipline. And IM is even more tempting than email.

One of the most powerful benefits of IM is its ability to show 'presence'. You can see who is online, at their desk - and so know whether you will get a swift response. As this presence gets integrated into VoIP and email systems, I think our ability to communicate will be greatly enhanced. At the moment, these packages are disparate - email, IM, VoIP, PIM - but during 2005/06 we'll see them becoming integrated into a communications flightdeck.

I think this will help agencies work much more closely with their clients. The concept of presence will show the client when we're available (and vice versa), so it will be simple to call, book in interviews, IM updates. Access and availability are so important to a client relationship. Once we have this communications flightdeck not just on the desktop but also in a portable device, then PR consultancy really will be 'on demand and in real time'.

Firefox - update

While Firefox may not handle Bookmark importing and exporting well, here's a great little app which does the job niceIy, imaginatively called Safari Bookmark Exporter - thanks to Joshua Ourisman for this tip.

Firefox

I'm a big fan of Open Source development, and so have closely followed the launch of Firefox 1.0. As a Mac user, I've already been saved from the security loopholes inherent in Internet Explorer, but the ability to add Extensions and new Themes to Firefox appeals. I particularly like FoxyTunes, bringing iTunes management to the browser window.

Since Safari already uses the Mozilla engine, I thought it would be easy to switch to Firefox. But there doesn't seem to be a wizard to move Safari bookmarks to Firefox. And, Safari doesn't allow you to export bookmarks either, so I'm caught in a limbo between browsers until one of the Open Source community smiles on a hapless Mac user. (Did I say how much of a fan I am of Open Source development?)