eastwikkers

Start-up Fun Time

The timing of Vyatta's recent post about Start-up Fun Time really hit home with me and reminded me once again why I love this business.  During the past 15 years, we've had the "fun" of working with scores of start-ups and in fact get to relive Start-up Fun Time over and over again with our clients everyday.  There's nothing that can replace the adrenalin and excitement of starting something new and investing the blood, sweat and tears to help make it successful. We've been walking down memory lane recently remembering some of the more famous start-ups we've helped along the way as part of celebrating our 15th year in business.  Launching Palm back in the early 90s, introducing the first ebook with Softbook Press, working with WebTV in the early days and taking Keynote and Ramp Networks public.  I remember the long nights, stressful launches, mini crises but most of all, the pure fun of it.  Thanks to our friends at Vyatta for reminding us just how fun work can really be.

Rachel's Daily Tech Tidbits

HP Buys Gamemaker VooDoo

San Jose Mercury News
Moving to counter arch rival Dell, Hewlett-Packard said it has agreed to acquire VoodooPC, a boutique maker of high-priced computers for gamers.

Microsoft Announces Zune Pricing and Ship Date

PC World

Microsoft Corp. said it would launch its hotly awaited Zune digital-media player and a related media download service in mid-November as it begins a head-to-head challenge to Apple Computer Inc.'s popular iPod and iTunes online media store.

Yahoo in Deal to Feature Services on HP Computers

CNET News.com
Yahoo and Hewlett-Packard have signed a deal to feature Yahoo services, including search, on the HP PCs sold into the US and European consumer markets.

To blog or not to blog?

Not a week goes by that we at Eastwick don’t get asked this question by a client or friend of the agency.  It seems to be an even bigger question for our enterprise-focused clients.  Do people I want to reach (the C-level and key execs) really read blogs?  The deeper we get into the trends in social media, the more I’m confident in answering with a resounding yes!  Now does that mean we recommend to every client that they should blog?  No way.  Why?  Because blogging isn’t for everyone or for every company. 

When looking at whether a blogging strategy makes sense we always first look at the demographics and information consumption habits of the company’s key audiences.  This happened to be a topic of discussion at a meeting I attended this morning hosted by our friends over at PodTech.  Überblogger and PodTechite Robert Scoble spoke to a room full of tech folks about the “new” conversation and the impact that word of mouth marketing is having on the tech industry.  And of course, blogging is a big driver for much of that dialog.  The thing I like about how PodTech is talking about social media strategies and in particular, the role of blogging as part of the communications mix, is that they are starting applying real metrics around these programs.  The conversation is now focused on how to make text blogs more successful, why video blogs get a lot more hits than text-only blogs, how making an offer late in a podcast allows you to measure how many people actually listened or listened all the way through.  What many companies don’t realize is that one of the biggest benefits of blogging is the effect that blogging has on an organization’s online presence. 

Blogging helps create a constant flow of new content.  New content drives search engine optimization and improves rankings.  And at the end of the day, a better online presence is what many of our clients are looking for anyway.

Rachel's Daily Tech Tidbits

Use JAJAH on Your Cell Phone

PC World

JAJAH announced a new service called JAJAH Mobile, a way to use their long-distance phone service on a cell phone.

Mozilla Releases Firefox 2.0 RC1

InformationWeek
Firefox 2 Release Candidate 1 (RC1), the preview release of the next version of the Firefox browser, is now available for download.

Microsoft Upgrades Data Protection Manager

InformationWeek
Version 2 of DPM, as the software is known, now offers a more granular approach to continuous data protection, as well as increased security for information in Microsoft applications such as Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint.

Watch Lets You Discreetly Check Caller

Forbes

Sony Ericsson has designed a Bluetooth watch, the MBW-100, that lets you control your mobile phone without taking it out of your pocket.

A Free eBook on Social Media

Still a bit fuzzy on exactly what social media is? Spannerworks, a British search engine optimization company, is offering a free download of a short eBook that gets you up to date on all the definitions and current trends and issues. It’s easy to read and contains links to social media sites and recommendations about how to start experimenting.

Favorite quote: “…a defining characteristic of social media is the blurring of definitions, rapid innovation, reinvention and mash-ups.” 

 

Rachel's Daily Tech Tidbits

An iPod for Readers

Forbes
Sony has announced plans to introduce its long-delayed electronic book store on the Internet and also sell a device that displays e-books purchased from the store.

Verizon Sees Investment in Fibre Network EBITDA-Positive in 2008

Forbes

In demonstrating renewed confidence in its FiOS Fiber to the Home (FTTH) initiative, Verizon Communications Inc. said it will boost investment in the market to $18B by the year 2010.

Intel Says New Chips Will Arrive This Year

San Francisco Chronicle
Intel Chief Executive Officer Paul Otellini told several thousand hardware and software developers that his company will bring out an energy-efficient microprocessor with four computing cores.

Sharp Develops Triple-Vision LCD Panel

Reuters
Sharp Corp. said it has developed the world's first liquid crystal display (LCD) panel that allows the viewing of three different images on one screen at the same time.

Microsoft Issues Out-of-Cycle Patch for Critical IE Flaw

PC World
Microsoft issued a security patch to fix a zero-day vulnerability in its Internet Explorer browser.

It’s SaaScon

SaaScon, the software-as-a-service conference wrapped up yesterday, and bloggers have contributed several interesting posts. SaaSWeek noted that industry experts estimated the SaaS market would grow an average of 20 percent per year until at least 2010—while quoting Bill McNee, founder and chief executive officer for Saugatuck Technology, as saying. “On the one hand, that is a $20-25 billion market. But on a relative scale, our large enterprise software vendors are not going to go away and are not intimidated with this stuff.” Amy Wohl cites IBM VP of SaaS Rick McGee’s comment that “SaaS gained irrevocable prominence in the marketplace, based in part on the support for SaaS by important vendors like SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft, all of whom have SaaS initiatives now and are expected to have more in the future.”

But perhaps most interesting was ZDNet blogger Phil Wainewright’s post about a session entitled “The Skeptical CIO.” According to Wainewright, the CIOs participating in the session “agree that most of the claims vendors make for SaaS are outlandish”—the claims being ease of implementation, ability to switch vendors, lower costs, and the idea that SaaS vendors are “partners in achieving business results.”

I, for one, am glad not all CIOs are this skeptical. Otherwise SaaS, which I believe will eventually be the dominate software delivery model, wouldn’t have a chance, nor would hosted, on-demand infrastructure (disclosure: Eastwick has several clients with hosted services). Besides, if it were left to the skeptics, computers themselves would have been an interesting experiment but more trouble than they were worth.

Still, developing trust is key to the relationship between sellers and buyers, and to move new technologies beyond early adopters and overcome the skeptics, smart organizations must turn claims into reality through the constant application of customer applications stories—as is the case now with SaaS and on-demand infrastructure. Is it possible for vendors to withhold every “outlandish” claim until a customer can validate it?  No, otherwise those early adopters would be hard to come by. But it may be possible for the claims not to gain the frequency and volume of seeming truth without this validation, which would build confidence and make the truth easier to discern. 

Rachel's Daily Tech Tidbits

AOL Members Sue Over Search Data Release

Computerworld

Three AOL subscribers whose records of Internet searches were made available online are suing the company under privacy laws and are seeking an end to its retention of search-related data.

Nokia Unveils N95 Multimedia Phone

Reuters
Nokia will start selling a handset with a satellite navigation system and its fastest data connection yet in an effort to stay ahead of competitors such as Motorola Inc.

Firefox Buggier, But IE Takes 9 Times Longer to Patch

InformationWeek

Symantec's biannual Internet threat report shows vulnerabilities for IE, Firefox, and Safari have increased in the last six months.

Spansion Demos 4-Bit-per-Cell Flash Memory

InformationWeek
Spansion has demonstrated a working example of a flash memory that can store 4bit per cell.

Mojopac Puts Your Windows PC on an iPod

CNET News.com
RingCub's Mojopac takes your personal computing profile and puts it on a USB storage device, like a thumb drive or an iPod.

Religion Meets MySpace – a Heavenly Match?

We’ve discussed how technology and citizen journalism have evolved during the past few years, and how blogs and wikis have offered real-time reports during emergencies to get the word out to an exponential number of readers (example: Hurricane Katrina). Now it appears the potential viral reach of Web 2.0 and new media technologies is being embraced by the church -- is this religion meets MySpace?

“Church Marketing Sucks” is a blog “to frustrate, educate and motivate the church to communicate, with uncompromising clarity, the truth of Jesus Christ.” A recent posting discusses how churches can use “MySpace and other social networking sites to connect with people, whether it's connecting your congregants or giving visitors a preview.” There’s also networking site MyChurch and biblical search tool eBible. “We’re really just starting to open up that Pandora’s box of the Bible and social networking,” says Mark Sears, chief executive of Godspeed Computing. For more, check out this Red Herring article.

On a similar note, I just read that the Catholic Archbishop of  Boston has started his own blog chronicling his travels “as part of an effort to reach out to modern-day Catholics.” For more, click here. Clearly, religion is putting new technology to work to accomplish something it’s been trying to do for years: recruit new members. This is also a recognition of sorts that social networking’s long reach and strong grasp cannot be ignored. The only question is: can the Web’s most tech savvy social networkers be reached? And what about older members of the church. Will they welcome technology as a way to recruit, communicate with members and converse about services, biblical passages, etc.?

Click Fraud and the Golden Age of PR

Check out Steve Rubel’s post on Click Fraud and the source article in BusinessWeek. According to the article, click fraud is “a dizzying collection of scams and deceptions that inflate advertising bills for thousands of companies of all sizes. The spreading scourge poses the single biggest threat to the Internet’s advertising gold mine and is the most nettlesome question facing Google and Yahoo, whose digital empires depend on all that gold.”

Says Rubel: “My take on all of this is that advertising is clearly at a major crossroads. The old model of throwing stuff up there and seeing what sticks is dying. Search engine marketing, while certainly effective, can have its challenges too and clearly can be gamed. Over time, people are going to say “enough.” They’re going to want companies to engage them in conversation before they are convinced they should buy. This is why I believe we’re about to enter the golden age of PR.”

Rubel is right. Unless Google, Yahoo, and others change their practices, the click advertising model is likely to collapse in upon itself. It’s not just about scammed advertisers abandoning the model. Search for an item, say ping pong tables, and you get more links to more tables from more sellers than you can possibly assimilate. It’s unpleasant and intimidating—unless you are already dealing with a select group of trusted retailers.

Which is why Rubel is right that relying purely on search engines will likely be replaced with something more conversational, which paves the way for trust. Still, the “golden age” of PR may be a bit further off than we hope. While many of the experiments in community—and Eastwick is involved in several—are extremely successful and point us in the right direction, companies need to be more tech savvy and invest more time and money to create a community. And while large retailers and tech companies will move more quickly to adopt new models and reap the benefits, new tools and partnerships will be needed to help smaller retailers and non-tech companies to participate.