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With natural disasters in the past, I have pointed to ways in which volunteers, individuals, aid organizations and the media have utilized the web to help communicate and coordinate their responses. As I’ve said before, my interest in this began with having family in costal regions in Florida and Alabama — along with my involvement with blogging and other collaborative “social” media. I’ve seen a lot of efforts in the past, but little pre-planning or coordination.
Already, groups are forming who are eager to utilize their past experience and the web-resources available. While I hope that competition will not lead to duplicative efforts, that’s one of the things that happens in these situations. Rather than worry about it, I recommend that everyone cooperate when they can — or do their own things when they can’t — just get over any urges that my crop up that your are competing and liberally link to each-other and mirror any information that is displayed anywhere. (Later: I’ve updated some information to correspond with name and link changes.)
In that vein, rather than collect any links here, I’m pointing elsewhere:
The Interdictr.com Wiki: (Needs a name change, quickly, however.)GustavWiki.com: From the community that sprung up around the Katrina weblog the intedictor (that at the time, I said changed my entire opinion of the Live Journal platform), a new website at the URL interdictr.com has evolved. The group has just set up a wiki (http://gustavwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page) to collect and share information about the storm. (The new wiki is based on the Katrina Help wiki.)
Wikipedia: As typical, Wikipedia’s best and worst is on display in a situation like this. If you click there, you’ll likely find a comprehensive collection of Gustav-related information. However, I just clicked there and for a few seconds, discovered some vandalism. As the day progresses, I predict some measures will be taken to raise the bar on who can make changes to the page.
The Gustav Information Center (Gustav08.ning.com): Springing up from some industrious volunteers is a site called the Gustav Informaion Center who are using the Ning platform. They, too, are pulling together content from most of the user-contributed corners of the Internet (Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, etc.).
I’ll add that two newspapers along the likely affected coastal area that have previously displayed savvy, even Pulitzer-prize-winning use of new media are the Mobile Press Register and, most notably, the New Orleans Times Picayune.
Already, the Times-Picauyune (NOLA.com) is the center of coverage for the New Orleans area. And in the Mobile area, AL.com/hurricane is tracking the news using approaches they’ve learned in previous hurricanes. (Sidenote: the Mobile and New Orleans papers are both owned by Advance Publications, the parent company of Conde Nast, et al)
For more links, check with any of the linked sites above.
Technorati Tags: gustav
With the new Hot Trends feature on Google, you can see what people are searching for at any one-time. I thought the Hot Trends screen grab above reveals a bit of insight into what is on the minds of Google users this first big afternoon of the college football season. Forget politics or approaching hurricanes. College football accounts for about 80% of the top 100 search terms (larger view of screen grab).
I’m sorry if you’ve had problems attempting to comment on this blog during the past few days. For some reason (translation: operator error), the setting got changed so that someone had to be “registered” on the site to make a comment. As I probably have “registering” turned off, that made commenting problematic. Sidenote: I’m trying to install the Disqus and FriendFeed plugins but the blog’s custom theme is making the installation of both a notch above my skill-level — I’m close, but not quite there. I’ll tackle it this weekend. That is all.
I’ve been trying hard this year not to link to items that fall into the shiny object chasing category I’d call “tech-blogger meme-of-the-day.” However, I can’t help myself on this one. Mozilla Labs (the folks behind the Firefox browser) has a concept project called Ubiquity that utilizes an interface concept that will be very familiar and compelling to users of the software called Quicksilver.
I’ve never tried to explain Quicksilver, but here goes: It a light-weight utility that I use on my Mac that allows me to navigate and operate pretty-much everything on the computer in a text-driven way so that I can by-pass all the clicking I do when using the “finder” and all the metaphors related to the desktop. Of course, writing that previous sentence and recognizing that it makes no sense, whatsoever, is why I don’t try to explain Quicksilver.
So I won’t attempt to explain how or why I find Ubiquity so compelling either (watch some of the video and maybe you’ll see why). One day, perhaps in about 10 or 15 years, people who live on the Internet will migrate to a web interface that Ubiquity points to — one where users can navigate among websites and web-apps using “verbs” or “language-driven” methods of controlling the browser and content and services they want to collect, store or share. In the old days, I would have predicted 3-5 years, but about 15 years ago, I predicted such a life-span for the fax machine — and I hear one whirling in the background.
I’m not recommending you become a lab-rat and download an early version of Ubiquity. It’s cool to use, but not yet something ready for prime-time. However, if you’re already someone who uses Quicksilver, you may want to check it out.
(via: waxy.org)
Technorati Tags: ubiquity
Jon Henshaw, the SEO guru (among many other things) at the web-development firm, Sitening, says some very nice things about the online strategy displayed on the Hammock Inc. company website, Hammock.com. (Yes, I do have a job.) Thanks, Jon. I feel like Sally Field.
There are subtle things about the site that Jon notes — simple things that took me years of blogging to figure out and that took several people at Hammock (not just me, but thanks for the credit, Jon) nearly a year to think through. Again, it’s a simple strategy that any business or association, large or small, could implement. But for some reason, very few do — perhaps because the “content” commitment such a strategy requires appears daunting once you start scratching the surface. (Another promo: Helping companies and associations do such things is our business.)
 Jon observes one of things I’m very proud of (in a geekish way), but something no one else has written about: Every employee at Hammock has a “blog” designed to look okay even if it’s never updated. I’ve often said that if they weren’t called “blogs,” more people would have one. So internally, we decided to have a page for each employee, but to not use the B-word (or, come to think of it, any letter followed by “-word”). Internally, we call them People pages. On the site, at first, we didn’t call them anything. They were just pages for each employee that contain work-related contact info. Officially, they reside in the “About” category. Each of these pages have an easy-to-remember URL, like mine, Hammock.com/RexHammock. But as Jon noticed — and we have now acknowledged — each of these pages is also a blog built on Moveable Type with all the bells and whistles you’d expect on a blog — even a stealth blog. Recently, we did add them to the “blogs” category and put the word “blogs” at the top of each page. The first (and for several, only) “post” on each page is a bio that has another easy-to-remember URL, like Hammock.com/RexHammock/bio. Some employees have never made a second post to their page, but by design, such a page doesn’t look like a blog that hasn’t been updated — just something that provides helpful contact information. Some employees use them like a phone message — “I’m out of the office until Sept. 2.” Others do use them like a blog. Those who study online behavior would recognize the pages’ versatility in serving dual roles for identity and expression. As each “people page” (it’s a stealth blog, remember) has an RSS feed, it’s easy for them to be integrated with other services. For example, I have mine feeding into my FriendFeed page.
In Jon’s post, he speculates about the SEO mojo that our strategy generates. I’d share the before and after data (we have about nine months of data) but I’m not yet a true believer in all that radical transparency stuff. Let’s just say, it’s working.
In a future shameless self-promotional post, I’ll explain how the Hammock.com website embraces a variety of social media services in nuanced ways (APIs, RSS, etc.) and how we’re working with association and corporate clients to do the same.
Technorati Tags: hammock, SEO, strategy
Folio: is reporting that business-to-business (or “trade”) magazine circulation remained mostly flat during the first half of 2008, according to numbers released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Earlier this month, the same audit bureau reported newsstand sales of magazines was down 6.3% in the same period. If you weren’t living under a rock, you probably read the widespread coverage when those newsstand numbers were released. Beyond Folio, a few B-to-B bloggers and the website of American Business Media, you’ll probably not be reading much about today’s reports. That’s because to most general business reporters, “the magazine industry” is that part of the industry that pertains to consumer magazines. As I’ve noted before, that misunderstanding often leads to comparisons between magazines and other media that make little sense, i.e., comparisons of consumer advertising in magazines with all advertising on the Internet.
By now, regular readers of this blog know that I dismiss any statistics-dependent article written by a reporter. Even reporters who should know better feel compelled to quickly post any report that involves percentage signs. I’ve given up on trying to educate readers or writers about stories involving numbers*. I’ll merely remind those who are not in the magazine industry, there are distinct types of magazines. It’s impossible to say “the magazine industry” and mean something beyond the type of print format content is distributed on:
1. Consumer magazines: The kind you see on the newsstand. The ones that had a 6.3% decline in newsstand sales.
2. Business to business (or trade) magazines: The kind you receive at work, like Plumbers Weekly. The circulation of these magazines was flat during the past six months.
3. Other (which can be divided into endless sub-categories): All the magazines you get from associations, universities, non-profits, your grocery store, the company you bought your car from, the kind you pull out of the seat back pocket on an airplane, etc.
Business-to-business magazines are, like other segments of the magazine world, being transformed by the Internet. However, most companies that publish B2B media have diversified their businesses into events, information services and a wide-array of digital and online products.
Bottomline: The magazine industry is bigger than those magazines you see on the newsstand. That said, it’s an industry that must adapt to challenges and embrace a wide array of changes. Of course, you can say that about any industry, I’m sure.
*For following the way in which numbers are used and misused, I recommend the New York Times’ Freakonomics blog.
Technorati Tags: advertising, magazines
Doing a little blog maintenance that requires a post. Sorry for all of the echos this post will generate.
Here’s a grab-bag of items and thoughts I’ve not had time to post during the past week, which, according to tradition is supposed to be one of the slowest of the year. Not so for me.
Nashville tech-related publicity: BusinessWeek.com posted a story on “Marketing to Millennials” that features Nashville startup Facecard.com and a local franchisee of Jersey Mike’s whose nearby unit makes regular deliveries to the RexBlog HQ.
Advice for bloggers: I forgot why I jotted down this note, but a recent project involved looking at lots of blogs, something that might surprise people to learn I rarely do. I read content from lots of blogs, but mostly via a newsreader and not the blogs, themselves. Looking at a hundred or so blogs in a row made me realize that many bloggers, even veteran ones, need the following advice:
1. Display in a prominent place the name of the person or organization who set up and maintains the blog.
2. Display in a prominent place a brief description of what the blog is about.
3. Display on every page something, anything that gives people a hint how to subscribe (via: RSS, ATOM, email or smoke signals) to your blog. If you know what that means, go look at your blog and see if you make it easy for readers to figure out how to easily add your blog to their newsreader or to their personalized “start” pages. If you don’t know what that means, here’s a link to page called Feed 101 maintained by a Google service called FeedBurner. Or maybe this popular video will help. Bottomline: Make it easy for people to find the URL of your feed.
I don’t care that the Chinese are going to win more Gold Medals than the U.S.: I’m happy to trade civil liberties and a non-totalitarian government without state-run sports-training programs for less medals. While I admire the efficiency and spectacle of these Olympic games, I’ve found it a bit too, uh, managed. This afternoon, I heard one of the NBC commentators illustrate how “dedicated” the Chinese women synchronized swimmers are by recounting something the team’s coach told her. “One of the players asked the new coach (who is from Japan) if she could have the weekend off to see her family.” Why?, asked the new coach. “Because I haven’t seen them in 12 years.”
That said, I’m not necessarily a big fan either of the U.S. system of medal-winning that depends on obsessed stage-door parents, elite university admission policies, government mandated college athletic scholarship requirements, the professionalization of NCAA athletics and corporate sponsorship dollars out the ying-yang.
Obama-Biden: As a word person, I like the alliteration in the paired-words, Obama-Biden. I also think that when Biden said in a debate, “If that’s his baby, he needs help,” it was the best one-liner of all the debates. Oh, and once I chatted with Joe Biden while on an early morning train from New York to DC. I can’t remember what we talked about. I’m sure he can’t either.
The Wall Street Journal has a story about the Olympics organizing committee’s efforts to hide any logos that are not those of the sponsors:
To ensure that only the companies that pay millions of dollars to be official Olympic sponsors enjoy the benefits of exposure in Olympic venues, organizers have covered the trademarks of nonsponsors with thousands of little swatches of tape.
In years past, many companies tried “guerilla marketing” attempts to grab some ‘un-paid’ media attention, so I can understand the organizers’ efforts. And in China, I’m sure it’s a bit more easy for the organizers to control such things than in, say, a country with civil liberties that is not ruled by a totalitarian government.
Despite their best laid plans, I can think of at least four brands (or, in one case, issues) that have received significant exposure (for U.S. TV viewers, at least) from the Olympics for little (or no) media-dollars or “paid” sponsorship.
1. Kinesio: Kinesio, as blogged yesterday at NYTimes.com, has gotten hours of airtime in return for providing 50,000 rolls of its all-cotton, colorful athletic tape that has been displayed on beach volleyball player Kerri Walsh.
2. Microsoft: From the “as long as they spell your name right” department, the guest appearance at the opening ceremonies by the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) at least let the world know what operating system was used by the producers to put on the $300 million production.
3. Facebook: Facebook received major mojo from Michael Phelps as Bob Costas kept referring to how many fans he had on the site. The “number of fans” meme has been picked up by bloggers and main-stream news media. Had Phelps been a more savvy marketer, he would have cut-off Costas and said, “Swimroom.com is where people can find me.” (Swimroom is a “social network for swimmers” that Phelps endorses.)
4. Protesters: Attempts by Chinese officials to quiet Free Tibet protesters have gained their cause significant exposure in the west. Barring Joey Cheek from entering the country to protest China’s Darfur policies provided him an even better platform.
Can you think of others? Comment below if you can.
Sidenote: I haven’t been to the Masters Golf Tournament in several years, but the times I did, it was the most sponsor logo-free sporting event I have ever attended. The Masters logo is displayed tastefully throughout the course, but sponsor logos (I think Cadillac and Travellers Insurance were the only sponsors) were limited to a display area near the club house. While the organizers couldn’t prevent the players from displaying brands on their clothing and bags, they went as far as requiring that Cokes be served in green cups and at the vendor stands, the Coca-Colo logos on the drink dispensing machines were masked.
Once in a while, I realize just how much of a magazine geek I am. When I saw the Michael Phelps Sports Illustrated cover this morning, I didn’t think about the iconic poster of Mark Spitz. I recalled the Life magazine cover of Don Schollander that appeared after the 1964 Olympics when I was in the fifth grade. I guess things make a big impression on you when you’re 10 years old.
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Quote - If Time and other publishers are looking to thwart Mygazines and its more than 16,000 users, it may have to go after VeriSign, which maintains the master .com database.
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Each Business Exchange topic page links to articles and blog posts from myriad other sources, including BusinessWeek’s competitors, with the contents updated automatically by a Web crawler.
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As image-editing software grows in sophistication and ubiquity, alterations go far beyond removing red-eye and whitening teeth. Revisionist history, it seems, can be practiced by just about anyone.
There’s a fascinating article in today’s New York Times about the sudden let-down an Olympic champion can sometime face after years of preparing for a challenging goal that, even if met, can be followed by a form of post-traumatic stress when athletes find themselves without the structure, regimen and goals that previously defined their lives.
Some of the champions were able to redirect their drive into professional careers (Eric Heiden is a surgeon, for example) and entrepreneurship while others seem to fall off a cliff or live their lives as if they’re a character in the Bruce Springsteen song, “Glory Days.”
It doesn’t take winning an Olympic Gold Medal to find oneself wondering, “What next?”
This morning on NPR, I also heard a story about the challenge many soldiers returning home from war face in transitioning back into civilian life. I’ve read recently that it takes new corporate executives twice as long to transition into new jobs as previously thought — and many never do, often fixated on how things were done at their previous company.
The solution? I believe there must always be a goal in front of you. Something you are moving towards. Make it a big goal. Make sure it involves skills you don’t have so you’ll be required to learn and practice new things. Make sure it requires you to have an open mind and stimulates your curiosity. At the same time, make sure it’s something that requires you to have the same focus and discipline that got you to where you are today.
It’s great that you have been a champion. That you were a success at something previously. That you were at the top of your class, made lots of money or led a big department at Procter & Gamble. But if that’s how you see yourself, you’re looking in the rearview mirror and worse, you’re not propelling yourself forward, you’re coasting.
What’s your goal? What’s next?
 Here’s a lesson your parents probably didn’t teach you. Actually, it’s a lesson you could use if you talk with your parents using a cell phone: Who should call back when you’re having a conversation on a cell phone and the connection is interrupted?
1. if you initiated the call and it drops you call the other person back.
2. if you received the call and it drops you just wait for the call back.
From Richard Wolpert via Joi Ito, who suggests we should all pass it on.
Of course, like every rule, this has an exception. If you are a student or young adult and you’re talking with your parents on a cell phone and your incoming minutes cost less than the minutes you initiate, wait for them to call back.
 “The magazine industry is being besieged by a new foe: digital piracy,” screams the lede of an AP story yesterday.
If you read this blog, you can guess from earlier this month that the story is about Mygazines.com, a site that is reportedly on servers in Anquilla that enables users to share scans of articles from magazines. As I suggested when I first ran across the site on July 22, it was only a matter of time until the site became a take-down notice magnet.
The AP story rounds up all of the potential legal actions magazine publishers can take — and the walls they could run into. It also quotes a July 29 press release on the Mygazines.com website where “John Smith” (its creator) claims, “its copies are no different from magazines shared in doctor’s office or salon.”
As I noted in my August 5 post, magazine publishers love the “pass-along” sharing of print versions of magazines as it is part of the circulation they report to advertisers. What I didn’t mention was that a new media niche of what the auditing organization ABC calls e-publications or e-periodicals is available that provides magazine publishers with a digital-version distribution alternative that can be audited and, in some cases, DRM-protected. In other words, Mygazines.com is likely perceived more as a threat to the magazine publishers’ own plans for e-magazine distribution rather than as a threat to the printed version. Note, however, that is my interpretation — maybe some magazine publishers actually do think a digital version and paper version of a magazine are the same thing. (Disclosure: Hammock Inc. embraces all media. We produce e-magazine versions and editions and would publish smoke-signals if readers and readers and clients wanted them.)
Another thing: The AP story says they tried to contact “John Smith” but he wouldn’t respond. I’ve found that jsmith@mygazines.com will respond if you blog about him.
Related: An article in the New York Times looks at how some media companies are working with Google to generate revenues from “pirated content” appearing on YouTube.
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