e-consultancy’s PR Briefing
Posted Tuesday, April 3, 2007 at 5:06pm in Blogging | 4 Comments
One of my favourite blogs, e-consultancy, has just informed me that they’ve just published a 12 page Online PR Briefing that’s free to download for registered users. Loads of content in there from topics discussed at their recent PR roundtable. These include: what is Online PR; which department or agency should own Online PR; SEO and Online PR; the importance of bloggers; affiliates and Online PR, and Brands and Forums.
Here’s the page where you can download it. I’ve just noticed myself that they published a similar document on SEO not too long ago which I’ve just downloaded also.
Stone Roses? Fools Gold? Classic!
April Fool fun
Posted Monday, April 2, 2007 at 5:56pm in Blogging, Off topic | Leave a Comment
One of the greatest April Fools’ Day pranks of all time - spaghetti trees
On April Fools’ Day the internet is widely known as place for pranks and tomfoolery. March 31 each year, everyone from the mighty powers of Google to the bedroom-based individual are all scheming their plot against the unknowing surfer. This year was no exception as numerous plots were implemented. But is it any wonder that the internet breeds so many jesters? Creative talent, one great idea and the potential of reaching a world wide audience it is the perfect medium. From big to small and good to bad here I’ll list a few April Fools’ pranks that caught my eye this weekend.
Google is no stranger to the April Fool fun. Their most memorable prank, in my opinion, is the PigeonRank page from 2002 and Google Romance last year. This year they went for Google TiSP which is a free broadband service delivered straight through your home’s toilet. Nice! The Gmail team went for a new feature for the email service called Gmail Paper which allows anyone using Google’s free email service to request a free paper copy of any document in their inbox which will be delivered by Google via snail mail for free.
Michael Arrington of TechCrunch announced he had bought dotcom deadpool website, FuckedCompany. FC was a website started in the 90s to cover failing technology companies in the dotcom boom period. In his own words, Arrington, who usually reports on start up companies, said:
“That tabloid-style journalism tends to generate a lot of eyeballs and, subsequently, advertiser dollars. This is something we just can’t compete with. By acquiring FC, we can go more negative faster than anyone else out there, when and if we need to.”
Check out the comments. All 243 of them!
Who would consider having their child tattooed?! This is from some radio station in the states where they ran a promo of the business on the station and created the website www.tattooyoutoddler.com. Take a look at the comments. Some people were actually considering it.
ArtsWOM claims political commentator, Iain Dale, is giving up the politics thing altogether and moving into art including painting, writing and poetry. Dale, of course, denies it.
Probably the most unbelievable story this April Fools’ is one from The Register which claimed Apple and Google were partnering to build the “ultimate phone”. One that allows you to buy Viagra at the touch of a button.
For more April Fools’ madness check out the 100 April Fools’ Day Hoaxes Of All Time.
X-posted to The Interactive
My fragmented news consumption
Posted at 8:03am in Blogging, Media, PR General | 7 Comments
How do you consume your media? I get my fix from a number of methods throughout the day. It’s a bit of a habitual process for me as I tend to use different media as I go about my day from morning until night. Each fitting to the situation I’m in at that particular time.
Morning
On a morning I read my feeds on my phone from Bloglines Mobile. It’s easy enough to turn on my mobile, click a few buttons and be open to 170 feeds from around the blogosphere or, indeed, from general news sites. I’m usually half asleep at that time but the morning fix is a good start to the day.
Once washed and ready my walk to the tube will entail either listening to the radio or a podcast stream from my new phone I mentioned last week. I generally tend to listen to Radio 1’s Chris Moyles Show which has half hourly news bulletins but I’ll sometimes tune into Radio 4 which is a tad more serious than Moylesy, Comedy Dave and Co. No Celebrity Tarzan on Radio 4 that’s for sure.
When I get to the Tube station I usually pick up a copy of the Metro. I like the Metro for its quirky stories, stapled pages (believe me you need a newspaper that won’t fall apart at 8.30am on the Northern Line) and the fact that there’s just enough content to last from end to end. Not to mention it’s free also.
If I’m running late all the Metros are usually gone so I might pick up a tabloid. The Sun for instance.
Work
Once in work I’ll spend 20 minutes catching up on my feeds using the Bloglines web edition and will go on to check them at different points throughout the day. At around 9am I also receive two emails-type-newsletter from the Guardian. The first is the day’s headlines from the Guardian itself and the second is a media briefing outlining what’s making the headlines in the tabloids and broadsheets. The Guardian also sends a weekend briefing on a Monday too.
Evening *
Leicester Square Tube station making my way home I’m usually mobbed by the ‘paper boys’ to take either a London Lite or the London Paper. Yes, mobbed. Have you ever seen them fellas fight among one another to give you a paper? I’m like “dudes, calm down! I only want one, thanks.†Like the Metro, either of these has enough content to allow me to step inside my little bubble, headphones on and forget about the fact that I’m stuck between someone’s armpit headlock stylie.
I read the Standard for a while but the content is quite in-depth and I wouldn’t get half way through it before it was time to hop off the Tube. It’s 50p a pop too.
When I get home I’ll watch either Sky News or BBC News 24 for half an hour. The 24 hour news channels are repetitive so half an hour to an hour is enough before you start feeling a sense of deja vou. I’ll also have a read of the various news sites available for the mobile phone and read some mobile magazines available from this application I’ve started using. Mobizines are magazines (Nuts, NME, Time Out, GQ, Hello! etc.) for the mobile phone built using Mobile Java. They provide small snippets of content from each of the magazines available in Mobizines form. They’re pretty slick and, once you’ve updated the content, very quick too.
It’ll be interesting to see what other media people consume throughout the day so, on that thought, I was going to start a memetag. I then realised how annoying they can be so I won’t bother.
* I do actually have a life some evenings.
technorati tags: media, news, news+consumption