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This PC Pro magazine cover-double of Microsoft chairman Bill Gates caught my eye the other day.

It’s the June 2008 edition of the magazine, just out. Two different covers but exactly the same content in each version.

Each contains an eight-page feature along with an editorial with a pretty interesting assessment of Gates and Microsoft over the past 30 years.

Whatever you think of Bill Gates and Microsoft, it’s clear that both he and his company have massively contributed to the usefulness of computers that’s felt worldwide.

Well, what do you think of Bill Gates?

Here’s your chance to say:

And a clue to what I think: I bought the ‘Farewell’ version of the magazine.

Related post:

• The legacy of Bill Gates

“Regret the error” is a phrase that appears daily in newspapers around the world - the standard admission that something has gone terribly wrong in the reporting, editing or printing of an article. This brief notice is generally accompanied by an equally terse correction.

But Craig Silverman, founder and editor of RegretTheError.com, goes beyond the boilerplate to ask key questions that concern everyone who follows the news, both print, broadcast and online.

In this FIR Interview, Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz joined in conversation with Craig Silverman to discuss some key questions - including: what can be done to minimize mistakes? does a culture of error degrade our media-driven society? - address a key theme of Regret The Error, Craig’s new book, as well as focus on the key question of specific relevance to those of us in journalism and PR: What can we do about it?

Listen to this podcast now:

 

 FIR Interview - Craig Silverman - May 15, 2008 [40:59m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (15)

Get this podcast:

• Download the MP3 file (18.7Mb, 40:59)
• Get the show on iTunes
• Subscribe to the FIR Interviews RSS feed

About our Conversation Partner

Craig Silverman is a Montreal journalist and author. In addition to founding and editing RegretTheError.com, he is a columnist and blogger for The Globe and Mail, a national newspaper in Canada, and a columnist for Hour, a Montreal Weekly.

His writing has also appeared in publications including The New York Times, Editor & Publisher online, the Montreal Gazette, and Report on Business magazine, among others.

In November 2007, Regret The Error was published by Union Square Press.

If you have comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future interviews, email us at fircomments@gmail.com; or call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America) or +44 20 8133 9844 (Europe); or Skype: fircomments; or comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR; or at Jaiku: fir.jaiku.com. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the twice-weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

Podsafe music - On A Podcast Instrumental Mix (MP3, 5Mb) by Cruisebox.

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel’s and my podcast blog.)

Content summary: Upcoming FIR Interviews and FIR Live call-in shows; discussion: podcast advertising and different approaches; Dan York reports on the disconnects when buying a new home, and more; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; new online tool to measure unconscious emotional reactions to brands; the risk of CGM; journalists live blog their working day; media relations in the age of Twitter; David Philips reports; listeners’ comments discussion; music from Sol-Iss; and more.

Listen to FIR now:

 

 FIR #345 - May 15, 2008 [61:34m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (28)

Get FIR:

• Download the MP3 file (28.2Mb, 61:34)
• Subscribe to the RSS feed
• Get the show at iTunes

Messages from our sponsors: FIR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years, www.ragan.com; Save time with the CustomScoop online clipping service: sign up for your free two-week trial, at www.customscoop.com/fir.

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, for May 15, 2008: A 61-minute podcast recorded live from Concord, California, USA, and Wokingham, Berkshire, England.

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show are posted to the FIR Show Links pages at The New PR Wiki. You can contribute - see the show notes home page for info.

• FIR #345 show notes at The New PR Wiki

If you have comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for our future shows, email us at fircomments@gmail.com; or call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America) or +44 20 8133 9844 (Europe); or Skype: fircomments; or comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR; or at Jaiku: fir.jaiku.com. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

Join the FIR Discussion Forum and extend your conversations with the FIR community. You can also join the FIR Facebook Community and become an FIR friend.

So, until Monday May 19…

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel’s and my podcast blog.)

If you use the internet from a mobile device - whether that’s a phone or a laptop - from any of the mobile operators in the UK, you’ll probably know about speed.

Or rather, you’ll be exposed to a lot of information about speed - how fast you can browse the web, how many hundreds of emails you can retrieve, how quickly that MP3 track will download, etc.

In the UK, it’s one of the big selling points in the advertising and marketing messages put out by the mobile operators and comparison websites.

It’s also confusing and, I’d say possibly in some cases, misleading. More on that later.

Yesterday morning, I had a chance to hear what one mobile operator says about mobile broadband speeds.

A lot of interesting technical points discussed about the mobile internet. Plus I was able to contribute some points on my favourite topic concerning being online with a mobile device - pricing transparency.

Read the rest

Content summary: UserVoice listener feedback put into action; FIR Live on BlogTalk Radio May 24; FIR Interview with Craig Silverman May 16; upcoming FIR Speakers & Speeches podcast of Neville’s PRII Dublin presentation; OTRO interview with Josh Bernoff available; Shel’s being interviewed on Podcast Junction; discussion: PR spam victims bite back; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; the evolution of the press release according to Brian Solis; ‘Nuts About SouthWest’ relaunches; Michael Netzley reports from Singapore on the Java Jive Challenge taking place in Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand; listeners’ comments discussion; music by David Steele; and more.

Listen to FIR now:

 

 FIR #344 - May 12, 2008 [62:03m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (44)

Get FIR:

• Download the MP3 file (28.4Mb, 62:02)
• Subscribe to the RSS feed
• Get the show at iTunes

Messages from our sponsors: FIR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years, www.ragan.com; Save time with the CustomScoop online clipping service: sign up for your free two-week trial, at www.customscoop.com/fir.

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, for May 12, 2008: A 62-minute podcast recorded live from Wokingham, Berkshire, England, and Concord, California, USA.

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show are posted to the FIR Show Links pages at The New PR Wiki. You can contribute - see the show notes home page for info.

• FIR #344 show notes at The New PR Wiki

If you have comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for our future shows, email us at fircomments@gmail.com; or call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America) or +44 20 8133 9844 (Europe); or Skype: fircomments; or comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR; or at Jaiku: fir.jaiku.com. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

Join the FIR Discussion Forum and extend your conversations with the FIR community. You can also join the FIR Facebook Community and become an FIR friend.

So, until Thursday May 15…

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel’s and my podcast blog.)

I’m still in Dublin following yesterday’s PRII conference at which I spoke about PR and social media.

I gather all the presentations will soon be online at the PRII website, I guess sometime next week.

It was a terrific event. The venue was the ballroom at the Conrad Hotel, a pretty big room. It was packed; I’d say there were at least 150 people representing the PR business in Ireland, agency and client sides.

I’ll have a post with some thoughts about the conference once I’m back in the UK. Loads of photos, too, which I’ll upload to Flickr.

We’ve been staying at Stauntons on The Green, a guesthouse-type hotel. Very comfortable and a place I’d definitely come back to. Free wifi, too, although the signal doesn’t reach to the bedrooms so I’ve been using the 3 mobile broadband modem which the folk at 3mobilebuzz enabled to work for me here in Ireland. Thanks again, guys.

Today has been one of relative relaxation. Laura and I spent the morning meandering around the centre of Dublin, dodging a rain shower here and there. Planning to take one of the 90-minute sightseeing bus tours tomorrow before heading back to the UK.

Bernie Goldbach has been a tremendous host, showing us the evening sights around the Temple Bar area on Thursday evening. He was at the conference yesterday with a variety of gadgets to record audio and video.

So, a wholly enjoyable experience on this trip to Dublin, my first time back here for any length of time in about 12 years.

Next - the meetup at 4.30pm today.

Content summary: Dan York reports; One-Minute News: social networking studies, Encyclopaedia Britannica Webshare, Twitterfone, reading on the Web, banks on Twitter; David Phillips reports; listener comments; music from No-Fi Soul Rebellion; and more.

[Messages from our sponsors: FIR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years, www.ragan.com; Save time with the CustomScoop online clipping service: sign up for your free two-week trial, at www.customscoop.com/fir.]

Show notes for May 5, 2008

Welcome to For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, a 59-minute podcast recorded live from Chicago, Illinois, USA, and almost live from Wokingham, Berkshire, England.

Download the file here (MP3, 23.7MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod, subscribe with iTunes; good podcatchers include Juice and DopplerRadio, and RSS aggregators that support podcasts such as FeedDemon.)

In This Edition:

• #342 show notes at The New PR Wiki

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show are posted to the FIR Show Links pages at The New PR Wiki. You can contribute - see the home page for info.

If you have comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for our future shows, email us at fircomments@gmail.com; or call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America) or +44 20 8133 9844 (Europe); or Skype: fircomments; or comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR; or at Jaiku: fir.jaiku.com. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

Join the FIR Discussion Forum and extend your conversations with the FIR community. You can also join the FIR Facebook Community and become an FIR friend.

So, until Monday May 12..

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel’s and my podcast blog.)

 

 FIR #343 - May 8, 2008 [59:08m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (50)

Do away with boring text search and see what you’re looking for.

That’s the thrust of visual search from SearchMe, a startup search engine currently in public beta that offers you something a bit different, and visually more attractive, in your online searching.

The company has been around for some years. See this post on TechCrunch for detailed information including about the recent financial backing.

I’ve noticed the name quite a bit recently as I see it frequently in my server stats (this blog is obviously being indexed by SearchMe).

I tried SearchMe on something quite simple - my name.

Given that SearchMe readily acknowledges that their index is small - “less than a billion documents,” they say, so small is relative - I wasn’t really expecting much of a result.

Quite a surprise, though, to see the scope of the results, as the screenshot above shows. I found websites, blogs and references to me all over the place.

You navigate through the search results images with your cursor keys or simply click directly on one of them. Very simple and a pleasure to use.

If you make use of the Windows Flip 3D features of Windows Vista as I do, this behaviour will be familiar to you.

It’s a far more attractive way of searching than the traditional text-only way such as with Google.

But how do they compare, though? It’s all very well having a pretty and visual method but if it doesn’t give you the results you want, it’s not much good.

Well, my simple experiment is simple indeed. But it produced the result I wanted. Indeed, more than I was expecting.

More information on the rather good SearchMe blog.

One day, all search will be like this.

One of the new business books I have in my to-read pile is Groundswell by Forrester Research analysts Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff.

My copy came last week courtesy of McGraw-Hill UK who distribute the book in Europe and South Africa.

I still have two other business books on the go at the moment - and two at once is about the max I can handle - so I’ve not yet started it. (I need to soon, though, as it’s slated for an FIR Book Review podcast with Shel which we plan to publish this month.)

Meanwhile, I’m keeping an eye on much of the online commentary I see about Groundswell.

Which is how a post on the Groundswell blog the other day caught my attention, with this chart:

The chart itself doesn’t make clear what ‘user-generated content’ means. In this context, it’s podcasts and video as a quick look at chapter two in the book, from which the chart comes, indicates.

Much to ponder here when you look at the usage differences between countries.

What struck me in particular was:

• No one in South Korea listens to podcasts
• Over half the Japanese read blogs
• There is a stark difference between Japan and South Korea in viewing user-generated video - 20% and 5% respectively
• The British and Germans don’t participate much in conversations on blogs compared to the Japanese and South Koreans

I would say much of the reasoning for these states of affairs is to do with differences in national cultures more than anything else.

Mind you, the book may explain it differently which I’ll find out when I actually read it.

How would you explain such differences?

Related post:

• Is business podcasting dead?

One of the more rewarding aspects of business podcasting is when you get an opportunity to interview some interesting and influential communicators and other business people.

That’s a privilege my podcasting partner Shel Holtz and I have been enjoying since we started our For Immediate Release podcast series in 2005.

One such example is the FIR Interview with Jon Iwata of IBM that Shel and I have done and which is published today.

The primary topic of discussion in that interview is The Authentic Enterprise (PDF), a report recently published by the Arthur W Page Society that examines the evolving role of the senior communications executive in 21st century business.

An additional topic Jon talked about is a significant change in the global communication and marketing functions at IBM which was announced internally within IBM yesterday.

I’ve not yet seen any public announcement from IBM so it looks like FIR has an exclusive! Again.

In our FIR Interview, Jon describes the integration of IBM’s global marketing and communications organizations under his leadership. Jon will become Senior Vice President, Marketing and Communications, effective on July 1, 2008.

Jon told us that the intent of the change is to create a capability for IBM that does not exist in either function today. He says:

The environment is changing, The context in which business operates is changing. Corporations have well established, very successful, tried and true models and mechanisms and tactics to reach customers, the press, employees.

It’s not that those things should suddenly be thrown out. But we are going through, as we say in the [Page] paper, this period of change.

New methods and models are emerging. The corporations that seize them first will be advantaged.

And there’s much more. That discussion starts at about 35:40 into the podcast, which you can listen to here.

Isn’t it good to see a communicator in charge of communication and marketing?