Virtual Player in Virtual World Becomes Online Millionaire

When you sign up at Second Life, a virtual world, you get assigned a character with $250 in virtual pocket money--each Linden dollar is worth about four-tenths of a real-world penny. To pump up your account, you could buy more Linden dollars using your real ones. You could sell products or services for Linden dollars. Recently, a Second Life user claimed to have become a millionaire based on her Second Life exploits.

Where Should Public Relations Go from Here?

The ICCO (International Communications Consultancy Organisation) World Summit is taking place this week in India. This conference is bringing together senior public relations people from around the world to discuss "next practices." One of the highlights from Paul Holmes (Holmes Report):

PR people should be used to dialogue, for reaching out to multiple stakeholders, to using a wide array of channels rather than a single communications vehicle -- all the characteristics of this new environment. In all, it's a great chance for PR to redefine itself as much more strategic in redefining the art of conversation as a marketing and communications vehicle.

Blogger Ruins Research in Motion New Product Introduction Surprise

If current customers or potential customers have knowledge of an amazing product coming out in 6 months, why would they bother buying the current one? This blogger is potentially squashing demand for their current offerings. Read about it here.

Is municipal Wi-Fi the right approach?

Looks like Boston is the latest North American city to jump on to the municipal Wi-Fi bandwagon. Boston will turn to a nonprofit corporation to blanket the city with 'open access' wireless Internet connections, under a plan unveiled last week. Click here to read Mark Evans' blog posting.

P2P keeps getting interesting...

The company behind Morpheus (the music/video downloading service), StreamCast has filed a lawsuit against Skype (recently bought by ebay). Read more about it here.

At the core of the complaint is the FastTrack P2P technology, which went from Kazaa to Sharman and eventually ended up in Skype. StreamCast claims that it had the first dibs on this technology, which they say is part of Skype. The whole suit begs the question of, how much, and how carefully, did EBay do their due diligence before their 2-4 billion dollar purchase?

Like Father, Like Sun?

Have Scott McNealy and Sun Microsystems been copying ads and pitches from his father's former company, American Motors Corp(AMC). In 1974, amid the decade's oil troubles, AMC promoted its Gremlin as the car to buy to "relieve the fuel shortage." And this year, with oil costing more than $60 per barrel, Sun has chosen to spotlight the energy efficiency of its T1 servers. "Sip energy, gulp data," one ad reads, while another pictures a server chained to a tree slated for harvesting. Read more here.

Sun's McNealy Recalls Expensive Dinner at McDonald's

Interesting piece on CnetNews.com on how Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy had to be wined and dined at a Silicon Valley McDonald's before he gave up his reluctance to help launch the workstation maker in 1982. He and the other Sun co-founders, Vinod Khosla, Andy Bechtolsheim and Bill Joy held a panel discussion at the Computer History Museum this week.

Sun Prez and COO Schwartz Interview with Linux Journal

Jim Grisanzio's blog, http://blogs.sun.com/jimgris has an interesting post referencing Doc Searls' (Linux Journal) article based on his conversation with Sun Microsystems' President Jonathan Schwartz. Interesting piece on opening up its SPARC source code, employee retention, and links to Farber's piece on ZDNet.

Funny Remarks Made by Tech Execs in 05

Tech execs made some interesting and perhaps regrettable comments during 2005. Read Wired's account.
"Screw the nano." -- Motorola CEO Ed Zander
"I'm going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f***ing kill Google." -- Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer
"Lightweight, and crank it on, and you shuffle the shuffle." -- President Bush

Canadian Music Industry Applauds P2P File Sharing Ruling

An Australian court ruled today that the Kazaa file sharing network infringed on that countries' copyright laws. This may set a precedent and help support similar battles taking place in Canada and around the world. The decision comes only 10 weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court (see previous blog posting) ruled that file-sharing operators could be held liable if they induce people to violate music copyrights.

New York Times Combines Print and Online Newsrooms

A few weeks ago the Wall Street Journal reported that the New York Times plans to combine their print and online newsrooms. All of this is further confirmation that the line between print and online is slowly but surely disappearing. When I first started in this business, getting a hit in an online publication was considered a tier 2 or 3 hit and now we're talking tier 1 all the way. Trends are showing that more people prefer to get their news online than in print. For those of us in the communications field, this may make our job harder as print publications and newspapers will begin to disappear as everyone starts reading their news only online. All of this translates to less journalists to pitch as the number of journalists will surely be consolidated to make up for the transfer of readership and the loss of demand away from print.

I know i haven't written much this summer. Well this is why, I've been riding ancient Roman chariots in Caesaria. I'm standing in a sports arena dating back to 6 A.D. It's located in what used to be a small port city on the Mediterranean coast. The city was rebuilt by King Herod, who renamed it Caesarea in honor of the Roman emperor.

Wal-Martyr

This story in the Pensacola News Journal will make you think twice about Wal-Mart.
"You can't buy the Pensacola News Journal at Wal-Mart anymore. The store ordered us off their property, told us to come pick up our newspaper racks and clear out. So we did. A few people called last week, some even wrote letters to the editor, and wanted to know why they couldn't buy the newspaper at Wal-Mart in the days after Hurricane Dennis. Some managers at Wal-Mart didn't appreciate a column Mark O'Brien wrote last month about the downside of the cheap prices that Sam Walton's empire has brought to America..."

Do Wal-Mart execs think they run the world?

IBM loses Apple account to Intel

Sources say that IBM's loss of the Apple account may have been a blessing in disguise for IBM.
Apple provided little revenue and IBM is now focused on providing chips for the next gen consoles from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. According to analysts, the loss will have more of a "PR impact than a financial impact." I think most may have expected IBM to issue some sort of aggressive statement especially given the size of their PR machine, but they declined to comment other than to say that its Power PC is moving ahead and beyond the PC. Read the full story.

Apple's iTunes surpasses music swapping peer-to-peer downloading sites

A study by market research firm NPD Group found that approximately 1.7 million U.S. households downloaded a song from iTunes in March. That was good enough to earn the store a second-place ranking with peer-to-peer downloading service LimeWire. Interesting development as we await the Supreme Court decision on file swapping (see previous blog entry). Read more here.

Will Blogs Really Change Your Business

Nick Denton the publisher of Gawker Media and its blogs criticizes the hype around blogs. In this weekend's New York Times, he argues that blogs are just another form on Internet media and not the answer to every company's marketing problems. Read the article here.

British Columbia Election First to be Held in U.S. Style Election

In a xerox of their U.S. cousins to the south, Canadians in the province of British Columbia will go to the polls in the first ever election to be held in Canada on a previously fixed date, something Premier Gordon Campbell's Liberal Party signed into law soon after coming to power in 2001. It's also a historic election because voters will have a chance to decide in a referendum if they want to replace the current first-past-the-post electoral system with one that incorporates proportional representation.

'Apple Paid Gadget Guru To Feature iPod on News Shows'

Wow, what a potential PR nightmare. Technology expert Corey Greenberg said today he had been paid by Apple to demo and feature Apple products during local news appearances, but has not been paid to show the same product during appearances as NBC's "Today" show tech editor. Does it really matter that he was paid for one type of broadcast venue but not another? Does that make it ok? You decide. Read about it at MacNewsWorld. The practice of industry experts appearing on news shows and not revealing they have been paid for their appearance, endorsement or mention is very controversial.

Sponsorship Scandal Witness Remembers Envelopes Full of Cash

The Liberal Party of Canada used hundreds of thousands of dollars taken from the sponsorship program to fund its political activities in Quebec, the Gomery Commission has been told. Former ad executive Jean Brault also said that he delivered $136,000 in cash -- often in envelopes -- to senior Liberal Party officials.