Phil's Blogservations:- If you're wondering why there haven't been a lot of updates here lately, it's because of this: But, more importantly, this: More news as it develops... *8-) Technorati Tags: phil gomes,

Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media:- By Dave Stubenvoll, Co-founder and CEO of Wowza Media Systems. The recent introduction of Apple's iPad has re-opened discussion around Flash and Flash support, or rather, Apple devices' lack thereof. While this discussion brings to light the conflict between the two corporate agendas of Adobe and Apple, it isn't really about Flash or a methodology that Apple picked for video delivery. What it does begin to lay out, however, is a much larger discussion about online video. The discussion widens even further as supporters of alternative technologies and approaches like Silverlight, HTML5, and others begin to chime in with their thoughts on the current and future states of online video. While each approach has its merits, all of the technology options just mentioned present challenges to the online video industry that may not be obvious right off the bat. One would think that having multiple technology options/platforms would be a good thing...

Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media:- I caught up with Kieran Hannon the other day. He was in the Bay Area for a meeting with the Irish prime minister (he's on the board of Enterprise Ireland) and I realized it had been a good few years since I had last seen him. He used to be co-managing director of Grey Advertising, then had gone off to Texas to work as VP of Marketing for Radio Shack, and then moved to Santa Monica, in Southern California. He's now working as COO at a promising startup called Sidebar, which has an interesting mobile technology that recommends content based on what people like, very useful for online retailers and others.Kieran and his family had spent 18 years living in San Francisco, and I was curious what life in Southern California (SoCal) was like.He said life was good, and that the startup scene was healthy and that there are a lot of...

Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media:- Robert Andrews is puzzled. Why Are Russians Spending Like Mad To Save Journalism? | paidContent:UK

a shel of my former self:- Sensationalist report from Down Under makes a big leap: That PR providing news about their companies to reporters means the public is getting nothing but spin from their newspapers.

Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media:- Reuters reports:President Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday announced that Russia would build a high-tech hub near Moscow to spur modernization of the economy and reduce its dependence on oil and gas.

Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media:- I recently wrote about Twitter's business model as ultimately enveloping ever greater parts of its developer community. [Twitter Is The Black Hole Of The Twitterverse...]After all, why leave money on the table? Why not produce the best desktop client, or mobile client? Why let others build lucrative businesses out of your community?That seemed to be the way things were moving for Twitter after one of its engineers Tweeted: "If you had some of the nifty site features that we Twitter employees have, you might not want to use a desktop client. (You will soon.)"Khris Loux, co-founder of JS-Kit Echo, a commenting service, writes that Twitter has a choice of being a tyrant, or a benevolent king.

a shel of my former self:- The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #535: March 18, 2010

Phil's Blogservations:- The Big Dow Drop Meets The Nanny Index I recently read David Harsanyi's excellent book Nanny State: How Food Fascists, Teetotaling Do-Gooders, Priggish Moralists, and other Boneheaded Bureaucrats are Turning America into a Nation of Children. It was a thoughtful birthday gift from my folks, who thoughtfully indulge my libertarian bent with such works. In this book, Harsanyi says that the five most frightening words than can be uttered by the typical U.S. government official are "Something needs to be done." Starting last Friday and cresting today thanks to the stalled mega-bailout, that devilish phrase is at a six-month all-time...

Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media:- I was glad to see Joel Postman's post on his Socialized blog: Social Media Isn’t Conversation, It’s Publication because this has been a subject close to my heart.

Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media:- The Internet is huge but it's a hodgepodge of hundreds of thousands of smaller, private networks, connected through thousands of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and dozens of backbones operated by the large Telcos and service providers.Moving data from one end of the Internet to the other can mean traveling across many different computers and different networks. Some of these computers and networks are old and inefficient while some are modern and very efficient.They are all tied together into what we call the Internet, through a collection of standards. These standards determine how a packet of data can reach its destination, complete and undamaged.Many large Internet companies own large chunks of the Internet through building their own data centers, networks, backbones, etc. This helps to keep their costs down.

Phil's Blogservations:- For those of us who love freedom, this is a must-see. More at Reason.Tv. Technorati Tags: freedom, communism, cold war, berlin wall

Phil's Blogservations:- We're at about six months since the United States Air Force's blog-response chart made its rounds online. Since then, it has crossed my desk often. I've always found it well-designed and comprehensive, though something has always bugged me about it. The other day, I figured out what it was. Somewhat incredibly, it ignores the number-one rule that all combat pilots must follow: "Lose Sight, Lose the Fight." The flaw is in the little box at the lower right-hand corner. INFLUENCE: Focus on the most used sites related to the Air Force. Seems narrow to me. For example, let's imagine that, say, and influencer like Robert Scoble is talking with a buddy in the Air Force. One day over coffee, the buddy says that the plane he flew in Iraq had an intermittent issue where the readouts would blink for no good reason...

Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media:- It was two years before the iPhone got copy and paste functions. Now, Microsoft says that its Windows Phone 7 Series, won't have copy and paste when it becomes available later this year.Engadget reported:Microsoft just mentioned in a Q&A session here at MIX10 in no uncertain terms that clipboard operations won't be supported on Windows Phone 7 SeriesAnd:Update: We just super-double-ultra-plus-confirmed this with Microsoft -- Windows Phone 7 Series will not have copy and paste functionality. There is a data-detection service built into the text-handling API that will recognize phone numbers and addresses, but Microsoft says most users,...

Phil's Blogservations:- ...to watch the serve.gov site, presumably. Found this evening, though I don't expect it to be up for long. Technorati Tags: fail

Phil's Blogservations:- From peHUB about video processor startup Novafora folding yesterday: "'VC appetite has really dried up for later-stage semiconductor companies,' says a former Novafora executive, reached at his home this morning. 'They all want to do social networking and things like that.'" Sure, you want to go where the money is and where a quick exit can be had, but isn't that how you got into that whole mess in 2001? NB: If we don't invest in keeping pace with Moore's Treadmill, the next-generation social network, entertainment device, toaster, or garage door opener simply won't happen. As I told a colleague some years ago: "Dot-coms make headlines. Well and good. But science makes history." Technorati Tags:

Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media:- This week marks the one-year anniversary since the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper stopped printing on paper and moved completely online. http://www.seattlepi.com/Monica Guzman, at the Seattle PI, has written an excellent roundup of how other digital news ventures in the Seattle area are doing.Here are some extracts from: New media ventures blossom in Seattle

Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media:- Most journalists I know can barely type, they certainly can't spell but they can tell a great story. Most professions have to continually upgrade their skills yet I know lots of journalists that are very reticent about adding new skills. They hate to shoot photos, or video, or edit the video. I know a journalist that does not know how to upload a photo!Carrying a pencil and a notepad is not enough, journalists need to know how to produce media content in a variety of ways.Here are ten basic skills journalists, heck, anyone should know:1 - How to shoot a photo with a digital camera and transfer it to a computer for a quick edit.2 - How to upload an image to a web site in the right format and size.3 - How to add a hyperlink to a word or part of a sentence by...

Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media:- The Guardian.uk has an article about how the New York Times and CNN are becoming technology companies. How the New York Times and CNN try to keep up with the tech companies"The New York Times is now as much a technology company as a journalism company," its executive editor Bill Keller said recently.

a shel of my former self:- Letting employees participate in social networks at work definitely has its advantages. But companies will accrue the greatest value by implementing processes and models that help identify and act on the best information and inspire the most beneficial employee participation.

Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media:- SAP's new co-CEOs today promised faster software innovation and better execution on a hybrid enterprise software model that includes cloud computing and traditional enterprise software.

a shel of my former self:- The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #534: March 15, 2010

Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media:- SAP recently reshuffled its top management replacing CEO Léo Apotheker with Bill McDermott, who was head of field organization and Jim Hagemann Snabe, who was head of product development.I'll be at the press briefing this afternoon. If You have any questions please leave them in the comments or contact me through Twitter @tomforemski.

Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media:- In mid-day trading, Google [$GOOG] was down 3.4 per cent to $559.73 on concerns about an imminent announcement that it is closing its Chinese search service.Its Chinese rival Baidu [$BIDU] was up 4.1 per cent to $572.95, as investors expected it to benefit from Google's exit from the Chinese market.Please see:Analysis: Could $GOOG Face Problems Outside Of China For Its Opposition To Chinese Government?

Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media:- Google's [$GOOG] opposition to the Chinese government over censorship of the Internet is making life difficult for its partners in China. The New York Times reported Sunday, that Chinese officials have sent warnings to Google's Chinese partners that they must obey the law.Chinese government information authorities warned some of Google's biggest Web partners on Friday that they should prepare backup plans in case Google ceases censoring the results of searches on its local Chinese-language search engine, said the expert, who did not want to be identified for fear of retaliation by the government.

Phil's Blogservations:- In Defense Of The "Purist" I while ago, I was having lunch with my friend "Bart" whose supervisor "James" had left the firm he worked for at the time. Naturally, this meant that Bart had to take on some of his former boss's responsibilities — some considerable shoes to fill. James was a leader in this company's online communications strategy, not just because of his considerable technical knowledge but, rather, the instincts he developed over a period of time. During one of the necessary transition meetings, Bart had a meeting with James' former boss. "The thing is about James was," the boss said. "He was just too much of a purist." Considering Bart and James were pretty much parallel philosophically, this wasn't such good news for my friend. Bart would leave the firm soon afterward. Since Bart told me this story, I've been asking myself, "What did James' former boss mean?" It occurs to me that there are some...

Phil's Blogservations:- Having A "Message" Is Fine, It's "Messaging" That Sucks In PR 2.0 circles, it has long been hip to say that there is no place in modern communications for a company with "messages" and that any company with "messages" is somehow lost in the digital weeds. A PR person who says otherwise is derided as a knuckle-dragging troglodyte while the supremely useless you-don't-get-it crowd gleefully jumps in and piles on. I disagree with the premise that messages are necessarily dead. This was a fallacy that was allowed to progress because the some PR folks were too busy ingratiating themselves with a small set of influencers to think the issues and distinctions through. If your company doesn't have a "message" — a set of clear ideas that codify how it sees itself, its industry, and the world at large — then why the hell does it even exist, let alone communicate? Frankly, a distinction needs to be made....

Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media:- Richard Waters at the Financial Times, reports that a source "familiar with the company’s thinking" has told him that Google is 99.9 percent certain it will close its Chinese search service....the company is likely to take some time to follow through with the plan as it seeks an orderly closure and takes steps to protect local employees from retaliation by the authorities, the person familiar with its position said.

Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media:- It seems you can be ethical but poor when it comes to Internet business practices. The FBI estimated that Internet business scams doubled last year to reach $560 million.In a delightful irony, the most popular scam used the FBI's name, reported the Associated Press:The most frequently reported scams were those that falsely used the FBI's name, accounting for 16 percent of the more than 300,000 complaints received last year. Authorities say another scam involved messages with a voice similar to President Barack Obama's, urging people to visit a Web site to claim a share of government stimulus cash. Visitors are charged a fee, and no money is ever received.There are a whole range of scams, including diet, work-at-home, dating and many others. Once the scammers get hold...

Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media:- Joe McDonald with the Associated Press, today reported:China's top Internet regulator insisted Friday that Google must obey its laws or "pay the consequences," giving no sign of a possible compromise in their dispute over censorship and hacking.

a shel of my former self:- The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #533: March 11, 2010

Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media:- The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) appears to be stepping up its scrutiny of Google and anti-trust issues related to its business. Bloomberg reports that the FTC is asking for sworn statements from competitors and advertisers.This action usually precedes the filing of a lawsuit seeking to block the $750 million AdMob purchase announced in November.Agency officials typically collect declarations “when they think there is some significant chance” the agency will ask a court to block a merger, or seek to modify a deal, said Stephen Calkins, a former general...

Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media:-

Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media:- Intel hosted an open house this afternoon at its Intel Labs Berkeley. The lab has been in existence since November 2001.Some of the projects revealed:

Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media:- James Rainey, at the The Los Angeles Times, reports on the "Bay Area News Project" financed with $5 million by Warren Hellman, a local philanthropist. The project has a CEO with a $400,000 salary and its editor, Jonathan Weber, used to run the Industry Standard, a popular magazine during the dotcom era. Bay Area News Project has high hopes, few employees - latimes.com

Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media:- The Federal Trade Commission held a second session today on the future of the newspaper industry and Hal Varian, Google's chief economist made a presentation. His talk, "Newspaper Economics, Online and Offline," was full of very interesting numbers, related to traffic, revenue, type of news stories that people read, how much time they spend reading news online, and lots more. With his access to detailed traffic stats from Google News plus detailed numbers on ad revenues, etc, Mr Varian is in an excellent position to know what works, and what doesn't work in online media. He has access to more information than any single newspaper publisher and thus can provide important insights into the newspaper business. What did Mr Varian advise newspapers to do? "

Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media:- Gabe Rivera's Techmeme is the news reader of choice for much of the Silicon Valley tech-setters -- more so than Techcrunch because it has a much wider selection of articles.I often see Gabe at press events, he has a press pass like other journalists. But is he a journalist? After all, he doesn't write any of the stories that appear on Techmeme.It seems that the Austin based conference South By South-West (SXSW) doesn't think he's a journalist because it refused to give Gabe a press pass. Does SXSW think that Gabe's Techmeme is a simple news aggregator and therefore not media?Probably. But Gabe is not just a software engineer with a news algorithm and a server. He's better viewed as the editor-in-chief of Techmeme with a large staff of editors. Techmeme does use an algorithm to try and surface news that is interesting but that's...

Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media:- This is astounding: ClickZ in the UK reports: U.K. to Regulate Social Network Marketing - ClickZMarketers and brands using social networks will soon find their activities in those spaces regulated by the U.K.'s Advertising Standards Authority, following recommendations submitted by the Advertising Association this week.

Phil's Blogservations:- How To Behave In An Internet Forum How To Behave On A Forum - video powered by Metacafe Technorati Tags: online, forums

Phil's Blogservations:- 2009: Hoping For Audacity, Believing We Can Change From the Edelman Digital blog: The first few years of my PR career in Silicon Valley were marked by a singular frustration — most PR professionals did not aspire to be, nor were they particularly expected to be, as driven to innovate in their own field as their clients were in theirs. "Just get into the Journal," seemed the dictum. "Everything else is secondary." For a number of reasons so tangential to this story as to be distracting, the advent of social media is what kept me in public relations at a point in 2001 when I asked myself "Is this all that there is?" Years later, I'm glad to see there's a lot more. A hell of a lot more. For what it's worth, 2009 will be the year when real innovation starts to come back into PR — not in the relatively...

a shel of my former self:- The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #532: March 8, 2010

Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media:- I often meet with ad networks and ad exchanges for various stories I'm writing. And because I'm a publisher, they give me the pitch about how publishers make more money with their solution. The pitch they give advertisers is how much money they can save them.Clearly, both can't be right. The money has to come out of one pocket or the other. Guess which one it comes out of?Over on Poynter Online, Dorian Benkoil wrote an article headlined: Can Ad Networks & Exchanges Help Increase Ad Prices (Instead of Driving Them Down)?

Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media:- I'm a fan of the work of SDForum, which organizes conferences and events related to SIlicon Valley innovation. The organization also has a Global Gateways initiative that seeks to build connections with technology centers around the world.As part of that initiative, SDFroum has teamed up with the Dutch government to host an incubator for Dutch companies. I spoke with Susan Lucas-Conwell, CEO of SDForum."This is a first for us and also the Dutch government. We have room for about ten companies in the incubator with each one staying for between 3 and 6 months. The companies will have office space and a services package that gives them access to our events and to service providers." SDForum runs about 20 events per month and has about 12,000 members in SIlicon Valley.

Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media:- Gabe Rivera, well known for Techmeme, has unveiled a new news aggregator site: Mediagazer (media grazer might be a better name :).Megan McCarthy is the site's editor (yes, Gabe uses human-enhanced news search algorithms). Introducing Mediagazer «The media business is in tumult: from the production side to the distribution side, new technologies are upending the industry. What do news organizations need to do to survive? Will books become extinct? When will an audience pay for content? Can video bring television and the internet together? Will the iPad save us all? Keeping up with these changes is time-consuming, as essential media coverage is scattered across numerous web sites at any given moment.The...

Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media:- Wayne Rosing, when he was VP of Engineering at Google, once told me that Google saves every bit of data from people's searches and puts it onto tapes and ship it off to a storage facility. Why does Google collect all that data I asked? We don't know, but we collect it all, he said.These days Google has a better answer but it continues to save all that data.

Phil's Blogservations:- An exchange today, reacting to a press release about a topic that I have never been even remotely interested in: Sammy Spamalot: [Insert spray-and-pray release here.] Phil: Please take me off of your list Sammy: Use the unsubscribe link in the email please Phil: Way to blame the victim, dude. Sammy: Thanks Phil, it would just take me ages to find your addres in our database. Phil: Probably no more time than it took for me to fish your note out of the trash and find the link, I'd imagine. Almost as good as the time the PR person told me that she was blameless and advised that I call the company that sold them their media list.

Phil's Blogservations:- Quick Update So, I spent some time here: Met this way-cool guy:

Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media:- I first met Patrice Lamothe, co-founder of PearlTrees in November and became fascinated with the PearlTrees service because of the many ways it can be used, and because it is an example of a media technology that is closely integrated into the way people are using the web.Since then, I've played around with PearlTrees and I can see lots of interesting uses for this technology, and its potential in creating a giant, curated web, one which goes beyond simple search, and beyond social tagging as in Delicious.And I'm excited now to be working with PearlTrees, as an advisor, in helping this startup grow to...

Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media:- People like to talk about disruption but sometimes some people misunderstand the power of disruptive technologies.I've had companies tell me: "Yes, we know we are in danger of disruption but we see it, we can adapt, we can change and take advantage of it."Good luck. Even when you can see the train wreck ahead. You will likely slam right into it. Disruptive technologies disrupt. Technologies are not called "disruptive" just for the sake of it. Niki Scevak, a serial entrepreneur, writing over at Bronte Media, has a nice analysis of AOL versus Yahoo. He says that AOL, under Tim Armstrong and his team, has a more realistic understanding of the advertising markets, and where things are headed.Carol Bartz, who I am sure is an excellent manager of large...

Phil's Blogservations:- NYT Profile On Jolie's Media Management Shows PR Profession Has A Long Way To Go I'm still not sure whether The New York Times was repulsed or intrigued by the fact that that Angelina Jolie exhibits greater media savvy than the average Hollywood type, taking more than 1,500 words to tell its very literate readership what it already intuitively (or explicitly) knows about celebrity PR. Where The Old Gray Lady sees a "carefully orchestrated image", I see a very smart woman who has a greater level of media savvy than the average actor or actress. Like Princess Di, Jolie also knows that she can channel interest in her celebrity life to bring attention to the topics and world issues she cares about. Putting aside for the...