February 07, 2008
Reed Hundt and EDUCAUSE are Wrong - And here's why...
Everyone from Reed Hundt to EDUCAUSE has called for a $25/50/100 billion investment in making fiber available to every home in the United States to provide at least 100 Mbps of broadband from sea to shining sea, along with picking up all businesses along the way. But they're all wrong, wrong I tell you... Wireless is the way to go, ba-be.
Let's ignore the fact for a moment that the new guy in the White House in 2009 -- Republican or Democrat -- is going to have a serious challenge digging up $100 billion to throw into a glorified public works project that (under some proposals) would do nothing more than recreate the glory days of the old Bell System in fiber, except with Net Neutrality provisions for access (Maybe).
Let's also ignore the fact that, quite on their own, the cable companies and the telcos are leapfrogging their way up to 100 Mbps (and higher) speeds on their existing customer bases. (Hello! Verizon can deliver 100 Mbps tomorrow if they just got the product marketing people out of the way, Hello!) You'll see cable companies talk about DOCSIS 3.0 and that's good for around 160 Mbps or so per household.
So, without spending a dime of (your) tax money, there are a bunch of market and competitive issues that will bring faster speeds to many households in the next few years and bring us up on the too-often-quoted World Per Person Broadband speed indexes, so we can start catching up to South Korea, Japan, and the others ahead of us.
We need to take a page from the (so called) developing world - wireless. There are three (3) issues that are interlinked here: one technology, one economic, and one social.
TECHNOLOGY: LTE is king of the hill. AT&T has decided to join the LTE bandwagon, joining Verizon Wireless and the rest of the GSM world, so we have a growth path for a world-wide cellular high-speed broadband technology. First generation LTE is promising speeds of at least 100 Mbps to handsets/users and there's already some lab testing for using more channels and 4 MIMO-linked antennas to do 300 Mbps.
The WiMAX crowd is not standing still; they realize LTE is coming to gun for them, so you'll likely see a rapid push in IEEE world to get a 2nd generation WiMAX standard refined, defined, and out the door. How fast will 2nd gen WiMAX be? Likely fast enough to be put side by side LTE in (so called) developing world countries and be a good deal.
ECONOMIC: Digging trenches is expensive. Bless the guys at Verizon for biting the bullet and pulling fiber to the home in order to put the sweats on cable (and to find new revenue streams as people disconnect their second lines for cell phones and DSL for cable modems). But, still, it's expensive, it is disruptive, and it is man-power intensive. Requires a lot of infrastructure.
Now the (so called) developing world doesn't have the institutional biases or legacy infrastructure/mindset having wires everywhere. Yes, this is a contrary view, but stick with me. You put up the cell tower. To go faster, you upgrade the handsets and upgrade the electronics on the cell tower. And that's it. No truck rolls. No trenches. No guy symbolically cutting your copper...
SOCIAL: Let's face facts -- Many people under the age of
It would not surprise me if today's toddlers grow up to consider wall-based broadband connectivity (cable or fiber) as "quaint" and something that Grandpa had back in his day to send text-based e-mail...
If you already can get 100 Mbps out of your cell phone, why are you going to pay more money for a landline connection (Maybe as a way to feed the femtocell or get pay-per-view on the big screen).
My meta point here is that people have been pimping the idea of 100 Mbps fiber to the home for almost a decade in some form or another and wireless is going to blow straight by it in terms of technology, economics, and social use.
Of course, there's probably some not-so-minor details about spectrum that I'm glossing over, but LTE and WiMAX usage over the next few years will only drive competing companies into pestering regulatory agencies (here in the States, the FCC) to free up more spectrum.
Posted by dmohney at 03:49 PM | Comments (0)
February 01, 2008
A coming building boom in Mid-East Undersea Cabl
A pair of cable cuts affecting India and nations throughout the Middle East are likely to spur proposals for more fiber optic cable in the region over the next twelve months, as well as a review of satellite capacity.
Information, not oil, is the rising coin of power for many nations. Bahrain, UAE, Qatar and Kuwait easily have the cash to spend to upgrade redundancies in their telecommunications infrastructure, and they are likely to want to move fast to get more capacity in.
Will India benefit from this building boom? Interesting question. If you want redundant connections out of the region to the East, certainly they would pass through/by India.
In an ideal world, the Gulf states would be able to pull fiber to their west than north through Iraq, then go across Turkey into Europe. But....
Who knows? I wouldn't put it past some daring(crazy) company to 1) Cut a deal with the Iraqi for a right-of-way through the country and 2) Figure out a way to keep things stable enough to lay fiber up to some connection point in Turkey. Plus 3) Pull fiber over the mountains of Turkey...
Posted by dmohney at 11:52 AM | Comments (0)
December 19, 2007
My mini-Social Networking Boomlet
Over the past two weeks, I've received a flood of Facebook, LinkedIn, and even Spock bits/invites...
I'm still sorting through them all and trying to figure out what I use for "work" and what I use for "social" networking.
I'm not going to hesitate to LinkedIn (Link in?) with anyone I worked with during the Clone Wars, er, the DIGEX days. [Key phrase: "worked with"].
I'm not connecting with any random recruiter who is shotgun mailing me out of the blue. Some people are equating quantity with quality. Forget that.
Unfortunately (ARE YOU SOCIAL NETWORKING PEOPLE LISTENING), I don't have a way to label people to my internal/personal preferences between true friends, former colleagues, and current business relationships. Until the tools get better, I'm putting a group of people "on hold" because I don't think the current crop of business relationships wants to network/link in with my buds from the Clone Wars...but I want to be able to look at my friends from the Clone Wars and business relationships with one tool.
*sigh* I suppose I could create two different personas/profiles...
Posted by dmohney at 12:24 AM | Comments (0)
December 10, 2007
If you die, who updates your LinkedIn profile?
Sounds morbid, doesn't it? But it's a serious question.
One of my companions out of the CloneWars, er, the early Internet days died suddenly on December 23, 2005. Two years after his passing, his LinkedIn profile is still active, still alive.
I'm not sure if there's a proper protocol for this sort of thing; be interesting to turn this over to Ms. Manners and see if her head started steaming a little. Do you note that the person has passed away? Who makes the notification or request? Do you leave it to the family or what? Does LinkedIn need a fax of a death certificate?
I don't want to push the matter, but leaving him "hanging" up in the Net as still living -- while potentially true -- at the same time smacks of the inadequacy of keeping information up to date on line.
I don't want to remove him as a "Friend" from my LinkedIn profile because I prefer to think of him as a friend (whatever THAT definition is in the era of Facebook and Jeff's 10,000 friends...). But I would like to see some sort of "note" on LinkedIn that indicates his status.
No easy answers on this one.
Posted by dmohney at 11:53 PM | Comments (0)
November 20, 2007
Why I cry over CES Hotel Rates....
You'd think I would have learned by now to reserve my room early for January 5-8, when CES comes to Las Vegas. Nooo... so now I'm shelling out $187 a night for Sunday and Monday night in a, shall we say, less than 5 star hotel....*sigh*
But seriously, CES is one of the few shows where room rates in LostWages go UP during the week. During normal not-you-and-120,000-new-friends time, hotel room rates go down from Sunday-Thursday, go up on Friday and Saturday...
Instead, room rates get jacked across town during the week. This despite the fact that net-net at least 5,000 or so rooms per year get added onto the Vegas Strip alone (even after they blow one up...). In a normal supply-and-demand situation, there should be enough additional new hotel rooms ultimately added onto the strip to see prices go down. But (of course, duh) Vegas isn't normal.
Don't get me wrong. I love the Sahara hotel for what it gets me. It's cheap, it's got the most convenient monorail stop of any of the Strip Hotels (well, with the exception of the Hilton...), the morning buffet is adequate and no-frills.
The Sahara has one other thing going for it: Location, location, location. When (not if) the lines to the monorail backup, I can walk from the LVCC back to my hotel room.
Now, my next tough decision for CES: Do I rent a car, or not?
Posted by dmohney at 01:34 PM | Comments (0)
November 19, 2007
Kindle & Sprint - OMG!
My jaw is dropping a little bit as I read the press releases on Kindle, Amazon's new e-book reader.
Sprint is providing "Whispernet" to deliver e-books from Amazon's servers to the 10.3 ounce eInk reader via EVDO. Amazon must be writing some interesting checks to Sprint, since newspaper subscriptions come with a free 2 week trial and there's also free access to Wikipedia through the device.
It's the combination of form factor and connectivity that has me jazzed. I already use Sprint's EVDO service whenever I'm on the road, preferring it over the headaches of Wi-Fi.
Kindle has a keyboard. It would be interesting to see a derivative of Kindle as a web/e-mail reading device...I can only hope either Amazon or Sprint takes the logical step.
And I suspect that Kindle's WiMAX brother is already waiting in the wings... unless they've managed to sneak a WiMAX chip in there without telling anyone. Sound too far fetched? Well, up until this morning, the rumormill had Wi-Fi as the baseline connectivity with some sort of connectivity option through Sprint.
Those guys at Amazon, they know how to keep a secret...
Posted by dmohney at 11:24 AM | Comments (0)
November 16, 2007
Ads, Freebies, and Mobile Print
Rupert Murdoch, someone who knows a little bit about media, has said the online version of the Wall Street Journal will be free. Rup says they can make more money selling ads that reach an audience of 15-20 million freebie readers than the current model of 1 million paid subscribers.
Murdoch's announcement is "old beer" to the NY Times, according to press reports. The Times had tried to wall off their columnists in a subscription format, only to find out that their columnists were getting much less exposure and therefore lower ad clickthrough rates. Or something like that.
Exciting eh?
On the other hand, we're also starting to see a lot of non-traditional printed media migrate to the web. Marvel has opened up "Digital Comics Unlimited" up, so for $9.99 per month (and hey, I know people who used to *ahem* pay more than that for hardcopy back in the day), you get full access to thousands and thousands of classic and new titles... ahhh....
*ahem*
And if that wasn't enough fun for one day, on Monday Amazon will take its crack at the e-book reader market. Will people pay $399 for a single-function device to lug around to read both books and newspapers? Will it have a better showing than the Sony reader? Kindle will have WiFi and perhaps an option for Sprint EvDO service.
Now if I can only get rid of the Compaq laptop...
Posted by dmohney at 01:36 PM | Comments (0)
November 04, 2007
VON "It's a Small World" - Take 2
What do Vivek Khuller, CEO and Founder, DiVitas Networks and I have in common? The answer is more interesting than you might expect.
I met with Vivek on Wednesday morning. We went through the stock briefing and then he asked me where I lived. I said "DC" and he asked where. I said "Northern Virginia," but then indicated I had lived in Maryland for quite a while, including Greenbelt when I was working at the University of Maryland....
Turns out that Vivek was working on his Master's in EE at the University of Maryland College Park and running a lab for the Systems Research Center (SRC) at about the same time I was running the CAD Lab for Mechanical Engineering. He was over in the AV Williams Building while I had been in the Engineering building, but we started comparing where we lived and who we knew and where we ate and it got pretty scary pretty quickly.
We both lived in the Springhill Lake apartment complex at one point. He might have been my neighbor, for all I know. We also ate at some of the same restaurants and went to the "Vu," also known as the Rendezvous Inn.
Had to explain to his PR person about the "sticky shoes" you got from the beer at the Vu...
Posted by dmohney at 10:10 PM | Comments (0)
November 03, 2007
The Circle of Trust and Six Degrees
So there I was, leaving VON Fall, going through the US Airways shuttle security line at Boston Logan, and who's ahead of me but this familiar redhead.
No, I wasn't looking into a mirror. It was Danielle Deibler. (And no, Danielle didn't tell me anything cool, even though I tried really hard to convince her...)
Danielle has been working at Adobe since November of 2006 and she works with/around/for Dr. Henry Sinnreich. Henry, as you may know, has graced the front cover of VON Magazine and does all things SIP. Henry also works for Adobe. Now, there's all kinds of rumors that Adobe doing something with SIP/VoIP/whatever...
No, I can't tell you anything cool about what's going on with Adobe. I've also heard Phil Zimmermann has visited over at Adobe, but Phil wouldn't even confirm that. He told me to talk to Henry :)
Needless to say, there's something Very Cool going on at Adobe, because I doubt they're paying Henry and Danielle for show. Would some one at Adobe brief me on embargo already?
ANYway, I know Danielle from Way Back When (fall of 1993) when she and I started working for DIGEX (along with John Todd that same fall, now at TalkPlus and making guest appearances at all things Asterisk)...
Six Degrees Moment - I went to dinner with my buddy Frank McConnell and a group of his friends about two Spring VONs ago. One of the guys there had a Danger phone and was making off-hand jokes about hacking Paris Hilton's phone. He quietly picked up the tab for pizza and departed before we could offer to split the bill.
Turns out his name was Paul Rubin, who started Android, got bought by Google, and now is all the buzz for Monday's forthcoming announcement on Google's mobile phone software/ecosystem/open something or another...
Posted by dmohney at 03:49 PM | Comments (0)
November 01, 2007
Open Source, Wireless make the "Buzz," -- plus advertising
"So, what did you see new and exciting at VON?"
I get this question a lot. People reflexively ask me it and the show floor could be an hour old. Or at the end of the day, when my feet are tired and I'm likely to answer something silly.
But seriously, open source, wireless, and advertising are the three key concepts that are sticking in my head.
If you haven't already noticed, pulvermedia is doing a LOT with Open Source. VON Magazine has acquired "Open Source Telephony," (OST) the publication started by Steve Sokol. It delivered Digium Asterisk World and will be putting on AstriCon both in the States and in Europe.
It was a nice surprise when I was making my rounds and mentioning that we bought OST, people perked up. Dialogic is building an open source program. Pactulous has their sipdev.org effort; that's all open source (And *ahem* not Asterisk, they like to point out).
Sooo, net-net is Open Source is starting to snowball.
Wireless? Do I have to tell you about Wireless? I love Wireless. There was a big chunk of wireless conference sessions. I chatted with the Ericsson folks about LTE and IMS and other good things. I like what I hear about LTE, but it's not something I can get tomorrow. But I should be able to get WiMAX by the end of the year in the D.C. area, if I remember the press reports correctly.
Then there's advertising. Embarq's CEO referred to advertising as "almost like a fifth business." Or was it a fourth? I'm a little numb right now, but you get my point (quad vs triple play + advertising). Other folks are excited about the prospects of advertising in mobile, data, wherever...
Posted by dmohney at 10:45 PM | Comments (0)
October 30, 2007
Sometimes, Jeff Pulver Makes Me Cry
I went to Jeff's traditional PulverParty this evening, footsore, dragging after a 8 AM to 8 PM series of introductions, meetings, and various other events.
I almost skipped it.
But I get there, and there's some guy on stage warming up for Herding Cats. He sounds good, can't really place where I've heard him before... and then somebody introduces him as Matthew Ebel.
*Lightbulb*
I heard Ebel's music over a year ago on Adam Curry's Daily Source Code podcast. Always meant to buy his album "Beer and Coffee," but never got around to it.
And now the effer is on stage and I go up and talk to him and gee, I can even buy his new album "Goodbye Planet Earth" for a paltry $10, well, live, at the Roxy.
Tazer me bro! Tazer me!
Oh, but it gets better; he's also got a box of the "Beer and Coffee" CDs rattling around, so I can buy both albums for $20 cash and consider it either an impulse buy or a noble effort to support a new artist.
Turns out Matt was in town with the podpeople for PodCamp run by Chris "Don't Taze Me, Bro" Brogan and knows Matt, blah-blah.
Matt sells his own music via the Internet and right now I'm listening to his music while processing the 70+ press releases for the day and it's the only thing that's keeping me sane at about midnight local time.
Posted by dmohney at 11:40 PM | Comments (0)
October 28, 2007
VON + Red Sox = World Series Champions
In 2005, the Boston Red Sox were in the World Series Championship games and VON was taking place in Boston. The throngs at the evening PulverParty were watching the big screen TVs as much as Huey Lewis and the News (Altho' Huey and the band didn't seem to mind...)
This year, the Sox are giving a beat down to the Colorado Rockies. And VON is in Boston once again.
Game 4 will be played this evening (Sunday) in Colorado, but I'm betting the Rockies come up with something tonight so there's one more game taking place ... during VON.
The Red Sox Nation might wanna start thinking about sending us tickets.
Posted by dmohney at 12:13 PM | Comments (0)
October 26, 2007
Wave to me if you see me at VON...
My schedule at the Fall VON conference next week is, shall we say, challenging...
I think I've got about a 15 minute gap from 8 AM to 10 PM on Tuesday, October 30th; everything else is spoken for. Wednesday looks to be similar.
Remarkably, I'm starting to pick up meetings on Monday. Da-da, Monday-Monday...
There have been about 120 or so meeting requests that have flowed through/towards/in the master schedule, so parsing and juggling and assigning meetings has been a real headache.
Plus the steady flow of last minute can-you-meet-with-us meetings...
Posted by dmohney at 02:28 PM | Comments (0)
October 24, 2007
Oooh, pretty new Pulvermedia Events page - I like
If you haven't had a chance, swing by the updated/new/improved pulvermedia events page here http://www.pulvermedia.com/web/eventCalendar.php
Graphically, it's quite nice. And then some, if you can read between the lines, so to speak.
This reminds me of a conversation I had earlier today with A Company about a strictly hypothetical event that may or may not be announced next week in Boston. Of course, the company couldn't tell me anything directly, but I put three little bits together to come up with a theory and we both agreed I might get a phone call in Boston.
Hypothetically speaking, if such an event might take place.
Posted by dmohney at 12:33 AM | Comments (0)
October 19, 2007
This Just Out - 18-24 our of 100+
On a typical month, we (VON Magazine) get over 100+ product/service press releases. From that list, we run anywhere from 18 to 24 new product listings, depending on space available.
So, that's roughly a 1 in 4 chance on every month that if you send us a product listing AND it doesn't get spam-eaten, it might show up in print.
Not great odds, I admit, but it's better than not sending at all = Zero.
Posted by dmohney at 11:06 PM | Comments (0)
October 18, 2007
Booked 103 press releases in 3 days for Friday's VON Focus
From Tuesday through Thursday, I "processed through" 103 press releases that were deemed worthy of being in the VON Focus electronic newsletter listing on Friday, October 19th. To get to 103, I have to filter out duplicates, marketing releases ("Come to our Free Webinar"), award/list announcements, and some other things that are not what we deem newsworthy (Wanna know what is newsworthy? Go visit www.vonmag.com and review our PR submission guidelines)
In a typical month, I print about 330-400 unique releases in a month through the electronic newsletter, with surges around VONs of around 500-550...
So this week was pretty brutal. Monday was no cakewalk either, with around 60-75 releases.
Add on to that a steady stream of "I wanna meet you at VON" e-mail, trying to put together articles for the print edition of VON Magazine, finalizing the on-line web form for VON Magazine's "Innovator" award and, well, it's been a pretty busy week by far.
I have already made one request to Chris Brogan to tazer someone in the Boston area. Chris responded by sending me his selection of "Don't tazer me, bro'" parodies floating around on YouTube. I responded by sending him my YouTube URL of an Iron Sheik interview where... well, there are some things I won't repeat on a public blog... Let's just say the former WWF/WWE wrestler brings a new meaning to the phrase "Make him humble."
Posted by dmohney at 11:21 PM | Comments (0)
October 09, 2007
Passion and Feeding the Troops
On Monday, I took a (way too quick) run through the AUSA (Association of the United States Army) event down at the D.C. Convention Center, walking around on the trade show floor and getting a head full of stuff.
You can't talk mission-critical communications in the military these days without having VoIP and data on the menu; data is much more important these days, but networking gear is a must regardless. I think I laughed out loud in the press room when I saw one company's press release announcing an Ethernet switch that looked like they took something off the shelf and painted it camo.
General Dynamics has a lot of interesting hardened networking tech, but if you start asking them if they expect to branch out of military sales into the civilian sector, they'll tell you that Cisco is the 800 lb Gorilla. "You remember how you could never get fired for buying IBM... well..."
I think the thing that about broke my heart, however, was walking by the U.S. Army food display and listening to the U.S. Army civilian employee on the show floor talk up the virtues of the Unitized Group Ration-Express. UGR-E, in Mil-speak
It wasn't so much the subject matter that was sexy -- I mean, c'mon, we're talking about a big box that's one step up above the dreaded MRE designed to deliver a hot meal for 18 warfighters (we're at war, you don't call them soldiers these days) -- but the passion, enthusiasm, pride and conviction this gentleman had for talking about his product.
Basically, the group-meal-in-a-box allows troops, er warfighters to pull some tabs, add some water, and get a hot meal in 30-45 minutes without the muss and fuss of either having to haul out food in insulated containers or sending out a mobile kitchen and a cook to make it. Inside the box, there's 4 six pound trays of food - entrée, vegetable, starch, dessert, plus snacks, utensils, serving utensils, beverages, and dining trays.
When you don't have a McD's in the middle of Iraq or Afghanistan and have been eating MREs for a week, this isn't a bad thing. You also have to understand that food is important for morale.
UGR-Es eliminate the need for convoys to remote places in the field; they can be put in the back of the truck and dropped off, no fuss-no muss, no IED risk. They're so popular, they get picked up off the shipping dock and air freighted straight out to the field.
The second-generation UGR-E will replace the injection-molded plastic trays with fiber coated trays that are cheaper ($5/tray) and lighter. Less weight, more recyclable, better for the environment.
But again, it was the person talking about the product, what they've done with it, what the plan to do with it, how they're working to get scrambled eggs into a tray pack so they just add some water and pull a tab and you can get hot eggs for breakfast that's amazing. Or how they have "box o' Joe" container that you fill with water, dash a little water in the heating elements and 30-40 minutes later you've got a nice hot pot of water...
Well, you get my point.
If I were hiring, I'd be tempted to offer this guy a job in two seconds. But he's so enthusiastic about what he's doing and he knows what it means for his customers -- the warfighters -- that it would likely take 2-3 times his salary to even get him to think about it.
Posted by dmohney at 11:58 PM | Comments (0)
September 03, 2007
VON Magazine Innovator List - Yes, Something New
VON Magazine has been asked to create the "VON Magazine Innovator" list. There's more news coming both in print in the September 2007 issue of VON Magazine and on www.vonmag.com.
Basically, we want to build upon the legacy of the pulver100, and recognize innovative companies, products, and services in the IP communications space. Applicants must have a totally new product introduced and shipping in 2007; no version 2.711 which is a warmed-over 2.70.
Unlike the pulver100, companies are going to have to fill out an application on line. Applications will be judged by a group of VON magazine contributors and Carl Ford of pulvermedia.
Also unlike the pulver100, we're going to encourage publicly-held companies to apply. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is that there are some big companies, such as Apple, who have introduced some products worth of recognition in the IP communications world (i.e. iPhone). There's also been some blurring between public and private as public companies get rolled up into buyouts and go private.
If you have any more questions, please REFER TO THE VON MAGAZINE WEBSITE. I'm not going to get into an extended lobbying discussion on why company XYZ should be on an "Innovators" list. That goes double for the billing/transaction firms that think they need to be in every story we run every month.
Bribery will also not be tolerated. The judges for the list have been instructed to recuse themselves from evaluating any company that they have a current or former financial interest in. Will that boil down to the 200 shares of Microsoft I have? I don't know if we'll get that extreme, but we shouldn't have people weighing in on company XYZ if they just did a consulting gig for them in the last 12 months.
Posted by dmohney at 01:09 PM | Comments (0)
August 29, 2007
Uncoordinated Customer Obligations - UCO
"You-CO" or "Yuk-o"
What is a UCO?
In its' simplest form it is a bad practice where person A makes a commitment to a customer upon behalf of person B, without bothering to talk to person B beforehand.
Sales people do this a lot. "Sure, Joe will take care of it, no problem" then they get back to the office and say "We told them we'd do blank."
Leaving someone else to fill in the blank, as they move along to their merry way, having cleared this upon their checklist.
The problem with UCOs is that there could be reasons (technical or resource related) where the OBLIGATION might not be met. Leaving the customer to yell at some later date, "You told me this would happen!!!"
Not a good scene.
UCOs stem from bad communication and the desire to get something done,, but one should never make an obligation -- even an implied obligation -- to the customer without all company parties involved understanding the expectations involved.
Posted by dmohney at 03:35 PM | Comments (0)
August 19, 2007
Phone Port at Bad Time
My Sprint Samsung A920 started eating battery at an obscene rate for some unknown reason. I was hoping to hold onto it for another year or so in order to get a crack at either an EVDO Rev-A phone and/or a WiMAX-enabled phone. (It would have also given me an additional $75 upgrade credit on the hardware, but...)
(Of course, Sprint shows all their WiMAX stuff last week in Reston but can't find my phone number even though VON Mag has done at least one big WiMAX piece, so go figure...)
ANYway, so I spent time acouple of weeks ago week figuring out what type of new phone I needed (RAXR), buying it, and then transferring my phone contact list onto the new phone.
Part of the deal at the local Sprint store is you get $75 credit plus another $30 or so activation credit if you buy two accessories in the store along with a new phone. Easy purchases there, one new car charger, one new AA-battery "emergency" charger.
Figures that the week after I buy the phone, all the info comes out on the RAZR2 or whatever it is. *sigh* Can't win, can I?
I also spent another $50 bucks or so buying the extended life 1300mA battery and the humpy-back battery cover for the RAZR. Here's to hoping that I haven't wasted my money for the extra battery life.
Posted by dmohney at 11:48 PM | Comments (0)
August 14, 2007
On a personal note...
Before I went out to DEFCON, I got a raging case of poison ivy.
Rather than listen to my primary care person, I said "Oh, only the 6 day steroids pack should do." "If it comes back, you'll be back here and we'll have to do the 12 day sequence." "Let's try the 6, I don't like the way the 'roids get me hyped."
Sure enough, get back from DEFCON, poison ivy returns for revenge, now I'm mid-way through the 12 day sequence of 'roids. Bigger pills, more pills per day, edgy-edgy... At least I am not slavering benedryl 3-4x per day on the scratchy skin (See? did you NEED to know this? No, but it's a BLOG so it's OK if I talk about it, riiight?)
I know, what this this have to do with the blog? I've been so edged up on getting daily work (newsletter, current cycle of print production, start work on October pieces), that I have trouble focusing on blogging for information.
Posted by dmohney at 06:17 PM | Comments (0)
August 08, 2007
NASA TV - But not on my downstairs TV
I wanted to TiVo tonight's launch of the Space Shuttle tonight, but Cox cable doesn't carry NASA-TV anymore and it's unlikely that -- barring disaster -- the evening news will carry more than a 90 second clip of the liftoff.
If I wanted to futz around for more than 5 minutes, I could probably figure out a way to get TiVo to pick up a live stream of NASA-TV, but I want to record, rather than watch live.
Mayyyybe I just don't have the fine intimacy of TiVo that I should. I may have to try out the new-fangled search feature that scours both recordings and online archives for key words in order to get what I want for this evening.
Maybe I should see what Network2 has .. Hmm...
Posted by dmohney at 04:22 PM | Comments (0)
July 17, 2007
What's wrong with this picture?
I've reviewed my blogging history (i.e. how many times I've been blogging) over the past two weeks and have come to the somewhat counter-intuitive realization that I've been able to blog better when I'm out of the "office" (i.e. not at work) than in the office.
Does this mean that I blog better with less stress? Have more time to blog when not "on the clock" because I don't say to myself "Hey, I forgot about this, I'll work on it now..." ?
Of course, the blog is a FREE thing. Scott Kargman nudged me into doing a blog a while back and I finally gave in.
Ah well, off to return the Holter monitor....
Posted by dmohney at 12:43 PM | Comments (0)
July 11, 2007
Of Bears and Blogs
This morning I was thinking about my experiences at Philmont Scout Camp (yes, a long, long time ago).
We had settled in for camp and our team leader was up a tree trying to straighted out the rope for our bear bag when someone actually spotted a young bear in a hollow nearby.
We all scrambled for a better look, except for the team leader, who shouted "Don't leave me stuck up here with the bear coming!" (Ironically, he was in the safest place).
Quietly we passed the word among our group and others near by, carefully positioning ourselves for a better look at the 200-300 pound or so critter.
Suddenly, breaking the silence was a rush of feet, and a "A Bear! Hot D*mn, let's stone him!!!" A group of young lads from North Carolina rushed to get closer and in their haste made so much noise that the bear looked up and around, then casually shambled off into the woods and away from the campground.
The next morning, the North Carolina group awoke to find a bigger , older 600+ pound bear had located and took down their hanging food bag (Bears are smart), and shambled off into the woods to chow down on the yummier bits (Being packed with a lot of dehydrated food, I doubt Mr. Bear ate it all; but then I wouldn't put it past one to figure out how to cook it up).
Since we were on our last day or two of the trail, we loaned the noisy North Carolina boys some of our food and wend home.
Is the moral of this story "Don't shout too loud?" "Never threaten to stone a bear because he'll tell his peers?" Or "Anyone can write anything in a blog without having relevance to a topic you are really interested in?"
Posted by dmohney at 11:10 AM | Comments (0)
July 09, 2007
I love a good bus wrap!
Hanging out here in Ocean City, Maryland, the coolest thing to catch my eye down here have been the freshly done "bus wraps" for Candy Kitchen.
A bus wrap takes your generic dull white bus and puts a full-sized commercial or "wrap" on the outside. Done well, the colors pop, and it catches the eye. You get a rolling 3-D billboard at eye level.
To ensure exposure and success, wrap a bus or two or three on a frequently used route. For example, at CES and NAB, there are buses running all over the place between the display floors and the hotels. Consider that a bus creeps along in traffic when getting close to a stop, then parks for 10-15 minutes as it loads and unloads passengers. So people waiting in line or outside walking to and fro between see it as well.
In Vegas, I'm not sure if I have the same love for the monorail wrap. Getting on the monorail is a bear when there are exceedingly high crowds(i.e. CES, likely NAB), it's above ground level, covered for parts of its journey, and sometimes moving too far too fast to make out what is on the side.
Posted by dmohney at 12:12 PM | Comments (0)
July 07, 2007
DEFCON 15, here I come (Well, in August)
I've been going to DEFCON for some obscene number of years.
Doug Humphrey asked me to tag along when he went out sometime in the mid-90s and I've been finding excuses to go every since. (Oops, did I say that out LOUD?)
Seriously, there are a lot of smart people, presenting a lot of interesting and sometimes Very Important information about technology and security. The Media tends to focus on the sideshows of spiky-dyed hair leather-clad youth, a loud but small percentage of the attendees.
The ones you really have to worry about are those who don't stand out in a crowd, but you catch eying you like a pit bull does a chipmunk.
This year I've got a speaking slot to talk about TV "White Spaces"; the current efforts to cover over the empty TV channels on your dial into usable broadband. It's 700 MHz, the mythical "beachfront" property, it's cool, and it's likely to be approved for use by the end of the year.
Posted by dmohney at 12:19 PM | Comments (0)
July 05, 2007
Am I a "good" blogger or a "bad" blogger?
Is there some sort of subtle ratio of number of blogs per week/month that puts me into the category of a "good" blogger or "bad" blogger?
I mean, I'm not a soopoer blogger, like Chris Brogan, who just gotta blogs at least twice a day. I bet he blogs before breakfast and then blogs during lunch. And then, when he's on a roll or had too much coffee, he probably throws in another couple of blogs before b-ed time.
I'm happy enough to blog 3 to 4 times a week, and start to feel guilty if I haven't blogged in three or four straight days.
Chris and Jeff (Pulver) fall into the Blog-is-Life category but I am not sure I am comfortable with that sort of frequency. Right now I'm blogging because I have a break between work pieces at the moment. But I wouldn't be blogging while catching up on "Battlestar Galactica" on the couch. But I have been tempted to do a posting entitled "BSG vs Trek Officers" because it would just be AMUSING to see what kind of fallout I would stir-up in the geekdom world.
Posted by dmohney at 10:30 PM | Comments (0)
June 27, 2007
Playing "Poker" With Airline Prices
I'm presenting at DEFCON (www.defcon.org) in August. Last week, I started to review pricing on my preferred carrier and was averaging $478 for a flight out of Dulles (IAD) to Las Vegas (LAS).
This week it's running $433 or so, net savings of $45. It's not much, but still, it's real money. So, just like the whole "Deal or No Deal" calculation, do I book now or do I wait for another week or two to see if the price sheds another $50 or so? Fuel prices are relatively stable so I'm comfy there...
Tough choice, yes? After all, Vegas in August isn't like oh, Hawaii any time of the year? I think it's marginally better than Houston in August (no humidity), but once the mercury goes above 100 degrees, it's just HOT, regardless.
Posted by dmohney at 01:29 PM | Comments (0)
June 26, 2007
iPod, iPhone, iHype
Stare straight into the crystal ball. Ignore the world around you. Yes, yes. Apple is Good. Apple Never Fails. Apple has never put out a failure. Ignore that AppleTV gathering dust over there. Ignore the corpses of Macs past. Ignore the switch to Intel. After all, Intel is Faster Than Those Other Chips we were using for many years..
Apple's hype machine is at it again, spinning up the jihad of faithful and the fifth column of media it has cultivated over the years to make sure everyone Really Really likes the iPhone. Ignore that little faux pas over who had the trademark to iPhone. There is now only one iPhone and Apple makes it.
Sprint and others think iPhone is a passing fad, right or wrong. Certainly if you have the need for speed, there's EVDO and EVDO Rev A. Compare that what iPhone is connected to on the Cingular, er AT&T Wireless network.
Ah well. Apple needs the money...
Posted by dmohney at 10:32 PM | Comments (0)
June 13, 2007
Network Solutions "Renewal" Notice
I just received my renewal notice from Network Solutions for one of my domain names. It's paper. Paper good for these sorts of things.
I'm in danger of losing one of my domain names if I don't renew by September 2008. Yes, September 2-0-0-8. Since it's mid-June 2007, you could say that either A) Network Solutions would like to get my money faster or B) They want to annoy me so I'll just switch over to GoDaddy or someone else.
The IRS, Virginia MVA, and hordes of other agencies requiring regular renewal don't start flogging the horse more than a year out.
What a shakedown. Given the headaches I had the last time I had to "verify" my identity -- fax over a driver's license copy and oh-by-the-way they won't tell you what their data retention policy is on that sort of stuff -- do I need any more reminders from them?
Posted by dmohney at 06:26 PM | Comments (0)
June 11, 2007
Affordable Fault Tolerance
Once upon a time, if you wanted a fault-tolerant machine that would run without interruptions, the price tag started at $500,000 and included proprietary hardware and software. Today, the price tag starts at $10,000, according to some of the vendors I've been talking to.
Industry-standard (i.e. PC and Intel-based) components have driven down the price tag of hardware, so it's easy enough to build a fault-tolerant server for a bit more than you would a single stand-alone server.
Others advocate the tactic of "Lots of cheap" networked at the IP level, so if you lose a component it's an easy plug-and-replace job. The problem with "lots of cheap" is it adds additional complexity. Additional complexity means the potential to generate additional problems and failure points.
The FT camp says rather than buying two (2) servers and the assorted off-the-shelf stuff, buy one (1) FT machine -- which by-the-way may cost LESS than the lash-up for two servers + other gear -- and save yourself time, money, and complexity. One box to manage, one piece of gear, turn it on, it works and keeps on working.
Posted by dmohney at 11:31 AM | Comments (0)
June 08, 2007
New cell phones = Latest patent hostage crisis
Sooner or later, the patent lawyers are going to piss off the wrong people and they aren't going to be happy with the final outcome.
In the latest "Perils of Pauline" patent adventure, the U.S. International Trade Commission has banned the import of all future models of cell phones using 3G tech from Qualcomm that have been found to infringe upon a Broadcom patent.
This ruling could leave a laundry list of names, including phone manufacturers Motorola and Samasung and cell operators AT&T, Sprint Nextel and Verizon Wireless, in the lurch.
Everyone wants to sell faster 3G services, but this puts a big roadblock in getting more 3G phones into circulation until Qualcomm and Broadcom can work out some sort of arrangement.
However, why did this have to happen in the first place? We already saw this sort of brinkmanship during the Great BlackBerry Patent Fight. Does BroadCom win anything other than money in this fight? Does Qualcomm save anything other than money (which they will likely end up burning in legal feels and lobbying to get the ITC decision lifted)?
Another straw on the patent camel's back...
Posted by dmohney at 04:39 PM | Comments (0)
June 04, 2007
Blogs aren't for everyone
A lot of people have a fond love of the Blog. I'm not really one of them.
Blogging means being a slave to posting things. What did I do today that was so cool? What did I see what was so hip? Who do I want to scream at?
Too much emotion, combine with shooting from the hip. Do you really CARE if I tell you my favorite artist is Stevie Nicks? What does it matter in the larger scheme of IP Communications or PR?
Many corporations have "blogs" but you already know they are not spontaneous shoot-from-the-hip this-is-what-I-really think street creds type info. It's edited propaganda pap, measured for content and sanitized of any real flavor, like going to Taco Bell and expecting to get something that resembles real Mexican cuisine. Let me tell you something, my buddy Jerry at TacoFiesta (www.tacofiesta.com) knows Mexican food and it's a crying shame I can't get his Aunt Liche's chili anymore.
*sigh*
Many news blogs are nothing more than glorified and RSS-ed websites, it being easier to quick-post a blog entry than to take another two seconds to set up and organize web pages.
Certainly, the technology is great to post information, but how much information do you really need? Do you need to post every day? Every single day? Every single day without fail? Oh man, do I ever feel a Sam Kinison moment coming on.
Posted by dmohney at 11:19 PM | Comments (0)
May 22, 2007
Print is Dead. So were Trade Shows
"Print is dead, print is dead, long live the Internet..." go the naysayers.
"Trade shows are dead, trade shows are dead, long live the Internet," was the party line out of people who should have known better a decade ago.
If print is dead, then why does Rupert Murdoch want to buy the Wall Street Journal? Why have any number of newspaper deals gone down over the last twelve to twenty-four months?
I remember any number of "experts" who were gushing about the wonderful glory about Virtual Trade Shows and, oh, yes, you'd never need to go to a trade show ever again. Instead, you'd do everything on line. Blah, blah, blah, blah.
Fast-forward to the real world today, with CES and NAB still pulling mega-crowds to Vegas (and let's not even get to things like the outdoor equipment events)... with the virtual trade show concept DEAD DEAD DEAD. People don't even try to pretend/fake it anymore.
If virtuality were all that wonderful, Jeff Pulver wouldn't be a frequent flyer on multiple airlines, hmmmm?
So, what about print? Despite having the Internet, I still go to the mailbox every day to see what shows up.
I get better quality junk mail through "snail mail" than I ever have from the Internet. And less volume. Why is that?
Since people have to spend "real money" to send junk mail, they tend to work on the presentation and quality -- and it shows. The barriers for entry -- both in money and legally -- means that the Nigerians who have hundreds of millions of dollars of unclaimed dollars in offshore accounts WON'T BOTHER ME.
And "junk" mail gets at least one good look before it is thrown away; can you say the same with e-mail? SPAM filters at the ISP, mail provider, and locally end up killing a good chunk 'o junk.
So, when something glossy with a bunch of pages AND something I am interested in arrives in my mailbox, I'm more likely to take time to read through it.
Magazines come and go all the time. People bemoan/obsess about the death of a printed InfoWorld, but a lot of computer/IT magazines lost their way over the decades, failing to fine tune both their content and their subscriber base. The death of Boardwatch magazine is a case study in how to take a perfectly good product and running it into the ground.
Print is adjusting, and continues to adjust. If anything, some types of print have exploded. How many "free" newspapers have sprung up over the past three years? The D.C. area has two of them -- one that shows up on my lawn (! Talk about expensive delivery), the other handed out at Metro stops by the Washington Post. I mean with paper and ink and everything.
Posted by dmohney at 11:04 AM | Comments (0)
May 18, 2007
Euro Political Riots in Second Life - America Next?
First France, now Spain.
Both countries have had political unrest spill over into full-blown riots into Second Life. According to Reuters, supporters of socialist and socialist and conservative parties are trying to burn down each others' party offices, with violence including bombs, fires, and submachine guns.
In January, French factions fought it out in Second Life with missiles, mini-guns and pig grenades, with the violence ultimately "destroying" the far-right Front National (virtual) headquarters.
Pig Grenades. Hmm.
This is giving me a headache to think what will happen when U.S. hotheads collide.
Of course, one might argue blog-o-ticians have been throwing text bombs for any number of years. If nothing else, let's credit the French for showing some style...
Posted by dmohney at 12:07 AM | Comments (0)
May 12, 2007
A Place With No Love For Cell Phones
Mobile freaks need to take a trip down to the hospital and watch how fast they'd get dirty looks from the staff in whipping out their cell phones.
A large hospital I wandered through this week had jumbled zones of "No cell phones allowed," "No cell phones within 3 feet of the monitoring equipment," to 4 and 5 bar Sprint reception in the basement cafeteria.
A couple of the wings had the wireless 2.4 GHz SpectraLink VoIP system installed, but there were a few "no go" zones for that equipment as well.
In this environment, the hard-wired phone becomes a necessity, as well as a way to quickly update directories for patients moved from wing to wing. The phones also serve as "punch card" devices for maintenance tasks -- dial a central number, then punch in a code to indicate task completion.
Finding patients on the move from rooms to labs to post-op to rooms can be a challenge for visitors. An ideal solution would be an RFID tag embedded into a patient's wristband and readers stationed around the building to note movement from zone to zone... but there's the bugaboo of RF interference mucking with the equipment again.
It can't be a big problem for hospital management because they always manage to send you the bill, regardless of the outcome.
Posted by dmohney at 10:34 AM | Comments (0)
May 11, 2007
One problem - Three X Rays
On Wednesday evening, a man in an outlying county to Washington D.C. has trouble breathing, dizzyness, goes to his local hospital (Calvert), goes to the ER, gets a chest X-ray in the diagnostic process.
Man is diagnosed with severe heart problems, arrangements are made to move him ASAP to MedStar and Washington Hospital Center early on Thursday morning.
Man gets a bumpy uncomfortable ride to MedStar, arrives in the ER -- one of the best in the D.C. area -- along with his stack of medical records from Calvert, and his first chest X-ray.
MedStar shoots a second chest X-ray shortly after arrival, says this one will be in the "computer system" at Washington Hospital Center. Not that there's a scanner to load in the original X-ray film that would be cheaper and quicker just to scan in the first chest X-ray.
Man is moved upstairs to Coronary Care Unit (CCU) at Washington Hospital Center in an hour or so, admitted, poked, prodded. During process, another technician comes in to attempt to take a THIRD chest X-Ray. Something about the second X-ray not being in the system.
They might have taken a third X-ray later in the day; details are blurry at this point.
It's 2007 and hospitals are, at best, islands of data; at worst, they can't even store and move data from one specialist or primary care physician to an ER in the same building.
Ignore the expense for a moment and just think about the TIME and ENERGY it takes to repeat the same tests. If you want to be paranoid, you can fret about the overexposure to radiation, but frankly, I'm not so sure if that's an issue at this stage of the game...
Verizon is offering their employees an "Electronic Personal Health Records tool." Participating employees can use the tool to store health care information on a password-protected web site, which employees and their designated health care providers can access from anywhere in the world.
Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I hope Verizon beats a lot of people over the head about interoperability, because it would really be annoying if employees keep one set of records and health care providers stuck to their own islands based upon who owns them.
Posted by dmohney at 01:51 PM | Comments (0)
May 07, 2007
Two Degrees of (Amusing) Blog Separation
I hate to blog about another blog posting, but Verizon's PolicyBlog posting about Jeff Pulver getting FiOS is a hoot.
(Now if someone would only credit me with turning Jeff on to the power of EVDO, I'd be really happy).
Anyway, the many levels of messages being sent here are amusing--
1) "Look, FiOS is so cool even Mikie, er Jeff Pulver likes it!"
2) "Hi Jeff, we really do pay attention to you. Yes, we are watching you blog. No need to send us an e-mail or a memo, just post it..."
Speaking of blogging, I recently received some feedback through my wife talking to her college roommate, who is in turn married to someone who reads my blog... but no, I can't be simply bought off by a trip to Fenway Park. And I don't hate all PR people; just the 80 percent who can't be bothered to do their homework.
Posted by dmohney at 11:35 AM | Comments (0)
May 02, 2007
The second part of the second half of trade show season begins next week
The second part of the second half of the trade show season is winding up...
(The first half of the trade show season running from September through early December, and the second half starting in January and ending up in June...)
Now that we're all clear on where we are...
Next week is The Cable Show in Las Vegas. Interop is May 20-25.
Moving into June, there's the Spring 2007 VON Europe in Stockholm, June 11-14 and then NXTComm following to "close off" the trade show season.
I'm scheduled to go to NXTComm in Chicago. Wish I could go to The Cable Show to see the high-speed cable gear (Over 100 Mbps!) ARRIS is demoing, but I'll have to catch it another time. There's some seriously cool cable technology coming out and in the pipeline that is going to make the fiber optic types sweat and the DSL people cry.
People spend the month of July recovering and on vacation. In August, people should start planning and/or executing for the startup of the next "season" in September.
Posted by dmohney at 01:01 PM | Comments (0)
April 27, 2007
Unified Communication - OK, I'm (almost) a believer
Between Dialogic, Microsoft, Acme Packet, and the folks at Mitel, I've become convinced that unified communication (UC)is something more than some good words and Powerpoint.
Dialogic thinks that the driving force in selling their boards and appliances into the Enterprise space over the next couple of years is UC. At their Boston press briefing, they had Microsoft present a vision based upon the migration off of TDM into hybrid networks. Once you have IP in the network, you're half way to UC.
Acme Packet's Seamus Hourihan (VP Marketing and Product Management) pointed out to me if you're spending all that money for new IP communication infrastructure just to save a few bucks, it doesn't make sense. IP communications is not a "black phone" replacement, but enables enhanced collaboration, white boarding, and all kinds of other bells and whistles.
Finally, I'm looking over the Mitel purchase of Inter-Tel and seeing them drop the UC phrase as the first phrase when they start rattling off company strengths.
Posted by dmohney at 12:51 AM | Comments (0)
April 12, 2007
A day at VON
People wonder why I look so dog-eared during the day at VON, so I wanted to share a "typical" day at a trade show for a reporter/editor, based upon my schedule of Tuesday, March 20.
6:30 AM - Get up, start the e-mail, have things download while in the shower. 57 e-mails before breakfast
7:30 AM - Press/Analyst Briefing with Sylantro
8:30 AM - Go back to room, process/sort e-mail. Watch another 20 download.
Between 9 and 10 AM - Go watch keynote speech with Jeff Pulver and others. Take pictures.
11:00 AM - Meeting with BroadSoft
11:30 AM - Meeting with GenBand; can't talk to me yet, something "big" in the works. Turned out GenBand was buying Tekelec's switching bits.
12:00 - Briefing lunch with Aculab
1:00 PM - Meet with Surf Communications.
1:30 PM - Meet with Covad
2:00 PM - Meet with Owera
2:30 PM - Meet with NexTone
3:00 PM - Meet with someone else I can't remember
3:20 PM - Run back to room, download another 22 e-mails.
4:00 PM - Meet with Packet8
4:35 PM - Run back to room, start processing more e-mail.
5:45 PM - Moderate "SIP vs IMS: Are there distinctions?" Watch two of the panelists square off. Wish I had a ring so I could see them mano-a-mano rather than BulletPoint-v-BulletPoint. Room is packed, despite the late hour
6:50 PM - Thank the panelists, shake hand, run over to Hyatt St. Clare for dinner media event.
8:50 PM - Leave dinner, go back to room. Download 47 more e-mails. Get FOCUS e-newsletter prepped to go.
10:40 PM - Curse the person who sent a 1 MB PDF file, clogging up the other e-mails.
11:35 PM - Put FOCUS newsletter "to bed" for publication in morning. Go to bed. Have dreams of 1U form factor devices spitting out PDFs...
Posted by dmohney at 04:14 PM | Comments (0)
The Same Names - Someone is doing something right
Going through the last couple of layouts for VON Magazine, I've begun to notice some companies appear in print more often than others.
Why is that?
The outsider might attribute it to sloth (not) or money spent with the magazine (NOT).
From the inside, it's a bit different. VON Magazine has four "steady" editors that contribute pieces every month, a rotating set of writers for hardware, security, and testing, and a couple of columnists; call it nine people that regularly contribute to the magazine.
I see the same names and companies across multiple pieces, so what this means is the PR mechanisms -- internal and external -- promoting these companies have done an effective job in at least one of two areas.
1) Monitoring and being pro-active on the editorial calendar: They read and review the latest version of the VON Magazine editorial calendar. They understand they need to approach the writer well in advance of a piece (60-70 days) and they understand the editorial deadline for contribution is on the 10th of the month.
2) Approaching/establishing relationships with more than one writer. PR is a MARKET. Writers are your customers. Your story, your people, your experiences, your customer successes are your product.
Ya gotta sell the product to your (media) customers.
A lot of people Don't Get It. They label under the misconception that writers are just sitting around with nothing to do and the writer needs to contact them. (Where in reality, writers get all kinds of pitches every day, have to work every day to pay the bills, etc...)
Meanwhile, the more successful companies who do Get It -- the ones I keep seeing in the proofs every month -- understand that writers are their customers, have established relationships with them, and keep track of what their customers might be working on every month. They're doing a patient and successful job selling.
What have you done to sell your company today, mediawise?
Posted by dmohney at 03:50 PM | Comments (0)
April 06, 2007
MR 101 - Education for PR - 1 Day Event - Draft Vision
Shopping for a new PR firm? Looking to learn more about PR? If you're going to spend thousands of dollars per month on an external PR firm, shouldn't you spend a day and some (smaller) amount of money learning the most effective ways to work/use PR in the first place?
My vision is to have (currently hypothetical, nothing committed) an event whereby you, the designed marketing/PR person, staff or executive charged (i.e. stuck) with PR duties can come and learn more about media relations.
MR 101 - (MR = Media Relations) - would occur during the July/August time frame, with perhaps one session happening on the East Coast, one on the Left/West Coast. I know, it's during your "vacation"/downtime, but that's the POINT for two reasons: 1) If it's trade show season (i.e. September onward) you don't have the time and 2) Quite frankly, you should be doing strategic marketing and PR planning for the Fall and Spring "seasons" way before September.
MR 101 would provide context to what "PR" means, how it fits into the overall framework of marketing/marketing communications, what a reporter does, different techniques for pitching your story, and the like.
Let's face facts: If you are talking about press releases just the week before a big event, you've already lost the battle.
Dirty little secret: (with respect to Jim Dunnigan) A certain number of companies end up in print more often than others because they 1) Plan in advance, 2) Build a comprehensive 6-12 month plan 3) Steadily execute on their plan.
Dirty little secret #2: If you hire a PR firm and expect them to instantly get you in print in 90 days or less, you have, shall we say, unreasonable expectations. (For one thing, print cycles alone can be 60 days)
Speakers would include a combination of media people (i.e. like me) from different publications and principals from select PR firms. Participants would hear from media DIRECTLY, unfiltered by the spin of a Big-Name PR firm. Participants would also hear PR principals talk about the CUSTOMER'S responsibilities when it comes to PR, both what they should expect from a PR firm -- if they need one -- and what the customer should be expected to provide in terms of education, information, and oversight.
Sure, you can wind-up a PR firm and let it go off without supervision, but if you do so, doom on you, baby.
Do you like the idea? Are you interested? What would you want to learn about? If so, e-mail me; dmohney@vonmag.com is easiest.
I think the biggest problem in this hypothetical event is to keep it tight and functional, so you walk out of there with enough tools to be effective, rather than a heavy toolbox with stuff you don't have the time to use.
Posted by dmohney at 04:10 PM | Comments (0)
April 03, 2007
E-mail is not "Five-9"s reliant
E-mail is not "Five-9"s reliant, although many companies and PR firms assume it is.
Let me translate that into English: E-mail is not as reliant as the legacy "POTS" telephone call. But many assume that it is -- at their own peril and/or headaches.
Time to get out the virtual whiteboard and explain further....
The term "Five-9s" and shorthanded by me here refers to the cliche/statement that such-and-such a thing is 99.999 percent reliable. So if we were talking about a telephone system, it would be NOT be available for less than 6 minutes a year...
(There's a whole school of thought about the "myth of the nines," but you get my point -- On any given day, and on most days of the year, you'll have dial tone and be able to place a phone call on a POTS line without breaking a sweat).
People have come to ASSUME the same reliability of e-mail -- on any given day, most days of the year, your e-mail message will get through.
Now, you KNOW that isn't true, correct?
Let me tell you my little Spring 2007 VON story to illustrate. Over the course of the four day event, news@vonmag.com -- the e-mail box for press releases -- received about 183 unique press releases that were published in the electronic newsletter. On some bizarre impulse, I checked the FILTERED e-mail folder on our web mail service and found two releases hung up in it. Filtered e-mail doesn't get POP'ed off (downloaded), so there's two e-mails missed right there.
Out of that raw sample, we come up with 98.9 percent reliability -- not even two nines, unless we round upward.
More disturbingly, I found a couple of e-mails from VON Mag's Director of sales in the DELETED items folder; the filters on my laptop labeled the inbound mail as SPAM. Why? I don't know, but I had to add her as a trusted user and now things are OK, but you see my point.
Unfortunately, there's no easy solution to this. E-mail is reliability enough, but not TOO reliable.
You could call everyone you send e-mail to, but that's time-consuming and could be annoying to the person you are calling (I received 57 e-mails before breakfast on Tuesday at Spring VON -- I don't have the time to even take a fraction of "confirm" phone calls).
Some PR firms have a knee-jerk habit of re-mailing if they see any sort of error message - this is not smart as in best-case, I now have double the releases. Worst case, this sort of mass-mail behavior trips a spam filter threshold and then NONE of their e-mail gets through.
Return-receipt-requested? No, that's also annoying if you have to pad through 57 e-mails before breakfast, and then someone on the receipt end has to match up receipts with a mailing list. Sounds non-trivial.
A second e-mail a few days later, asking if I received the first e-mail? (See above: 57 e-mails before breakfast).
Don't know if there is a solution to make everyone happy.
Posted by dmohney at 09:16 PM | Comments (0)