Usher Blogs

Into the Breach

Would seem someone has figured out how to defeat TypePad's comment-spam control system, because the security measures that worked for the past 6 months ain't working now.

And, what is the point of spam anyway, really.  I don't get it.  So much of it has no call to action. I understand the dubious marketer looking for the one-in-a-million to click a link or order the counterfeit viagra or whatever.  But so much of the spam is just non-sensical...in the case of the comment spam its all meaningless links (I get the supposed value in that) but so much of the email spam (and there's been a real increase in just the past couple of weeks) has just been true nonsense with no point and no obvious scheme...

Anyway, a pox on all their houses.

Where's the News?

According to The New York Times and its reporter Michael Barbaro:

   

"What is different about Wal-Mart's approach to blogging is that         rather than promoting a product — something it does quite well, given     its $300 billion in annual sales — it is trying to improve its             battered image."

I am not sure how this makes Wal-Mart unique.  Earlier in the story there is a reference to GE meeting with environmental bloggers before investing in green technology "to build support."  Is that promoting a product other than the GE brand?  Is that wrong? 

Having a strong brand helps promote and sell product.  Selling is not necessarily evil, even when it is done in obscene quantities.  Both companies are engaged in grassroots PR and they're not alone and that is a good thing.  Wal-Mart's brand is under attack and they have every right to defend themselves.  Wal-Mart probably does a lot of good, but with a footprint of their size they are bound to trample at least as much. 

The real question (which the Times didn't ask) and its answer are what is actually newsworthy...will Wal-Mart take advantage of the blogosphere as a two way dialogue?  Rather than working only with their friends, will they engage their critics in the blogosphere, open a dialogue, and use blogs as a platform for addressing their concerns.  Wal-Mart is too big and too polarizing today to win over everyone, but by listening to all of their constituents and working on reasonable criticisms, my guess is that they will win more hearts and minds than they lose. (the low prices help too).

Keyword searching is not currently supported...

The Wayback Machine is kind of like a video tape of the vast majority of the Internet's history, capturing probably too much for posterity, but such are the times we live in. 

I don't know what the copyright situation would look like, but why wouldn't Google (or someone else) offer to make it keyword accessible?  It could conceivably be sold as a service to law firms, pr firms, media, and anyone else interested in paying for that kind of capability, or have ads attached to search results or both.  Though being a non-profit Wayback might frown on such behavior, and I imagine that's why it hasn't yet happened.

If that's the case, Google should just donate the capabilities and maybe even the developer resources to make it happen.  It'd be a PR win that supports their mission and adds polish to the "informal corporate motto, 'don't be evil.'"

Google

I'm Gonna Die Screams the Nanomaker

The email I got from Apple (below) on a nearly brand new iPod seems like extortion to me.  They're telling me that the thing is likely going to break and you're going to need phone support and if you don't pay us now we're going to charge you through the teeth later.

I think it is outrageous that consumer technology companies charge for phone support at all, though Apple is surely not alone here.  Phone support should be viewed instead as the data mine it is.  Use its data to improve products and marketing messages and above all make things that will actually work, not ones that will cause a menacing headache as you migrate iTunes libraries from one PC to another in order to consolidate a family of 5's 4 iPod's. 

If I were Sony or anyone else determined to break Apple's stranglehold on portable entertainment I would start advertising free phone support, not just for my own products but for Apple's as well.  Huddle the lawyers and get the disclaimers in a row and then engage each one of Apple's *somewhat* dissatisfied customers (dissatisfied by definition that they are calling in a problem with the device) and figure out what sort of product(s) would get them endure the switching costs.

Now that is (potentially expensive but effective) guerilla warfare. If they sue you, enlist the Naderites and eat them alive in the media as a company not interested in helping its customers.

ipod Apple nano walkman Sony

Think About It...

The digitization of our lives may in fact be the evil or benign design of aliens or other Intelligent Designer(*gasp*). It will at least represent an amazing historical record for anthropologists in the future. 

 

Whereas historians and anthropologists today crave to understand how people 1000 years ago lived through examining their tools, dishes, and other artifacts, historians 1000 years from now will have a very firm understanding of not only how we lived, but how individuals think.  

 

The search records held by Google and others are an amazing archive of what people are thinking...it is really quite fascinating, and if aliens are watching now they already know an awful lot about you (and so does Google your ISP and coming soon to a courtroom near you, the US Government too!)

Shocked (gasp...not really)

TypePad stats are down (again.)  What a surprise.

What are you looking for?

Before Usher Raymond hit the scene, most people who asked about my name would say something trite like "were you conceived in a movie theater" or perhaps something slightly more intellectual such as were your parents fans of Edgar Allen Poe?  The real answer is that my grandfather was named Usher and that Usher is a derivative of Asher. 

Nowadays that has changed to, "Usher, like the singer?"  To which I need to find a wittier response, and I'm open to suggestions.  Maybe I should try just humming a few bars of one of his songs.

Anyway, I've noticed something funny since I started tracking the stats on my blog (of which there aren't that many.)  Probably half of everyone who ventures on this blog has done a search for "Usher" or "Phat Usher Pics" or something like that.  Now, I'm not entirely sure what these people are looking for, but I'd say its a fair bet that they didn't find it here. 

Of course if I were really smart I'd figure out a way to capitalize on that traffic and make a few shekels (now that I've put the words "Usher" and "Raymond" together, I think my stats are going to jum again.)  In the meantime, thanks for stopping in and good luck finding what you are looking for and rest assured this is likely the last time I mention Usher Raymond on my blog.

Google History?!

I love maps and globes. I'm kind of a geography geek and I'm fascinated by history.  Spending probably too much time fooling around with Google Earth, it occured to me what a great teaching and learning tool historical globes can be (and already are).  Suppose you could look at any year in history and see where the borders, kingdoms, tribal lands, overlapping tribal lands, topography, climate, etc. looked like.

I think Google Earth could be a great platform for building a compendium history of the entire world.  What if a group of accredited and *invited* professional and amateur historians who represent a wide range of views and expertise areas could help draw lines, showing us graphically and globally where the Sioux Nation was in 1600, the Carthaginians at the height of their empire, the Han Dynasty at its pinnacle, etc.  What about being able to see where different religions dominated and when, ethnicities, etc. and be able to see (probably through color coding and overlapping color coding) how different peoples lived together (and often killed each other).  Being able to look at the world so broadly and drill down narrowly (I think) helps us understand the past and present.

This is an idea with legs, and I think its both a great open source project/problem, and economically viable, even as a non-profit.

I think this supports Google's mission of organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful.  Would Google ever consider seeding such a project?

I think if Google doesn't Microsoft (or Apple or whomever wants to be known in the education market) should seed this kind of project because if successful it will be the reference tool for every classroom in the world (or should be.)

What do you think?

Technorati Tags:
Google
Google Earth
Encarta

Mother May I?

Maybe I haven't fooled around enough with it, but can I create an RSS feed for Google searches...I know there is one for news, and I saw an RSS feed for Google searches through Bloglines' auto discovery for RSS feeds at www.google.com, but it was non obvious and beyond my (albeit limited) ability to manipulate it.

Seems like a good place for RSS, probably a good place for value-added RSS, i.e. the ability to put some analytical tools on top of changes in search rankings.  Or, is this already being done and I'm just behind the times? I did notice that Technorati doesn't have RSS for keyword searches but does have it for tags.

Tags are good, but as someone watching multiple companies I want to run an RSS feed of a specific search string in several places.  I saw through Brad Feld's blogroll that Newsgator does keyword searches, and that is helpful, but again, I want an RSS feed that monitors changes to Google searches and I'm not the least bit perturbed if they want to insert ads into that feed.

Media Beef

Below is the full text of an exchange with an unnamed journalist who happens to write for a very powerful East Coast daily.  Our exchange raises some interesting topics for discussion with regards to the overlapping roles of PR people and journalists.   

The exchange was infuriating for me because we as PR people spend a lot of time hearing about journalists who can’t stand when PR people pitch them material that is inappropriate to their beat, or don’t respect their deadlines, or commit any number of other cardinal sins.  In this case I think the journalist showed no respect for my client’s time and the process the client has in place to ensure journalists do in fact get a timely response.

The order of events is as follows:

In the middle of last week the reporter left a voicemail for the CEO of a company that hasn’t sought his attention in the past.  (We have specifically avoided him because our story seemed too technical for his beat.)  The voicemail simply said that he’s working on a story and that two *very* large and powerful players in a related space have said less than flattering things about my client's technology.  There was no urgency or mention of a deadline in the voicemail.  I recognize that the job of a daily news reporter is filled with deadlines and perhaps I failed my client by not instilling that constant urgency in him.  However, as he was offsite Wednesday and Thursday and there was no urgency in the message I did not receive it until Friday. 

At no point did the reporter try and contact the person listed as “media contact” on the company's Web site (me).  When I received the message I did a quick review of what the journalist has written recently and returned his call.  His outbound message was that he was on vacation through Monday.  I left a voicemail and sent the following email:

________________________________________

Hi [NAME REDACTED],

Left you a voice mail but wanted to be sure you had my contact information
handy. Not sure if you're still working on a story about [the very large players] , and still need [my client's] input.

If so, please give me a call. We're happy to talk but I want a sense of
what the others have had to say before I get our CEO on the phone to
respond.

If we're beyond your deadline, we'll just read it in print and go from
there. Hope you are having a great vacation.

Regards,
-Usher
.......................................
The Usher Group, Inc.
[Phone number included in the original]
JID: ulieberman@jabber.com
msn: usherml@hotmail.com
AIM: usher6236 | Y! Usher62_36
http://usherblogs.typepad.com
.......................................

________________________________________

The writer responded by cc’ing the CEO as follows:  (Actually, his message contained 3 cc addresses, each of them a potential permutation of the CEO’s email address)

________________________________________

From: [NAME REDACTED]
Sent: Friday, October 14, 2005 2:38 PM
To: usher@theushergroup.com
Cc: [CONTACT ADDRESS REMOVED]
Subject: Re: [my client]

Usher--

I am very very disappointed that [CEO] chose not to return my call when I needed him. [your client] is too small, and in too fast moving industry, to bounce things to PR agencies that take days to be responsive to urgent calls, not to mention agencies that want to ask inappropriate questions about other reporting we have done.

If [your client] wants a relationship with The [daily newspaper], [CEO] can call me directly.

Best
[NAME REDACTED]

________________________________________

Today on behalf of my client I responded with the following email, cc'ing my client's CEO as well as the newspaper's managing editor as follows:

[NAME REDACTED] –

The [daily newspaper] is important to [my client], but their CEO is not at your beck and call.  [my client] is an [specific technology] infrastructure company and I’ll  address what that might have to do with your story, but I do try hard not to waste the time of media who aren’t going to understand and likely not cover our story.  I am listed as the media contact on [my client's] Web site to ensure that journalists of all stripes do get access to the spokespeople they need to hear from in a timely manner.  It is my job to be at your disposal, and had you called me directly – at any point – we would have been able to meet any deadline. 

Instead, you called a CEO with whom you have no prior relationship (or any relationship with the company or it would seem much knowledge of the company itself) and said in a voicemail that [two very large and powerful companies] have less-than-fantastic things to say about [my client's] technology.  Our CEO was in customer meetings until Friday, not that this is any of your business. You didn’t indicate urgency, you assumed that your name and publication was enough to stir anyone, certainly the CEO of growing company that might benefit from a “relationship with The [daily newspaper],” as you put it. 

When I got your message I responded immediately.  Before [my client] wandered into a battle fought by giants, I wanted a bit more perspective and I apologize if you found my message insulting.  [my client] does not offer [competing] solutions, therefore, we don’t compete with [the really big players] and we don’t compete with [their primary competitors] either.  We do however arm some of these companies with technology tools and services.  For your reference, [one significant competitor to the two companies you mentioned] is not a customer, though [another of their significant competitors] is a partner.  [the first of these competitors] selected [the open source version of my client's technology] on which to build [a new product], and they probably did this because [of specific key benefits].  If there are a lot of applications you want to embed with [a particular derivative of this type of technology] and reliably deliver them as a service to other applications and/or people anywhere, [our stuff] just plain works (and it has also been sanctioned by the primary standards body, the IETF.) 

If you would like more information about [my client or their technology], feel free to contact me. As far as a response, to [the really big players'] comments, it would be inappropriate for me to respond further without more context.

As to [my client's] relationship with The [daily newspaper], feel free to drop me a note or call anytime. 

Regards,
-Usher

________________________________________

Now I understand the job of reporting is difficult and I try hard, not always successfully, to respect the media’s time and send pitches only to the people for whom they are appropriate.  Is it too much to ask that the priorities and time of my client be respected as well? 

The reason my client lists my name as the only media contact for the company is to ensure media calls get the attention they require. 

A small company that has dedicated PR resources is a company that respects the role of the media.  My role is not to get in the media’s way and run interference; it is to ensure that when your call comes in it is elevated to the appropriate level, quickly.  That is not the role of the CEO nor should it be.  Respect a CEOs time, even if you have no respect and/or appreciation for the role of PR, it will save everyone some unnecessary effort.