What is RSS and why should you care? Consensus is that RSS is an acronym for Real Simple Syndication. Syndication is the key word here. Wikipedia defines RSS as “a family of XML file formats for web syndication used by (amongst other things) news websites and weblogs”.
Now, if you’re anything like me (non-techie), that may as well be German. This is how I understand RSS:
CGM “encompasses the millions of consumer-generated comments, opinions and personal experiences posted in publicly available online sources on a wide range of issues, topics, products and brands” and originates from:
* Blogs
* Message boards and forums
* Public discussions (Usenet newsgroups)
* Discussions and forums on large email portals (Yahoo!, AOL, MSN)
* Online opinion/review sites and services
* Online feedback/complaint sites (www.hellopeter.com)
Intelliseek have published a concise report on Consumer-Generated Media: What it is, why it’s important and how it’s growing.
I like their “speakers” and “seekers” concept.
Gizmodo has just notified us that the PS3 is available on pre-order from Amazon.com.
My mom never let me get a PS1 – said it would interfere with my schoolwork.
My wife won’t let me get a PS2 – something about “but I’ll never see you!”. Can’t imagine why.
No-one is stopping me from getting one of these babies!
I am not a person who is particularly fond of manuals on “how to become a leader” or the “7 steps to becoming effective” or books on “how to win friends and influence” but I really liked Jeff Immelt’s recent interview in FAST COMPANY (July 2005) where he provided a quick and dirty list of the 10 “Things Leaders Do.” Check it out.
1. Personal Responsibility.
“Enron and 9/11 marked the end of an era of individual freedom and the beginning of personal responsibility. You lead today by building teams and placing others first. It’s not about you.”
2. Simplify Constantly.
“I always use Jack [Welch] as my example here. Every leader needs to clearly explain the top three things the organization is working on. If you can’t, then you’re not leading well.”
I’m heading to China next Saturday (27 Aug) for 10 days. My Dad is going there on a geological research trip and I offered to carry his luggage – and he agreed. Hooray! I’ve wanted to go to China for a few years now and especially would like to be there for the 2008 Olympics – yet it’s happening now. We’re going to Heilongjiang which is the northern-most Chinese province, the capital of which is Harbin (the “Ice City”) where they have the massive ice sculptures in January that sometimes make it onto our news. Our destination is just north of Mudanjiang – a city of 1/2 a million people.
The question is – how can this benefit TomorrowToday.biz?
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There is a rumbling in the blogosphere… Blog Business Summit 2005 officially kicked off yesterday in San Francisco, attracting some of the world’s finest writers, web guru’s, uber-geeks and a horde of eager-to-learn companies to hear leading blogging experts share their knowledge.
Business Blog Consulting has most of it’s regular contributors (a who’s who collection of professional bloggers around the globe) attending the Summit, and naturally, all of them have something to say about it on the blog.
Here are some mouth-watering excerpts:
Late last week, Roger Saner (our web uber-maester) and myself were meeting at a Coffee Shop to work through some web design issues. As we sat there, a woman who was meeting with a friend came over to us and said she was doing a feature on “The Third Space” – people who did work in coffee shops (not at home, or at an office), and asked us a few questions about what we were doing and why here, etc.
We have some experience in coffee shop culture – most people in TomorrowToday know which shops at every airport and in most shopping centres provide support for workers like ourselves. Click here to see one of Barrie’s experiences a few months ago.
I gave her my card, and it turns out she’s in the middle of reading my book, and wanted me to give her a more formal quote on the coffee shop culture we work in. If you’re interested, here is what I sent her.
The more business blogs I read, whether they are actual business blogs or sites about corporate blogging, the more I realise that corporates who embrace blogging are faced with a difficult challenge; guidelines vs. traffic. It’s rare to find both hand in hand.
Blogspotting comments on the fact that Intel bloggers are busy working on policies/guidelines/rules (all the same) for their sites. Who want to read blogs that are regulated?
This is an ongoing theme for blog publishers, personal and corporate, regardless of the blog’s application. Openness, transparency, vulnerability all generate TRAFFIC, but at great risk. You can implement guidelines and manage the risk, only to watch the readership dwindle. People want action!
Blogs, whether internal or external, should foster a culture of honesty and transparency, but most of all, vulnerability. The question is not whether or not to regulate blogs, it’s whether or not to make your blog public.
Your views?
Adage.com ran a story under this title on 27 July 2005 (read it here – requires free login). The basic argument is that some action groups are demanding that Congress regulate mobile phones marketed to children. The industry is clearly targeting young children as its next growth market. It sounds to me a little bit alarmist and over the top. The arguments include the fact that cellphones will distract children at school, and that “even though cell phones for children are marketed as a tool for children to contact parents in an emergency, in reality the phones allow advertisers of all kinds to better market to children. Despite the [wireless] industry’s rhetoric, [Walt] Disney and the telecommunications companies really want to use children as conduits to their parents’ wallets. And marketers want another way to bypass parents and speak directly to the nation’s children.”
Shock horror! Who would thought that advertisers were so evil – actually wanting to connect directly with kids? And what evil device is this cellphone that allows them to do something they have yet not been able to do via magazines, games, TV, radio, music, billboards, in store promotions, sponsorships, and many other techniques? Oh wait… they have been doing for some time now, haven’t they? (The article goes on to give some good stats about current cellphone usage amongst US kids).
Would it surprise you to know that Ralph Nader is behind this? Probably not. The lesson is simple – if you want to find a political hot potato, just kick up a fuss around the Millennial Kids of today – you’re bound to grab attention and win the sympathy vote. But I wish adults would think with their brains on these issues, and not get all neaderthal about the use of technology. Rather than banning their kids from using cellphones (Internet, TV, etc), why not spend some time teaching their children how to learn to discern for themselves what is good and bad, and give them techniques for managing the deluge of advertising information that flows our way each day. Why not? Because most parents don’t have these skills themselves. Maybe Ralph Nader should start educating, rather than protesting.
We all hate spam (except for the Monty Python “Spam” skit but that was, well, completely different. What I’m talking about is “Double the size of your pickle! Buy pharmacy products! Free OEM software!”). And there’s been very little way to fight back…until now! (cue big cinema music). The Blue Frogs are pioneering a way to stop spammers – by shutting down their websites if they don’t stop sending spam.
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I read this interesting article on the Fast Company website (click here to read the article.)
The article talks about “flow” – that state of being when you are completely immersed in doing something you love. And the question: how do we achieve that it business? Hmmm … some interesting ideas here.
Thanks to Steve Rubel for an awesome link.
The FedEx Furniture dot com guy (Jose) loves FedEx. So much so, that his entire apartment is furnished with FedEx packaging. He raves about it online and has an eclectic readership who are fascinated by his obsession.
As FedEx, how would you choose to respond to Jose? Include him in your marketing campaign? Fly him to HQ for a lunch with the CEO? Link to the blog from your website?
Apparently not…
…is Time Europe’s phrase-of-choice when describing word-of-mouth networks and tagging in this article entitled Taming the Wild Web, published on the 14th August.
A great quote from the article states, “…companies are banking on the notion that, in the aggregate, these (personal content) pages represent a gold mine of credible consumer information. “Whether you are referring someone to either a great restaurant or a local hairstylist, since the lead came from a trusted source, there’s a good chance that the person will be much more qualified to react not just to the content on the page, but also to the advertising”.
The social network that supports this blog (and is supported by the blog), got a taste of this magic in action when Barrie posted about his hair problem the other day…
Every now and again, I look back over our blog and select a few posts that have caught my attention. Anyone could do this – just list the best posts and give a reason why. It helps those people drowning in data to find a shallow end to paddle around in….
Here are mine:
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Today, in Durban, South Africa, 5 doctors gave themselves up to the police after warrants of arrest were issued for them (read News24 coverage). In short, they are part of a global network that buys and sells human organs, especially kidneys.
The story as it stands is that wealthy (mainly Israeli) clients pay up to $ 120,000 (yep!!) for a kidney transplant. Doctors in many countries, including the accused in South Africa act as middle men, and also do the surgery. The kidneys are sourced from donors in (mainly) Brazil, who are paid $ 10,000. Hospital fees can be up to $ 50,000, which means that these middle men who were in court today could earn as much as $ 60,000 per operation. They are known to have done more than 110 in the past few years.
This is technically illegal, and contravenes South Africa’s Trafficking in Human Organs Act. I don’t know why it should be illegal.
You gonna love this one. I’m not sure what else to add except (click here for the full story). It’s a beeeooot.
Certainly I would be stealing a sign or two if I passed through. In fact, I might even go there if I was in Austria just to steal a F**king sign.
Nuf Sed
Ooooh, this is a goodie. Possibly the best example of the Connection Economy I have seen at work.
The Business Experiment is an open-source business adventure. Check out this blog entry from the site which gives a short explanation of the concept. Go and read it, I can’t explain it better than it is explained there.
This is a space to watch. It could be the defining model for the way big business is started and run in the next few years. It could also be an almighty flop. Either way, it’s generated a fair bit of interest.
Reminds me of TmTd.biz’s business model, in a way. Maybe it’s not that original after all…
Or do you feel differently?
Wikipedia is an open source, free-to-use online encyclopedia built by people like us for people like us. In order to cater for cultures across the globe, Wikipedia offers it’s content in hundreds of different languages. Problem is, content is not simply translated from language to language, but instead each language enters its own interpretations as encyclopedia entries. It gets interesting when cultures differ on certain historical “facts”…
I attended a breakfast this morning where Sue Adkins an international expert on Cause Related Marketing did a presentation .
See more about her book at Kalahari.net or Amazon.com ISBN 0 7506 4481 8
What struck me was how technology is changing the global consumer . We are now able to view and be made aware of bad behaviour by corporates far away from their consumer base through the internet, television, blog sites, cellphone cameras etc. The statement that who you are will be much more important that what you sell is being defined through a new set of rules that cannot be controlled by governments or the mighty corporates of the past.
This is a great read for anyone interested in making a difference in the 21st century enviroment.
EULA = End User License Agreement. That annoying scroll-down window of text you always ignore when installing new software. I must’ve installed software hundreds of times, and never once read the agreement. My indifferent attitude has never come back to bite me, however, “World of Warcraft” gamers are finding out the hard way that they should think twice before selecting “I accept”…
I can’t make out if this is for real or a hoax web site? I guess with all the Hollywooders that make the apparently obvious transition from movies to politics you can’t be too sure? Check it out for yourself. Would you vote for Christopher Walken? (click here for the full story)
If you’re interested in the month’s top 500 blogs then check out Feedster’s list (click here) Each month they list 500 ‘interesting and important’ blogs. It’s based on how many hits a blog gets.
To be honest though I think I agree with Robert Scoble, the writer of the blog Scobeleizer, #74 this month (click here for his blog), “I’m far more honored by having people say “you’re interesting enough to read day after day.”
Ingrid Sanden’s one year old daughter has made it onto the infamous ‘no fly list’ (aka Advanced Passenger Information System) in the US, because her name is too closely linked to a possible terrorists name (click here for full story on CNN.com). Sanden lives in Washington and was flying internally when she was first stopped.
This is the list that got Cat Stevens booted out of the US last year for his Islam name Yusef Islam. In fact the plane he was on was diverted once his name popped up in the system. It wasn’t that he was accused of terrorism, it was that his name is similar to someone who might be linked to terrorism. Still he didn’t get into the US even after an interview. I’m sure there were good reasons?
While there are aparently over 100 000 people on the list, there is a system in place to help remove people who shouldn’t be in it. “The TSA has a “passenger ombudsman” who will investigate individual claims from passengers who say they are mistakenly on the lists. TSA spokeswoman Yolanda Clark said 89 children have submitted their names to the ombudsman. Of those, 14 are under the age of 2.”
Pete Carruthers is one of my favourite commentators (he needs a blog!). He sends out a regular email (click here to sign up for free), and is a great advocate (he calls himself a Warrior) for small business (mainly in South Africa, but his stuff is great for everywhere).
His latest email missive tells of his adventures with Nedbank. We’ve had some of those, too, so for your reading pleasure, here is how Pete Carruthers and his bank got on this past week…
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I picked up a kewl post on CherryFlava today (click here) about Blogging becoming a paid career opportunity in some companies on the globe.(click here for full article at Courier-Jornal.com)
Companies employing bloggers are seeing it as an opportunity to use a conversational style mechanism to connect with their clients. Says Gary Hirshberg, “With the blogs, we are giving a little bit more access to us as a people with a mission.”
Certainly the dangers are massive, for both blogging and the companies concerned. One hopes that blogging is developed and entrenched enough to withstand an assault from corporates looking to exploit another ‘open source’ medium? But the market is powerful and I have a feeling it will be the corporates who do it badly that will, in the end, feel the pain. “Don’t go toward fake blogs. Don’t launch character blogs. Use a blog for what it’s for, transparency,” said Steve Rubel, vice president of client services at CooperKatz & Co., a New York PR firm.
Here’s a post that you’ll all thank me for. You know how sometimes (well actually most of the time) you wish you could see what a web page looked like last year, or the year before that, or even way back in 1996, but you neglected to save it to your hard drive? NOT!
That’s where the WaybackMachine comes in (click here to check it out) They’ve stored all those sites you wish you could walk down memory lane on. Kewl.
They have a neat little gadget like thingy for your tool bar (just drag it), and then when you’re on a page that you’d like to see what it looked like ‘way back when’, you simply hit the newly created button, and waa-oop there it is.
So you’re involved in an accident. The paramedics arrive. You’re unconscious, but there’s a cell phone in your pocket/bag. Who do they phone to work out who you are, or who needs to be notified? That’s the idea behind the In Case of Emergency (ICE) campaign. Prompted by the London bombing it’s being promoted by emergency services in the UK, and has an e-mail now doing it’s rounds to drive us all crazy. (click here for story on BBC) or (here for Google search results).
The idea is simple really. Create an entry in your mobile phone address book under ICE with the number of the person you’d like called should you be found with your phone and unable to communicate to your rescuers. If you’ve got more than one person simply have an ICE 1, ICE 2, etc, etc. Although I can’t imagine an emergency worker standing over you phoning your entire list while you need some serious assistance?
Yes, imagine. Today’s CEO’s should be ashamed. In general, their companies are successful in spite of them. In general, their leadership styles (command and control, on the whole) are outdated, and not suitable for human performance improvement – a critical success factor in business today. And to top it all, many of them (if they ever read this post) would think “that’s not me”, because they have surrounded themselves for “yes men” who are too scared or too indoctrinated to say otherwise.
Imagine a new type of leader emerging in the 21st century – self-aware, emotionally intelligent, in tune with other people’s needs and aspirations, self-effacing, “level 5″ – whatever labels you want to use. Imagine.
In a recent article published by HR Innovators, they argue that the leader of the future is quite likely to emerge from the ranks of the HR and Recruitment professionals. Whilst acknowledging that these two disciplines have serious issues themselves, they point out some important characteristics for the leader of the future, and some advice for the HR professional who has designs on the CEO’s office. The article is worth reading and digesting – click here for the full text.
Red Nova News reports today from the San Jose Mercury News that as Northern Hemisphere students look forward to the opening of a new school year, a generation gap emerges – “what to buy for back to school?” Largely its a matter of what technology purchase will be most beneficial in the year ahead. In “Generation Gap Exists Between Kids, Parents Over Back-to-School Technology“, they argue that the difference is between functional and educational technologies (laptops, learning software, cellphones) and “cooler” tech items (iPods, gaiming consoles, etc). It seems that parents are winning this battle – kids have to buy their own desires with their own money. It might be a “new gap”, but some things never change.
What is the difference between good and bad service?
The 11th of August was a big day for me. It was Biannual Cellphone Upgrade day. Time to trade in my outdated (and somewhat worse for wear) Nokia 6100 for a shiny new handset. I’d checked out all the specials, seen the ads, and knew just what I wanted… the Nokia 6680.
Having called on a few customers in Midrand that morning, it made sense to me to pay the Mothership a visit. You’ve seen it – Vodaworld is prominently situated next to the N1 highway, a lifestyle-orientated, one-stop megastore for cellphone geeks. I was convinced that choosing to upgrade at Vodaworld (having had some dodgy experiences at Vodashops countrywide), would be a hassle-free experience. Besides, I once scored a hole-in-one on the 9th hole of the Pitch & Putt course and was hoping to have another go at it. However…
The 11 March 2010 edition of the TIME magazine had a great cover article on “10 ideas for the next 10 years“. In the same edition, Nancy Gibbs (who has often written on generational issues for TIME), wrote an interesting short piece on how young people perceive the generation gap these days. It’s [...]
A report under this title appeared in the New York Times on 12 March 2010. It’s a great example of a few things, but especially of the power of social media, and the fact that innovation (and competition) can come from anywhere these days.
Read the story of how technology developed in the aftermath of [...]
For years banks and credit card companies have held a strangle hold over the movement of money and charged exorbitant rates for doing so. Now this is changing and fast.
Michale Ivey the founder of Twitpay has devised a system, using code that PayPal made available to him, that allows people to make payments [...]
In the last few hours the 10 billionth tweet was tweeted on Twitter. As one would imagine there was all kinds of hype and excitement, as Tweeps with the necesary skills attempted to predict the time it would happen, and I imagine even be ‘the one’?
My last tweet was 9999989724. Wild. Will be at 10 [...]
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