Thursday, March 31, 2005

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #20: March 31, 2005

Content summary: Listeners’ comments: audio comments and a few written ones, too, on VNRs, multimedia search, and new blogs; Elizabeth Albrycht’s advice column; Nielsen-Norman’s top 10 intranets; Microsoft’s newly named stripped-down Windows XP for Europe; new bloggers at GM’s Fastlane blog; Yahoo 360; faux blogs; and monitoring employees’ onliine behavior.

Show notes for March 31, 2005

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Welcome to For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, a 63-minute conversation recorded live from Los Angeles, California, USA, and the UK.

Download the file here (MP3, 28MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need software such as the FeedDemon RSS aggregator, or the free ipodder or DopplerRadio).

In this edition:

Intro:

  • 00:29 Shel on what’s in this week’s show; how to give your feedback; show notes
  • 02:01 Comments from the last show

Features:

  • 28:36 Elizabeth Albrycht’s new blog advice column
  • 29:53 Nielsen-Norman’s 2005 top 10 intranet listing
  • 35:29 Microsoft and the EU settle on a new name for Windows XP in Europe
  • 35:29 New executives are blogging to the General Motors Fastlane blog
  • 39:50 Yahoo launches Yahoo 360
  • 44:34 Faux blogs
  • 47:49 Employee monitoring

Outro:

  • 58:07 Comments and show notes reminder

Music:

If you have comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for our future shows, email us at comments@forimmediaterelease.biz, or call the Comment Line at +1 206 984 0931. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

So, until Thursday March 31…

Click “More” to read Carl Rogat’s e-mail about multimedia search.

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Posted by shel on 03/31 at 12:11 PM
Show Notes • (2) Comments • Permalink

Monday, March 28, 2005

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #19: March 28, 2005

Content summary: Listeners’ comments: keep it up, ego boosting and a listening experience; video news releases and responsibilities; relying or not on third-party web services; new tool for tracking where a conversation goes; the Disney mouse that roared; asking the blogosphere for input on policy; the risks of writing and posting without due diligence.

Show notes for March 28, 2005

Download MP3 podcast

Welcome to For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, a 70-minute conversation recorded live from Concord, California, USA, and Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Download the file here (MP3, 28MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need software such as the FeedDemon RSS aggregator, or the free ipodder or DopplerRadio).

In this edition:

Intro:

  • 00:29 Shel and Neville on what’s in this week’s show; how to give your feedback; show notes
  • 02:01 Comments from the last show

Features:

  • 06:50 Video news releases - The responsibilities of producers and broadcasters, and trusting the news you watch on TV
  • 19:06 Using third-party tools and web services - How much can you rely on them? How much should you?
  • 27:48 Blogpulse conversation tracker - Now you can see and track where a story spreads in the blogosphere
  • 34:28 PR and building relationships - A missed opportunity for the Walt Disney Company
  • 44:48 Blogging policies in the workplace - Thomas Nelson Publishers asks the blogosphere for input and comments
  • 54:12 The responsibilities and obligations of bloggers, and the risks of posting without checking

Outro:

  • 64:41 Shel only on Thursday’s show; how to give your feedback; show notes; about the music and the band; outro music

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show:

Intro - Morgan McLintic, Chris Thilk, Dan York, iTrip, iPod, Frederick Gilbert, iPodder.

Features - New York Times, Jay Rosen, Ketchumgate, BBC, BBC World, Boston University Journalism School, del.icio.us, Blogrolling, TypePad, Technorati searchlet beta, Freepolls, Technorati, Dave Sifry, Zoomerang, Blogpulse conversation tracker, Steve Rubel, Jeremy Wright, Politech, Boing Boing, MSNBC, AP, CNET, Kryptonite bike lock, eWatch, Cybervalence, PubSub, Walt Disney Company, Jim Hill, SaveDisney.com, Pixar, The Blog Herald, Michael Hyatt, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Tom Reynolds, London Ambulance Service, Hart Scientific, Charlene Li, Forrester Research, Google, Mark Jen, Technology Review, Wired News, Web Pro News, Jayson Blair, Vanity Fair, Wall Street, Journal, Financial Times.

Outro - Tourist, Garageband.com, Jacob’s Ladder, For Immediate Release, A Shel of My Former Self, NevOn.

If you have comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for our future shows, email us at comments@forimmediaterelease.biz, or call the Comment Line at +1 206 984 0931. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

So, until Thursday March 31…

Posted by neville on 03/28 at 11:31 AM
(2) Comments • Permalink

Saturday, March 26, 2005

An Open Conversation with Steve Rubel, Micro Persuasion

Last Monday 21 March, Shel and I interviewed Steve Rubel for The Hobson & Holtz Report bi-weekly podcast.

Steve is Vice President Client Solutions at CooperKatz, a New York PR firm, and author of the Micro Persuasion blog. He is arguably the most prominent and influential blogger in the PR profession either side of the Atlantic.

We enjoyed a stimulating and wide-ranging 45-minute conversation that covered many topical issues, including blogging as an integral element of the practice of public relations; the General Motors blogs; the growing importance and significance of tags and folksonomies; influence, celebrity and responsibility; ethics and the public relations profession; and whether Steve wears pyjamas when he blogs.

You can download the show containing the interview (MP3, 30.8Mb) and subscribe to the RSS feed to receive future shows automatically.

To complement the podcast, the following is a complete transcript of our conversation. As a transcript, it has no editing nor editorializing - it’s the raw conversation including all the ums and ahs, reflecting what happened in our conversation.

One thing words on a page can’t convey is the emotion and humour of our conversation. We all had a lot of fun doing this interview! The sense of that comes across best by listening to it.

Here’s the transcript:

Shel: Well, Steve, thanks for joining us, we really appreciate your taking the time. And, just to start with, can you tell us how things are going with your blog - any changes planned, any developments?

Steve: Heh! Should there be? Um, no, I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing, blogging like a madman, and, er, what I’m trying to do is really, I want to shake the tree because I think that PR professionals need to really, you know, get what’s going on here and jump on board and I think that the three of us and the other 97 of us who currently blog in the PR industry, we need to do a better job of talking to the everyday PR man or woman and what it means to them.

Because I think a little bit of what we’re doing now is talking amongst ourselves, and talking amongst the people who do get it in social media land. Actually, in mainstream media land as well, as you know, with the different opportunities we get to talk to the press. But I think we need to get everyone on board.

I spoke at the Council of PR Firms meeting in Chicago last week, and I talked about RSS and using Bloglines and things like that. I think that’s something that we, everyone of us, needs to take responsibility for in getting, you know, somebody in their agency, at their competitor, at their clients, wherever, understanding what RSS is, what blogs are and what this all means, because I think we have a lot more work to do there.

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Posted by neville on 03/26 at 09:17 PM
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Thursday, March 24, 2005

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #18: March 24, 2005

Content summary: Listeners’ comments: on reporting rather than commenting, bulletin boards and blogs, listening on the bus, not listening on the run, fixing a mashup; blogs and communicators in Europe; changing demographics for media; GM’s new podcasts and other podcast developments; open source marketing; IABC; Robert Scoble and time challenges for bloggers; Creative Commons tool from Yahoo.

Show notes for March 24, 2005

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Welcome to For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, a 72-minute conversation recorded live from Concord, California, USA, and Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Download the file here (MP3, 30MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need software such as the FeedDemon RSS aggregator, or the free ipodder or DopplerRadio).

In this week’s show:

Intro:

  • 00:30 Shel and Neville on what’s in this week’s show; how to give your feedback; show notes
  • 02:21 Comments from the last show

Features:

  • 07:55 Are communicators in Europe ready for blogs? Comments to a blog post and a look at changing demographics
  • 25:11 General Motors’ new podcasts; the development of podcasting; did GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz use the GM Fastlane Blog to talk about earnings?
  • 44:11 Open source marketing - What does marketing have to do with Linux? Everything, it seems. And Open Sauce Live as well
  • 53:21 IABC issues update; the value of IABC; member events provide value
  • 61:30 Robert Scoble stops the link blog - one big example of the time challenge for bloggers

Outro:

  • 65:22 New Creative Commons content searching tool from Yahoo
  • 65:54 How to give your feedback; show notes; about the music and the band; outro music

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show:

Intro - Lee Hopkins, Sebastian Keil, Chris Thilk, Hans Kullin, Steve Rubel, Lee Lefever, Jackie Danicki, Ludo Magnocavallo, Tom Abbott, Thomas Pleil, Octavio Rojas, Morgan McLintic, James Cherkoff, Elizabeth Albrycht, Fredrik Wacka, Mike Manuel, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Online Publishers Association, Online Journalism Review.

Features - General Motors, Pontiac Solstice, Cadillac XLR-V, Michael Wiley, Clay Dean, Jonathan Marks, Dave Winer, Adam Curry, Alexander Graham Bell, Rock & Roll Geek Show, Geek News Central, Daily Source Code, Skype, Audacity, Associations Unorthodox, GM FastLane Blog, Bob Lutz, Debbie Weil, Kevin Dugan, Hass MS, James Cherkoff, ChangeThis, Linux, Cluetrain, Johnnie Moore, Corante Brandshift, Open Sauce Live, Constantin Basturea, The New PR Wiki, IABC, Allan Jenkins, Warren Bickford, Robert Holland, EuroComm Networking Summit, Barbara Gibson, IABC International Conference, PRSA, BL Ochman, Toby Ward, Robert Scoble, Pete Shinbach.

Outro - Creative Commons, Yahoo, PodcastNYC, Salme Dahlstrom, Hello California, For Immediate Release, A Shel of My Former Self, NevOn.

If you have comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for our future shows, email us at comments@forimmediaterelease.biz, or call the Comment Line at +1 206 984 0931. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

So, until Monday March 28…

Posted by neville on 03/24 at 01:33 PM
(5) Comments • Permalink

Monday, March 21, 2005

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #17: March 21, 2005

Content summary: Listeners’ comments: on suggestions for how to comment, video and vlogging trends, differences between internal blogs and bulletin boards; interview - an open conversation with Steve Rubel; discussion about the interview; planned changes in show format for future interviews.

Show notes for March 21, 2005

Download MP3 podcast

Welcome to For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, a 67-minute conversation recorded live from Concord, California, USA, and Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Download the file here (MP3, 30.8MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need software such as the FeedDemon RSS aggregator, or the free ipodder or DopplerRadio).

In this week’s show:

Intro:

  • 00:29 Shel and Neville on what’s in this week’s show; Steve Rubel interview today; how to give your feedback; show notes
  • 01:24 Comment Line at +1 206 984 0931 for your feedback; Comments from the last show

Feature:

Outro:

  • 58:27 Comments and thoughts on the interview with Steve Rubel
  • 60:30 Format change for future interviews
  • 61:17 How to give your feedback; show notes; about the music and the band; outro music

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show:

Intro - Dan York, Skype, Audacity, Frank Meeuwsen, Captivate, Camtasia, Lee Hopkins, Lee Lefever on bulletin boards, Common Craft, New Communications Forum 2005, SkypeOut.

Feature - Steve Rubel, Council of Public Relations Firms, Fleishman-Hillard, Cluetrain, Boeing blog, PR Week, GM, IBM internal blogs, Hass MS&L Blogworks, Hill & Knowlton, Richard Edelman, CooperKatz, Micro Persuasion, PubSub, Flickr, Feedster, Technorati, Spread Firefox, Robert Scoble, Buzz Bruggeman, Kevin Dugan, GM FastLane Blog, GM Smallblock Engine Blog, Debbie Weil, folksonomies, John Udell, del.icio.us, Media Magazine’s Media 100 list, Tom Murphy, Phil Gomes, Web Pro News, Yahoo, Google, Jay Rosen, Ketchumgate, Cameron Reilly, Mick Stanic.

Outro - Mike Manuel, Garageband.com, Sea Breeze, Verbal Klint, For Immediate Release, A Shel of My Former Self, NevOn.

If you have comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for our future shows, email us at comments@forimmediaterelease.biz, or call the Comment Line at +1 206 984 0931. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

So, until Thursday March 24…

Posted by neville on 03/21 at 12:34 PM
(4) Comments • Permalink

Thursday, March 17, 2005

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #16: March 17, 2005

Content summary: Listeners’ comments: on PR ethics, slowing down podcasts, learning the ins and outs, listening to a ground-breaking first podcast, music and intersection with the past; Podshow.com and lowering the barriers to entry; folksonomies and categorizing your information; new communication channels too early for Europeans; iPodder new release and FeedDemon’s podcasting.

Show notes for March 17, 2005

Download MP3 podcast

Welcome to For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, a 59-minute conversation recorded live from Concord, California, USA, and Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Download the file here (MP3, 27MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need software such as the FeedDemon RSS aggregator, or the free ipodder or DopplerRadio).

In this week’s show:

Intro:

  • 00:29 Shel and Neville on what’s in this week’s show; Steve Rubel interview; how to give your feedback; Comment Line at +1 206 984 0931; show notes
  • 03:02 Comments from the last show

Topics:

  • 13:04 Podshow.com, Adam’s Curry’s latest venture - making it easy for anyone to podcast; How the barriers for entry into using new-media communication channels are coming down
  • 27:18 Folksonomies - user-defined tags: what they are and why communicators need to pay attention to them; del.icio.us and how to use it
  • 36.32 New Communications Forum Paris conference postponed - too early for new communication technologies in Europe? Is the business community in Europe not receptive? Listeners: what do you think?
  • 44:14 Quick Takes - iPodder 2.0 released; screencast on how to configure FeedDemon for podcasts; new devices about to arrive

Outro:

  • 50:57 How to give your feedback; show notes; about the music and the band; outro music

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show:

Intro - Steve Rubel, SkypeOut, Skype, Philip Young, University of Sunderland, Gary Goldhammer, Stuart Roebuck, Michael Klusek, Hans Kullin, iPod, iriver, Dan York, Oscar Trim, Allan Jenkins, Back to The Future, Doc Emmett Brown, Garageband.com, TK Outline.

Topics - Podcasting, Podshow.com, Adam Curry, Daily Source Code, Jeff Hallett, ProfNet, Ron Bloom, Cameron Reilly, Mick Stanic, The Podcast Network, FeedBurner, General Motors, Christopher Carfi, Michael Wiley interview, RSS, Firefox, Internet Explorer 7, Dawn & Drew Show, folksonomies, Flickr, del.icio.us, John Udell, del.icio.us screencast, eWeek, O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, Wikipedia, Technorati tags, TypePad, Blogger, New Communications Forum 2005, Elizabeth Albrycht, Guillaume du Gardier, Internet 2.0, Blognomics, Constantin Basturea, PR blogs directory, The New PR Wiki, iPodder, DopplerRadio, FeedDemon, Nick Bradbury, Marketing Loop, Mixcast Live, Camtasia, Vlog It!, ANT, Eric Rice, CeBIT, SXSW.

Outro - Derek Trucks Band, For Immediate Release, A Shel of My Former Self, NevOn.

If you have comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for our future shows, email us at comments@forimmediaterelease.biz, or call the Comment Line at +1 206 984 0931. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

So, until Monday March 21…

Posted by neville on 03/17 at 12:08 PM
(2) Comments • Permalink

The rig

image
As promised, here’s an image of the rig I use to record For Immediate Release. Here’s what you’re seeing:

The main piece of equipment (other than the Apple Macintosh Powerbook G4) is the mixer. That’s the contraption all the wires are running into. This one is a Behringer (prounced with a hard “g”) Eurorack UB1202. The microphone is a pretty basic Radio Shack mike, the Pro Unidirectional Dynamic. The mike jacks into Line 1, one of four inputs on the mixer designed specifically for a microphone.

From the headphone output on the Powerbook, I’m running a cable that plugs into one of the other inputs on the mixer. This allows any sound generated by the computer to be mixed with my own voice coming in from the microphone. This is how Neville’s voice gets into the program. I could also play sounds from any media program, like iTunes or Real Player, from the computer in order to add those sounds to the mix, but instead I’m saving those to the iPod and sending that through the single RCA input on the mixer. The second pair of RCA cables is a line out; this goes to a separate recorder, an iRiver MP3 player, the iFP-890, with recording capability, where I make a backup just in case something goes wrong with the computer recording.

The main output from the mixer goes into the smaller box to the left. This is a PreSonus Comp16 compressor. The compressor takes the various signals from the mixer and adjusts them to a single level (if I understand it correctly). In any case, the sound quality is better with the compressor than without it. The line out from the compressor goes into the line in on the Powerbook.

Right now, I’m using Audacity, a free audio recording and editing package, to record the show. I also use Audacity to make adjustments (for example, to amplify the show if the audio is too low) and to convert it to MP3. Then it’s a quick adjustment to the ID3 tags and an upload via FTP to the show server.

The only thing you don’t see here are the RCA HP-40 headphones, which jacks into a headphones output on the mixer board. And for those who are interested, my wallpaper on the Powerbook is a concert shot of Jerry Garcia and Mickey Hart. It’s more interesting than a shot of Audacity.

There will be a quiz; I hope you were paying attention.

Neville’s edit 18-Mar-05 - The Amsterdam Rig

That’s quite some hefty kit Shel’s got to do all the tech stuff that makes our bi-weekly show actually happen. So, as also promised, here’s the kit at the Amsterdam end of the podcast.

Just to remind you - Shel does all the recording work for the shows; I do the show notes and post those to this blog.

Nev's Rig

Here’s what you’re seeing in the photo, taken today at my home office.

On the left is a Toshiba Satellite 5105-S701, customized from the original spec when I first bought it in late 2002 (it now has a gig of RAM, and it’s running Windows XP Pro SP2). This is my primary PC and the one I use for keeping on-screen all the things I’ll need to refer to during a show - blogs, websites, email, you name it. So I tend to have a lot of programs running.

I do the show notes for the podcast on this PC. You can’t see it on the screen, but I use BlogJet 1.5.0 to write up the notes. I don’t publish to the podcast blog from this app; I copy the HTML code from the app’s code view and paste it into a new post with the post editor on the podcast blog (which is an Expression Engine blog).

What you can (just) see on the screen is Winamp 5.0.8, which I use to listen to the recorded show in order to write up the show notes. I find this app perfect for this purpose: discreet little program which takes up little space on the screen and has easy-to-see time controls so you can quickly jump around the recording, which I often do when doing the notes.

This is the time-consuming part, which is when I quite happily sit there listening and pounding the keyboard accompanied by a nice glass of Berberana Carta de Oro Crianza Spanish rioja (not pictured!). I listen to the recording through the Toshiba’s speakers, which have truly outstanding sound quality as they’re built-in Harman/Kardon speakers with sub-woofer underneath the PC.

The PC on the right is an IBM Thinkpad T30, again customized (a gig of RAM) and running Windows XP Pro SP2. This is the machine on which I run Skype 1.2.0.21 beta for the call with Shel. I have no other applications running, apart from Norton AntiVirus 2005 and Zone Alarm free version, so there is nothing that can use up any needed computer resources when Skype is running.

Resting on the T30’s keyboard for the photo is the headset/mic combo I use - a Plantronics DSP-300. Plugs in via USB, and is an excellent product.

Both laptops, incidentally, are wireless and connect with my network via a Belkin F5D7230-4 54g ADSL gateway router.

On the shelf between the two PCs is an iPod Mini. It doesn’t have anything to do with the podcast preparation or recording, but I’ll often listen to something (not usually a podcast, actually) while finalizing show notes publishing. The Mini sync’s to the Toshiba through a Sitecom Cardbus 2-port USB 2.0 PC card which you might be able to see on the left side of the Tosh. And that, of course, is important for sync’ing podcasts to the iPod Mini.

So, that’s the current set up in Amsterdam. I hope you were paying attention for Shel’s quiz…

Posted by shel on 03/17 at 10:04 AM
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