The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #80: October 27, 2005

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #80: October 27, 2005

Content summary: Listeners’ comments discussion (creating a reverse thesaurus; what’s in a name: ‘business continuity planning’; more on hearing about blogs; Libsyn glitches with podcast downloads); Yahoo RSS white paper; faux research from Advertising Age; the use of blogs during labour disputes; TypePad has service problems from rapid growth; OpenOffice 2.0 is out; Waxmail for voice email; Microsoft joins Yahoo and Google with a book project; Dan York’s report; Shel’s report on the CPRF panel in New York; upcoming FIR book reviews.

Show notes for October 27, 2005

download mp3 podcast

Welcome to For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, an 86-minute conversation recorded live from Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and Concord, California, USA.

Download the file here (MP3, 35MB), 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 a podcatcher such as the free iPodder, DopplerRadio, iTunes or Yahoo! Podcasts, or an RSS aggregator that supports podcasts such as FeedDemon).

OPML
[Show notes OPML file to come]: Get the show notes on your own PC, Mac, PDA or other device. To use this file, we suggest trying Dave Winer’s OPML Editor (for Windows).

In this Edition:

Intro:

  • 00:36 Neville introduces the show; what the show’s about; what’s in this edition; show notes

Listeners’ comments discussion:

  • 02:40 Josh Hallett suggests creating a reverse thesaurus to help figure out buzzwords and jargon
  • 03:17 Bryan Person thinks ‘business continuity planning’ is a silly corporate-speak term
  • 04:27 Donna Papacosta isn’t surprised at what Shel heard at the IABC Canada conference re blogs, and says we should keep on evangelizing
  • 08:07 Clarence Jones reports on difficulties he’s had with downloading FIR, and other shows hosted on Libsyn

News:

Features:

Outro:

FIR Show Notes links
Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show are now posted to the FIR Show Links pages at The New PR Wiki. You can contribute - see the home page for info.

If you have comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for our future shows, email us at fircomments@gmail.com, 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 October 31…

Posted by neville on 10/27 at 12:12 PM

  1. Hi, guys.

    Another great show, as usual. I can tell, because I have a long list of things I want to comment on.

    I’ve only read about the TypePad server slowdown issue, as my own blogs are all hosted on my website, but what Neville describes about the impossibility of doing anything after 3 PM takes me back to the mid-Nineties when I was teaching at the University of Warwick (which Neville will know is in Coventry, not Warwick—and Shel, if it’s you reading this, don’t pronounce the second “w”). Even with the university’s T1 connection, we all noticed a huge slowdown in the Web starting around 2 PM when the Yanks began to wake up, and it only got worse by the time 9 AM rolled around in California.

    When I moved to California myself 7 years ago, I felt painfully far behind the rest of the world just by virtue of being in the Pacific time zone. After a while, of course, anyone who lives in California comes to believe it’s the center of the universe, particularly where technology is concerned, and thanks to cable internet I don’t notice too many Web slowdowns, though I have sometimes had problems with Libsyn downloads.

    Anyway, on to other topics before I bore you and your listeners utterly.

    You mentioned WaxMail. I haven’t tried it, but I reviewed Netralia’s first product, Skylook, for Kickstartnews.com a couple of months ago. I use Skylook to record Skype conversations (it can record just the speaker or both parties) and find the sound quality quite good, though the bit rate might be lower than you prefer on FIR. Once you turn Skylook recording on, it automatically records your Skype calls and saves them as MP3 files. The only catch is that you have to have Outlook open (and, of course, it only works on Windows).

    Speaking of reviews, if you’re getting too many books, you could always recruit some of your regular contributors do review some of them (though perhaps Dan York and Lee Hopkins and Eric Schwartzman won’t thank me for that suggestion).

    Finally, regarding the challenge of getting up to speed about New Media, my own recommendation is that the PR professionals and anyone else who wants to know more should listen to podcasts. Podcasts are a terrific “dead time learning” tool, to borrow a phrase from Alex Mandossian. They don’t take time away from your regular work unless you normally work while driving, shopping, cooking, doing housework, exercising, and participating in other activities which require your eyes and hands but only a small part of your brain.

    I’ll close with a question I read on someone’s blog: why don’t car stereos come with “line in” jacks? These would have been useful ever since the invention of the Walkman, and the technology for them already exists, since it’s used in non-automotive stereo systems. At the moment Apple is sitting pretty with car manufacturers building iPod-only fixtures into their 2006 models, but where are the adapters for the rest of us so we can share podcasts with our passengers?

    Posted by Sallie Goetsch (rhymes with "sketch")  on  10/30  at  05:52 AM

Name:

Email:

Location:

URL:

Smileys

Remember my personal information

Notify me of follow-up comments?

Submit the word you see below:


Next entry: The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #81: October 31, 2005

Previous entry: Speakers and Speeches: October 26, 2005 CPRF Critical Issues Forum

<< Back to main