Category Archives: General

One of my favorite VC bloggers, Fred Wilson, recently posted on removing some widgets from his blog.  Now Fred clearly attempts to try every plugin ever made, and I applaud him for the efforts.  I’ve tried a few from time to time, and the two that I’ve decided caused the most hassle for LD are now gone.

1. Sitemeter
   Why I used it: Built-in server statistics are less reliable than Windows ME.
   What I liked: Seemed to keep pretty decent stats, and the stats views are real-time.  Very handy for determining who is linking in.  Considered mostly reliable for site metrics.
   What I didn’t like: Tangibly slowed down page-loading, occasionally prevented site from loading in single-digit-seconds.
   How I’m replacing it: Google Analytics.  It doesn’t boast the same real-time capabilities, but I realized that I don’t care enough on a day-to-day basis to watch the numbers anyway.
2. My Del.ici.ous
   Why I used it: Very convenient way for me to link to a story I found interesting without having to add a full blog post for it.
   What I liked: Helped keep content “fresh” on the home page.
   What I didn’t like: Extremely buggy, caused really ugly script errors that were all-too visible.
   How I’m replacing it: I’m not.  I’ll keep bookmarking sites I like, and those who care can track them here.  I’ll probably try to add more short-form blog posts anyway, since my unbelievably long essays are a little much for the average reader.

Anyone have any other plugin recommendations that I should check out?  I browse the WordPress codex intermittently, am I missing the boat on anything?

For years now, the Press Release (I’m giving it the proper name treatment for this article) was (and really still is) the de facto method for a company to distribute news.  Press Releases go out on the wire (no caps) and show up in the inbox of reporters, based on the regionality of the reporter and the release.  In pre-blogger times, this worked out pretty well as there really aren’t that many journalists out there, so the communication flow was fairly efficient.  With a supposed 57 million blogs online (personally I think that’s missing a decimal point), all of differing degrees of professionalism, the Press Release method is beginning to crumble.

Accordingly, publicists and PR firms are in search of new methods for distributing their information, including leveraging blogs and social networks.  While I think we all should praise these people for seeking out the methods, even though often times the results fall far short of the objectives (3 words: Vista. Ferrari. Bloggers).  Stowe Boyd wrote a great piece yesterday on the Social Media Press Release and how incredibly bad an idea it is.  For a quick definition (from his post):

For those who have missed the idea, a social media press release is supposed to be a webbish/bloggish version of old timey press releases. These will incorporate elements of the now commonplance blog motif: links, tags, comments, and trackbacks, for example.

As he (and Scoble and Jeremiah and probably many others) have expressed, it’s a bad idea in so many ways. Dominic Jones also blogged on the topic this week, and he proposed a different solution:

News release writers today can learn a lot from the Digg front page. That’s where you will see effective attention grabbers that prompt people to click on links. We’re talking about a linked headline and a 25-word summary.

That’s what a newswire news release should look like in 2007.

I think this is a good idea, but doesn’t properly address the problem. First of all, the fact remains that sources such as AP and Reuters still account for a large part of news flow, both offline and online.  The reporters for more traditional outlets don’t necessarily deserve to have their worlds come crashing down just because us “hooligan bloggers” don’t have the patience to read through a full-page of carefully crafted spin information.  And what about financial institutions and analysts, where every word of a news release matters?

I don’t think we can kill the Release just yet, it still serves its purpose.  But smart companies should be trying to complement it.  Scoble suggested using blogging for all information dissemination – I think using blogging in conjunction with a release is the right idea.  Whether it’s 25 words or 40 words or a full page, companies should assign an employee to write a blog post that coincides with and summarizes the release.  With this method, bloggers can simply subscribe to the RSS feeds for the companies they want to track.  Furthermore, services like PR Newswire can offer aggregated (river) feeds that are companions to the Press Releases themselves.

It may sound like more work, and it is more than what publicists had to do in the past.  But it’s probably the most effective method I can think of to address numerous audiences for official company news. 

I received over 300 Press Releases in the two weeks prior to CES. I read less than 10.  My fault for missing some cool news.  Their fault for missing me as a reader.

On the morning I flew out to Vegas for CES 2007, I ran into Team Engadget (plus a little Team CNet) in SFO. On the afternoon as I was leaving Vegas, while saying goodbye to the good folks at WowWee, I ran into Team Engadget. Is it fate? Destiny? Sheer coincidence?

Probably coincidence.

After we clearly established which of our “competing blogs” had the better CES coverage, I put Peter and Ryan on the spot with a few questions of their thoughts on what they had seen at CES. I think we have a clip… clip? Is there a clip? AH, yes.

If you are a long-time reader of mine, you’ve probably noticed a ridiculous upswing in content this week.  If, on the other hand, you are new to the LD, you probably think I’m one of the more prolific bloggers around. 

The simple truth of it is: I captured a ton of content at CES this year, just didn’t get to upload it until after I returned.  Not only that, I didn’t want to blast it all in one day, so I’ve spaced it out for the past few days.  I think it comes to an end tomorrowish.  That said, while I appreciate the ridiculously rapid pace at which the blogosphere addresses news and moves on to the next topic, I think the year’s biggest consumer technology event deserves a few extra days worth of coverage.  And if that means I blog alone on the topic, well, it won’t be the first time!

Also, you’ve probably noticed a bunch of videos and many of you may be thinking “video? cool, but I don’t have the time this moment, I’ll just watch it later.”  Have no fear, the videos are mostly 1 minute long, some of them are… 2!  Yup, nice, bite-size content, perfect for that time while sending/receiving email in the mornings…

PR Queen Renee Blodgett has a great article today on Old vs New Media at CES this year.  Once you’ve read it, scroll down to read Jim Louderback’s comment:

And let’s face it, if you’re hanging out in the press room at CES — or the Bloghaus at the Bellagio, sucking down free coffee and looking for your next freelance gig or some free bandwidth, you’re in the wrong place anyway.

I think Jim’s comments are spot-on.  I kept wanting to go to the Bloghaus, but kept having other things that I felt couldn’t be missed.  I’ve heard it was a great time, but I was truly amazed at the quantity of time people chose to spend there.  In my eyes, CES is so packed full of events (note to self: do not attend 4 press conferences next year – ugh), I couldn’t justify the taxi line and traffic to head over to the Bellagio Hotel to hang out with other bloggers.  Don’t get me wrong, there is no insult intended here – I had some good friends there and a lot of bloggers who I read religiously. 

Now, granted, I am in this utterly tiny minority of bloggers who happens to make a living in the consumer electronics field.  For me, it was equally important to attend events as a blogger as it was to extend my personal network of consumer technology manufacturers.  Furthermore, I was asked by a client to scout new technology for possible licensing or acquisition needs.  This created a bit of a “perfect storm” (in a good way) for me where literally every booth had the potential of being interesting, either for the blog, for the client, or for me.  It’s nice when worlds like these collide.

I did hit the press room a few times, but mostly to grab a bagel or a coffee and then head back off to the floor.  While there, I couldn’t help but notice the level of “old guard” that was there.  It was like being surrounded by the ghosts of CES past.  I was impressed by the quantity of available laptops and network connections they provided for people to use.  Primarily, the two press rooms (one in the Sands, one in the LVCC) were located very conveniently to do a drop-by. 

I’d like to see CES approach bloggers differently in CES 2008 with these simple suggestions:

• team up with & sponsor the Bloghaus, then either move it to the Renaissance (right next to LVCC) or at least have an annex there – the Bellagio is beautiful, but prohibitively far from the action.  Also, I’d rather see CEA doing the sponsorship than an individual company – while I applaud Seagate for their initiative, as I was walking the floor with Dave Winer he made some very good points about the bias it creates (whether evil or not, it’s bias).
• change the single “press” badge into three badges: Analyst, Online Media, Offline Media – the rationale being it tremendously helps the PR staff for a company to know who they are talking to.  some companies care more about the blogosphere than they do print media.  others don’t.  focus is good.
• provide blogging “clusters” (or pods) on the show floor – once you have your Online Media badge, you can go to these pods which include power and network and allow you to rapidly get your fresh content online

Anyone out there have any other thoughts for blogging & CES 2008?

I first met Bob Anderson, the CTO of Best Buy, while working with Sling Media. While there it was quite apparent that he’s a pretty sharp guy when it comes to consumers and technology products. We spent about 45 minutes walking the CES show floor (Central Hall) and chatted about gadgets and the like. He agreed to do a 1-minute video with me, and here it is:

Thanks Bob, good to see you again!

If you’ve ever browsed my photos, you’ll notice tons of underexposed shots, or pictures where there just isn’t enough light to work with the digital camera. For cell phone users, this problem is even worse. While wandering the Sands Expo at CES 2007 I stumbled upon CameraBright. The company makes a few attachments for digital cameras that give you more light, especially for shooting video (would’ve been great when I was recording the Pussycat Dolls at the MSFT party – video coming online this week). At CES they were also showing one that works with your cell phone (called PhoneBright), and we got a little demo of it in action…

They gave me a unit to try out, so I’ll get a full report in shortly (read: in February).

More coverage at I4U (including their video too).