Drew B's take on tech PR

New PR blogs to subscribe to

Here are some PR blogs that I've recently subscribed to and thought I'd share. All of these people I was subscribing to over Twitter before I read their blog, which is kind of back to front but just the way things are now I suppose.

The Opposite Direction - the blog of Robin Wilson, head of PR at McCann Erickson
Personally Redefined - a view on tech PR from my colleague in London Tim Bond
Balancing Act - Becky McMichael, geeky Pr chick with a passion for all things digital, and head of tech and corporate PR at Ruder Finn UK
Paul Stallard - the ramblings of a tech PR insider at Berkeley PR

Five Evernote hacks (one of which is evil)

People within spitting distance of me have heard a little about Evernote. I like Evernote a lot, for ways that probably I won't be able to fully take advantage of for too long. So when I saw this article in LifeHacker today, I had to re-post it.

Evernote is a piece of technology you use through your phone and your computer. You take a photo on your phone of something you want to remember. The photo saves on to your computer, then you can search for the photo later as a reminder, except what's so very cool about Evernote is that the technology reads the words inside your photos.

Here's some examples, pretty rudementary ones at that, of how Evernote could be used:

1. Take a photo of a shop window, then search later for brand names to get your reminders
2. Take a photo of your receipts and find what's in them in the future without having to file them
3. Scan or take photos of your notes and search for them one day in the future based on the words you wrote
4. Launch a competition online, and no need for entrants to follow tagging and uploading instructions. Everything's findable more easily
5. Every photo on the web searchable by its contacts instead of its tags and its titles... hmm. Google or Flickr to snap up Evernote maybe? (Evil Google had to make it into my list...)

And here's a video on how Evernote works, from the makers themselves. Check 1:30 into the vid for the good bits.

Any ideas from you on how Evernote could be used?

Russians dent Google’s world domination

I'm reading an article about Russia's biggest website, its equivalent to Google, called Yandex, in the Sunday Times. What a cool story and business.

It's a coincidence that I was talking to a Russian digital PR consultant in the Social Media Cafe networking gathering last Friday and he fired up Yandex on his Mac. He did it to illustrate how his home country maps out its wifi hotspots whereas we don't (Social Media Cafe has free wifi and I mentioned how annoying I is that it's so hard to find listings of free wifi). I suppose that if Yandex does useful things like tell you where your nearest wifi is then in some ways it's better than evil Google.

But get this. In the article, the Sunday Times chooses not to tell you the URL of Yandex. I think it may be rndex.ru, but that's a guess judging from the photo in the article. So I wonder how many people will be Googling Yandex today...

A picture of social media

I've come across a graphic that shows quite well the different kinds of social media sites that are out there and how they are different. It doesn't cover everything off but it's a useful illustration. Courtesy of Brian Solis.

Click here to see the verion on Flickr, which has user notes attached to it to show extra sites that maybe should have been on there.

BlackBerry Bold Hacks

I have started using a BlackBerry Bold, and wanted to share a number of hacks (or ways of using it that you might not have picked up on, in non-geek speak)

1. Bedside mode. To turn your Bold into an ambient bedside clock, go to the menu and click on the Clock icon. Press the BlackBerry button (the one to the left of the rollerball) and click on Enter Bedside Mode. Presto. The phone is now a glowy bedside clock.

2. Apps. use the web browser to go to http://m.google.com and you can download some of Google's nifty mobile apps, such as Gmail and Gmaps. 

3. Turn out the lights. The Bold, like other BlackBerry models, has a blinking light that alert you as to when you have new unread emails. Turning this light off let's you sleep at night without your bedroom becoming Blackpool Illuminations, and you'll find it a de-stressing exercise too. Most people I've spoken to don't realise you can do this. To turn off the red light start at your home screen, go to Profiles, scroll down to the bottom and click on Advanced. Click on the profile you're on right now and it will let you edit its preferences. Click on Messages. Set the Repeat Notifications option to None (instead of LED Flashing). Hey presto you won't have the red light force you to check your inbox ever again!

[More coming soon. I've not had the Bold long. I started this because I was asked on Twitter about one the BlackBerry Bold's bedside mode. It didn't fit into 140 chraracters.]

Needed: two new hires in our digital team

As I mentioned on Twitter yesterday, Hotwire's 9-strong digital media team is looking for two new guns.

Firstly we're looking for a top notch PR person with experience of PR in the media sector. Think clients in TV, tech, web or traditional media (like news papers and that). It'd be cracking if you have at least three years experience, but we're looking for someone ideally at account manager or account director level. Come and boss us all about if you have big trousers.

The package is excellent and designed to attract top top talent.

Secondly we're looking to hire a social media maestro. Someone who knows their widgets from their gadgets, and who has spoken to a few bloggers in their past. Hotwire's digital team all live and breathe Twitter, Flickr and RSS, as one would expect, and increasingly our clients are asking us to run campaigns entirely within this social media world. So much so that the nine of us need to bring in more geeks, and that could be you, no?

Any shape or size, we'd like to hear from someone who's got the desire to want to talk blogospheres 'til the cows come home. The package is, again, attractive to boot.

Our benefits include flexi-time, charity work allowance, plenty of holiday, a well-being allowance, opportunity for international work, and pension (plus lots more). Our office is in Clerkenwell, near the Silicon Roundabout.

Drop me a line on drew.benvie @ hotwirepr.com if you would like to ask any questions about these openings, or if you'd rather talk to our HR team it's katy.burgess @ hotwirepr.com you should speak to.

How digital PR is changing

Mark Hopkins at Mashable has written a post that's a must read for PR people who ever find themselves doing PR in the blogosphere. It's our day to day here at number 33, but there are some useful tips for any PR person in Mark's post. The post originates from an article by Edelman's Steve Rubel on how PR needs to change from pitching to something a little more sophisticated.

All too often I hear that people in PR are told: "never pitch to a blogger". Fact is, we do, and some are doing it a very ok way. So have a read of this post and see what usefull logs you might find laying about:

"Instead of being sent press releases by public relations folks, I'm receiving friendly emails and phone calls letting me know about interesting upcoming tidbits of news, and increasingly I'm starting up conversations of a friendly nature that often have very little to do with what sort of new thing their client may be doing. It's leading to all sorts of beneficial things."

Mark goes on to talk about the kinds of things a good PR person should do. I hope this is useful. Is to me.

Company blogging policy tips

Some discussions have been happening in the office and on Twitter about what a good company blogging guidelines document looks like. I always say when asked that question that a really good example is Yahoo. Not only because they published their guidelines online openly at a relatively early stage (like four years ago I believe) but also because one of their social media evangelists re-wrote his own version and published it on his blog - and his version became the defacto standard version (or so the story goes).

His name is Jeremy Zawodny, and I believe he no longer works for Yahoo. But here is his blog and the blogging policy I mentioned. Happy reading.

After a lot of work internally, the Yahoo! Employee Blog Guidelines have been published.  Yahoo! employees can find them on Backyard (our corporate Intranet) and the rest of you can get the PDF file by clicking that link.

Toward the end of writing these, the Powers That Be asked a few of us existing Y! Bloggers if we would like to toss in our own advice that they could link to. Here is what I wrote.

So you wanna blog about Yahoo...

Great!

But before you get started, let me offer a few bits of advice. I've been writing publicly about Yahoo on my weblog for a few years now and its been a lot of fun. There are A LOT of people out there who want to read about what goes on here and what we're up to: friends, family, fans, lawyers, enemies, journalists, shareholders, the SEC, and crazy people looking for anyway they can to get in touch with Yahoo.

Basically, just about anyone can and will read what you publish. So keep that in mind. If you're worried about what your Mom, manager, ex-coworker, or Terry Semel would think, listen to that instinct. And realize that once a cat is out of the bag, you can never get the damned thing back in. The blog world is incredibly efficient at spreading rumors, secrets, rants, hyperbole, and your mistakes.

You'll make mistakes. We all do. Just try to be smart about it.

But above all else, have fun with it. You'll meet a lot of interesting people and find that you never think about this company the same way again.

Seriously.

I wouldn't still be doing this if I didn't enjoy it. The fact that our executive team is giving is their official recognition and endorsement says a lot about the future of Yahoo.

Go forth and write. Be yourself. Speak your mind.

I did not write these guidelines, but a few of us (Russell, Jeff, JR, and me) acted as a sounding board for those who did.

Now I fully expect someone to point out a dozen or so times that I've completely disregarded the spirit of the guidelines. Knock yourself out. :-)

Free WiFi at St Pancras - and here's to more coffee officing

I saw this morning an article about St Pancras Station in London providing free WiFi to all its passers-by. Nice huh! If only St Pancras was my commuting station. It would make the train-waiting a little less tedious.

There are pockets of free WiFi across London, but not too much. Aside from web access being for the commuters, for people passing by, or working nearby, there's no reason why not to perch yourself inside one of the swish-looking brand spanking new coffee shops or bars in St Pancras and slurp off the WiFi. A change is as good as a rest, as they say, and that's what I like about coffee shop working / coffee officing / etc.

Luckily my local coffee shop, Coffee @ Goswell, does free WiFi too, but I jut wish there was more of them (the chain of coffee shop, AND free wifi elsewhere too). It would save so much time when I'm between getting from A to B. Maybe I just need a dongle...

The Telegraph goes mobile

Oliver Luft at The Guardian has posted on the PDA blog that Telegraph.co.uk has today launched a free WAP and 3G version of its site. The Telegraph joins other UK national newspapers - the Times, the Sun and the News of The World - in running a free-to-use mobile platform, says the Guardian article.

My first reaction, having taken a look just now (here's my pic), is that the site is nothing different from anything else you look at on your mobile. Links and text. But good that it exists nonetheless.