MarCom Professional

Why on earth did it take me so long to discover ShoZu? It’s amazingly simple, but incredibly effective. Elegant even. It provides a conduit to simplify communication between mobile devices and web applications.

So when I take a photo on my mobile up pops a dialogue box asking me if I’d like to send the snap off to Flickr. I hit yes, because it’s a cool snap that I want to share with family and friends, and off it goes, almost instantly landing in my Flickr image feed. Now that is neat. Really neat.

You’ve probably stopped reading this post because you knew about it already, right? So why didn’t you tell me about it? Thanks to Andrew Grill and James Whatley for pointing it out to me via Twitter after I’d spent an evening fumbling around with Zonetag. More...

You know me, no point crying over negative economic stories; recalibrate and redefine markets, and focus on the recovery. But I was grateful for the news that at least one utility isn’t going up in price while usage actually is – and that’s telecoms.

Ofcom says that between 2002 and 2007 Brits doubled the time we spent talking and texting, as well as increasing our use of t’Interweb at home – and all the while households are actually spending less.

Overall, each UK household spends £1.53 (1.6 per cent) less on their monthly comms bills than in 2006 and £4.31 (4.4 per cent) less than in 2004. More...

Given that I’ve recently co-located between my office and flat in London and family home in the North East I reckon that I’m more than qualified to wade into the debate that was kicked off this morning by the think tank Policy Exchange.

Its report reckons that Northerners should move to the South East if they want to improve their quality of life because regeneration policies in the North are doomed. Mass internal migration is the only answer.

It’s patronising nonsense and is entirely unsustainable. I’d argue that the quality of life in the north is actually excellent whereas in the South East it is full of compromise. More...

Here’s a quick project I’ve been meaning to write up since I first trialled the 3G dongle from 3mobilebuzz.

The ability to eliminate the physical connection between a PC and the internet enables a whole range of applications. I’ve used it to check email on the move, web browse, upload images to flickr, post blog postings and demo web application in press meetings.

But my favourite use is a web cam. Using TinCan a £10 capture and upload application, I set up a web cam on my PC to upload images to my personal web space (image above shows a view over the City of London from the south). More...

Turns out that Sally Whittle doesn’t give a **** what I have for breakfast. I’m gutted. I thought she cared. She makes a serious point though: there is a lot of complete and utter ******** written on Twitter. And then there’s a lot of ego-posting.

It’s the one reason that I dissed the platform for so long. And then I signed up. Since then I’ve made a Twitter hire, picked up on recommendations, met a load of interesting people (mainly for breakfast), and chatted with colleagues, frenemies and mates. And posted a lot of ********.

But where’s the harm? Unsubscribe, block or log-off. More...

There’s a bunch of blog postings that I’ve marked-up in my RSS reader over the last week or so to respond to but haven’t. So I'm going to try and crack through them before dinner. Here goes on print versus online, reading lists, social bookmarking, social media promotion and an apology for a misdirected press release.

Dodgy survey or are PR people deluded?

Andrew Smith has posted a critical analysis of a survey into the importance attached to online versus print by PRs. Parker, Wayne & Kent the author of the survey can’t have spoken to anyone at Rainier PR. I sat in a client review meeting yesterday for an account where we’d delivered 90 pieces of coverage (not including any syndication) over a six month period. More...

Cow PR secured a cracking hit in PR Week this morning for its claim that seven out of 10 FTSE 100 companies are at risk of being brand-jacked because they have left their ID unclaimed on Twitter. Cow PR director Dirk Singer cautions "Owning your Twitter feed is critical to protect your brand reputation."

PR Blogger Stephen Davies was quick off the mark to spot that Cow PR had failed to register its own moniker on Twitter. So we’ve registered @cowpr for them. Drop us an email fellas and we’ll hand it over. More...

Today, Rainier PR says goodbye to Bradford bad boy, Tim Hoang. In his two years here he’s brought boundless energy, creative prowess and digital flair to the agency and its clients. He landed a gig as BBC Blogger as part of an agency rag challenge and more recently has been contributing to New Media Knowledge. But now he’s off to join the digital team at Porter Novelli. We wish you all the best mate. As Davina would say, here’s your best bits.