The lack of intelligence behind this is making my brain haemorrhage.

Last week Apple sent out cease and desist letters to the folks at Podcast Ready, demanding they stop using the words “Podcast” and “myPodder” on their website. This is believed to be the first round of attacks on smaller companies to try and strong arm the word Podcast and Podcasting away from the general community. As Todd Cochrane says, you are going to see a very large number of people get up and start screaming at Apple, and this is going to turn into their PR nightmare. Apple is not going to win any friends in this community with the type of actions they have shown the Podcast Ready folks.

ZDNet
Apple Trademark Office docs point to REAL reasons for ‘Podcast’ controversy
It is too early in the morning for me to get into detail of the legal stuff, but it is well worth a read and gives a hint about who to write to.

MacWorld
Apple’s ‘Pod’ Police Dropping Hammer on Trademark offenders
“Apple spokesperson Kristin Huguet said the company was declining comment on the pod cases — at least three have been publicized on popular technology Web sites.”
Jason Calacanis of Weblogs Inc, now owned by AOL
Apple to trademark Podcast? (or “How to fight the good fight”) “Now, if you feel more aggressive I would hold the line. Apple could very well lose the trademark for podcasting and podcast. Apple legal will try and divide and conquer–that is why they are attacking one site at a time and doing this very covertly.”

Dave Winer
Scripting news
“Maybe change is something Apple should contemplate? Maybe there’s a way of working with creative people outside their own company that creates a win-win, and a foundation for further innovation?”

Michael Geoghagen
“If I were Podcast Ready, all I could say is “Thank you Apple!” As could be predicted, the blogs are buzzing with reaction to the C&D letter Podcast Ready received from Apple’s legal department. Now I admit, I am a silver lining kind of guy so let’s just look at this.”

Todd Cochrane
Jason Calacanis says either fight or submit to Apple on Podcasting
“Just to think that Apple iTunes directory was awarded an award from the podcasting community which they are supposed to pick up at Podcast Awards ceremony this coming Friday night. We will see if they have the guts to come to Ontario and pick up there trophy (i could get really evil here) but I bet they don’t have the guts to come get it.”

Apple send in the goons
“How should we look at Apple’s Rip Van Winkle approach to enforcing its pod-marks? My gut tells me that this a reaction to a flattening growth curve on its Pod-ucts (groan), something the techmedia and ’sphere has been murmuring about for months. Is this the first sign of growing Apple concern that soon, its iPod market nearing saturation, it will have to start moving into related markets, or generating licensing revenue from others who do?”

Podcasting dead, long live Zunecasting!
“How can ostensibly smart people - I mean, they passed the bar, right - be so absolutely, abysmally, galactically stupid?”

Legal Tip: Avoid Using “Pod”
“If you feel that Apple is out to lunch (as is the increasing opinion of the intelligent world at large), then fund the fight with money or volunteer time. Don’t put your business or domain on the line. Apple is big, hungry, and rich. Probably more than you.”

The Apple Podcast Grab Is Sullying The Orchard
“Orchardists the world over know what to do when a tree begins to say under the weight of too heavy a fruit yield. Cut her down or prune her back.”

Connecting the dots
“Unfortunately Mr. Jobs, these moves are signaling the marketplace. You’re telling the iPod ecosystem and marketplace to make audio, video and other media generic instead of iPod-centric. THAT is the essence of why this is a bonehead move. Without a doubt Microsoft, Creative, WalMart and others would like to say an enthusiastic and resounding, “Thank you!” for accelerating it.”

Technorati : apple, podcast

Filed under: Uncategorized
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I am seriously thinking of reading for a Doctorate in Communications at one of the three very fine universities here in Adelaide. If I am able to show that my research is relevant to PR as a profession, there is also the possibility of a grant to help with fees and to speed the process along (because I could then study full-time, rather than part-time).

Part of the application process involves writing a 4,500 word piece on a topic of my choice that would form part of my research focus. Were this to be a simple one-year course of study I would probably look at the implications and impact of social media on employee communications, however as the course is potentially of three years duration (full time) and more likely six years (part time), such a narrow focus would be foolish, as the internet has shown itself to be spectacularly adept at ‘moving on’ despite earnest researchers’ desires to slow it down while they measure it.

I’ve wandered through the IABC research area for ideas, but so far nothing has ‘grabbed’ me. But then again, I am not the world’s best strategic thinker — I am more a tactician than strategist when it comes to the ‘big issues’.

Therefore I turn to my colleagues-in-arms: what thoughts do you have around issues in business communication and what would you, given a free hand, like to research?

Technorati : business communication, doctorate, research

Filed under: miscellaneous
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Normally my Outlook spam filter dumps all of my email spam into a folder which I routinely just Ctrl+A and delete.

But for some bizarre reason I found myself looking at the names of the spammers yesterday; just for something to do, I guess.

A couple of names stood out from the pack: Eccentricities L. Comparatively and Profusion I. Runs, but nothing beats this one, and so it therefore wins the inaugural BetterComms Spammers Name of Distinction:

Reprehensible B. Scuttlebut

Now that is a name I would be proud to have thought up!

Any names you have found in your spam folder that tickle your funny bone?

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Shel is ‘on the money’ again with regards to CEO blogs. In passing, he cites Dr. Henry Mintzberg as someone who has studied senior leaders. For organisational/organizational psychologists Mintzberg is a BIG figure! I was presenting a poster at an international convention of psychologists in Montreal many years ago (after which I wanted to move there, it was so beautiful a city, plus it was the home of Cirque du Soleil and other circuses, PLUS they have — or at least back in 1995 had — an amazing understanding of how to keep teenage boys out of trouble) and everyone was dropping Minztberg’s name.

Says Shel:

About 20 years ago, I met a successful Fortune 500 CEO of a thriving company who was speaking at a conference. I’ve never forgotten what he told the audience. The initials CEO may stand for Chief Executive Officer, he said, but they also stand for “Customers, Employees, and Owners.”

Oh yea, tell it like it really is, Shel!

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Our Nev has a great link off to an amazing e-report/white paper. Fard Johnmar has written a phenomenal paper on why social media is so important to businesses. Granted, Fard focuses on the health industry, but the lessons are apposite to all. I will be emailing this pdf paper to all of my contacts — it really IS that good! Thanks, Nev, for finding it.

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Today is OneWebDay.

What it means to me:

• Words fail me to describe the richness that has enveloped, engulfed and enlarged my life.
• Without the web I would never have found the IABC, Shel, Neville, Donna PepsiCola, Donna Tocci, Allan, Dan, Ben, BadgerDan, the divine Miss Heidi, Andrea (who is closer to my heart and prayers than she may realise), Kami, Douglas Fortesque Arbuthnot and his wife Jen, Trevor Cook, Paull Young, Crescenzo, Rubel, Scoble, Stibbe, Robert French and the marcom students, Ross Monaghan, and a thousand other folks who have immeasurably enriched my life
• Without the internet and its technologies I never would have ‘found’ and been able to interact with such incredible business communicators like Amy Gooen, Brad Bellaver (formerly of The Memo), Catriona Byrne, Isobel Redmond, Meryl David, Peter Vogt, and others who have/are going to be interviewed by me about ‘communication’ and why it is so important to business and indeed family life.
• Finding ‘my home’, where I have never felt so ‘at home’ before. It has enabled me to find a rag-tag collection of like-minded souls across multiple disciplines and world views. Adelaide was always too small a world to encompass my world view — no one here could encompass such diversity as Status Quo, Led Zeppelin, Cold Chisel, Midnight Oil, Tom Waits, The Police and Sting, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Howard Jones, Peter Gabriel at his darkest and my all-time musical ‘hero’, Thomas Dolby.
• Finding my ‘passion’. I was an avid songwriter, moving to the UK to ‘try my hand’ at the big time. I didn’t make it but perhaps unsurprisingly once I accepted my ‘failure’ and removed the pressure of ‘making it’ I wrote my best material. I love desktop publishing and writing lyrics and music, but nothing has fired my creativity and passion so much as the global conversation that is the internet. It enables me to tap into every single one of my passions (I occasionally play my own music in the background of my FIR reports) and develop and grow them to greater heights of ecstacy than ever before.

I feel like the Blue Nile, who I am currently listening to. I have been a devoted follower of them since their first album, A Walk Across The Rooftops. Every now and then I pull one of their cds out of my collection and remind myself why they are every romantic British-er’s band. As they say in their own biography, people have either every Blue Nile cd in their collection or they’ve never heard of them.

I remember having dinner with one of my then Professors at Surrey Uni, John Groeger, who had just recently discovered Walk Across The Rooftops. I felt duty-bound to put him onto the then newly-released Hats, with the proviso that if he thought a couple of tracks on ‘Rooftops’ were ‘emotionally touching and humbling’, wait until he heard ‘Hats’.

The Blue Nile, having released just four albums in 21 years, recognise that everyone has their ‘Tinsletown in the Rain’, their ‘Family Life’, their ‘From a Late Night Train’ (my late night train is a woman called Jenny Boulter). I can track my love life, and by extension my life, by these songs, as I equally can by Tom Waits‘ songs.

The internet, for me, is a powerful part of my life and who Lee Hopkins is. To think of Lee Hopkins without the internet is to think of Lee Hopkins prior to 1994. Some of my wonderful friends, who I have known since school days and we are a very close knit bunch (do your beloved friends stretch back 35+ years?) sometimes forget that I am not the brash, vodka-drinking teenager I used to be. I’m a late 40-something vodka drinker…

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Glenn Reynolds continues his marvellous series of posts on the magic and perspicacity of comics. Mandatory reading if you believe that connecting with your audience, by what ever means available, is important…

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Steve Crescenzo. The most funking amazing blogger I have ever come across, because he lays himself wiiiiiiiiide open and wears his heart on his sleeve. I used to get in all sorts of trouble for wearing my heart on my sleeve (”pansy”, “gay”, “faggot”, “not a real man”) because I had emotions. So I learnt to bottle them up, play the corporate game, be ‘the man’.

Then comes Crescenzo, who has more credibility and absolute adoration amongst those who have heard him speak than anyone I know of. And he wears his humanity, his failings and his heart on his sleeve, right there in the open for people to gawp, to snigger, to ridicule, to mock, to vilify.

But in this age of ‘conversation’ he is a hero. Perhaps largely because his is such a beguiling, engaging, funny speaker (says everyone who has ever seen him talk — I am yet to have the privilege). I envy him his honesty, his integrity, his guts. Were we all like him…

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Seth Godin, the marketer’s marketer, asks the question that every business that’s been around a while should ask:

Where are the talented individuals and small firms that want a closed-end engagement… not to completely redesign a site that’s working, not to do any coding, but just to mess with the html and css a bit.

To take their learning from many clients and figure out that this works better than that.

We consultants equally ask, “Where are the clients who recognise the value in moving past an internet business model that is two years of out date?” “Where are the clients who recognise that the internet world moves on and their website needs updating more than just a colour and logo change?”

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Rubel points to yet another bit of ‘cluelessness’ by the company that has done so much to bring “Oooh, ahh!!” coolness factor to modern technology — Apple.

It seems that Apple are yet again firmly bent on annyoing the buggery out of ordinary citizens and trying to alienate the vast populace. They want to own the term ‘podcast‘, it seems. Good luck with that!! Is there any limit to the depth to which Apple’s lawyers and PR people will fail to understand the marketplace they so dominate?

Technorati : allan jenkins, amy gooen, andrea weckerle, apple, badger dan, ben hamilton, blue nile, brad bellaver, catriona byrne, cold chisel, ddot hill, donna papacosta, donna pepsicola, donna tocci, douglas copeland, flying aqua badgers, glenn reynolds, heidi miller, howard jones, iabc, isobel redmond, kami huyse, led zeppelin, marcomm, matthew stibbe, meryl david, midnight oil, neville hobson, onewebday, paull young, peter gabriel, presentation zen, robert french, robert scoble, ross monaghan, ryuichi sakamoto, seth godin, shel holtz, status quo, steve crescenzo, steve rubel, sting, the blue nile, the police, thomas dolby, tom waits, trevor cook

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Arnold Schwarzenegger has a big one.

Michael J. Fox has a small one.

Madonna doesn’t have one.

The Pope has one but doesn’t use it.

Clinton uses his all the time.

Bush is one.

Mickey Mouse has an unusual one.

Liberace never used his on women.

Jerry Seinfeld is very, very proud of his.

Cher claims that she took on three.

We never saw Lucy use Desi’s.

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Answers may be posted as comments to this post, or as trackbacks!

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Thanks to Donna PepsiCola and Terry Fleishman.
Batman photo courtesy of CrazyAboutTV.com

Technorati : donna papacosta, donna pepsicola, terry fleishman

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Okay, I missed ‘B‘ in the line-up, but that’s coming up shortly (Brad Bellaver kindly unhitched the horses from the wagons, put his Smith & Weston rifle away and, dagnabbit, chatted with me from deep in the bowels of his secret Wells Fargo location).

So until I edit Brad’s interview and publish it I am jumping ahead one letter and moving to ‘C‘.

Which means here’s a bloody fantastic interview with Catriona Byrne — ex-’big cheese’ of internal communications at the Sydney 2000 Olympics, now a Director at SageCo.

She’s a wonderful friend, fantastic coffee companion, fabulous lunch partner and incredibly insightful into the ways, whys and wherefores of employee communications.

This interview lasts a scant 16 minutes and 49 seconds, as she had to race off to yet another meeting to share her passion for employee communications and the foolishness of companies who let their vast stores of knowledge (aka their more-senior, longer-serving staff) disappear without a trace, or without tapping into that phenomenal warehouse of insight and information.

You can download the interview directly to your computer and listen, or if you want to catch all of the interviews, plus other interviews I conduct then why not subscribe to my rss podcast feed and retrieve them in your podcatcher of choice (such as iTunes or Juice).

It’s part of a series of interviews that I am compiling for Ross Monaghan’s theMediaPod.net site for PR students.

Technorati : catriona byrne, ross monaghan, sageco, themediapod, themediapod.net

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Not content with interviewing just a few internal communication folks, I have set myself the heroic quest of interviewing every internal/employee communicator in the world.

So, starting with the letter ‘A‘, here’s a fascinating interview with Amy Gooen, deputy head of global internal comms at Verisign.

In the interview she draws on her journalist beginnings and marcomms experiences and how they impact on 5,000 Verisign employees worldwide.

Find out why Amy believes good PR starts at home and how she coped when her husband threw her a copy of a business magazine with a damning report of her business unit at a previous company — and she had no idea the report was being written. She even has ‘inside’ knowledge of Southwest Airlines‘ employee comms material — her husband Eric is a pilot with them!

It’s a fantastic interview with a great communicator, and you can download the interview directly to your computer and listen, or if you want to catch all of the interviews, plus other interviews I conduct (such as with Isobel Redmond MP) then why not subscribe to my rss podcast feed and retrieve them in your podcatcher of choice (such as iTunes or Juice).

At just 27 minutes and 07 seconds long, and worksafe friendly, this interview’s a bargain!

It’s part of a series of interviews that I am compiling for Ross Monaghan’s theMediaPod.net site for PR students.

Technorati : amy gooen, ross monaghan, southwest airlines, themediapod, verisign

Filed under: Uncategorized
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As part of a series of interviews with communicators on the importance of internal communications, I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Meryl David, long-time IABC member (and former Asia-Pacific Director) and someone extremely highly respected by her peers.

Meryl is the Internal Communication Manager for Zurich Financial Services here in Australia and is based in Sydney.

It’s a fantastic interview with a great communicator, and you can download the interview directly to your computer and listen, or if you want to catch all of the interviews, plus other interviews I conduct (such as with Isobel Redmond MP) then why not subscribe to my rss podcast feed and retrieve them in your podcatcher of choice (such as iTunes or Juice).

At just 26 minutes and 25 seconds long, and worksafe friendly, this interview’s a bargain!

It’s part of a series of interviews that I am compiling for Ross Monaghan’s theMediaPod.net site for PR students.

Technorati : iabc, meryl david, ross monaghan, themediapod, zurich financial services

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