a personal blog about technology, communications and other stuff that interests me
Jon Arnold (blog), Canada’s independent voice on IP communications, has entered into a partnership with Marc Robins (blog) that “includes the two firms joining forces to provide an array of marketing, communications, strategy consulting and market research services to their growing roster of IP communications technology vendors and service providers.” They are also planning to launch a new joint electronic newsletter. This will be good. More in the press release.
“Post och Inrikes Tidningar” (PoIT), the world’s oldest current newspaper has discontinued its print edition as of January 1, 2007 and is now an Internet-only edition at PoIT.org. Established in 1645 as the official newspaper of Sweden’s national government, it had lost a lot of readers in recent years, according to Der Spiegel (in German).
Near the end of the Thirty Years’ War, Swedish Queen Christina and Chancellor Axel Oxenstierna wanted to use PoIT to explain to its people “what all the money was spent on”. Over the centuries it turned from an outlet for the government’s official view into a full blown newspaper with reports on epidemics, the exchange rate for Swedish currency, weather reports, poetry and novels, and then was mostly focused on being “the country’s official notification body for announcements like bankruptcy declarations or auctions” (from the Wikipedia entry). The last print edition on December 29, 2006, was published with a circulation of only about 1,500.
Rather than viewing it as another proof point for the decline of print media, I’d say in this case the glass is half full. The Internet is a godsend for these types of official notification publications: the official function works just as well online. But it costs less public money.
(Disclaimer: I don’t speak Swedish; my only sources were Spiegel Online and Wikipedia)
Users of the Canuck PR toolbar may have wondered about the new button called “RSS – All Feeds” that has popped up out of nowhere. In addition to the existing directory of Canadian PR, marketing and media bloggers and the news ticker, I’ve now also included an RSS reader with all the feeds from the listed Canadian PR and marketing bloggers.
People who subscribe to all these blogs in their own RSS readers, either as part of their browser or in readers like Bloglines or Live.com, may not be interested in this new feature. If you don’t like it, it is easy to turn the RSS reader off by clicking on Toolbar Options (in the Canuck PR menu on the left of the toolbar), selecting “predefined components” and de-selecting “RSS All Feeds”.
The PR and marketing blogger list keeps growing. The following blogs are currently included in the RSS reader (click image to enlarge):
I will update the directory, newsticker and RSS reader with more Canadian PR and marketing blogs as soon as I come across new ones or get a heads up from other people in the comment section.
In other toolbar news: The resources directory has been updated with a link to David Jones’ excellent Social Media Toolbox for PR People in Squidoo.
BTW – if anybody is looking for a list of PR blog feeds that isn’t limited to Canada, I recommend the Public Relations Feedburner Network.
And finally, a quick note on RSS feeds: special kudos to Marc Snyder for having the biggest RSS icon this side of the 49th parallel. It doesn’t have to be that big but it helps to have the RSS icon in an easy to find location, preferably near the top of the page. When I went through all the blogs in the directory to find the RSS feeds, it was interesting to see where some bloggers had placed the links. In two cases, I couldn’t find a link to an RSS feed at all. So one blog isn’t included in the RSS reader and with the other I was lucky to guess the feed URL.
P.S.: If you don’t have the Canuck PR Toolbar installed yet, you can download it here.