a personal blog about technology, communications and other stuff that interests me
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1) “How To Live Up to the Innovation Hype” – Business Week innovation and design writer Reena Jana on former “next big thing” companies that didn’t live up to the initial hype but are now seeing an upswing in business growth because they have “refined their technologies, remade their business models, and reached out to new audiences.”
If these [new] technologies weren’t taken to market, their owners may never have found that better use,” Chesbrough writes in an e-mail. “Innovators need to learn how to play poker in pursuing these technologies, rather than playing chess, where the objectives and possibilities are clearly defined at the outset.”
Henry Chesbrough, executive director of the Center for Open Innovation at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business
2) “How Blogging Can Help You Get a New Job” – The Wall Street Journal
Corporate recruiters have long surfed the Web to vet potential hires, but now they are also surfing blogs to unearth job candidates, expanding their talent pool and gaining insights they say they can’t get from résumés and interviews.
PR Blogger Kevin Duggan is quoted in the article. He says that his blog generates “about one job lead a month”.
Blogging still plays a minor role for PR hiring practices in Canada. But the importance is growing. Blogging can definitely help people get a new PR job here, too. Just ask Chris Clarke or Michael O’Connor-Clarke or Tamera Kremer of Thornley Fallis.
In a move to become more transparent and address accusations that authorites are “covering up the truth”, the French space agency CNES has put its archive of UFO sightings online.
In the past 30 years there have been 1,600 sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects in France, according to tech news service heise.de. The CNES is a state organization that also observes “extraterrestrial phenomena.” They are working on adding photos and videos related to the sightings.
(via heise.de)
Today is my seventh anniversary of immigrating to Canada. It’s a good day to say thank you to the unknown customs officer at Pearson Airport. I wish I had asked for his name.
On March 21, 2000, I anxiously stood in the customs lineup with a suitcase, a backpack and a list of things to be shipped later. 
When the officer saw that I am a new immigrant, he smiled, shook my hand and said “Welcome to Canada! Glad to have you here.”
Some people may dismiss this as a little Wal-Mart greeter type of gesture. It wasn’t. It made a world of difference to me. Since this is supposed to be a PR blog: I don’t think anybody could have done better PR for the country than this customs officer.
Thank you, Officer. And thank you, Canada. I am glad to be here, too.
[Cross-posted from the High Road Blog]
IT World Canada just announced that it has acquired IT Business Group from Transcontinental. That means ComputerWorld Canada and Computing Canada will be part of the same family. For how long? IT World Canada confirmed seven lay-offs in the press release but added there would be “no additional personnel changes as a result of the purchase”. No details yet on the future of all the publications and digital brands. IT World Canada’s president Andrew White made the following comment:
“Over the coming weeks, we will be finalizing the integration of the companies, and reviewing the product portfolios for future synergies. In the meantime, we will maintain all existing properties and work with our clients to ensure a smooth transition over the coming weeks and months.”
The acquisition will strengthen IT World Canada’s position in the market (I am especially interested to see what kind of digital strategy the combined powerhouse will embark on). Depending on the extent of the “future synergies”, it may also leave the Canadian IT community with less opportunity to get business technology news from different media sources. This begs the question: will we see another media company (or blogging network) step up?
Maybe one of the large American technology business sites will consider creating a Canadian site to get a share of the local online advertising dollars. Red Herring announced some kind of Canadian presence a while ago. CNET already operates international sites in Asia, Australia and several European countries. It has all the technology infrasctructure in place. Why not hire a few journalists and add Canada to the portfolio (again)?
Maybe other Canadian media properties, like Canoe or Globetechnology.com, will look at beefing up both enterprise-focused content and Canadian stories in their technology sections?
Or will we see even more independent bloggers and news sites pop up in Canada? Former National Post tech reporter Mark Evans is blogging away with his two tech blogs and a podcast series (together with Kevin Restivo). On the telecom/VoIP side, we have people like Alec Saunders and Jon Arnold covering the community. And there are many more.
IT World Canada is positioning itself for long-term success as an important voice in Canada’s thriving technology community. With more editorial staff it has the chance to provide even more breadth and depth in coverage. But there is room for more voices – corporate or independent.
Read the press release here.
If you happen to be in Sherbrooke today or in Montreal tomorrow, go see Johnny Clegg in concert. I went to his show in Toronto on Tuesday and was blown away (again). I first saw him live in 1994 and was incredibly impressed by his music and his live performance. I don’t think many people can sing or play guitar, and at the same time do a zulu dance – together with the band.
In my dreams I see Johnny Clegg hosting a new reality show: “Zulu dancing with the stars”. A bunch of famous cooler-than-you rock bands would have to learn to lighten up and integrate some really cool African dance moves into their boring stage performances. It would make for better TV and, afterwards, better concerts.
Anyway, Johnny Clegg is still brilliant. And South Africa should pay him as a cultural ambassador.
More Johnny Clegg info here and here. Crappy cell phone pictures below:
The networked camera has no objective. No lense, no zoom. It’s just a black box with a button and some electronics inside. “Buttons is a camera that actually shoots other’s photos, taking the notion of the networked camera to the extreme.” Sascha Pohflepp, a student of visual communication at the Berlin University of the Arts, has created it:
Photography has become a networked process. It no longer ends with pasting prints into an album. Instead, making them public through services like Flickr is rapidly becoming one of the main ways how we treat our visual memories. The photographic process extends from preserving a moment to an act of telecommunication, with numerous implications on how we perceive reality, how we make our memories and how we create a narrative from it.
If you liked Michael Wesch’s video (“Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us”) that has been posted all over the blogosphere recently, you might also enjoy the concept of Between Blinks & Buttons. You can watch a video here.