a personal blog about technology, communications and other stuff that interests me
“Innovation is, first and foremost, a business philosophy — that’s the message that must be sent to Canadian businesses. Change the workplace culture first, otherwise your IT investment achieves little. Innovation is little more than a buzzword if you can’t see that.”
ITworldcanada.com’s Dan McLean on innovation in When bad practices happen to good IT concepts
After reading about it on Mark Evans’ blog, I’ve been trying out Pandora for a few days. It is a great idea to let listeners create their own music radio station based on their favourite artist(s) and then provide recommendations of ‘similar’ music.
The intelligence behind the recommendation engine is still a work in progress, though. For example, how I got from my selections Buffalo Tom and Heather Nova to a recommendation of Def Leppard is still a mystery to me.
I did like some of the songs Pandora came up with and it is definitely a site I will return to. But Radio Paradise is still my favourite Internet radio station. Bill and Rebecca at Radio Paradise put together a program that I prefer to my own Pandora selections. They have introduced me to many artists that were new to me, and some of them I would have never come across on my own – even with a recommendation program.
Maybe it is a little bit like the chess matches between Kasparov and IBM’s Deep Blue. It is fascinating to see what technology can do. But I always wanted Kasparov to win. When it comes to Internet radio, I’m still in Bill and Rebecca’s corner.
The mesh conference organizers have introduced a new event segment for “entrepreneurs, start-ups and do-gooders with great stories“. Submit your written pitch here and you may get the chance to present your idea/venture for five minutes on stage at the conference. Three people per conference day. Neat idea. Before you submit your elevator pitch, you could test it first with this web service.
According to an IDC 2005 survey of medium and large businesses that is mentioned in IDC Canada’s April 2006 IT Matters newsletter, 70 per cent of large companies agreed that they’d be “open to dealing with new IT vendors”. That’s good news for vendors who are trying to get their foot in the door with Canadian enterprises.
My guess is that the openness varies considerably depending on which part of the IT system the new vendor is targeting and how big the pain is that the solution addresses. IDC says that “addressing less glamorous business challenges” may help close the sale.
I love JAlbum. I downloaded it a few weeks ago because I wanted a better way to put photos on my website. Now I finally got around to trying it out. It is a fantastic program. And it is free (users can donate money if they like). JAlbum comes with the option of choosing different skins for the albums, and there is a whole “ecosystem” of people who design skins.
I have used the Fotoplayer skin for my new galleries (to see an example click here). Fotoplayer.com has a free trial version and can be upgraded to a Lite version and a Pro version, which even includes online shop capabilities for professional photographers. For a snapshot photographer like me, the trial version is enough, although I may upgrade to Lite at some point.
I keep reading about Flickr and Bubbleshare, which are easy to use and have great blog integration. What I like about JAlbum are the features, flexibility and design options. Blog integration would be nice. The Fotoplayer skin already comes with an RSS feed, so who knows what features may get added next. I also like that I can keep the photos on my own website, and don’t have to store them on Flickr or Bubbleshare. But I can see the attraction of their services. Now if the people behind Fotoplayer and JAlbum got together and offered a hosted online version… well, just a thought.
According to Netcraft’s April web server survey, there are 80 million hostnames on the Internet now. This means the number has doubled since reaching 40 million in April 2003.
(via heise.de)
Do PR people need new media skills? – Good post by Tom Murphy on “what skills and knowledge do practitioners need to effectively communicate with their audience(s) using traditional and new media tools”.
Media Relations Measurement System launching – David Jones announces the launch of a new “Media Relations Rating Points system” in Toronto on April 20. The system has been created by by the National Measurement Committee of the Canadian Public Relations Society. More info will be available on the new MRP blog.