Martin Hofmann

a personal blog about technology, communications and other stuff that interests me

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What would a Canadian PR Toolbar look like?

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Just came across pr-toolbar.de, a free PR Toolbar created by a German agency. The  download offering for German PR professionals includes 380 PR links, a PR glossary, RSS feeds with PR news as well as gadgets like cookie cleaner, unified email notification and a chat function. I haven’t downloaded it but it looks like it also includes a couple features that are supposed to generate leads for this agency.

I am not a huge toolbar fan in general because it further diminishes the little screen space I have on my laptop  and the new IE7 Beta browser (just like Firefox) has an integrated search box anyway. But it is still a nice marketing and community-building idea. 

pr-toolbar.de was developed based on a free toolbar creation service from Conduit, so it would probably be easy to create a Canadian PR toolbar.

Not sure if anybody would be interested. But, just for the sake of an exercise, here’s a quick brainstorm of what could be included.

  • Sean over at Buzz Canuck has just created “The Power 50“, a list of Canadian marketing bloggers. Not all of them are PR blogs but it would be a good starting point for community links and/or RSS news. And why not cross over into other marketing territory for some of the links?
  • Third Tuesday, Third Monday and CaseCamp and other PR events
  • Inside PR for podcasting
  • Since it is not just about blogging but about PR in general, we should throw in links to  CPRS and IABC for good measure
  • prmeasurement.ca on the resources side of things, of course, and links to vendor partners like CNW, CCN Matthews, NewsCanada, Bacons, Vocus etc. 
  • And I am sure for additional resource links we could also take a look south of 49

Yes, there’s plenty more to be found in Canada. But it’s time for dinner. Other ideas anyone?

From Wikipedia to Citizendium

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There will be no logged-out editing and no anonymous editing [in Citizendium].  Anyone may participate, but all must be logged in under their own real names (we will use the honor principle to begin with), and with a working e-mail address.  Where Wikipedia shares the culture of anonymity found in the broader Internet, the Citizendium will have a culture of real-world, personal responsibility.

Larry Sanger

Larry Sanger, one of the founders of Wikipedia, has started a new project called Citizendium, which initially is supposed to be a “progressive fork” of Wikipedia. One of the key differences is the inclusion of editors (vs. authors) who must state their credentials on a user profile page. With this system, Citizendium hopes to fight the “widespread anonymity that, according to Sanger, has led to a “troll problem” in Wikipedia. He also want to make Citizendium attractive to academics, “so that they can contribute in a way they feel comfortable with”. He explains his approach in detail in an essay called “Toward a New Compendium of Knowledge“.

Trying to get rid of anonymity and trolls is a good idea. It will bring who-edited-my-wiki-page feuds to an end and make it easier to call out people for editing an entry a certain way. The proposed editorial system could be a challenge, though. Larry Sanger suggests that Citizendium editors and “chief subject editors” act as “facilitators and organizers, not dictators”. I think it is a great idea in theory but in the end, when there are differences in opinion, somebody has to make a decision. But overall, I find the notion of taking personal responsibility for writing or editing entries very appealing.

Larry Sanders wants to have software and servers for Citizendium set up by September 30th.

Links of note – September 16

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Totally pointless – Marketing Magazine’s article on youth loyalty marketing mentions my High Road colleague Heather Steele and provides an example of our digital marketing and social media work for clients.

Podcast consulting for Mark Evans – David Jones and Ed Lee are smart people. This is the 2.0 version (or “NGT” version?) of great relationship-building with journalists.

Links of Note – September 2

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Two articles on managing people from business author and consultant David Maister that I found well worth reading:

– Why (most) training is useless

– Tips on managing people

His blog and more articles can be found here.

I found David Maister’s articles by reading a new blog called Managing the Professional Services Firm by Australian consultant Jim Belshaw. It features good insights on training and recruitment.

Ads with a personal touch

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BBC News has interesting article about the future of advertising and some of the new technologies that could be used to create “personal” and “interactive” experiences. One example is the use of facial recognition software to determine whether the person staring at an outdoor/subway ad space is male or female, which would lead to different ads being served up. More on the BBC website.  

I’d be interested to read more about the future of online advertising, too. I can still count on one hand the number of times I have clicked on a Google or MSN ad in the last three years.

Boeing loses Connexion

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Boeing announced that it will shut down its inflight Internet service Connexion, which allowed passengers on a number of airlines to surf the Web during flights (via CNN).

Boeing says the market for the service didn’t materialize. Scoble thinks that 30 bucks was too expensive for two hours of service. I think it probably failed for a different reason: space.

I tried Connexion during a Lufthansa flight to Germany last year. The connection worked perfectly and it was a fast surfing experience. The problem was that I was sitting in economy class and had absolutely no room to actually work on the computer. It is one thing to use a laptop on a plane to watch a DVD. But it is almost impossible to actually type on the keyboard and get stuff done even if the guy in front of you hasn’t yet lowered his seat dangerously close to your crotch. I basically had to put the laptop monitor on my legs and put the keyboard against my belly. It looked more like I was playing accordion than working on a computer.

A look at an overview of airline seat dimensions shows that there are very few airlines who offer a little bit of comfort for economy class passengers. As long as there is no room to actually properly use a computer for work, and make onboard Internet usage useful and fun, it doesn’t really matter how expensive the service is or how much trouble airlines have to go through to install a service like Connexion. To make a service like this work, it is not enough to win over the business class.