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Martin Hofmann

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

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PR Toolbar: Making room for more feeds

by Martin · Apr 14, 2007

The list of blogs in the RSS reader has grown quite long. After talking to Michael O’Connor Clarke and Gary Schlee at the last Third Tuesday, I’ve decided to split up the RSS reader in the Canuck PR Toolbar into two sections: one for PR blogs (red) and one for marcom and social media blogs (blue). 

This has nothing to do with “separating church and state”. It is simply a functional improvement because a couple toolbar users told me that some RSS feeds had become unreadable because in lower screen resolutions the combined list extended beyond the margins of the monitor. Now the two RSS readers have a little room to grow again.

I will do another round of search on the weekend and add new Canadian PR and marcom blogs (suggestions welcome, as always).

The toolbar will update itself automatically. No need to reinstall. If anybody has trouble with the updated version, let me know.

Filed Under: Communications, Toolbar

New RSS reader feature in Canuck PR Toolbar

by Martin · Jan 5, 2007

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.

Filed Under: English, Toolbar

Canuck PR Toolbar – One Month Later

by Martin · Nov 1, 2006

What would the world in general and the blogosphere in particular be without random statistics? Surely we would cease to exist. So let me help by providing a quick update on toolbar statistics. Since its launch on October 3 the toolbar has been downloaded 32 times. According to the reporting function on average 18-20 people use it on a daily basis to perform 103 operations. You may say those numbers are small and insignificant. I say they confirm that the toolbar has become the productivity tool of choice for a select elite of Canadian PR professionals. 🙂 

Here is the list of Canadian PR bloggers that are currently included in the toolbar for both the blog directory and the news ticker.

Please welcome Michael “Back-In-the-PR-Game” O’Connor Clarke (Congrats, Michael and Thornley Fallis!) and Maggie K. Fox of socialmediagroup.ca as the newest additions. If you would like to see anybody else added, please leave me a comment or send me an email.

Ryan Anderson (The New PR)
Darren Barefoot (Capulet Communications)
Boyd Neil (Hill and Knowlton)
Chris Clarke (Thornley Fallis)
Eric Eggertson (Mutually Inclusive PR)
Ted Graham (Hill and Knowlton)
Maggie K. Fox (socialmediagroup.ca)
Leona Hobbs (Flackadelic)
Brendan Hodgson (Hill & Knowlton)
Martin Hofmann (High Road Communications)
David Jones (Fleishman-Hillard)
Bob LeDrew (FlackLife)
Ed Lee (iStudio/Fleishman-Hillard)
Colin McKay (Canuckflack)
Michael O’Connor Clarke (Thornley Fallis)
Donna Papacosta (Trafalgar Communications)
PR Girlz (Thornley Fallis)
Julie Rusciolelli (Maverick)
Marc Snyder (emm-ess consultants)
Joe Thornley (Thornley Fallis)
Lisa Walker (Hill and Knowlton)

I am also happy to add recommendations in the other sections of the toolbar, for example journalist blogs, marketing blogs, PR events, associations or podcasts.

Filed Under: Toolbar

Get the new Canuck PR Toolbar – version 1.0

by Martin · Oct 3, 2006

As promised a couple weeks ago, here is a first version of a Canadian PR toolbar. Download it at http://canuckpr.communitytoolbars.com/.

The toolbar is based on a very cool, free service by Conduit. I am looking for a few people who are willing to test it and provide feedback. I hope this will be a community effort.

It is now called Canuck PR Toolbar because somebody else must have already reserved the term “Canadian PR Toolbar” (Ed?) on the Conduit site. Anyway, the Canuck PR toolbar includes:

SEARCH BOX

Google.ca is set as default but once you download the toolbar, you can change it to other search engines. I’ve added Technorati, MSN, Yahoo!, MSN News, Yahoo! News, Google News and Wikipedia. Other wishes?

It also comes with a “highlight pen”. If you put in words in the search box and click on the highlight button, it highlights those words on the current site in your browser.

PR BLOGS

The current list of Canadian PR blogs is just a start, it has nothing to do with a ranking or a “top list”. If you have or know of a Canadian PR blog that is missing, leave a comment and I will add it. Don’t be shy (you are in PR, remember). Nominate yourself and others. It makes it easier for me. 

The cool thing about this toolbar is that once you have it installed, your toolbar will be automatically updated whenever I update the list on my end. So it doesn’t matter if your blog isn’t on the initial list; everybody who has the toolbar will still get to see it once I’ve updated the list.

Question: do we want other related blogs (marketing, news, U.S. PR bloggers etc)? Let me know your opinion. I can include submenus to differentiate between different blog types.

PR RESOURCES

This is a list of links that includes events, associations, podcasts, publications and services. It will serve as a directory of PR resources. Again, just a start. If you have an idea for additional links, please leave a comment.

PR BLOG NEWS TICKER

The news ticker provides the latest headlines from Canadian PR blogs. Right now, everybody included in the blogs list is also included in the news ticker (except for one of the blogs where, ahem, I couldn’t find an RSS feed). Also included are two del.icio.us feeds with PR headlines from Constantin Basturea (Daily PR Digest – okay, let’s call it an honourary Canadian feed) and David Jones to broaden the scope a little bit.

I will try to include all new blogs that I am adding to the blog list in the news ticker, too. Since this toolbar is based on a free web service, there may be restrictions for the number of RSS feeds that can be added. It doesn’t say so but I am still trying to figure out the whole system, so I will add Canadian PR blog feeds for as long as possible.

OTHER FUNCTIONS

The toolbar also comes with the option of adding a few other features including weather forecast (you can input the city), a pop-up blocker tool, an email notifier (works with Hotmail, Yahoo Mail and Gmail) and buttons to open Windows programs such as Word, Media Player or a calculator. With the exception of the search box, all items can be activated/deactivated. 

Again, according to the instructions by Conduit, it is not necessary to download new versions of the toolbar to receive updates to the installed features such as the blog list, the resource list or the blog newsticker. A new download would only be necessary for a major change. So if you send me suggestions for Canadian PR blogs and sites, I can add them in (just give me a bit of time, I do have a day job).

So much for now. It was a fun project putting a first version together. Please go ahead and try it out if you are interested. And let me know if you like it or think it is a waste of time. Feedback welcome. 

[Please note that I have only tried the toolbar with IE7 Beta. There is a Firefox version for download, too. But I have not tested it]

Filed Under: Canada, Communications, English, Toolbar

What would a Canadian PR Toolbar look like?

by Martin · Sep 18, 2006

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?

Filed Under: Communications, Toolbar

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