04/11

There is a rising worry that porno spam that sneaks through office filters and around firewalls can end up costing a company money. Why? It can be construed as sexual harassment.  That is, someone who is deeply offended by the crude come-ons passing for direct advertising could sue the company for failing to protect the person from such stuff.

I have a hard time thinking how one might sustain a lawsuit against a company unless the company has made no effort to stem the spam tide, but nonetheless, the irony is complete.  One gets sued for failing to stop something that he didn't want anyway and has tried to halt.

I am in favor of a national anti-spam bill with harsh penalties for spammers.  Such a bill would not take care of letters from Nigeria but it would slow come-ons for Viagra and penis-extenders that bombard mailboxes.  It would also put hard-core pornographic spammers at risk.  Such a bill has been moving slowly through Congress.  It couldn't move fast enough for me.

Now for more irony.  Spammers are obviously opposed to any bill that limits their activities, and they say it is unconstitutional limitation of their free speech rights.  Yup. I have the right to bombard you with crude messages but you have no right to tell me to stuff it.  In an extension of irony, one association behind the anti-spam bill is the Direct Marketing Association, which is worried that bad spammers will penalize good ones.

Spam is an area that cries for a balance of individual rights.  Congress just passed the "do-not-call" registry for telemarketers.  We need something similar for spam -- and we need it now.

04/10

The destructiveness in Baghdad yesterday was a positive communication from a people yearning to be free.
 

04/09

The Charlotte News and Observer launched the site in 1994 when the Web was just starting to grow.  It showed the way for many news sites that came after it.  The McClatchy Co. of Sacramento, California acquired the Charlotte paper in 1995 and along with it the Web site that it has run until now.  The reason McClatchy is shutting down the site is that larger and more nationally oriented news purveyors have overtaken and passed The Nando Times.  These are companies like The New York Times, CNN and The Wall Street Journal, all of whom came later and had better brands to compete on the national and international news scene than a local paper.

It's a pity that the site is going away.  I would like to think that some of the early sites will continue to hang on, but many have fallen and more will as time passes.  It is hard to believe less than 10 years later how we reacted to the Web in its infancy.  When a site was launched, we all rushed to click on it and see what it held.  It was a rare gift.  Then two, three, 10, 100, 1,000 sites a day began to flood online and the gift turned into a commodity. 

Apparently, the McClatchy Company is going to keep the staff of The Nando Times and will have its reporters and editors produce copy for the company's other papers -- The Minneapolis Start Tribune, The Sacramento Bee and Modesto Bee.  It is fitting the staff will stay in place.  They have more longevity than anyone in publishing news on the Web. 

So before the site passes into history, take a few moments to browse it.  It might be hard to believe that a newspaper in Charlotte, North Carolina, was a leader in news publishing, but it was.  Innovation starts in unlikely places, but sooner or later, others catch up.
 

04/08

Few technologies have had a splashier introduction than Segway on TV, in print, online and on radio.  There were hundreds of stories, and reporters, one after another, tried it .  But, 14 months after the Segway has been on sale to businesses and five months after it has been offered to consumers, you don't see many of them.  In fact, you see hardly any. 

What is going wrong?  The two-wheeler with a top speed of 12.5 miles per hour is simply too new for cities, business and others.  It is also too expensive for most consumers at $5,000.   Massive publicity, it turns out, hasn't spurred sales.

This is not to say Segway is a bad product.  It might be a poorly priced product or a product for which regulations need to be written, but it apparently works as advertised, and it is seemingly as simple to operate as the company claims.

According to one news story about 200 companies have purchased one or two Segways each for evaluation, but there isn't a stampede.   This is far less than the 50,000 to 100,000 units annually the company planned to be shipping by now.

As you might expect, several of the more optimistic Segway executives have departed the firm -- on to the next big thing.   It will be up to the company to hang in until credibility for the product builds, or until the company realizes there is no market for a two-wheeled, gyroscopically balanced transporter.

My hunch is that Segway will find a market, but with the recession and the generally gloomy times, it is going to be a longer rather than shorter period.  The lesson for PR practitioners?  There is only so much PR can do. 
 

04/07

However, I thought I should tell you about changes in the directory section of online-pr.com.  The directory was a mess.  Over the years, I put reference information on the page that did not belong anywhere else.  In the beginning, I divided the section between general and specialized directories.  I didn't have a lot of either so it made sense. 

But, when things grow, one should accept that old categories are no longer sufficient.  That's what happened.  It became a stewpot directory with a little of this, that and something else.  I finally got around to breaking it up into sub-sections and updating links.   The subsections are now History and Biography, Arts and Entertainment and Business and Law.  That leaves much-reduced general and specialized directory sections, as they should have been in the first place. 

General directories are now indeed general reference sources for large bodies of knowledge.  Specialized directories are for focused topics like (my favorite) www.webtender.com  -- a directory of cocktail recipes for those of you have who to tend bar at the next corporate event.

I've also expanded the white papers, http://www.online-pr.com/OnlineprWhitePapersAnd%20Essays.htm,  with two more essays.   I would be happy to hear from you should you read them, especially if you think I'm wrong.  While I try to stay balanced, sometimes I tip too heavily into personal opinion that should be corrected.   The latest essay about web site maintenance is a pet peeve that is controversial with some colleagues.  I believe strongly that Web sites should be updated frequently: Some of my colleagues don't.   I'm curious to know what you think.