Monthly Archives: June 2007

Is social media really for teenagers?

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Melcrum’s research (pdf) into social media usage at global corporations found that less than a third of communicators feel confident about using social media as part of their communications strategy.

However, despite this skills gap, 60 per cent of organizations will have some form of social media in place by the end of 2007.

So it’s good that Melcrum, in light of these findings, decided to make the ‘Strategy’ chapter from the report ‘How to use social media to engage employees’ available to download for free (pdf).

PS: Maybe, as Mark Kobayashi-Hillary commented following his recent global service book launch, corporations still think social media is really for teenagers?

PPS: By fitting coincidence the Urban Word of the Day is ‘Email Bankruptcy’:
When you are so inundated with email, both genuine email and spam, that you have to delete everything and start over again.I am so far behind on email that I am declaring email bankruptcy this year.

Surface tension

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Flickr contacted me to say they have removed a photo I used from an award-winning photographer’s website: “We have received a Notice of Infringement from Nick Cobbing via the Yahoo! Copyright Team and have removed the photo “surface tension” from your photostream.” Sorry Nick, I should have asked first. (I guess he doesn’t remember me from the days of Red Pepper, which is amazingly still going, when I had the pleasure of working with him as news editor. )

RefugeePhoto by Stuart Glendinning Hall

Pictured: Refugee Week pic from Sunday, just before the Falklands War anniversary celebration. In the photo-journalistic style of Nick  from the ‘old days’.

Challenge Gringo!

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I have a nice idea for a site which plugs into the cheeky, user-centric, ‘jackass’, travel-orientated culture. With a cool strong ethical side to it, and seriously sponsoring fun globally, with web 2.0 features such as ‘degrees of separation’ and rating individuals’ activity.

The twist is the dry British sense of humour so the ‘jackass’ is more witty and dry and less slapstick, so the idea is to put really obscure trivial, silly things up, like the guy who did a funny dance in a different places around the world but even more so. So this will be a place to upload all those silly holiday anecdotes, and have them rated, and then the most popular rise to the top of the pile digg style. For example when I was in Brasilia getting to talk to the lady who used to do the nails for the mum of the best footballer in the world, Kaka, would go up – be rated by the site – and by other users. You get the drift.

Of course because I would be the creator/gringo in charge, my sense of humour would be central to the site, with first and foremost me rating submissions by travellers from around the globe, though also allowing site users to do the same. Hence the site name: Challenge Gringo!

OK, enough. I have registered the domain name. Anyone interested should try to keep a straight face and bump into me sometime. One to do when I have another spare moment.

Dr Who?

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Watched the last episode of Dr Who thinking OK so he goes to the end of the universe, very sci fi. Then sat up when he told off his two time travellers, saying “to stop blogging” in terms of their chit-chat. Nice example of where conversation in the real world, and in the online world, are connected in the world of TV!

The name of the Game

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Well, well. Funny what you overhear in you local Gamestation outlet. Today Gamestation staff banter included a reference to a buyout and staff policy not to discuss pricing with the local GAME store, located but 2 mins walk away. Maybe I was lucky, but it turns out that was right. GAME bought out Gamestation just last month, and bosses want to keep the branding (pricing too?) separate. This line in a report on the sale also caught my eye:

“GAME lists Gamestation’s standing amongst the more hardcore gamer as a key reason for the acquisition, compared to GAME’s more mainstream offering.”

And what do you know the Office of Fair Trading is also interested in how this will effect the ‘hardcore gamer’..[Gamesindustry.biz report]

“The OFT enforces competition law, and is currently looking into the GBP 74 million (EUR 108m) retail buyout to see if it will result in reduced competition in the games retail market.”

“The GAME Group offered the following comment: “As expected we have notified the acquisition of Gamestation to the OFT for normal regulatory review. This review will take about two months and we will be co-operating fully with the OFT process.”

NASA TV

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Just watching the space shuttle work live at sun sets on Atlantis at 21:45GMT. Though by the looks of it my timing was out;-)

“Mission Specialists Danny Olivas and Jim Reilly performed repair work and helped fold solar arrays Friday during STS-117’s third spacewalk. The 7-hour, 58-minute excursion wrapped up at 9:22 p.m. EDT.”

Invention vs Innovation

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Saw this on the Business Link site and thought it was good to make the distinction:
“It is important to differentiate between invention and innovation. Invention is a new idea. Innovation is the commercial application and successful exploitation of the idea.”

Why has Slovakia implemented the EU’s anti-MRI directive?

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Why is Slovakia the only country in Europe to implement the EU’s anti-MRI directive in advance, when the Commission itself has written to member states saying in effect that they are going to postpone the MRI part of the EMF directive? See Medicexchange.com for some answers.(Funny to think now that I attended a economic trade fair in Czechoslovakia, as it was in 1988, as a guest of HM Government, complete with little flags flying from the front of the black limo).

PS: Heard from Commissioner Vladimir Špidla’s office on 19 June: Apparently, only Slovakia has implemented it, but there are no indications that it would have done so in order to restrict the access of patients to MRI investigations (which, let me re-iterate, is simply not among the objectives of the Directive).  Rather, it appears that Slovakia has implemented the Directive under the assumption that the limits which it sets would have no effect on the practice of MRI.” Latest story developments on Medicexchange.

The story of this site so far

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Just passed the 30k mark in terms of unique visitors, since 2 November 2005 launch a few days before my 40th birthday. However, checking on the Wayback Machine I also remembered the predecessor site, m-power.org.uk, first launched in August 2000. While the domain m-power.org.uk was registered by me on 24-Feb-1998, just a few weeks before I flew out to Memphis with the BBC for the Martin L. King 30th Anniversary. What goes around, comes around, changed.

Apprentice Katie fired

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I hear Ex-Apprentice Katie has been fired from the Met Office, during her probationary period which is tough for anyone. Looking forward to the final tomorrow. My guess is that Sir Alan Sugar will opt for Simon (maybe a bit of pro-Cambridge bias?), though Charlotte might be the safer bet. But who knows which way the wind will blow.