Three weeks in and the news cycle has slowed down momentarily in the tech space.  We all have a bit of a hangover from All Things D and Interop, what is a PR pro to do?  This is the calm before the June 29th storm, a storm which I believe will be much smaller than people, I'm looking at you Gannon, envision.  Oh sure there will be a running of the gadget geeks to the genius bar, but when folks discover the lack of batter power and the inevitable bugs in the 1.0 version, things will slow down.  My recommendation, which means absolutely nothing, wait for iPhone 2.0 or just buy the Nokia N95.  Enough of my pandering to the Apple PR machine...

Onto The Week that Was: PR & Technology (reminder of the mission)

Now THIS is Fair & Balanced
Nod to Leslie, our newest superstar in our Boston office who was looking for a producer at Fox News and came across this advice from one of their producers in MediaMap:

"Consider what else is going on in the news...Watch CNN."

Major kudos to that producer, he's right to point out his competition to PR folks so that they can get him a more competitive angle.  It is a lesson we should all consider as we look to pitch outlets, whether it is a trade magazine or a local radio channel.  Understand what the competition is covering and give your target something new.

Happy Birthday To You SMNR!
While meeting with a very exciting prospect last week  (stay tuned for news on that...) their CEO was looking at our example of a Social Media News Release and wondered aloud, "Why wouldn't people use this?".  It's a great question and with the celebration around the one year anniversary of the SMNR it was particularly timely. There have been some great case studies of folks using the SMNR, but in general we still see the aging four-page mess that we've seen for a century.  PR people need to go on the press release patch and break the habit.

You can provide more information and clarity by streamlining the medium, additionally the SMNR allows us to immediately track the impact PR has on lead generation. 

Imagine...the ability to measure the effect of PR on the bottom line, SHOCKING!  If you are thinking about SMNRs in your program make sure you ask the right questions of your PR pros including:

• Wire distribution options;
• Use of SMNR by sales;
• Creation of landing page for major news;
• Integration of RSS feeds and social media tags (del.icio.us, digg, etc);
• Ability to create and integrate multimedia;

The OS Wars are Just Heating Up
Ubuntu continues to gain visibility, if not minuscule market share, and this week we saw the launch of an Ubuntu focused publication.  The pub is purely an online download and speaks to the importance of opening up the OS conversation.  Most people have just given up and put themselves in a Windows or OS X mode for their laptops and desktops, that's a shame.  I've been playing with Ubuntu and SUSE Linux on my home machines and have found them to both be stable (most of the time) and provide me with the resources and features I need.  I'm a very simple user and I was able to get this stuff up and running, which means nearly anyone can accomplish the task.  Do yourself a favor and go try a different flavor of OS...it's like the first time you shifted from a vanilla cone to mint chocolate chip, with sprinkles, whipped cream and hot fudge.

First Name Mister, Middle Name Period, Last Name 'T'
Gaining intelligence through Mr. T?  Check out this YouTube video from Hitachi, who hooked up with Mr. T.  As a kid watching the adventures of the A-Team I never thought I would hear Mr. T mutter, "I pity the fool who doesn't use Hitachi data virtualization."  An instant classic (nod to Sam Whitmore)

Search, The Final Frontier
We all use Google, right....right?  Good.  Well then do you know these 20 tips for better Googlizing?  I love ways to be more efficient, which begs a question I ask many folks in the office; why not use two monitors?  I  set up two monitors on my desk about a year ago.  I feel about 20x more productive since I did this, but is that just my perception?   VIBE did a study, and it looks like I was pretty close:

The first study revealed that the users' productivity increased by 9 percent. Further studies showed even greater increases - at times up to 50 percent for tasks such as cutting and pasting. Mary Czerwinski, the VIBE research manager, is excited about her group's discoveries, asking, "If you're able to squeeze 10 percent more productivity out, do you know how much money that will save?"

My Technology Clip of the Week
Terrific video.  Nod to Brand DNA.

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