Online Communications

Experimenting SquareSpace

Following a discussion I had with Philippe at the IAOC conference, he convinced me to give a try to SquareSpace. I've set up a new blog there and I am going to give it a try.

I have to say that I am so used to Typepad that it's not so easy to find my way in any other weblogging solution, but I made my decision to change and I now have to find the one I feel more comfortable with. I will definitely also consider WordPress, following Neville's exemple and successful move since few months already, so if you have any feeling you'd like to share on one or the other of those both, please jump in the comments.

Technorati Tags: squarespace, typepad, wordpress

Conversation with Neville Hobson, co-producer of FIR

Both Neville and I are attending today the IAOC conference in Bruxelles (See Philippe's first post yesterday evening there), I've been taking this opportunity to do a podcast with the master himself, co-producer with Shel Holtz of the most famous marcom podcast: For Immediate Release - The Hobson & Holtz report.

We haven't prepared anything, we just went through it between my talk and Neville's one, and I publish it without any cut.

Neville and Shel have been doing their show live from the IAOC conference, using Skype to bring us Shel's voice in the room.

Click on the icon below to listen to the show, right click to save and download it.

Use this link to subscribe to PR Thoughts' podcast.

Technorati Tags: iaoc, neville hobson

Conversation on New Media

Today I've had an opportunity to spend some time with Christophe Labédan, founder of the Social Media Group (SMG), the first french experimentation in the field of vertical blogs or blogzine, name it like you want, following a first podcast we did together 9 months ago.

It's a very unformal conversation, we haven't prepared anything but just decided to  make an update of his Group and of the market in this show. Christophe is sharing with us his views on the evolution of this estonishing market, we are talking about the growth of the SMG, the business model, blogvertising and his first success stories.

Hope you'll enjoy it, and again, no preparation and no sound cut...;o)

Click on the icon below to listen to the show in Windows Media Player, right click to save and download it.

Length: 16.34

Weight: 7.3 Mb

Update: apparently some technical problems with either Typepad or Dewplayer, the speed of my voice is three time what it should be, impossible to have the link working on the podcast icone, so I am using the most basic way to share the MP3 file with you, get it from here directly. I'll double check in the afternoon to see if this is fixed...;o(

Update 2: unfortunately this is still not fixed, so I delete the dewplayer feature, simply click on the blue podcast icone to listen to the show...:-(

Robert Scoble to join PodTech

You probably already heard about this story.... Robert Scoble leaves Microsoft to join PodTech (the company behind the famous InfoTalk podcast from the Silicon Valley), part of the reason why is there. Scoble considers his job at Microsoft is done and wants to participate in a nascent industry.

Today, PodTech's server has been down for an hour due to the huge traffic coming from the blogosphere following the announcement of Robert's departure... Amazing and not astonishing at all...

The press release is available there, by the way this is the first time I see a release on a corporate website open to comments...;o) and to trackback !!

Robert Scoble was a "first time" in the blogosphere, we are going to need a new one as reference for the corporate blogging world...

Technorati Tags: podtech

Peugeot is podcasting

Peugeot launched it's first podcast, announced as a weekly show, the first episode is about the exterior design of the new 207. A specific website has been designed to host the show (a videopodcast precisely) which is in french and of 1.50 min. length.  It seems to me that it's the first french car manufacturer to podcast.

Good luck Peugeot !

Technorati Tags: peugeot, peugeot207

Map your blog's network

An amazing way to graph your connections, although no information is available on the nature of each link, still a nice visual effects. Get your own graph here.

Click on image to enlarge

See more informations there.
Via RMen's

Another tool available is TouchGraph, providing much more information on your network as it shows who is each contact and their own network of connection:

Click on image to enlarge

In the same spirit, you should also have a look on Swarm:

Swarm is a graphical map of hundreds of websites, all connecting to each other. It updates itself every second with where people are going and coming from. As sites become more popular, they move towards the center of the swarm and grow larger. Conversely, sites that lose traffic move away from the center and grow smaller.

As soon as you use Firefox and download Swarm extension, you share the information regarding the websites you are visiting with other users and so does every member of the community. The most popular web sites will be the closer to the center of the map. Definitely worth having a look !

Click on image to enlarge

Technorati Tags: firefox, swarm

Join the IAOC conference

The IAOC is handling the european session of it's first seminar in Brussels, on the 15th &16th of June: "Where Content and Technology Meet", related to online communications.

You can still register there and find additional informations at the IAOC.

Technorati Tags: iaoc

Edelman and Technorati to announce an exclusive partnership

Well, today I am happy to announce a partnership that will have a direct impact on my business blogging life !;o)

Technorati and Edelman announced yesterday that we will have an exclusive right to offer Technorati's analytic tools in Chinese, French, German, Italian and Korean, starting with French in July and continuing into early 2007. The analytic tools themselves will be able to cluster blogs by language, not only the user interface.

As I wrote it, french will be the first customized analytic tools available, so I'll be more than happy to experience it. This will definitely help us track more efficiently conversations within a specific language and provide local feedback to our client. We are indeed often asked about the ability to track conversations not only on a world wide level but also on a local level.

As you can easily imagine, there are two mean reasons for that:
- First of all, companies might make announcements that will only have a local impact
- Second, reaction to a specific announcement will be different depending of the local culture and of microeconomics parameters.

Those are two good reasons to motivate such a customization. This will be definitely very helpful.

So, stay tune, I'll share first experimentations here soon !

Technorati Tags: edelman, technorati

Go Wengo !

This is a geek week at PR Thoughts...

Have you heard about Wengo, an IM solution that you can use to connect with your friends who are using other IM client (Yahoo! Messenger, MSM, Jabbber...) ? The new release WengoPhone 2.0 is available, enabling voice and video calls.

Give it a try, you can download it for free. I've been trying the Firefox integrated release till now, but they issued the Mac OS X one yesterday too, so I am definitely going to test this one.

Update: I succeed in the setup, my ID: gdugardier

Technorati Tags: wengo

MacBook: terrific !

Just discovered the new MacBook... I want it.... Now...

Technorati Tags: macbook