Andrew Lark

Links & Blinks :: Friday Dec 28

1. Stowe on Social Scale - he is right and this is one of the major social management challenges facing any community. When others grant access to your information on an "all comers" basis they show a lack of understanding of social scale.
2. Emerging Web 2.0 sites... from the Guardian
3. PR Week on Analyst Relations via ARmagedon.
4. Google's 2007 Year-End Zeitgeist...
5. If Silicon Valley Built A Car... Yep...

Technorati Tags: PR,Dell,Andy Lark

Links & Blinks

• Thanks for this!... Handy reading on best marketing blogs.
• Become a de.licio.us power user.
• Some very cool gifts!
• How people leverage different social networking sites.
• Be successful in 2008. Go on now!

Economist tech predictions...

They call them fearless - I call them narrowly defined. But, still interesting...

1. Surfing will slow:  PEERING into Tech.view’s crystal ball, the one thing we can predict with at least some certainty is that 2008 will be the year we stop taking access to the internet for granted. The internet is not about to grind to a halt, but as more and more users clamber aboard to download music, video clips and games while communicating incessantly by e-mail, chat and instant messaging, the information superhighway sometimes crawls with bumper-to-bumper traffic...
2. Surfing will detach: Google, mobile, blah, blah, blah...
3. Surfing—and everything else computer-related—will open. Rejoice: the embrace of “openness” by firms that have grown fat on closed, proprietary technology is something we’ll see more of in 2008. Verizon is not the only one to cry uncle and reluctantly accept the inevitable.

my new XPS One

NOTE: I'M POSTING TO A NEW BLOG - COME OVER AND VISIT

Finally got around to unpacking my new XPS One - a gorgeous system that in looks and performance rivals anything out there.  Amazingly easy set-up and unpacking.  Keyboard is fantastic.

What actually takes the most time is getting all the stuff I need onto the system.  We have to find some way of making that easy for people to do - maybe as part of the order process?  Anyway, here is what I am loading:

• Internet Explorer 7 - already on the system - set-up my iGoogle and Yahoo home pages. Remember, you can set as many homepages as you like so when you launch, they all open in tabs. Import bookmarks and feeds.
• Firefox: I prefer IE 7 over Firefox but like to have Firefox about for some of the add-ins.
• Download and install del.icio.us extensions for IE and Firefox. Click on the buttons and save to del.icio.us.
• Livewriter - my preferred blogging client. Fantastic little app from Microsoft that they have managed to make impossible and anoying to install by bundling with their very confusing "Live" family of products.
• Google Toolbar. Try the beta. Love the gadgets in the toolbar.
• Google Notebook. Terrific way to store information and access it from anywhere.
• Skype. Can't live with it. Can't live without it...
• Yahoo Messenger. Chitter chatter...
• Feeddemon - my preferred way to read all those blogs. Still can't get it to sync correctly and wish they would deploy the NetNewsWire interface.
• Raphsody. Love this. Is the future of online music in so many ways. But still need a simple way to manage my tunes so download iTunes as well.  iTunes is still the best way for me to access my Podcast subscriptions.
• Real.  I go for the free version with the IE 7 plug-in. Love it as a way to collect and store video.

Now i am downloading all my cadgets for Windows Sidebar - why don't they store this online and sync it via log-in? This goes for all the dashboards...

I'll keep updating this as I motor along...

Great Tech Writing from 2007

Peter Griffin over at the NZ Herald links to some of the best Tech Writing of 2007. The University of Michigan gathers some of the best - all free to read....

broadcast recordings via skype

This is a great tutorial on how to record broadcast quality interviews using Skype. Very useful!

Project da vinci

Today we announced Project da Vinci which has at it's core the selection of WPP to create a global marketing agency for Dell. 

This is one of the most exciting ventures I have been involved in - and one of the reasons I came to Dell.  Tomorrow we start on the journey of creating a next generation of marketing services firm that will set aside all the notions that plaque large and existing agency | client relationships.

We've got some great agencies working with us and we will explore ways of keeping it that way, albeit in a new operating construct.

One of the key drivers of this decision was the collapsing boundries between communications and other disciplines - especially online.  Year to date we have had nearly 100 million conversations with customers online - and it's increasing.  How we ignite and contribute to these conversations is truly a multidisciplinary practice.  Managing it through multiple agencies was proving very difficult and bred considerable complexity.

I'll share with you thoughts and learnings from the journey.

Read my new blog or else: the dailylark.com... come take a look...