Andrew Lark

How The "Great" Work

Fortune has a little expose on how the "great" work.

"I'll just sit down and do e-mail for ten to 14 hours straight."
-- Marissa Mayer, Google

Spotlight Entourage

If you are using Microsoft Entourage (Outlook for the Mac) take a look at the latest update. Quite a few upgrades but most importantly "with the new 11.2.3 Update installed, you can now use Apple’s Spotlight feature to execute searches against your Entourage database contents. Spotlight can find any item inside your Entourage database; it does not matter, where that item is."

Interestingly, I didn't find out about this from any official source - rather from bouncing around blogs after two weeks of abstinence.

Brand Over Matter...

In another terrific example of "brand over matter" - the media are pointing to Google's new finance site as a potential competitor to the likes of Yahoo, and in some cases, Bloomberg.

I wonder of any of them actually looked at the site in any detail (that is rhetorical - I know they did, I know...). At best it is Yahoo extra-lite. (IMHO, based on what you can look at today, Yahoo's is infinitely better). It doesn't even come close to what a Bloomberg or Reuters offers. So I'm lost... interactive charts are meant to be really, really exciting news?

And here is an interesting point from the WSJ: "Unlike many other finance sites, Google doesn't have its own editorial staff."

This kind of coverage either points to the power of the Google brand over any kind of matter or substance. OK, now I'm ranting... sorry... but what is right for Google isn't necessarily right or needed by consumers. Maybe they should stick to their own truisims (thanks for the pointer GMSV):

2. It's best to do one thing really, really well.
"Google does search. Google does not do horoscopes, financial advice or chat."

-- "Ten things Google has found to be true," circa June 2004

Back From Vacation

I'm back on deck after a wonderful couple of weeks in NZ. You can't beat the weather down there at this time of year. More to come.

Pay Attention

InformationWeek on paying attention. This really resonates for me. I feel that large chunks of my career have been spent in a state of "continuous partial attention". Lately I've been consciously "disarming".

The era of continuous partial attention has left us overwhelmed, overstimulated, and unfulfilled, said Stone, who's now working as a consultant and writer.

This era, she says, is coming to a close. "CEOs ask people to disarm at the door when they come to a meeting," she said, asking attendees to drop off their laptops, cell phones, pagers, and BlackBerrys before the meeting started.

Do Bloggers Have An Ethical Responsibility To Disclose?

The answer is yes. If you are going to represent others PR spin at minimum disclose that you are doing so. This is pretty basic stuff and I am amazed that so many bloggers are willing to pass others words off as their own - even if they simply agree with those words at the most basic level.

The NY Times flagged this today:

Brian Pickrell, a blogger, recently posted a note on his Web site attacking state legislation that would force Wal-Mart Stores to spend more on employee health insurance. "All across the country, newspaper editorial boards — no great friends of business — are ripping the bills," he wrote.

It was the kind of pro-Wal-Mart comment the giant retailer might write itself. And, in fact, it did.

Several sentences in Mr. Pickrell's Jan. 20 posting — and others from different days — are identical to those written by an employee at one of Wal-Mart's public relations firms and distributed by e-mail to bloggers.

I don't think the onus is on Edelman here - although Edelman might have posted a blog on this thereby providing full transparency to their actions. (the counterpoint to this is why should a PR agency reveal their tactics in a competitive communications environment - to which the answer is, transparency matters).

The onus is on the bloggers ultimately. Reveal if you are repackaging spin and other content, be transparent.

Thanks to Brett at Sun for flagging this to me.

Oragami Ugly

Looking at the new Wintel Origami device - one I was looking forward to looking at... I can't help but get straight to "butt ugly" as a description. It looks like one of those remotes I needed to operate my home audio jalopy. If this is somehow meant to resemble origami, somebody in Redmond is doing origami with concrete.

The Disruption Of PR

Tom speaks to the disruption of PR by blogging and search. He couldn't be more right. I speak to many PR people on the impact of blogging on communications. Most view it as an overlay to traditional communications. It isn't.

While there is a clear case for viewing blogging as complementary to PR, you can really only hold that point of view from the shoes of a PR person. When standing in the shoes of a CMO, it is a very different view. As you look to optimize spend for awareness and lead flow - and juggle priorities such as shortening the sales cycle - you become acutely aware that PR is yet another budget area that should be cut in favor of new communications tools.

Tom focuses heavily on the economics of the new mediums: "You can get a company message out to your potential customers far more cheaply and far more effectively through the blogging medium." While these are significant factors - especially the fact that your message is unfiltered - others to consider include the utility of the medium. If I want to reach my audience, I just blog. It takes about a tenth of the time to blog as it does to craft a release, liaise with an agency, pitch media.... Other factors include the ability to quickly repurpose content (our eZine at LogLogic is essentially a packaging of blog content - we get lots of positive feedback); and, the ability to quickly activate a dialog.

Blogging represents a dramatic shift in the method and economics of reaching audiences. Similarly, Search has an equally dramatic impact on audience reach and awareness. Combined, they are very disruptive forces to traditional media and analyst relations.

Love Hate Blackberry...

The Webclient is just appalling. It is one of the worst performing interfaces I have ever seen and renders the Blackberry virtually useless for those of us using the Mac platform. Compounding the speed and general functioning of the "service" is it's dependence on the utterly worthless and now abandoned Internet Explorer for Mac.

At what point does Cingular wake up and head down the path of T-Mobile who abandoned the web client in favor of what we all want - straight pass through of email messages? Wake-up Cingular - Blackberry's worthless Web client reflects badly on your brand. I'm switching to T-Mobile as soon as I return from NZ.

If you want a Blackberry and aren't afforded the luxury of the Enterprise server edition, do not buy it from Cingular. Instead, buy from T-Mobile who won't subject you to the totally non functioning, IE dependent, cumbersome, web interface - all probably under the guise of selling you a few more bytes of storage.

In NZ...

Down in NZ for a couple of weeks vacation. Weather is a little murky but still lovely. Spent the day at Waihi beach - really stunning - no surf though, wind blowing in the wrong direction. One of the many things to love about NZ is the flat white - a version of the cappuccino - my fave way to drink coffee. Next project is to open a Flat White bar in San Francisco.

This is one of the few places in the world where stunning, raw, natural beauty; a good coffee and a nice glass of pinot are only about an hour away from each other pretty much all the time.