I'm crunching on the finishing touches to my slides today, getting ready for my talk at the IT360° Conference here in Toronto tomorrow morning. Looks like I'm on right after Wikinomics co-author, Don Tapscott - kind of a tough act to follow.

I'm looking forward to this event, though. It should be a good chance to talk about blogging and other social software goodies to an audience unlike the usual echo chamber of ardent blogophiles I often find myself in front of.

Don't get me wrong: I still enjoy attending the heavily bloggy conferences, seminars, and camps. Who doesn't want to mix and mingle with friends and fellow travellers? But it's also possible to have rather too much of the old Kool-Aid Gang (Kool-Aid and the Gang?).

Again, there's nothing entirely wrong about preaching to the converted - indulging in bloggy "inside baseball” with a bunch of fellow fanatics, all back-slapping and high-fiving each other like crazy. But I remember something I wrote waaay back on the original Cluetrain email list, back when the movement was just a website; the book a mere twinkle in the authors' collective eyes:

This message wants to MOVE - and it is doing, but mainly from one already "clued" individual to the next badass, net-savvy, already hyperlinked dude.

That's why it's good to break out of the clubby, incestuous circles of the blogosphere every now and then, and get out in front of audiences who haven't already got a complete set of Seth Godin bedlinen. What's the point of being a social software evangelist, if you're only ever evangelizing to your buddies?

The audience for the IT360° event should be a good mix of IT professionals, corporate network managers, and hardcore techies. So it's not that I'm expecting them to be completely unaware of the rise of social software - far from it. But I'm hoping to use this talk as an opportunity to look at the democratizing impact of social software from their perspective, if possible. Looking at how blogging, wikis and other, similar technologies are shifting the way content gets created and published in corporate environments, and what the impact is for the role of the corporate IT pro.

Working with the conference producer on the plan for this session, we came up with the title: "The Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum". A tad extreme, perhaps, but I heard that precise sentiment expressed by a friend who is a corporate IT manager just a few months ago. He used to have the company's web group tucked in as part of his org chart, with their webmaster reporting directly into him. The only content that ever got produced online passed across his desk before reaching the outside world.

His company's marketing department had recently decided to look at implementing some blogs inside the firewall. The intention, according to his marketing VP, was to enhance internal communications and show how "leading edge" they were.

Taking an appropriately inclusive approach, they chose to bring their IT Chief and one of his team members into the discussions early on.

Aglow with evangelical zeal, the marketing VP announced: "we're launching an internal blogging project, and we want to be sure we have your support". At this point, the more junior member of the IT staff in attendance piped up:

"An official one, you mean."

Marketing Veep: "Pardon?"

IT Guy: "An official one. You're launching an official blogging project."

Marketing Veep: "Sure. Er...yes. So, we want to talk you through our plans, and..."

IT Chief (interrupting): "Hang on," (turning to junior IT Guy) "What are we missing?"

IT Guy: "Oh, I just meant this would be an official blog to add to the six internal ones running on Drupal we already have."

Marketing Veep & IT Chief (in unison): "WHAT?!"

IT Guy: "Yeah, and two of your product managers have external blogs too."

Marketing Veep: (faints)

This story didn't surprise me in the least, by the way. I'm sure the same scenario is continuing to unfold the wide world over.

Question is, if you're an IT pro, what are you supposed to do about it? That's what I'm going to try to get into in tomorrow's session.

This is another post I've slept on for a couple of nights. Didn't want to fire off something in haste.

Late last Thursday night, I stumbled across this site (can't for the life of me recall how) and my jaw just dropped.

It's no great secret that I'm a long-time admirer of Hugh MacLeod's gapingvoid "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards". I've posted and linked to Hugh's cartoons in the past, featured his cartoons in conference presentations, and even ordered a set of "Street Cards" with one of my favourite Hugh cartoons on the back:


So when I came across the cartoons on this other site, the similarities in style and format stopped me in my tracks. For a tiny moment there I even thought perhaps these new cartoons were Hugh's work.

Compare and contrast:

A minor storm has blown up over at Bryan Person's blog, surrounding the corporate blogging approach taken by Scuderi Group - the concern being that the blog posts are actually being written by reps from their PR firm.

We've been down this path so many times before. While the Scuderi "blog" is not nearly as egregious as some other examples of ghost-blogging we've seen, their failure to disclose that the content is written by a paid third party is, at best, foolish.

In the comments at Bryan's blog, Ed Lee offers up the most succinct and delightful response, in the form of a simple pointer to yesterday's Dilbert cartoon:


*snort*

This morning's session hosted by the AMA Toronto Chapter and Brand Matters was a great deal of fun.

As the first question rolled through the panel, I was concerned, at first, that we were going to have another one of those unsatisfying mutual-reinforcement sessions; one where all the panelists basically agree with each other on everything, and simply echo each others' thoughts and opinions using slightly different words and examples. As I've remarked in the past: mild consensus doth not an inspiring panel make.

The good news is that we soon got warmed up and got into some healthy and, I hope, valuable debate. As a panelist, I'm afraid I wasn't able to take very good notes during the session - I was focused on listening to comments from my fellow participants and watching the audience to gauge their engagement. This is a bit of a shame, as there were some truly interesting points made by members of the wise and august group I was invited to be part of. I felt a little like the odd man out, surrounded by so much remarkable marketing knowledge.

There were some entertaining examples brought out by the other panelists to illustrate their thoughts on the direction of brand marketing. As I expected, we touched, at various points, on some of the well-known case studies of buzz-generating online marketing - the good, the bad, and the plain stoopid (Subservient Chicken, LonelyGirl15, the Tahoe Apprentice, Bridezilla, etc.). But it was also great to learn of some newer, home-grown examples such as the Toronto Zoo's hilarious Hissing Cockroaches.

The only thing that's been niggling at me since this morning's panel was a couple of points I threw out in my own comments that could have used a gloss. I tossed out a stat I'd heard Tony Perkins refer to a couple of times, that "62% of the content the average 21-year-old views online was created by someone they know."

Tony has attributed this to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, but now that I've dug around, I can't find the specific reference. There's a chance it's a misquotation of this report (PDF), which includes the far less juicy sound bite: "About 62% of blog-reading teens say they only read the blogs of people they know." Still interesting, but not quite as startling a thought.

The other thing I feel a little guilty about is that I shamelessly stole a joke cracked by one of my all-time tech heroes, Dan Bricklin, in reference to the acceptable failure rates of direct mail. The original citation, on David Weinberger's blog, is here. My belated thanks and acknowledgment to Dan for helping me get one of the biggest laughs of the morning.

Overall (my blatant plagiarism notwithstanding) this was a solid and interesting event. Excellent, sold-out attendance too - and the venue (the utterly lovely Verity club) couldn't have been nicer.

Good work by the AMA's Toronto Chapter and the other organizers in pulling off an exceptionally well-run session. Particular thanks to Patricia McQuillan and Maggie Fairs for hooking me in to participate - I'm glad they did.

Hey Toyota.ca, I love you too!

Don't you just wish, sometimes, that you could immediately pingback inbound links to your blog, to connect with the actual person who visited?

I noticed a recent visitor from Toyota.ca spent almost 15 minutes here, and it made me wish there was some way to reach out and tell them what a big Toyota fan I am.

I think I've raved here in the past about "TC" - my much-loved old Toyota Celica 4WD turbo (long gone, alas - had to give it up when it became too expensive and completely impractical for a three-child family). I'd love for our next car to be a Prius or - more likely - a hybrid Estima minivan. Plus we have a family connection - my sister-in-law (hi Wendy!) works for Toyota in Belgium.

Main point, though, is that this recent inbound link has set me to thinking once more about the emerging opportunity for a real two-way Web. I want person-to-person pingbacks, and I want them now! Kind of like a benevolent version of "Stalkr".

Anyway, hello Toyota.ca person, whoever you were. Thanks for visiting.

I've allowed myself the appropriate cooling off period before posting this piece. Never post in the heat of frustration – it only feeds the flamewars.

So now that I've slept on this particular topic for a couple of nights, it still strikes me as a frustrating and disappointing customer service experience, and still something I want to post.

What follows is a description and transcript (with annotations) of a recent, fairly lengthy email exchange with the founder of a company providing web-based services to the PR industry. It's a long post and probably of only marginal interest to most regular readers - but I needed the cathartic release of posting it.

I haven't edited the email exchanges at all, except to obscure the names of the company and individual concerned. On reflection, I've realised I have no particular interest in picking a fight with the specific company involved here, so I've chosen not to call them out by name.

What I think you'll get from this thread was that there was – somewhere – a major failure to communicate. I guess I might be partly at fault in the exchange, but at the time it sure felt like I was just getting bloody-minded and unhelpful service from someone who was trying to sell me their product. Consider my notes and colour commentary, then, as an honest attempt at Vendor Relationship Management.

The truth is – the service I was being pitched is something I would genuinely have been interested in trying out. Alas, it seems that I will never get the chance to evaluate their product, given how this thing unfolded. Judge for yourself...

Last Friday, at around 09:30, I received an email note inviting me to try out a new online service for PR folk. Let’s call it "Potentially Interesting New PR Service" or PinPRs.com for short.

This service looked like it might be of real potential value, so I was inclined to ignore the fact that they got my name wrong (everyone does it) and explore the service a little further.

Noticing that the contact person had a Boston-based phone number, I fired back a quick question to clarify whether the service covered the specific needs of Canadian practitioners.

Later that day, sitting on hold for a conference call at around 3:00pm, I clicked through on the link in the original message where it said: "I encourage you to register at www.pinprs.com". Noticing a prominent invitation on the website to sign up for a free trial, I duly filled in my details and then clicked out again as my conference call got going, without actually digging into the service at all.

Note: at no time in the original invitation or in any of the registration screens was there any description of the terms or time limit of the trial period.

I finished up my work for the week and headed home. On Saturday afternoon, I happened to notice that my question about Canadian coverage had been answered directly in an email from the founder of the service, who again encouraged me to register at the site. There was one key difference, though. His message said: "...You can take a free two day trial at www.pinprs.com" (my italics).

I didn't really think twice about this at the time – I'd already clicked through to the "Free Trial" registration on Friday afternoon. Figured I'd check it out properly when I had time. I didn't respond to the founder’s message at the weekend because... well, frankly because it was the weekend and I was kind of busy repainting Lily's bedroom and one of the bathrooms.

Back in the office on Monday morning, I discovered a new message (sent at 3:01am) with the subject line: Account expiry message from PinPRs.

Er…what? Oh. Oh well.

So I replied to the Saturday-afternoon invitation message from the founder (lets call him "Derek"), as follows:

Hmm... thanks Derek, but it doesn't look like I'll be getting to experiment after all. Just had a message from your automated system saying simply:

Hi, Your trial account has expired. Subscribe to PinPRs using this link http://www.pinprs.com/payment/OrderProcessing.jsp

Guess that two day trial wasn't just two business days. I'm afraid no matter how fabulous your service is, I really wasn't in an enormous rush to try it out over the weekend. This is one of the reasons why time-based trials don't work, btw. Would be better to anchor the trial conditions around number of logins or number of searches - or something like that.

Never mind. Looked kind of interesting, but I guess I'll never know.

"Derek" responded within a matter of minutes, saying:

Michael,

I can extend your trial for another day if you wish.

Regards,
Derek.

Now I know I had something of a paint fume-induced headache on Monday morning, which may have been colouring my judgement and is perhaps why this innocuous message rattled my cage a little. Whatever the reason, I'm willing to admit that my immediate response to Derek might have been a bit mean:

Perhaps, Derek - but I think that kind of misses the point.

I have 5 meetings in my calendar for tomorrow, taking up 6 hours of a standard work day, followed by a business event in the evening that will last another 4 hours. In between times, I have a mass of client writing to do and other general workday administrivia. I would venture to suggest that this pattern of busy-ness is not too different from the lot of the average vice president at an agency. Some of my junior staff are, if anything, even busier.

So you'll see that the offer to extend the trial by another day doesn't really address the problem. And it's your problem, btw, not mine.

To explain:

1. I am your target market, by definition;
2. I'm assuming you want me to test out PinPRs and have a positive first experience in using it;
3. But you're restricting my ability to enjoy a trial of your product by forcing the trial to fit within your schedule, not mine, meaning;
4. I'm not likely to have the time to take up the offer of a free trial and, therefore, unlikely to want to subscribe (as I won't have had any chance to play with the service).

Remember: you're asking potential clients to volunteer an hour or so of billable time to experiment with your product. That's something which, if I choose to do it at all, I'm only going to be able to do on my schedule - not necessarily within some artificial and entirely arbitrary timeframe that is only of benefit to you.

In other words - PinPRs still looks like it might be kind of interesting - possibly even valuable. But I don't think your approach to giving potential customers the chance to evaluate it makes much sense.

Snotty? Perhaps – but the idea of a 2-day trial that first of all failed to tell me it was time-limited and then counted two inactive, elapsed weekend days as the trial period – well, that just seemed silly.

Derek responded:

Michael,

Thanks for you feedback and I get the point you are trying to make. As you point out, we are all very busy in our schedules that is why we give you the ability to try it out when you are ready. Not when we dictate.

Best of luck in the future,

Derek

Hmmm...

Again – perhaps it's just me, but that "Best of luck in the future" seemed a lot like a brush-off. I was getting ticked.

Thanks Derek - but in truth I don't believe you are offering "the ability to try it out when you are ready" at all. That's what I'm getting at. I was invited last Friday. Duly signed up, but didn't have time to evaluate the service even in the most superficial way. By Monday morning - still having had no time to assess the value of the service - I'm told that my trial has expired. I know that's not a timeline I dictated.

I'm sorry, Derek, if I'm coming across as overly cranky, but here's the thing: there's a real possibility that what you've built could be of considerable value to me and my colleagues. I don't want to make a snap judgement about it and dismiss it out of hand, but nor will I spring for a $560 subscription for something I've had no time to test. If I had a reasonable amount of time to assess the benefits of your product, on my schedule, I might be interested enough to become a client. It seems, however, that that is not to be.

My response here was the verbose equivalent of something I've been prompted to do on a couple of occasions in big box stores. Have you ever had that experience where you walk in to a store or up to a counter, ready to buy and knowing pretty much exactly what you want, only to stand around for what feels like an age, completely ignored by the sullen, seemingly-idle sales staff?

I've been known to stand there with a credit card held on high, hoping desperately to attract the attention of someone who might be interested in taking my money (yes – crass as it sounds, I'm ashamed to admit I have actually done this). I've also been known to walk away in disgust.

Thing is, I am trying to give this guy a chance to keep me on his prospect list, but it's not working.

Back to "Derek":

Michael,

I'm up for a good philosophical debate as the next guy on how best to offer an online product. I have been in business for 20 years and selling online solutions for over 8 years and realize no matter how we handle our business somebody out there will not be happy...such is life.

From your replies, I understand you are passionate about this subject. So, I am going to just leave it as we agree to disagree. Should you change your mind and wish to try out the service at a time convenient to you please drop me a line at this email or call my cell at 617-XXX-XXXX and I will set it up.

Thanks again for your feedback and time,
Derek

OK. This is just way too much like hard work. I was tempted to point out that I too have been in business for over 20 years, and ran worldwide marketing for a company in the Software 100 – but at this point it's just turning into a pissing contest. I give in.

I was tempted. Thought I was trying to make that clear. Sorry I failed. On reflection, perhaps I'll just blog about the whole thing and write it off as an interesting experience.

To his credit, "Derek" took this last in good part and tied a polite knot on the whole thing.

I would love to read your post and have an open discussion about our trial policy. I'm always open to new ideas and suggestions.

So. I'm hoping he does indeed read this. And perhaps even respond.

One last attempt to make the point I thought I was making:

• I like the idea of the service his company has built.
• I might even have wanted to pay for a subscription to it.
• But there's no way I’m subscribing to something brand new without the opportunity for a proper trial.

And quite apart from anything else, getting snippy with a potential client before they've even had a chance to evaluate your product strikes me as just a really, really bad idea.

UPDATE: I've had a continuing email dialogue with the founder of this service. Good news - in a message earlier today, he said:

After discussion with my business partner, we have decided to lift the 2 day trial limitation in favor of a limited number of searches. So, all trial users will be given 10 searches with a limit of 25 results per search. By doing so, we hope to avoid the same issue you ran into with our trial.

Thanks again for your direct and honest feedback. As I wrote before, we are open to new ideas and we will see if this improves the user experience.

Yay! That's a very positive and happy result. I'll be trying out the service in the near future. Looking forward to it.

Anyone know a quick and easy way to get an accurate word count for a Blogger-based blog such as... er... this one?

This used to be a standard feature of the old Blogger dashboard - years ago. Seems to have suffered a little feature attrition.

Just curious...

I'm on a panel next Thursday morning at this AMA Toronto chapter event, speaking alongside some excellent fellow travellers on the topic of "How will brands survive in a new media environment?"

Full event details, here.

To quote from the AMA's event description:

The Future of Branding has never looked so uncertain.

With the introduction and advancement of new media at lightening (sic) speed, traditional brand management is reshaping itself through blogs, online social networking, mobile phones, print and TV. What does this mean for the future of branding and brand management?

I can think of LOTS I want to say on this topic, starting with David Carlick's excellent words:

I've been using Twitter for a while now. "Using" doesn't quite seem like the correct verb though.

I've been... participating? No - that's not entirely right either, as I mostly just follow the (often mundane) updates posted by people in my friends list; I haven't been contributing all that much myself.

I've been... watching Twitter, I guess.

Twitter is built on the central premise that your friends around the world are interested in the answer to the question posed by the site tagline: "What are you doing?"

Hmmmm. I think when my friends are using Twitter as a kind of "micro-blog" (posting tiny nuggets of interest, pointers to breaking news or stories they've found online) then, sure - that can be interesting and useful. I first heard about the Virginia Tech shootings through a comment posted to Twitter.

As for the "just hopping into the shower" or "making a nice cup of tea" posts (or - excuse me - "tweets" in Twitter vernacular), well - those I can probably survive without.

I'm staying plugged in to Twitter, though, as the intensity of this always-on, presence-driven world fascinates me. Joe Jaffe, in a recent "Across The Sound" podcast made some really interesting points about the potential of Twitter and the like as "real-time marketing" vehicles. (See! A podcast I like! They're not all tripe).

Twitter posts are now being indexed by the omniscient Google, apparently. This prompts Jaffe to float the idea that big brands need to be carefully monitoring the Twitter feeds (and Jaiku and Dodgeball and all the other Twitterish apps) as another line of instantaneous reputation monitoring.

As an example, a lot of people seem to post updates to Twitter from airport departure lounges - often updates of the "XYZ Airlines sucks" variety, when someone has been parked in that same departure lounge for the last N hours. Smart marketers might be well-advised to watch for, and be prepared to respond to, breaking reputation leaks through services such as Twitter.

And while we're on the topic of airline departure lounges, the latest vowel-deprived Web 2.0-y app to suck me into its elegantly Ajax-ified embrace is Dopplr (thanks for the invitation, Suw). To quote from Dopplr's "About" page:

"How does Dopplr work? It lets you share your future travel plans with a group of trusted fellow travellers whom you have chosen. It also reminds you of friends and colleagues who live in the cities you're planning to visit. You can use the service with your personal computer and mobile phone."

The service shows you a timeline of your travel plans mapped against those of your friends, so you can arrange to hang out in far flung locales, months into the future.

So now my friends can be constantly kept up to date not only on the prosaic minutiae of what I'm doing every day, but also where I am, where I'm going, and where I've been. If I opted to start posting to Twitter as often as some of the real addicts out there, anyone following my feed would soon know more about my workday existence than even my family do. More than any entirely sane person would ever want to know.

It's utterly fascinating, but all rather odd. How long before someone mashes up a few of these services, hooks into the GPS on your mobile phone, and releases Stalkr - the ultimate always-on, Web 2.0, presence-based, real-time, nano-blogging, social software, FOAF-tracking tool?

Again, I'm hugely intrigued by where this stuff is going, but every now and then it feels like we're all signing up to wear ankle tags.

Super groovy Ajax-based ankle tags, for sure, with names like Anklr or BluTag (that one really exists, btw) - but I wonder if we'll find, as Martha Stewart did, that they start to chafe after a while...

What happened at Virginia Tech was genuinely shocking.

What has been happening online since the utterly horrific events of Monday is, in some cases, just creepy.

As reported in Advertising Age, a number of news organizations (including the New York Times, the UK's First Post online daily, and even conservative Christian site The Real Truth) have moved fast to purchase keywords on Google in hopes of driving traffic to their sites.

In the hours and days since the massacre, anyone searching Google for something like "Virginia shooting" or "student shooting" will have seen sponsored links popping up in an attempt to pull clicks through to the news and opinions being offered up by these sites.

Here's an example of a Google search from this morning, showing the sidebar ads (click the image to see it full size):



And another, showing the topbar sponsored link:

I can fully understand the desire on the part of these organizations to put themselves at the centre of the news, but this approach just feels wrong. I'm having a hard time figuring out how to react to this; I just know that my gut says it's not appropriate.

Meanwhile, various other media organizations have been trolling for interviews on Facebook and other similar social networking sites. Dateline NBC created a Facebook group with this message:

WE UNDERSTAND HOW DIFFICULT THIS IS, AND WANT TO HELP SHARE YOUR STORY.... DATELINE NBC URGENTLY LOOKING FOR ANYONE WHO KNEW SEUNG HUI CHO. WE HAVE PRODUCERS AND CAMERA CREWS NEARBY READY TO TALK TO ANYONE WHO CAN SUPPLY INFORMATION ABOUT HIM AND HIS MOVEMENTS LEADING UP TO THE TRAGEDY. WE ARE ATTEMPTING TO PRODUCE A THOUGHTFUL AND INFORMATIVE REPORT THAT MIGHT SHED SOME LIGHT ON THE TRAGEDY AND POSSIBLY HELP PREVENT SOMETHING LIKE THIS FROM HAPPENING AGAIN.

Earlier today, I saw similar group postings from Portuguese and Korean TV reporters too. Again, that all just feels ...creepy.

Some of the real creeps, however, are the ones who've been out there snapping up domain names with all kinds of word combinations relevant to this appalling episode. As Wired reports in the magazine's "Threat Level" blog, scumbag marketers have been registering domains such as:

virginiatechshooting.com
vatechmassacre.com
virginiatechrampage.com

...and hundreds of other, similar ones. Nasty. I'm sorry, but I fail to see any valid, decent reason why someone would choose to do something as disturbingly ghoulish as this.

But all of these tasteless moves pail into insignificance next to the utterly repellent actions of the individual who has set up a blog with the title "Rampages Are Fun!" on BlogSpot. I refuse to provide a link to this execrable site - if you really want to see it, you can Google for yourself.

The first post reads, in part:

A new high score!

It is my pleasure to inform you that a new American high-score has been reached for the sport of school shootings!

That's just flat out ill. I've reported it to friends at Google. With any luck, the blog will be gone by the time anyone reads this post.

I can't even begin to frame an articulate response to all this. Going to bed.

[UPDATE, next day...]:

Jim Morris, via email, poses an excellent and entirely fair question:

"Please can you explain why websites which buy google ad words -- a standard form of online promotion -- is any worse than a newspaper or magazine promoting itself with cover lines, billboards, advertisements and other forms of publicity based around content in an attempt "to drive people" to their publications?"

It's not simple, is it? Candidly - I don't know that purchasing adwords truly is any worse than all the other generally perturbing forms of promotion geared to cater to prurient and sensationalist tastes.

I'm having a really hard time figuring out why these particular examples of media companies snatching up the adwords troubles me more than regular ordinary shock 'n' gore promo behaviour.

If it bleeds; it leads. 'Twas ever thus. Shock headlines and attention-grabbing photos are just tools of the trade, I know, and we've all become somewhat desensitized to that.

Perhaps it's merely the surprise that shocks me: the surprise of seeing the shiny new tools of online marketing tarnished by the same old tabloid thinking.

Still noodling... still troubled.

In other news, feedback from the Google/Blogger team is that the appalling "Rampages Are Fun" blog I mentioned above, while truly distasteful, can not really be classed as hate speech directed at a protected group. Not the kind of thing that their T&C and general free speech provisions allows them to tear down or block, alas. Understandable. Best response, then, is simply to deny the troll the oxygen of further publicity. So that'll be me shutting up now then.

Unlike my colleague Joscelyn, who posted some interesting thoughts about the challenges of media monitoring recently, I don’t often have occasion to interact directly with the monitoring service providers.

That explains how I completely missed the fact that the near-monopoly Observer AB – the 400 lb gorilla in the monitoring space – recently rebranded as “Cision”.

Over the past few years, the team at Stockholm-based Observer has been on something of an M&A tear, rolling up just about every other company in the North American media monitoring, measurement and intelligence space, including: Bacon’s, Bowdens, MediaMap, Delahaye, Verbatim, and Multivision.

In Canada, Bowdens has been pretty much the only game in town for the longest time. They do have some competitors in the media monitoring business – the two main wire services offer monitoring, plus there’s FPInfomart, J&A Media Services, and even the Canadian Press’s own broadcast monitoring – but in every agency I’ve ever worked for or worked with, Bowdens seems to have been the de facto choice. The consensus is that they have the most comprehensive reach; essential reassurance for harried PR staff wanting to feel that they’re never going to miss a mention of their clients.

The other point on which most Canadian PR pros seem agreed is that Bowdens has the worst customer service imaginable. Again – I’ve not had too much direct experience of dealing with them myself, so perhaps I shouldn’t be casting aspersions, but I’ve never heard a good word said about them in all the years I’ve been in this business. Indeed, I've listened to many, many colleagues and clients speculating about how they'd love to set up in competition with Bowdens - to build the proverbial better mousetrap and win on customer service.

And so now the company Canadian PR pros love to hate has pasted an ugly, decidedly gynaecological-sounding new name across their troubled reputation.

“Cision”.

Ew.

I can understand their urge to consolidate their multiple international entities under a single brand. That's just plain marketing sense. But could they not have picked something that sounded a little less like some kind of uncomfortable medical procedure?

I understand that it’s a clipped (ha!) version of “Precision” or perhaps “Decision”, but can’t help immediately thinking “Incision” whenever I hear it. Actually, the first prefix that sprung to mind was an even less flattering one, but I'm trying to exercise a little circumspection here.

Cision. It's not a nice word, is it? There's a hissing, nasty sound as it slips past the teeth – sounding like some sibilant amalgam of seizure, sizzling, censure.

“Nurse! The paddles! He’s having a cision!!”

"Yes, we've had a few complications, so I'm having a scheduled cision..."

Only fractionally more bizarre than the choice of word is the CEO’s quote in the (predictably pompous, self-fluffing) news release that announced the rebrand:

“The new brand and name change is significant because it streamlines client access to our wide range of integrated products and services, providing communication professionals the intelligence and insight that is linked to business strategy.”

Um… how does that bit work, exactly? How does choosing an unpleasant, aspirant word as your new brand name “streamline client access”. If I start calling our minivan a (Mer)cedes, will it beat a (Por)sche in a drag race?

Cision. Ugh. Perhaps it just sounds an awful lot better in Swedish.

Could have been worse, I suppose – at least they didn’t try to call themselves “Monday”.

Pop over to Robert Scoble's place and check out this post he has featuring a frighteningly smart application of phonetic recognition technology from Nexidia.

In the demo, Nexidia's Drew Lanham shows how spoken keywords can be plucked out of a video stream, almost in real time, and used to pull up contextually-appropriate Google ads right alongside the video.

Truly remarkable.

"To whom it may concern: It is springtime. It is late afternoon..." and Kurt Vonnegut, alas, is no longer with us.

As with so many great authors, I have my Dad to thank for first introducing me to Vonnegut's work. Slaughterhouse-Five is one of those books that has stayed with me and influenced much of my taste in fiction, ever since the day I first finished it way the hell back when I was about 12 years old.

God rest, Kurt. You'll be missed.

Well... quite the mini-maelstrom of feedback I seem to have stirred up with that last post.

Lots of emails, a good handful of comments (both here and in the real world), and even a couple of phone calls. For the record: no, I wasn't specifically talking about your podcast. Sheesh.

I'm encouraged to note that most people seem to have taken my disgruntlings in good humour, recognizing that my little rant was intended as a kind of constructive criticism.

The response has set me to thinking - what do I want to listen to in a podcast?

Again, I know I'm not really all that well qualified to pass judgement here. While I do listen to a lot of podcasts, my own small forays into this space have been either utterly goofy or guest appearances on others' podcasts.

So, in the spirit of "easier to criticise than to create," here are five quick thoughts from a non-podcasting podcast addict. Take these for what they're worth - one avid podcast listener's thoughts on how to keep your audience engaged.

1. Stop Preaching to the Choir
You're doing a podcast. We're listening to a podcast. Please stop endlessly blithering on about the wonderful power of podcasting and social media in general. We get it - otherwise we wouldn't be here in the first place.

If you have useful, illustrative anecdotes about the real-world impact of social media, I'd love to hear them - but enough gushing about the shiny new geekery of it all. Yes, it's immensely cool that we can all create our own radio stations now. Move on.

2. Stop Preening
It's genuinely wonderful that you're rising up the iTunes charts and I know the torrent of effusive audio comments from your legions of admirers must give you a nice Ready Brek glow; but unless the commenter is saying something that actually moves the conversation forward, we don't really need to hear them telling you how terrific you are. Get on with the business of creating a great podcast, and bask in the warmth of your subscriber numbers in private.

3. Lead With Value
Nearly ten years ago, Doc Searls wrote a piece that I'm still pointing people to almost every month. In his discussion of the problem with business presentations, he encourages presenters to think in newspaper terms when figuring out the structure of their pitch: "In the newspaper business they teach you to put the least important stuff at the end, so if your story was cut for length the reader wouldn't miss much."

I think that thinking applies just as well in podcasting - give me something of value in the first couple of minutes and I'll keep listening. Burn 10 minutes of my time with sponsor messages and piffling on about the weather - you've lost me. I was listening to a very well-known podcast on my subway ride this morning. The runtime tracker on my iPod showed 07:42 at the point when the host (finally!) said "So... on with the show". Ack.

4. More Voice Less Noise
There are a handful of new music podcasts I really like (John Sakamoto's Anti-Hit List being a particularly fine example). But if you're not doing a music podcast, go easy on the music.

My apologies to the many splendid artists who are selflessly contributing excellent music to the Podsafe Network and other resources, but I'm hear to listen to the host(s) talk. I'm sorry, but some of the intro and incidental music people are weaving into their podcasts now is really starting to chafe. If I want elevator music, Brian Eno is just a spin of the clickwheel away.

Secondly, pay attention to your sound quality. Yes, I know that rough-and-ready, hissing and popping, Skype-flanging sound might seem so much more "authentic" - but it's bloody painful to listen to. And use the Levelator, dammit. Too many wall-of-sound punk gigs back in the 70s - my old ears are buggered. If I'm constantly fiddling with the volume controls as I strain to hear your podcast, I'm going to end up tuning out.

(OK, so this is actually two points for the price of one - I'm either cheating or offering double value. Your call.)

5. Plan Your Spontaneity
Well, not really - but I think it helps to have some kind of a plan to your podcasts. Scripted and stilted is not good, but there should at least be some semblance of structure and, dare I say it, narrative arc.

Whenever I sit down to write - whether it's a news release, a client proposal, or a presentation - I always try to start by building an outline of the main points I want to cover. Perhaps your podcast could benefit from an approach based on outlining. If you just sit down and start talking, with absolutely no road map whatsoever, chances are you're going to get lost (and lose me) along the way.

OK, maybe that's a bit too sweeping a generalisation, but I listened to three different well-known podcasts over the weekend and two more on the way to the office this morning and I am seriously underwhelmed. Perhaps I'm just going through a cynical patch here.

If you were to strip out all the extraneous self-serving layers -- the kissyfest "love the show" comments from loyal listeners, and the hosts' obsequious thanks and "shout outs" to their buddies in the podosphere -- most of the shows I've just been listening to would collapse down to perhaps ten minutes of truly useful content.

This is not to say that podcasting per se is rubbish. I'm still a true believer in the form and recognise that there is a great deal of value in podcasting as an evolving communications medium. But I think it's time for many podcasters to get over themselves, stop prattling on about the wonders of the medium, get outside the echo chamber, and settle in to providing some better reasons to subscribe and listen.

I was reminded this morning of the first time I saw a presenter using a laser pointer on stage. More than 12 years ago, I took a group of US software company executives on a speaking tour of the UK and Ireland. One member of the group had acquired a pen-sized laser pointer, and made a big show of using it in every session. He'd bring up a slide, wave the red dot around on the screen, then pause and grin goofily at the audience with a "pretty cool, huh?" expression on his face. He seemed so keen to draw attention to his new "presentation aid" that the entire message of his actual presentation was lost.

Many podcasters, it seems, are still stuck at that stage of being in love with the coolness factor. There's too much self-referential discussion of the phenomenon of podcasting; not enough content of lasting value. Enough already - we get that it's easy to do; now do something with it.

There are notable exceptions, of course. Leo Laporte's This Week In Tech manages to be entertaining, informative, and eminently listenable - even at over an hour long most weeks. It helps that Leo's been doing great tech radio since the early 90's, long before he turned to podcasting. He knows how to create terrific audio content. With many of the other former favourites in my iTunes list, I'm afraid I'm about reaching podcast burnout.

I'm half tempted to launch my own mini-podcast - sans kissyfest, sans shoutouts; just a weekly 15 minute rant about the latest inanities in the PR world (or the world in general - why limit myself?). Feeling kind of like doing an audio version of the Loren Feldman thing (but without the ad hominems).

Grrrrrr. Cranky and short-tempered this morning. Need more caffeine.