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Keeping up with Bloggers, not Blogs

Published October 20, 2007 Uncategorized 2 Comments
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With over 70 millions blogs out there it’s pretty hard to filter the good from the rest and the best out of the good. Idan from Anecdotot has written a brilliant post on the subject of journalists, journalism, bloggers and blogs. He says (and I totally agree) that the evolution of the web has brought us a gift – journalists writing blogs, seeing the web not as an enemy but rather as another tool to publish their opinions.
Idan counts 4 reasons why journalism bloggers are successful:

  • Story telling: journalists are good at writing stories, and writing is like a muscle. The more you use it, the better it gets.
  • Knowledgeable in their respective field: when Ronen writes about sports, he knows what he’s talking about. The same for Raviv, Yuval Dror (technology) and others.
  • Involve their readers: a true social network. When ever they write, they’re plenty of comments. Yes, they are famous, seen on TV and all, but still – they involve the readers, and we all want that.
  • Crowd magnets: Again, relates to the last point. They bring new faces to the medium (web), and we all new the future is online…

You can read the full post here.

It was Idan actually that got me subscribing to Ronen Dorfman (Sports) and now to Raviv Droker (current affairs). I’ve been a fan of Raviv Droker for quite some time now – a young, ambitious journalist, who made it to primetime TV (Friday at 8pm), along with Ofer Shelach (Sports and news – basically everything).

If you have some free time this Thursday (the 25th), head over to WordCamp Israel, the annual event of WordPress in Israel, dedicated to blogs and bloggers, from all platforms.
With any luck you might just see me there, along with couple of other bloggers and media. You can see the full agenda here.

One last note, for The Daily Show fans out there:
No more YouTubeing scenes from the show. The Daily Show has posted last week over 13,000 video clips, dating back to 1999, on the show’s official website. We’re not talking about complete episodes, only short clips from each show. Thank you! Now we can admire John Stewart each and every day…

Lotus integration with MSFT

Published October 20, 2007 Uncategorized Closed
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I had a meeting Thu morning, straight from the airport, on Lotus Quickr. The meeting was organized by one of our BPs, prominent in the content management arena. In preparation to that meeting, I search our internal website for new Lotus Quickr material.

Lotus Quickr is widely in use internally by IBM, with thousands of virtual spaces, team spaces, forums, blogs and libraries. I personally created half a dozen places (content libraries and team places), which I use mostly for demos and file storage.

Obviously I installed the Lotus Quickr Connectors, and it works flawlessly. I have my Lotus Quickr places in my Lotus Sametime 7.5.1 client (see picture), and I can chat about any document with a simple right-click. There’s also the Lotus Notes plug-in, that prompts me to ‘save to library’ or ‘send attachments’ just before sending the email. Not to mention the MSFT Office plug-in, that creates another top-menu, Lotus Tools, that enables instant access to my online content, check-in/check-out, version control, basic workflow management and more. You can learn more about the Lotus Quickr Connectors here.

If you happen to surf the Lotus Sametime website, there are 4 newly added webcasts: the first (and highly recommended) is Lotus GM Mike Rhodin’s speech at VON 2007 [requires registration] – an hour long video explaining IBM’s strategy in the unified communication and collaboration arena. If you can’t spare the entire 60 minutes, pay special attention to the first 15 minutes. The other 3 are references of customers using Lotus Sametime: PGA Tour, Colgate-Palmolive and IBM [registration required for all]. There are also new resources and white papers [PDF] available. There are 2 more resources on the integration of Lotus Sametime with Microsoft applications: a brochure [PDF] and a demo.

All here: http://www.ibm.com/lotus/sametime

Back from vacation

Published October 20, 2007 Uncategorized Closed
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Just got back from my vacation, and there’s a lot going on…

Actually I landed yesterday, and I’m still on Eastern Standard Time (GMT-5) – go to sleep at 3-4 a.m and wake up after 1 p.m, but I’m working on it..

This vacation was long planned, and the timing was great – just as the 3Q closed and after the high holidays in Israel. Our vacation had 3 parts: 6 days in NYC, 3-4 days in New England (Yale University and Boston) and the rest back in NYC. You can see (some) pictures of my vacation at Flickr.

The flight

Our flight had its highs and lows. The high was definitely the individual, touch-screen-operated, entertainment/communication system, with games, music channels, flight info, tv shows, full-feature movies and air-phone. Also, you’re not confined to El-Al’s timing anymore – everything is on demand, courtesy of HOT Cable Company. We decided to start the evening (it was a midnight flight – landing in NYC at 7am) with Die Hard 4.0 – an OK movie, knew there was a reason I waited for the DVD.. Owen Almighty was much better, only because of Steve Carrell – so talented, and The Office [NBC] is a living testament.

The low point has to be the leg-room. Just not enough.
El-Al are still the national airline, but sometimes I wish I picked another airline. I don’t know who did the math and seating arrangements, but seating for 11 hours in a 32.24 cm cubicle isn’t a pleasant experience. Especially when you know it’s possible to make it wider.

My childhood friend who’s traveling a lot on business always tells me he’s upgrading to business (with Miles) on transatlantic flights – now I understand why.

Staying in-touch

I had my laptop with me, so was able to track my Inbox, and reply to some emails, but I kind of neglected my feeds. So I’ll paste some important links I read these past 14 days, just in case you haven’t seen them yet.

There’s a new demo video on YouTube for Lotus Notes and Domino 8.0.1. It’s an excellent video, showcasing some of the new features, such as Lotus Notes Traveler (push e-mail/calendar/contacts for mobile devices), Domino Web Access and Lotus Notes for Blackberry.

Ed Brill wrote a post earlier this week, titled “Nobody wants to be first“. There’s a lot of interest going around ND 8.0, and also requests from customers, wanting to talk to a ND 8 reference. So, just to strengthen Ed’s point – 60 days into the product not many businesses have finished a roll-out of ND 8, especially in large enterprises (>5k employees). And some languages (including Hebrew) will only be available during January 2008. Still, if you are in the process of a ND 8 roll-out, and are willing to be a reference, please contact us.

There’s another interesting video recently posted on ZDnet.co.uk, with Lotus’s Darren Adams. Darren talks about the benefits of integrating VoIP, video, presence, telephony, unified messaging and other technologies. You’re welcome to watch that as well.

Digitally mastered at MoMA

Published October 7, 2007 Uncategorized Closed
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Arrived yesterday at NYC for some quality time with my significant other – so although I have my laptop with me, the flow of posts will probably decrease..
The weather is excellent here, I feel almost like I never left Tel Aviv. But – there’s less humidity in NYC, so although temp is around 25-28 C and sunny, it feels great.

Whenever I visit NYC the MoMA (the Museum of Modern Art) is a must attraction. It’s always welcoming, always modern, and you can find some cool exhibitions every time you come.

Between Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, Joan Miró, Wassily Kandinsky and others there’s a unique exhibition called “50 Years of Helvatica“, dedicated to the most popular typeface in the world. I had no idea Helvatica was that popular – apparently it’s used in the Subway signs, MTA (Metropolin Transportation Authority) map, MoMA’s first acquired typeface, millions (maybe billions) of t-shirts (such as The Beatles pictured here) and many more.

More on MoMA to follow. Now I gotta go, the Soho and Village are calling my name…

Three Billion and counting

Published October 2, 2007 Uncategorized Closed
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The high holidays in Israel are always a good time to catch up on some reading, inbox maintenance, etc. There are only 5-6 official national holidays, but if you combine all of them together, including half-days, you can have almost 14 days of vacation.. Add that to the fact that schools are on a break the entire period (14 days) – and pretty fast you’ll find yourself seating alone in your floor, lots of open space cubicles to choose from..

Since I’m leaving in couple of days to a much anticipated vacation in NYC (any comments about this museum?), I had a lot of time to go over some articles piling my Google Reader. There I came across ThreeBillion.com, a website operated by Paul MacGregor, who defines himself as “a man whose life has been dedicated to making money out of young people by giving them something they want.”
The concept of the site is pretty simple: There are three billion people under twenty five on this planet… roughly half the world’s population. Pick one member of your family who is under twenty five. Ask them to name a cool brand. Now ask them to describe why it is cool. Did it make sense? Even if it did, would the other three billion under twenty fives say the same thing?

The site acts as an aggregator of content on the subject of teens’ marketing and lifestyle, and you can find articles, videos, studies, reports and much-much more. MTV and threebillion.com produced this video to explain why threebillion is important, and why Asia is super-important.

I also found this video, on the recent, (and somewhat) controversy Israeli ad campaign, aiming at improving tourism to the country.

Doing some searches in the site’s archives gave me this very interesting study, from USA Today, dated December 2006, about the gap in IM usage between teens and adults. The study provides the following stats:

  • Almost 75% of adults who do use IM still communicate with e-mail more often; Almost 75% of teens send instant messages more than e-mail.
  • More than half of the teens who use instant messages send more than 25 a day; 75% of adult users send fewer than 25 instant messages a day.
  • 30% of teen users say they can’t imagine life without instant messaging.
  • When keeping up with a friend who is far away, teens are most likely to use instant messaging, while adults turn first to e-mail.
  • About 20% of teen IM users have used IM to ask for or accept a date; 16% have used it to break up with someone.

Wow !! 25 IM chats per day ! 75% of teens send more IM than emails ! 30% can’t imagine life without IM ! Do we need more proof that IM is the future of communication?
I commented a lot in the past about the future of IM in the corporate world, and some of the popular entry barriers to adopt corporate IM. Teens are the workers of tomorrow. Even today we see more university graduates, straight from campus, hired to consulting firms, venture capital and investment banking – they are used IM as a primary communication tool, and expect to find it in the workplace.

Again, before wrapping up, another short video, courtesy of SNL (BTW – I’m going to the NBC tour next Monday, the 8th – Hey, I’m a tourist on vacation, what can I say… ;-).
Check out the host… LeBron James !

Oh, one more, the monologue:

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Mobile & Media Consultant. I help startup companies launch products to the consumer market. Reach out: dvir.reznik [at] gmail.com
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This is my personal blog. The postings here do not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my past employers or of my clients. It is solely my opinion.