Disruptive Conversations

I know my attention on Friday was not focused on any reports of iPad 2 lines or online scarcity but instead focused on all the insane and surreal news coming out of Japan with the combination of the earthquake and tsunami and all the resulting devastation. Given the super-high density of mobile phones in Japan, it was perhaps too be expected that this disaster would be uploaded.... videos.... photos... tweets... updates of all sorts...

My FIR report focused on that aspect of the event... and also Doc Searls great post: "Earthquake turns TV networks into print" about how the Internet is changing coverage of events, particularly when some media like Al Jazeera are using live streaming so well while other TV networks are not (or cannot due to contracts). I have much more to say on that topic... but in the meantime I encourage you all to read Doc's post. Or... listen to my report inside of this week's FIR ;-)

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• The NY Times article about negative publicity and Google search results, including:
  • The GetSatisfaction blog post about why negative comments on their site (and others) won't help with search rankings; and
  • Jeff Jarvis on "What Should Google Do?" (good comments, too)
• Robert X. Cringely on "The Decline and Fall of Email"
• My post about "At What Point Do We Just Stop Caring About IE6 Visitors?"

The episode will be available for your listening pleasure from the FIR web site later today.

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The largest change is, of course, moving from "twice weekly" to simply "weekly" and dropping the Thursday show. For reasons Shel and Neville explain, they really had to do this because of their schedules. Personally, I've been absolutely amazed that they have been able to keep the twice-weekly format going for as long as they have - and so the change wasn't a big surprise.

So what does this change mean for me and the weekly reports I've been sending in since 2005 for the Thursday show?

On one level... not much. I'm still sending in reports... just now for the Monday show. There are, though, some tweaks you'll hear to tighten up the show a bit given that ALL correspondent reports will now be in the single show. These include:

• The RadioDaddy intro to my segments has been dropped ("From the serene and picturesque hills...")
  
  
• My reports will no longer have the intro/outro music. (MANY thanks to FIR listener and composer Joseph Fosco who gave me that music to use many years ago!)
  
  
• My reports will not appear at the beginning as they have in recent times but will rather be simply mixed in with all the other news items and other correspondent reports.
  
  
• I'll be sticking to a hard limit of 5 minutes for each report. (In the past they've ranged but typically have been 5-8 minutes.)

I don't have an issue with any of the changes. I actually really don't mind the RadioDaddy intro going away - I've gotten kind of tired of being labeled as "from the technologist's point-of-view" given that these days most of my time is spent much more in a pure communications/PR/marketing viewpoint (admittedly, though, I'll always be a "technologist" at heart). Like I said, I'm surprised Shel & Neville kept going with the twice-weekly format as long as they did.

The big challenge for me is just going to be to remember to send in my reports on Monday! That will take some getting used to...

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With the iPhone app you have a very easy way to immediately jump to FIR episodes and start listening. When you go into one of the episodes you have a "Play Podcast" link when loads the iPhone's QuickTime player and starts playing the episode for you. You can also follow the "Web Link" to view the page out on the FIR site (where you could see comments). There's also a nice "Categories" screen that lets you see the various different categories of FIR podcasts.

If you create an "account" you can then apparently mark episodes as "favorites", comment on episodes and rate episodes. My one point of feedback I'll be passing along to Shel and Neville is that it's not entirely clear to me where I am creating this account. Is it on the service of the vendor behind this app? (GenWi, the company behind iSites.us) Admittedly I'm a bit more paranoid than the average user (blame my security background), but I'd like to know a bit more about who is going to have my data before I sign up.

Speaking of iSites, they are the iPhone application vendor Shel and Neville used for this app. It's admittedly very cool... for just $25 you can get your own iPhone app created.

Now, the only caveat is that for that $25 one-time fee, you are stuck with the in-application advertising that you see in the image to the left and over which you have no control. iSites does have a $99/year pricing plan that gives you control over ads and presumably they are expecting that a certain number of folks will choose that plan to lose the ads. (I would.)

I obviously just started using the app and I'll be interested to see how using it compares to using the regular "iPod" functionality built into my iPhone. This app has the advantage that you can very quickly get to FIR podcasts and be able to see what is there. Whenever you launch the app it seems to check for the most recent episodes so you are always up to date.

On the other hand, in the "iPod" app on my iPhone I do have to manually initiate the "Get more episodes" process to download new episodes. However, one advantage to the iPod app is that I get to see how far I have listened to any given FIR episode - and it retains that info so with one glance I can see which episodes I still need to listen to and how much more I have of each episode. This is a great advantage when your time to listen to podcasts is rather fragmented.

Regardless, I think it's rather cool for Shel and Neville to now have an iPhone (and Android) app. If you are an FIR listener (or are interested in the intersection of social media, technology, PR and communications), do check out the app and try it out. I'll be curious to hear your thoughts. What do you think of it? Do you see yourself using it versus the iPod app to listen to FIR?

P.S. In full disclosure... if you are not aware, I am a weekly correspondent into FIR, usually on Thursdays, and so I am affiliated with the podcast.

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As you'll hear in the show, Shel and I had quite an enjoyable time covering a wide range of topics about which both of us are passionate. The summary Shel wrote is:

Content summary: Dan York joins Shel as guest co-host while Neville copes with demands during his first week in his new job; our interview with Steve Rubel on lifestreaming and other matters is set for Friday; Dan reports that a lot of good content is coming out of the Inbound Marketing Summit, which is taking place today and Friday; Dan talks about his marketing and communications responsibilities at Voxeo and how he uses the concept he has dubbed “the attention wave”; Sallie Goetsch reports on the death of podcasting; Media Monitoring Minute; News That Fits: the FTC issues rules for affiliate bloggers in the U.S., companies continue to invest in social media but 54% of them block their own employees, a company owns up to unethical behavior, a deep dive into Twitter statistics including the behaviors that promote retweeting; music from Matthew Ebel; and more.

Links to the articles we discussed can be found in the show notes over on The New PR Wiki.

It was quite fun and I thank Shel for asking me. Schedule permitting I'd be glad to do it again sometime.

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