BlogWrite for CEOs Debbie Weil is the author of BlogWrite for CEOs, which looks like a very useful resource—complete with a list of CEOs' blogs and some free downloadable resources. I'm putting a link to it in Webwriting Resources as well....
Debbie Weil is the author of BlogWrite for CEOs, which looks like a very useful resource—complete with a list of CEOs' blogs and some free downloadable resources. I'm putting a link to it in Webwriting Resources as well.
Sir Tim Warns Us About Online Fraud Via the Guardian Unlimited: Creator of web warns of fraudsters and cheats. Excerpt: The creator of the world wide web told the Guardian last night that the internet is in danger of being corrupted by fraudsters, liars and cheats. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the Briton who founded the web in the early 1990s, says that if the internet is left to develop unchecked, "bad phenomena" will erode its usefulness. His creation...
Via the Guardian Unlimited: Creator of web warns of fraudsters and cheats. Excerpt:
The creator of the world wide web told the Guardian last night that the internet is in danger of being corrupted by fraudsters, liars and cheats.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the Briton who founded the web in the early 1990s, says that if the internet is left to develop unchecked, "bad phenomena" will erode its usefulness.
His creation has transformed the way millions of people work, do business, and entertain themselves.
But he warns that "there is a great danger that it becomes a place where untruths start to spread more than truths, or it becomes a place which becomes increasingly unfair in some way".
He singles out the rise of blogging as one of the most difficult areas for the continuing development of the web, because of the risks associated with inaccurate, defamatory and uncheckable information.
Sir Tim believes devotees of blogging sites take too much information on trust: "The blogging world works by people reading blogs and linking to them. You're taking suggestions of what you read from people you trust. That, if you like, is a very simple system, but in fact the technology must help us express much more complicated feelings about who we'll trust with what."
The next generation of the internet needs to be able to reassure users that they can establish the original source of the information they digest.
A Freelance Job in Vancouver This just arrived via the mail list of the Canadian Association of Journalists, and I hasten to pass it along. If you're a freelance writer in the Vancouver area, this could be of interest: The Conference Publishers is seeking freelance writers to cover the 2006 National Forum on Emergency Preparedness and Response in Vancouver. Writers are needed to produce 1800 word summaries of a pandemic flu exercise scheduled for December...
This just arrived via the mail list of the Canadian Association of Journalists, and I hasten to pass it along. If you're a freelance writer in the Vancouver area, this could be of interest:
The Conference Publishers is seeking freelance writers to cover the 2006 National Forum on Emergency Preparedness and Response in Vancouver. Writers are needed to produce 1800 word summaries of a pandemic flu exercise scheduled for December 14, 2006 (9 a.m. to 3 p.m.); turn-around time for reports is three working days. To learn more about our company please visit The Conference Publishers.
If you are available and interested, please contact Biljana Zelenovic at biljana@theconferencepublishers.com or 1-800-265-3973 x226.
Where to Put the Links? Milton Rhodes has sent me some questions about webwriting issues, and while I've dealt with some of them in the book, they deserve continuing discussion and debate. Here's his first question: Should you strip your copy of all links? One school of thought says yes, because links in the middle of the text ive the page that cluttered Wikipedia look and are off-putting. Much better to place all the relevant...
Milton Rhodes has sent me some questions about webwriting issues, and while I've dealt with some of them in the book, they deserve continuing discussion and debate. Here's his first question:
Should you strip your copy of all links? One school of thought says yes, because links in the middle of the text ive the page that cluttered Wikipedia look and are off-putting. Much better to place all the relevant links at the foot of the page or in the right-hand margin. Another school of thought says no. You need to make it easy for readers to find the link as they read the main copy. If you place it anywhere else, many will miss it.
And here's my answer:
The blessing and curse of hypertext is that it can take you so many places.
In regular print-based text, we follow the writer's line of thought. That "line of thought" is a metaphor for a great deal of pre-writing: consulting sources, reflecting on them and on one's own preferences and principles, reacting to the actual ideas as they appear in the words the writer has drafted. The final version is like a good meal, with each course carefully prepared and served in the proper sequence.
In hypertext, we have scarcely sat down and opened our napkins before we're invited to jump up and visit the kitchen to confirm that oregano was indeed used in making the soup. Before we can enjoy the first bite of beefsteak, we're back in the slaughterhouse and from there to the feedlot.
This can be both informative and entertaining. We may learn a lot about what went into our meal, but we risk missing dessert, coffee, and liqueur...not to mention some good dinner-table conversation.
How Scholars Use Hypertext
It's helpful to see what scholars do with such links. You could say they invented the first hypertext in their annotations to earlier documents and the footnotes by which they cite their sources. These break the narrative also, but scholars manage to ignore the disruptions. They absorb the information and then check the footnotes.
In the online medium, the "footnotes" are links—not to the original sources, but to citations at the bottom of the document, which in turn lead to the sources. A typical example is a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine. Go visit it and come back for my comments.
Welcome back. You've probably noticed that the NEJM article is not designed to be read online. The text sprawls across the whole screen. We have to scroll forever to follow the narrative. (We do have the option of clicking through to see the report's tables.) A sensible strategy would be to print it out, read it in our favourite armchair, and then return to the computer to check the links to the sources. We can click on a footnote number and "rappel" down the screen to the footnote, and then go on to the online source.
Serving Readers and Users
This is a pretty good format for "readers"—those who use the Web as a convenient archive for print documents. For "users"—those looking for information to apply to their own documents, or just for entertainment—it can be a bit awkward. It's especially awkward for bloggers, as I've learned in running my own blogs.
Most bloggers are writing for users, "hit and run" visitors who arrive, grab a fact or comment, and surf on to somewhere else. Blog posts (and many other website texts) should therefore be fairly brief. If they do run long, like this one, it helps to put most of the post "below the fold" on its own page. The user can see two or three posts on one screen, and then decide which to follow onto the next page.
So on my own blogs, like H5N1, I'm quite happy to include the links to my sources within the text of the post, usually with an excerpt. Only the most dedicated visitors need to visit the original source, so the link to that source won't instantly distract them. They can read the gist of the post at a glance (or with a little scrolling). And then they can visit the source for the full story.
Other Options?
Links on the side are another option. A good service of any website is to supply links to related sites, and blogs usually provide them. This is a convenience, but it may be necessary to supply blurbs with those links as well—many surfers are hesitant to click through to a different site unless encouraged to do so. But these links tend to be "stand-alone," unrelated to the main posts: They stay put in a side column, while the main posts gradually move down the page and disappear.
No doubt you might design a page so that links stayed to one side of the main text, but it doesn't seem worth it. Readers will still print out the text and then return to the computer to check the sources. Users will still want to grasp the main points of the post and then (perhaps) click through to the links, whether they're in the text itself or off to one side.
So designing the links of a post depends on knowing the kinds of readers you're writing for, and then providing what those readers are most comfortable with.
This post itself is a compromise. I expect people to read it online, not as a printout, so I've included a number of subheads to break up the text and help navigation. And of course I've included my links in the text, not at the bottom.
Of course I'd love to hear other opinions, whether you agree or disagree. This is an interactive medium, after all.
American Zeitgeist The Tyee has published my review of American Zeitgeist, a documentary about the origins of the Afghan and Iraqi wars....
The Tyee has published my review of American Zeitgeist, a documentary about the origins of the Afghan and Iraqi wars.
Are citizen-journalists just amateurs? Nicholas Lemann, in the current New Yorker, takes issue with many bloggers' conviction that they are doing the job the mainstream media are too complacent or arrogant to do. It's an entertaining piece, and in the online version you can of course visit the sites he mentions...and see what some blogger-journalists think of the article....
Nicholas Lemann, in the current New Yorker, takes issue with many bloggers' conviction that they are doing the job the mainstream media are too complacent or arrogant to do. It's an entertaining piece, and in the online version you can of course visit the sites he mentions...and see what some blogger-journalists think of the article.
An Intellectual Property Issue Judy Pokras (vegwriter@aol.com) has posted a letter to the Online Writing list, and she's given me permission to pass it along: I've been selling an e-book (of raw vegan Thanksgiving recipes) that clearly says on it that buyers don't have the right to distribute the information in the book. One of the buyers (a woman in New York, whose name and address I have) posted many of the book's recipes...
Judy Pokras (vegwriter@aol.com) has posted a letter to the Online Writing list, and she's given me permission to pass it along:
I've been selling an e-book (of raw vegan Thanksgiving recipes) that clearly says on it that buyers don't have the right to distribute the information in the book. One of the buyers (a woman in New York, whose name and address I have) posted many of the book's recipes on a yahoo e-group website (and admitted to it), and sent links to those recipes in an e-mail to the 2,610 members of that group, thus depriving me of who knows how many sales. I only have until
Thanksgiving to sell my book, after all.
I sent an e-mail to the group and the woman saying she was violating copyright law. She wrote back apologizing and saying she removed the files from the website. But for the period of time that they were up, who knows how many people downloaded those recipes and e-mailed them to others.
I went to the FBI's website, which has a division on internet crime. It said that not all of the complaints registered with them will be investigated, as they're sent to various agencies, and that if a matter is urgent, a complainant should contact local authorities. I then called the local sheriff's office and explained the situation. They sent a deputy over. Neither the phone person nor the in-person deputy had ever heard of the term "e-book." The deputy said this was a civil matter.
Do you know of any intellectual property lawyers who would take this case on contingency?
I told Judy I don't know of such lawyers, but perhaps some of the readers here will know of an affordable and effective way to estimate and recover damages.
In Judy's shoes, I'd join the e-group, explain the predicament my customer had put me in, and ask those who'd downloaded the recipes to send me something by way of compensation. But I wouldn't build my retirement plans around the anticipated revenue.
Directly Grabbing RSS Subscribers and Getting Syndicated Through Pheedo RSS Advertising Pheedo just released a new RSS advertising concept, called FeedPowered Advertising, that helps you generate new subscribers to your RSS feeds using RSS advertising, through Pheedo's RSS advertising network or through other ad networks.
The Key Facts
Their new RSS ad format ...
[a] Displays the latest content items from your RSS feed, including video content with direct "watch" links
[b] Allows the user to also add your content (directly from the ad) to del.icio.us, digg, Reddit, Furl or e-mai it to a friend
How the New Format Integrates DM, PR and Brand
The implications of this are quite strong.
[a] The ad format allows you to syndicate your RSS content to targeted online media, displaying your content there directly to generate more brand awareness, build your credibility and get new readers by actually demonstrating your value
[b] Furthemore, the ad itself contains further syndication options that will virally spread your content through the key social networking sites
[c] The ad functions as a direct subscription generation tool, enabling you to quickly capture new subscribers through other sites ... and actually works towards increasing your conversion rate by first demonstrating the content and so making the subscription decision easier and more educated, thus generating better qualified subscribers/prospects
In essence, the ad format integrates PR, direct marketing and brand advertising.
Is it perfect? While it is an amazing idea, it does need some further refinement.
Further Improvements Needed
[a] Looking at their example on their site using Internet Explorer 7 shows that the feed subscription option in the ad is not highlighted through the IE7 native RSS Reader, making it less intuitive to subscribe
[b] The existing example is clearly targeted to RSS Aware users. But data shows that more than 80% of RSS users are not actually aware of using RSS. The ad format also need to include other subscription options, in addition to the RSS button, such as Add to MyYahoo!
[c] The ad also needs some space at the bottom to better entice viewers to subscribe, using enticing copy and perhaps bribing the viewers to subscribe by offering them a free whitepaper
[d] For direct marketers, the ad format should also allow an in-between data capture window, allowing the direct marketer to capture prospect information prior to being given access to the feed
[e] The next step would be for Pheedo to add additional metrics for advertisers, such as new subscriber retention and long-term customer conversion, and perhaps even the CPO.
If you want to check it out yourself, here's the screenshot (working version available here):
I'm a little biased here, because I've always dug Pheedo work, but in my opinion this is the best RSS advertising development yet ... and finally an RSS advertising tool to generate real results by taking advantage of the power of RSS.
Links to the New Edition Writing for the Web 3.0 is now officially available. I've placed links to Self-Counsel Press in the right-hand column. If you're in the US, you can buy the book through the lower link; if you're in Canada or elsewhere in the world, the upper link is the one you want. If you're in the UK, you can also order the book through the Roundhouse Group. In the next few days...
Writing for the Web 3.0 is now officially available. I've placed links to Self-Counsel Press in the right-hand column. If you're in the US, you can buy the book through the lower link; if you're in Canada or elsewhere in the world, the upper link is the one you want. If you're in the UK, you can also order the book through the Roundhouse Group.
In the next few days I'll add some resources here that are available as a CD in the book...but only for PC users. So Mac users can download those resources here.
100 million sites CNN.com reports that the Web now has 100 million sites. The report is based on a story in Netcraft, a site I will include in the Webwriting Resources list. I suspect we will hit 250 million sites before we realize what a profound revolution Sir Tim Berners-Lee launched upon an unsuspecting world back in 1989....
CNN.com reports that the Web now has 100 million sites. The report is based on a story in Netcraft, a site I will include in the Webwriting Resources list.
I suspect we will hit 250 million sites before we realize what a profound revolution Sir Tim Berners-Lee launched upon an unsuspecting world back in 1989.
Ideagoras The Globe and Mail is running a series based on a forthcoming book, Wikinomics. Today they've published the second in the series, Ideagoras. Here's an excerpt: In addition to broadening and deepening its own proprietary networks, P&G searches for innovations in Web-enabled marketplaces such as InnoCentive, NineSigma, and yet2.com. These combined efforts led to hundreds of new products on the market, some of which turned out to be hits. In...
The Globe and Mail is running a series based on a forthcoming book, Wikinomics. Today they've published the second in the series, Ideagoras. Here's an excerpt:
In addition to broadening and deepening its own proprietary networks, P&G searches for innovations in Web-enabled marketplaces such as InnoCentive, NineSigma, and yet2.com. These combined efforts led to hundreds of new products on the market, some of which turned out to be hits.
In the process, Mr. Lafley and his managers like Mr. Huston transformed a lumbering consumer products company into a limber innovation machine. In fact, five years after the company's stock collapsed in 2000, P&G has doubled its share price and now boasts a portfolio of 22 billion-dollar brands.
Today P&G is a leader among thousands of companies that participate in what we call "ideagoras" where millions of ideas, innovations, and uniquely qualified minds change hands in something akin to an eBay for innovation.
Companies that move now can leverage a global pool of talent, ideas, and innovations that vastly exceeds what they could ever hope to marshal internally.
P&G figures that for every top-notch scientist inside its labs, there's another 200 outside who are just as good. That's a total of 1.8 million people whose talents it could potentially tap into.
The article is interesting not just for its content (which may be good stuff or routine corporate hyperventilation) but for the Globe's own awkward use of the online medium.
The paragraphing of the online article was identical to that of the print version I read over breakfast. I broke up one over-long paragraph to make it more readable.
The resources mentioned like InnoCentive and NineSigma are given without links to their sites. (Don't get me going about companies still using StudlyCaps.)
The story does offer a link to the Wikinomics home page, and to an earlier article in the series. But like so much material that the print media dump online, this is really just shovelware. Its value online would be far greater if only it had been turned into real hypertext.
That said, I'm posting a link to Wikinomics in Webwriting Resources, and I'd welcome your comments about that site.
Nielsen on the "Usability Divide" Here's an excerpt from Digital Divide: The Three Stages (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox): Far worse than the economic divide is the fact that technology remains so complicated that many people couldn't use a computer even if they got one for free. Many others can use computers, but don't achieve the modern world's full benefits because most of the available services are too difficult for them to understand. Almost 40% of the...
Here's an excerpt from Digital Divide: The Three Stages (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox):
Far worse than the economic divide is the fact that technology remains so complicated that many people couldn't use a computer even if they got one for free. Many others can use computers, but don't achieve the modern world's full benefits because most of the available services are too difficult for them to understand.
Almost 40% of the population has lower literacy skills, and yet few websites follow the guidelines for writing for low-literacy users. Even government sites that target poorer citizens are usually written at a level that requires a university degree to comprehend. The British government has done some good work on simplifying much of its direct.gov.uk site information, but even it requires at least a high school education to easily read.
Lower literacy is the Web's biggest accessibility problem, but nobody cares about this massive user group.
This really is a critical problem. It's one reason why I argue for keeping readability levels as low as possible. It's not dumbing-down the text—it's opening it up to people who can use it if only they can understand it.
Nielsen's post has a link to his guideline for writing for low-literacy users. I also recommend Readability.info, which can give you several good ways to assess your text readability. You can also find a link to it in the Webwriting Resources list, down in the left-hand column.
Lurkers and Posters Jakob Nielsen has a very interesting comment on his Alertbox page: Participation Inequality: Lurkers vs. Contributors in Internet Communities. Excerpt: There are about 1.1 billion Internet users, yet only 55 million users (5%) have weblogs according to Technorati. Worse, there are only 1.6 million postings per day; because some people post multiple times per day, only 0.1% of users post daily. Blogs have even worse participation inequality than is evident...
Jakob Nielsen has a very interesting comment on his Alertbox page: Participation Inequality: Lurkers vs. Contributors in Internet Communities. Excerpt:
There are about 1.1 billion Internet users, yet only 55 million users (5%) have weblogs according to Technorati. Worse, there are only 1.6 million postings per day; because some people post multiple times per day, only 0.1% of users post daily.
Blogs have even worse participation inequality than is evident in the 90-9-1 rule that characterizes most online communities. With blogs, the rule is more like 95-5-0.1.
I'm not sure I'd say "only" 55 million users have blogs, but Nielsen's key point deserves serious thought.
This is a truly interactive medium, yet almost no one interacts. Most of us are lurkers, which means missing an enormous opportunity to learn more and to influence others. (In the case of online education, the reluctance to interact has sabotaged countless courses—not to mention most of my class blogs.)
Read Nielsen's whole article...then come back and tell me what you think.
Wikipedia's Watchdog The Tyee, an online magazine here in Vancouver, has an excellent article: Wikipedia's Watchdog. Excerpt: Andrew is a tall, skinny, 18-year-old college freshman who lives with his mom and dad on Burrard Inlet's North Shore. Early in the afternoon on July 31, he settled into the swivel chair in his parents' study, turned on his computer, and began combing through the bowels of Wikipedia, the world's most popular online encyclopedia....
The Tyee, an online magazine here in Vancouver, has an excellent article: Wikipedia's Watchdog. Excerpt:
Andrew is a tall, skinny, 18-year-old college freshman who lives with his mom and dad on Burrard Inlet's North Shore. Early in the afternoon on July 31, he settled into the swivel chair in his parents' study, turned on his computer, and began combing through the bowels of Wikipedia, the world's most popular online encyclopedia.
Andrew (when he isn't busy playing favourite games like Battlefield 2) performs an essential role in the ongoing struggle to defend Wikipedia from vandals of truth. Andrew is so committed to his mission, in fact, that he has invented digital 'robots' to help him patrol for enemy attacks. As one of more than a thousand Wikipedia administrators, he volunteers up to 20 hours a week. He and his trusty 'bots' find and zap inserted falsehoods that plague the pages of the huge, interactive site.
It's never easy preserving Wikipedia's credibility. But on that July afternoon, Andrew faced a truly formidable opponent, the godfather of "truthiness" himself, Stephen Colbert.
Online Writing Resources Matthew Ingram at the Globe and Mail has an interesting column: Google's spot is growing. And it's not just about Google's new online writing and spreadsheet tools. Ingram looks at several other services. I tend not to be an early adopter, and while I've heard of online wiki-style writing resources, I haven't done anything with them. If you have some experiences to share (and resources to recommend), I'd love to...
Matthew Ingram at the Globe and Mail has an interesting column: Google's spot is growing. And it's not just about Google's new online writing and spreadsheet tools. Ingram looks at several other services.
I tend not to be an early adopter, and while I've heard of online wiki-style writing resources, I haven't done anything with them. If you have some experiences to share (and resources to recommend), I'd love to hear about them.
Blogging a Nameless War The Tyee has published my article Blogging a Nameless War, about the Lebanese and Israeli online response to the war in Lebanon....
The Tyee has published my article Blogging a Nameless War, about the Lebanese and Israeli online response to the war in Lebanon.
Interactive Optimization Blog Launched As I already explained, MarketingStudies.net is expanding its content to also covering Interactive Marketing Optimization and Analytics.
Essentially, this was the next logical step in the website evolution, considering that B2C e-commerce is in my blood, a passion, and something I do every day.
While I did say B2C e-commerce, the lessons learned can be applied to any other interactive field and to B2B is as well.
Why Read This Blog Anyway?
- Get the spin on interactive marketing optimization from an e-commerce director's point of view, working from the perspective that every online activity needs to generate a positive ROI
- Learn channel integration strategies and processes that combine everything from direct response television, telemarketing and direct mail to online
- Get a view of interactive optimization from the Central and Eastern European perspective, although rooted in US experience and approaces
- Take a fully actionable approach to online analytics and optimization
What Qualifies Me to Write About Interactive Optimization?
- I'm the International Internet Director for Studio Moderna, managing our internet operations in 21 CEE countries, with more than 130+ e-commerce sites
- Interactive optimization, in addition to long-term strategy development, is the key focus of my internet marketing activities
- I'm responsible for direct internet sales in 21 countries, as well as keeping all internet costs within strictly set boundaries
- I work in a 100% multi-channel environment
- I know my business:) It's not just work, but a hobby and a passion
But enough about me.
This blog is about how you can optimize your interactive marketing activities.
To get us started, here's a quick reading list of the top online analytics blogs, and here's the first part of the discussion of how conversion benchmarks are the greatest hoax in internet marketing.
A new French-language resource I've belatedly discovered écrire pour le web, a blog produced, I believe, in Belgium. Even with my rudimentary French I can see it's a good site, and I've put a link to it in the Webwriting Resources list. (It's way down at the bottom of the list, thanks to its lower-case text.) This raises another point: staying up to date. If you're running a site that deals with webwriting (at...
I've belatedly discovered écrire pour le web, a blog produced, I believe, in Belgium. Even with my rudimentary French I can see it's a good site, and I've put a link to it in the Webwriting Resources list. (It's way down at the bottom of the list, thanks to its lower-case text.)
This raises another point: staying up to date. If you're running a site that deals with webwriting (at least in part), please get in touch. It's time to do a serious overhaul of the links and resources available here. Non-English sites especially welcome!
Websites that changed the world The Guardian Unlimited has celebrated the 15th anniversary of the World Wide Web with an article that also lists 15 Websites that changed the world. You'll probably disagree with many of the sites on the list, but the Web has indeed changed the world....
The Guardian Unlimited has celebrated the 15th anniversary of the World Wide Web with an article that also lists 15 Websites that changed the world.
You'll probably disagree with many of the sites on the list, but the Web has indeed changed the world.
Beyond Wikipedia: Citizendium Via The Tyee, an article webwriters should read: Beyond Wikipedia. Excerpt: Larry Sanger doesn't trust the wisdom of the crowd, so he's no big fan of Wikipedia. But he's not like the others who get their kicks pooh-poohing the all-powerful (but flawed) wiki: Sanger had a huge hand in creating it. These days, however, he's doing his best to make it something future generations remember only as the troubled little...
Via The Tyee, an article webwriters should read: Beyond Wikipedia. Excerpt:
Larry Sanger doesn't trust the wisdom of the crowd, so he's no big fan of Wikipedia. But he's not like the others who get their kicks pooh-poohing the all-powerful (but flawed) wiki: Sanger had a huge hand in creating it. These days, however, he's doing his best to make it something future generations remember only as the troubled little brat of online encyclopedias.
Sanger is staging an electronic coup d'état with a new wiki called Citizendium, to be launched early in the new year. But there's a twist: the site will start out as a mirror image of the English version of Wikipedia through a process called "forking."
By making a replica of Wikipedia, Sanger hopes to attract a bevy of experts to the project, who will then refine the wobbly content pulled from Wikipedia's infinite pages to create a resource that is authoritative and reliable. ("We descend upon their content, red pens in hand and start our own new community," he recently wrote.)
"On the day of launch, we have over 1,000 people ready to get to work, and a large portion of them are professors, graduate students, research scientists, legal scholars, technical thinkers and assorted other intellectuals."
Question is, how far will his highfalutin model go in the unruly hurly-burly of cyberspace, where the wisdom of the crowds rules the day?
I've put a link to Citizendium in the Webwriting Resources list, and the article itself has a link as well.
As I sit at a pavement cafe in Camps Bay drinking red Africa tea and hanging out with my son and his family, blogging has been the last thing on my mind.
Yesterday afternoon the LA Times announced a new model for the newspaper's reporting with the Internet at its center - go figure! 
Prevailing wisdom says you can't control the message anymore. User-generated content has a life of it's own and any attempt to make it into a marketing or PR vehicle will backfire.
Last year I made the comment that many PR professionals had their heads in the sand about new media and online PR. 
I got an extra Christmas present in December from the makers of my laptop bag: Mobile Edge. Lewis Lustman, director of marketing for