Dec 062011
 
What to Know About the New BMW F30 3-Series

Here’s a post for anyone out there considering the new BMW 3-Series, due to arrive on these shores in February. I’m happy to report some uneventful driving in my cars, so I’ve no DIY story to share. I’ve got a lot planned for the M3 come spring. Even though the miles are still very low […]

Dec 022011
 
How Much Can You Automate Influencer Tracking?

If you’re in any type of communications role, you know every vertical has influencers. How to automate finding them, scoring them and cultivating them is a rapidly expanding cottage market within the broader social media marketing space. Marc Benioff of Salesforce.com has brought his formidable promotion skills to this space. Salesforce acquired social media monitoring […]

Nov 292011
 

Last week I had two online services fail, and I needed customer service fast. The experiences made me stop and think about how much I use free (or almost free )services daily, and if them being free changed my service expectations as a user. On 11/17 this  WordPress blog, which I’ve published for four years, […]

Nov 232011
 
Unlocking the Secret Menu Options on the BMW E39 M5

One of the great things about owning a BMW is that it is virtually impossible to know everything about the car. The amount of esoteric knowledge seems infinite, and its possible to turn the ownership experience into a full-scale hobby rather than just transportation. A case in point is the ability to access lots of […]

Nov 182011
 
Taking the Anti-SOPA Message to the People

It’s been fascinating this week to read coverage of congressional hearings around the SOPA bill, or Stop Online Privacy Act. The bill has strong support from the Motion Picture Association of America, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and big pharmaceutical companies. It’s opposed by most technology and telecom companies, plus consumer advocate groups like the […]

Nov 152011
 
Driving Traffic With Twitter

One of the things I do regularly for clients is drive awareness of their news through social media channels. So I read with interest an article from Mediabistro’s PR Newser about comparing Facebook vs. Twitter for driving traffic. PRNewswire worked with the social media company CrowdFactory to analyze activity around press releases over a period […]

Nov 112011
 
DIY Could Have Saved This Guy

I read a very sad and ironic story on the M5Board this week. A guy named Tom Ranck had owned his 2000 M5 since new, and had driven it for 276,000. Roundel, the magazine of the BMW Car Club of America, ran a profile piece on Tom and his car in this month’s November issue. […]

Nov 082011
 

This weekend I stopped by Calvert Woodley, a landmark DC establishment for wine. I wanted to pick up some French wine, and I wanted to attend a tasting of some wines imported by Robert “Bobby” Kacher. Kacher is a well known importer and a resident of DC. He was gracious as he multitasked conversations and […]

Nov 042011
 

I read a good article this week on CircleID by Bruce Levinson. He talks about how eventually cybersecurity will be something the federal government regulates, alongside other more familiar types of activities such as financial transactions and the environment. You can disagree about the proper role of government in the regulation of private networks, but […]

Nov 012011
 
Advances in Government Collaboration -- Report from GovComm

This morning I attended the opening of the inaugural GovComm show at the Washington Convention Center. The show is presented by InfoComm, the trade association for all things audiovisual. My client Polycom is exhibiting and their CTO for public sector Sean Lessman gave the opening keynote speech. Sean started by talking about how far collaboration […]

Oct 272011
 

I saw two pieces of news today that illustrated how consumers are dictating content delivery.  The Internet continues to accelerate the move to personalized media consumption, when and where the consumer wants it. This trend has decimated the b2b magazine space, and now video usage is rapidly going mass market. In January Ziff Davis will […]

Oct 252011
 

There aren’t many interesting restaurants very close to my neighborhood. Most dinners involve a drive to Old Town at least, if not DC. But this weekend we decided to go Bosnian at the Cosmopolitan Grill, located (a bit incongruously) right next to our gym along Route 1. Tom Sietsema in the Post gave the place […]