July 2010
1 post
June 2010
1 post
May 2010
2 posts
Totem
At Jones-Dilworth we talk a lot about what our (admittedly evolving) concept of the “agency of the future” really means.
From some as-yet-unpublished draft copy for our website, which I promise will go live someday:
We think that the agency of the future is laser-focused on a specific business opportunity and market segment, one in which it can be truly expert. We think that the...
April 2010
1 post
March 2010
3 posts
Quote of the Day
“I realize that some of you may have come in hopes of hearing tips on how to become a professional writer. I say to you, If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be a homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts. But do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to...
Very Thankful
And…exhale. SXSW 2010 has officially come to an end so I wanted to take a moment and reflect on this year’s show. It’s easier to have a little perspective out here in Yountville, CA where I write this –- good food and wine always seem to do the trick. First and foremost, I am humbled by our clients’ achievements. WolframAlpha won the SXSW Web Awards for Technical Achievement and Best of...
How PR Pros Are Using Social Media for Real... →
I really do feel strongly about what I told Christina in this interview:
“Right now we are doing a lot of work to mash up social data with business data to get cause and effect. Some products are starting to support this action — but only a few. I think this is the next big wave. You’ve got to be able to tie causes to effects, and that is the big challenge right now, what all our clients want,...
February 2010
5 posts
Stealthy Knowmore Loads Up On Talent To Silence... →
Really excited to start showing knowmore to the world. Human-centric design works — it’s not about a tech breakthrough in search of a problem — it’s using tech to solve real needs and pain points.
I love Julian’s take on this — “Do you think that Dean Kamen set out to make a transportation for mall cops?”
The Segway is the great example of a...
The Birth of the Virtual Assistant →
Siri’s launch is close at hand…
In the near future, anyone who lives a connected lifestyle will be able to delegate their everyday tasks to intelligent virtual assistants that will coordinate, execute and simplify users’ lives.
We will look back on these days and ask ourselves how we ever got by without our trusted assistants, the same way my kids ask in amazement about how we ever...
How Conceptual Metaphors are Stunting Web...
From a guest post last week by Venkatesh Rao:
Consider these terms: page, scroll, file, folder, trash can, bookmark, inbox, email, desktop, library, archive and index. They are all part of the document metaphor, a superset of the “desktop” metaphor. Some elements, such as scroll, desktop and library pre-date the printing press, but all are based on some sort of “marks on paper-like material”...
January 2010
1 post
Data and Business -- Mash post, Part Deux →
Here is the second in the series, which ran today. Feedback is very much appreciated if you have the time to give it.
The gist:
“Our collective data is the byproduct and the artifact of digital life and web living. It is increasingly rich and it is precisely the inner logic according to which we make decisions to buy and sell, act and react. We have, consciously or unconsciously, made...
December 2009
3 posts
Marketing in 2010: It's All About the Data →
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” – Mark Twain
That about says it all, hehe.
From my guest post in Mashable today:
In 2010 the very best marketers, PR professionals, and social media consultants will put data at the center of everything they do. For anyone unfamiliar with these concepts, just as with social media, data marketing may seem opaque or intimidating...
Congrats to ChallengePost
Anyone who knows me also know that I love stuff like this.
Major congrats to our client ChallangePost, which has helped the city of New York bring to fruition an immensely successful open government data program and app-building challenge.
Both the City and the people of New York benefit greatly, and similar programs around the country have been likewise successful. I hope that this is a trend...
My boilerplate SXSWi hotel recommendations
‘Tis the season, and it seems that everyone wakes up on 12/1 and realizes that they’re about to get screwed on SXSWi hotels. Which they are, hehe.
First —SXSW isn’t lying to you about the housing desk — it really is great and it really does work. I’d mostly recommend calling them first.
That said, everyone wants “inside intel” of which, in truth,...
November 2009
7 posts
SXSWi Accelerator Deadline Approaching + Free...
I am honored to be part of the incredible Advisory Board for the second annual SXSWi Accelerator. I’m also happy to report that the 2010 event is shaping up most excellently. The application deadline however, is 12/4 and quickly approaching.
SXSWi is as zeitgest-y as it gets — the event literally helps define the “spirt of the age and our society” etymologically speaking....
Datastreaming, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying...
UPDATE: The WSJ just wrote a very nice in-depth piece on this trend.
NOTE: this post also ended up serving as the conceptual basis for two guest pieces for Mashable, above.
We’ve had heart rate monitors for some time now. We have scales in the bathroom, speedometers (and more recently fuel efficiency measures) in the car, and all manner of timesheets in the workplace. Every day, we gather...
October 2009
1 post
September 2009
2 posts
SXSWi 2009 Schwag Analysis
From Cote:
As I joke with whurley in this very video, it takes me about 9 months to get the (now) annual SXSW Schwag Review video up. As you may recall from last year’s video, I’m joined by Austin tech scenesters Josh Dilworth and Lauren Sell on a quest to size-up the schwag scene at SXSW.
This year the schwag starts out looking poor, but picks up at the end to be pretty enjoyable.
Thanks to...
How well do you know the top tech press?
Using our client Smart.fm’s platform, we have created this quiz, which tests facial recognition of top technology press.
Whether you’re a bootstrapped startup or PR pro, knowing these faces can make a world of difference heading into the Fall conference season (TC50, DEMO, Under the Radar, Web 2.0 Expo and Summit, Supernova, etc.)
Three cool things to note – first, the application is called...
August 2009
1 post
SXSWi panels, please vote!
For those of you who haven’t already been checking out the SXSW 2010 panelpicker (which includes Film and Music selections for the first time, alongside Interactive), here is an abridged list of some of my favorites, which I’ll add to over time. Disclosure: Smart.fm, 80legs, Swingly, Siri and Twine are clients. Some of the trends we’re seeing across this year’s submissions include:
...
July 2009
2 posts
I got a lot of questions about sweet demo videos...
So here are two of my all-time favorites, by Atelier Transfert for Alltop, and Alien Eye for Smart.fm, respectively.
Alltop.com Tutorial Video from Atelier Transfert on Vimeo.
Disclosure: Smart.fm is a client.
Congrats to Austin-based Prefinery (emerges from... →
Justin Britten’s company makes a suite of products for launching and managing a beta. Prefinery hits a sweet spot for me because Prefinery’s capabilities sit immediately adjacent to many PR functions, and despite the fact that things like sign-up forms and approval queues and invite codes are among the last of the last-minute priority features to develop, they’re also some of the...
June 2009
3 posts
Who Can Name the Bigger Number? →
This is the clearest and best-written intro article on math, computability and big numbers I have read, period (and it’s from 1999, by the way).
More importantly, once the author (Scott Aaronson, a prof at MIT/CSAIL, and someone, hehe, semi-famously at odds with my client Stephen Wolfram) makes his way through the Ackerman sequence, Turing machines and Busy Beavers, he makes several very...
Leaving Porter Novelli, and Jones-Dilworth, Inc....
I’ve got big news on my end to announce – I am leaving Porter Novelli and starting my own agency – Jones-Dilworth, Inc. My last day in the office was today, and Monday is my last official day – Tuesday the 16th marks the launch of the newco.
It turns out that when you work with entrepreneurs day in and day out for years, it is only a matter of time before you catch the bug yourself!
I am really,...
May 2009
3 posts
Siri starting to come out of hiding →
Siri will give the first public demo of its virtual personal assistant tomorrow (Thursday) at the WSJ’s D conference.
In addition to the TechCrunch post, Elise Ackerman also wrote up an excellent piece for the Merc. And for even more info, video, and a mockup of a conversation with Siri, check out the MIT Tech Review’s profile from back in February.
I’ve been excited about Siri...
Twine is growing up (and up, and up) →
A hearty congrats to Nova, Candice and the whole Twine team. This article in TechCrunch today is a great send-off for the long weekend.
Their meteoric rise has been well-documented along the way, and there are even better things to come with Twine 2.0 i.e T2.
It’s worth noting that Twine has a very strong and active core of maven-like read/write users, alongside a much larger number of...
Buzzstream launches link building product →
To quote SEO jedi Eric Ward:
“A shout out to BuzzStream. Any of you link builders who haven’t already checked out BuzzStream should head over and have a look. I’ve been impressed enough to become an advisor to them. It’s in beta and already made my jaw drop. For years in my head I have envisioned the perfect link building management app, and in BuzzStream’s first feature set I see evidence...
April 2009
5 posts
First Look: Swingly Alpha →
I hereby pronouce April 28th to be International Search Innovation Day.
To top it all off, Andy Hickl has posted some very stealthy Swingly screenshots. It is going to be one heck of a summer, people.
Wolfram Alpha. Siri. MSFT/Kumo. Swingly. Watson. And much more…
UPDATE: ReadWriteWeb wrote up a very nice piece on Swingly here.
Disclosure: Swingly is a client.
The Wolfram|Alpha blog has launched. And so it... →
Today’s preview at Harvard’s Berkman Center and the simultaneous webcast represents the first (public) unveiling of the technology, with launch only weeks away.
Congrats to the team for all of the hard work that it has taken to get to this point. Stay tuned to the blog for more information and context on what Wolfram|Alpha is and isn’t, as well as what can be expected from the...
Austin: Social Media Capital of the World? →
Okay, so I’m not the first person to write this post (hat tip to Mike Chapman). That said, David Armano’s announcement last week that he is moving to Austin (the culprit: the resistance-is-futile tractor beam that Dachis Corp. has spent the last 12 months building) has me stepping back and remarking that we’ve got a seriously amazing community on our hands, people. SXSWi is...
(Via FriendFeed) A private note to PR people -... →
I am adamantly of the mind that well-behaved PR people are more Kaiser Sauze than attention whore (and poof! He’s gone…)
Some kind words that were said about me and others at the link above, and I am very grateful. But I am still keen on getting feedback on the following thesis, which I proposed in the comments.
Is the problem that some of the people best suited for PR (and marketing...
March 2009
7 posts
The Inner Beauty of a McNugget - A Cultural Scan... →
This is really, really cool. That is all;)
Wolfram Alpha is Coming -- and It Could be as... →
Update: I’ve now seen the demo — it is ridiculously awesome. I can’t imagine that they won’t have at least some growing pains and/or scaling issues, but that concern is moot — the product itself is groundbreaking and moreover real — they’re not at risk of anything Cuil-esque.
Nova posted some major scoop over the weekend — he and Stephen are good...
SXSW 2008 Schwag Analysis
[From Michael Cote]:
What makes the best schwag? How about crap schwag? While at SXSW last year, Coté, Josh Dilworth, and Lauren Sell go booth-to-booth to not just check out the schwag, but analyze and comment on it. Does it work? Where’d it come from? Would you want to get it?
After touring through the booths, we get outside and see the kind of schwag the press gets.
February 2009
6 posts
Siri selected for the MIT Technology Review's TR10 →
Congrats to Dag, Tom and Adam and the whole team — this is a huge acheivement.
Siri represents a paradigm shift in the way that we use the internet, and it’s exciting to take part of the product’s rollout. Indeed, we believe that in five years, everyone’s going to have a virtual assistant to which they delegate tasks. I for one, can’t wait.
Disclosure: Siri is a...