Flack's Revenge

Birth of a Buzzword; Augmented Reality, and Apps for Tech PR

It is a phrase that conjures interesting imagery.

Some might think it is what happens when you have one drink too many.

Others would say people experience this when they become politicians (or when joining the PR profession, for that matter; there are no sacred cows here).

Actually, augmented reality refers to a relatively new class of cellphone apps that superimpose data over visual displays to enrich the viewing experience. I first saw it in action when a buddy of mine proudly showed me his new Google Android phone. Being a geek from way back, of the programming and Trekkie variety, Charles was stoked that he could point his cell phone at the night sky and see the constellations conveniently named and drawn on the display. As he panned across the sky, the display changed to show the ones that were in view.

Being a wordsmith and geek too, I am fascinated by jargon, and like to follow the usage and evolution of buzzwords. I thought I'd search Factiva to find the first mention of the term.  I was surprised to learn that augmented reality has actually been around for quite awhile (the first article, at least in their index, was an EE Times piece about virtual reality from 1992).  So I am apparently incorrect when I refer to the phrase as a new one, or technology that necessarily relates to cellphone apps.

However, as the graphic below shows, usage of the term has skyrocketed recently in comparison to 2001, which is as far back as their chart goes.

I thought I'd explore (with tongue firmly planted in cheek) potential augmented reality apps that could be a boon for those in the tech PR profession:

Real Time Thought Bubbles

This app interprets the incredulous or bored looks of reporters or analysts as they take in demos and PowerPoints and superimposes what they most likely are thinking over their heads like the thought bubbles you see in comics; it can be an invaluable aid to the spokesperson and PR rep.

BS Detector/Crash Saver

Designed to rescue your client when an otherwise great briefing is going off the rails (think software demo crash, or perhaps the hype is going into overdrive). The app superimposes a screen that says "Sorry for the interruption, we will soon return..." or "This is a test of the emergency broadcast system..."

Jargon Translator

This app can be used by the reporter or analyst - it miraculously and in real time translates indecipherable jargon and superimposes it as sub titles.

Serendipity: Not dead yet, not by long shot

Damon Darlin wrote in his NY Times article Serendipity, Lost in the Digital Deluge that a downside of the Digital Age is a loss in serendipitous information discovery:

WE’VE gained so much in the digital age. We get more entertainment choices, and finding what we’re looking for is certainly fast. Best of all, much of it is free...But we’ve lost something as well: the fortunate discovery of something we never knew we wanted to find. In other words, the digital age is stamping out serendipity.

Everything we need to know comes filtered and vetted. We are discovering what everyone else is learning, and usually from people we have selected because they share our tastes. It won’t deliver that magic moment of discovery that we imagine occurred when Elvis Presley first heard the blues, or when Michael Jackson followed Fred Astaire’s white spats across the dance floor.

Although I think the nature of serendipitous info discovery has changed, I do not agree that it is dead - not by a long shot.  In fact, with growing info sources and increasingly diverse ways of receiving and digesting media comes even more opportunities.

I thought what I would do is illustrate this by describing recent jewels I have uncovered - articles and posts from different sources - and in the process show how information from a typical post on Flack's Revenge comes together.

I was casually going about my normal social media intensive day searching for mentions of this blog when I came across a false positive - a link not leading to a mention of Flack's Revenge, but instead to an article called The Revenge of the Flack - one that is perhaps a little dated in terms of being a year old but still extremely topical and interesting.  It is about taking PR directly to the people, and one that I found totally by accident during a Google search.

Not long afterward I was scanning headlines in my email in box to find the nuggets amidst the all the BS I normally need to wade through.  One headline from Ad Age fortuitously jumped out: As Media Market Shrinks, PR Passes Up Reporters, Pitches Directly to Consumers.

The trifecta of information discovery was completed when Andrew Fowler of Newsvetter shared a post via Twitter about diminishing news beats, and what this means for PR (this is perhaps less serendipitous as Andrew knows me and thought I might have an interest).  Nonetheless, the combination of affinity and serendipity led me to several related stories and provided fodder for a future post.

Damon's article assumes that the people in our networks are homogeneous and share the same narrow range of tastes that we do.  This is not true in general.  So, whether you see a Tweet with a link, see the results that surround your searches and search alerts, someone shares something unexpected, or yes watching TV and reading real mags which most of us still do, we are surrounded by info and it is harder these days NOT to accidentally discover something totally unexpected and interesting.

It's an App, App, App, App, App, App World

It's occurred to me that there has been a shift in how we think about and use software.

The growth of the iPhone, it's app store and myriad others, of smart phones in general and all the apps that go along, has caused software to pervade our culture and transformed it from something utilitarian into cute, bite-sized and cuddly things.

Software has become applications have become apps.   There are apps for every need and all walks of life ("we've got an app for that!" says the Apple commercial)

The boom in apps has led to a growing interest in and demand for software. There have been many stories about app developers striking it rich with humble offerings priced to move.

Apps provide welcome relief from bloatware (I just upgraded from MS Office 2003 to 2007 and my head hurts).  Meanwhile, in the realm of low cost and simple productivity suites, vendors like Zoho have quietly built a large following and $50M in revenue without any big VC backers.

This NY Times article covered Evernote, a great note taking and content clipping app that is proving that you can make a successful business from the so-called freemium model ("charging a few customers for premium service, in the hope that revenue from dedicated users will cover everyone else," according to the article).

Marketers are jumping on board, developing free apps to engage consumers.

Where does this leave enterprise users and software developers?

Will the "appification" of software pervade enterprise suites and solutions? 

That remains to be seen. Just like with cloud computing, there are threats and opportunities when compared with more traditional models of developing and marketing software.

While apps can have the effect of trivializing and perhaps commoditizing software, I personally feel that the trend can be a good thing because apps make software more accessible and user friendly.  Perhaps the growth in apps will lead to modularization and a shift from monolithic software suites to programs that are inexpensive and that people actually enjoy using.

I just saw that SalesForce.com announced an app-syle plan, priced to move subscriptions for the micro-business at just $9 per seat per month.

Multitasking is Like Functioning on a 0.16 Blood Alcohol Level

I am fresh back from not quite a full week away from the office.  It was as a nice break, although I am not sure you could call it a vacation.  I took my daughter, who is now a high school senior, to see some colleges in the greater Washington D.C. area.   It was also nice to visit with family there over the weekend.

While I blissfully shut myself off from social networking and social media for most of the time, my daughter compiled a veritable text messaging travelogue, documenting every step along the way (I force fed her some culture and history as we visited the National Mall, Smithsonian, etc.) by furiously typing on her cell phone.

It  has become part of our lore, how kids zoom past their parents in adopting technology.  I often watch in amazement as my two teen daughters sit in front of the TV, with MacBooks in their laps and cell phones in hands (sometimes a land line phone too, when they lower themselves to having an actual spoken conversation), attention darting between the devices. 

Similarly, lately these days, people seem to take pride in their ability to shift between Tweeting, Facebooking, emailing, texting, etc. while simultaneously staying engaged with home and work projects.

Is all this multitasking a good thing?

There's been tons of press lately about the dangers of texting while driving.  This NY Times article points out that some states are passing laws against texting while driving that come with penalties akin to those for drunk driving.  According to the article:

After a crash here that killed two scientists — and prompted a dogged investigation by a police officer and local victim’s advocate — Utah passed the nation’s toughest law to crack down on texting behind the wheel. Offenders now face up to 15 years in prison

It goes on to say:

Studies show that talking on a cellphone while driving is as risky as driving with a .08 blood alcohol level — generally the standard for drunken driving — and that the risk of driving while texting is at least twice that dangerous.

Another NY Times article described research from Stanford University on the subject of multitasking.

"Heavy multitaskers are lousy at multitasking... The more you do it, the worse you get," said Stanford communications professor Clifford Nass... Compulsive media multitaskers are worse at focusing their attention, worse at organizing information, and worse at quickly switching between tasks, the Stanford scientists wrote.

There's a bright side to all this. Some have said that the growth in social media means a loss of serendipity when it comes to discovering information, because we are spoon fed streams, feeds, and alerts according to our specifications and keywords and limit ourselves to our social circles and search terms.

But the research found that multitaskers have a harder time ignoring spurious information.  According to the article:

A bright side to such distraction may mean that the media multitaskers will be first to notice anything new

Overcoming Fear of PR Measurment

I had an interesting meeting with one of my most loyal clients this week - someone who Fusion PR has supported through various successful ventures over the years (about seven, I believe, which is a long time in tech).

He's a successful entrepreneur who is very sharp, on top of tech, social media, and a veteran and pro when it comes to working with all types of traditional and new media.

We had a lively discussion about the changing nature of PR.  We covered the blogs, top tier media and tech trades in this discussion.  He was of the opinion that print coverage in general and the tech trades specifically don't provide the same PR dividends that they used to.

While we were talking it occurred to me that discussing the relative merits of various forms of PR is meaningless without considering measurement of PR results.

Measurement is not the sexiest topic in the PR trade.  The profession has typically shied away from measurement unless backed into a corner and forced to do so for many reasons, some good (or at least understandable), and some bad.

The more understandable reasons are that measurement (at least in any meaningful way)  is hard to do, time consuming (hence, costly), and - without ways of connecting back to outcomes like sales, reputation building and brand equity - of questionable value.

The primary bad reason of course is that some don't want to set goals and measure against these for fear of coming up short, or having the goals arbitrarily increased.

 

Since it has been proved that PR can deliver outsized returns when compared with other types of marketing, avoiding measurement is self-defeating (see my post PR Props on the Fusion Forum blog).

Particularly, in light of the hard work many PR people are doing to advance and update our profession, now is a good time to swing the conversation back to measurement.

Whether you are talking about pitching blogs, issuing SMRs, or leveraging Twitter and social networks, or pitching traditional media, I'd like to update my credo If it Ain't Online, it Ain't Worth a @!#$%??*&  to: if it ain't measurable, it ain't worth a @!#$%??*&.

Further Thoughts on Semantic Web / Adding News to your Site

Lest I be accused of too quickly dismissing the semantic Web (Alan Morrison, the lone commenter to my previous post, correctly pointed out that some of the industry's best minds are working on this), I will delve a bit deeper into the technology and issues in upcoming posts.

Meanwhile, my astute readers (duh, you are all astute!) will notice a new section, Buzzword Du Jour in the left column of my blog.  And the topic of the day is, of course, the Semantic Web.

This was generated in about five minutes using MySyndicaat, as previously described in my posts "Newsmastering: So What," and "Tracking Buzzwords in the Wild."

Bling, Bing, the Wiki’s Dead

So I went out and got myself a domain. FlacksRevenge.com (the very URL you are now parked on).

Get it? PR guy turns media critic. Clever, right?

Started a blog of the same name. So far, so good. Time to build traffic and an audience.

What’s this, you say?  My blog needs bells and whistles? It needs Web 2.0 bling like tag clouds, widgets, and so on? That is, it is no longer enough for me to have a simple Web soapbox, my blog needs to be a social networking-enabled, Diggable, tagable Web 2.0 application? 

(As if it were not hard enough to just come up with all the interesting topics needed to meet the objectives of paragraph 2). 

Like senses that become inured to persistent unchanging stimuli, the hive mind quickly tires of the same buzz and no sooner does Web 2.0 catch on in a big way then it is time to move on. If Web 2.0 were great, 3.0 must be better right? And now it must be time for 3.0, since we have been buzzing about 2.0 for awhile. 

Web 3.0 has something to do with the semantic Web (Wikiepedia Definition). And this has something to do with building intelligence and structure into the ideas and information on the Web. 

Blogging caught on in a big way because it is light and easy. Web 2.0 added some intriguing elements and also some tech overhead. Still, the principles of keeping things light and loosely coupled prevailed. 

My early impressions of Web 3.0 are that it is neither light nor loosely coupled. The technology and ideas do not easily propagate. Can anyone offer me a description of Web 3.0 that is as easy to digest or elegant as “Read/write Web” or the “Web as a social computing platform,” ideas that typify Web 2.0 and separate it from Web 1.0? Can anyone explain to me how Web 3.0 technology will propagate as quickly as tags, widgets, Ajax and RSS have?

We risk killing with technology “kindness”  the wonderful ability of blogs and Wikis to free up information and ideas and connect people.

My advice: keep it light.

Difference in West Coast vs. East Coast Web 2.0 'Tude?

Are there important differences in outlooks of East Coast vs. West Coast Web 2.0 plays?

East Coast companies are supposed to be all about business and the bottom line.

West Coast plays are all about the consumer and building a revolution.

(Or so the thinking goes).

I decided to do some digging around to see what people are saying and found some interesting posts  on a couple of blogs, although the take was a bit different.

In a post entitled "Ouch That Hurts," VC blog High Contrast noted "I've seen several West Coast companies’ pitches that go along the lines of 'Web 2.0 is huge. We do that.' ‘Nuf said.”

His post was in response to Jeff Nolan, who said on the Venture Chronicles blog that "in my discussions with the Boston area venture capitalists I was left with the impression that this whole “2.0″ thing is something that isn’t widely grasped outside of the Valley."

Perhaps the most amusing was the 93 South blog, which wondered "is the Boston the PC and and San Francisco the Mac?"

The post says that the "East Coast is so cautious and, as a result, lagging well behind the West Coast when it comes to web innovation."

It invites people to write a commercial spoof featuring the Apple and Mac guys from the TV commercial.  Pretty funny, yet not a flattering image for us East Coast types. 

Could all this VC trash talking just be sour grapes over the fact VC funding does not seem to be as mandatory as it had been in previous tech waves (see the NYT piece "For Startups, Web Success on the Cheap?").

And, while it may be true that the East Coast does not have the same VC network and supportive ecosystem as the Valley, let's not forget that NY is the media capital of the world.  Web 2.0 is as much about content as it is about technology.

(Although a primary driver seems to be user generated content.  In fact, perhaps the old saying "content is king" should be updated: "user content is king").

Mobile OS Smackdown

I suppose it makes sense, the idea the handset vendors are winnowing the list of 3rd part OSes they support.

The natural trends seems to be that these devices are becoming ever more software driven.  So it seems logical that the handset vendors get out of the OS business and leave it to the experts.  And fewer operating systems overall are healthy for the ecosystem because it becomes easier to ensure compatibility, and makes life easier for everyone building mobile applications.

Yet I was still very disappointed to not see a mention of the Palm OS in the recent NY Times piece As Mobile Phones Grow More Complex, Carriers Insist on Fewer Operating Systems.

"Last year, two-thirds of smart phones sold ran on Symbian's operating system, an increase of about four percentage points from 2005, according to Canalys, a consultant and market research firm based near London. Microsoft was second last year with a 14 percent market share, slightly less than the year before, followed by Research in Motion, which makes the BlackBerry, with 7 percent, and Linux, with 6 percent, according to Canalys."

I have been a loyal Palm OS smartphone user, and have enjoyed my Palm PDAs and phones for years, while many I know have grumbled about their Windows-based phones.

Despite the great media reviews of Palm systems and tepid reviews I have seen for Windows-based phones, mediocrity is apparently (yet again) prevailing.  I suppose before long I will be forced to join the crowd.