IT and web teams want control over the corporate website for security reasons, and because traditionally it was their realm—their area of expertise. In this age of online communication that we live in, the CorpComm team also wants control over the website: they want to be able to update their online information quickly, get information about visitors to the site and generally have at least as much control over it as the IT team.

The reason I was giving the presentation was to help introduce CNW Group’s latest product (and the reason I’ve been so busy lately): the MediaRoom. Hopefully, it will be a peaceful resolution to any disagreements between IT and communications.

What is the MediaRoom?

The MediaRoom is a Web Content Management System designed for corporate communicators. It integrates easily with your existing website, and is easy to use so that the media section can be updated quickly and painlessly. If you can send an email, you can update your website with this. Anyone familiar with blogging tools like Wordpress or Blogger will be able to understand the MediaRoom CMS pretty easily.

As my boss, Nicole Guillot (CNW Group’s Vice President, Product Management and Operations),  said:

“In today’s 24-hour media environment our clients need to communicate their messages—or respond to a crisis—with complete immediacy. CNW newswire clients can set up their CNW MediaRoom to automatically post news releases as they cross the wire. They can make any other changes or uploads anytime and anywhere there is an internet connection.”

Examples of the MediaRoom technology in work can be found on the newsrooms for Kellogg’s, Match.com and Delta Airlines. I think the only downside of these examples is that they don’t show how truly flexible the MediaRoom is, and how much you can do with it.

PR in Canada wrote about the MediaRoom, as did CMS Wire. You can also find out more about the CNW Group MediaRoom offering by visiting Newswire.ca/MediaRoom or by checking out the Social Media Release CNW put out about the MediaRoom.

If you’ve got any questions about it, I’d be happy to answer them for you (mostly my roommates are just sick of hearing about “content management systems” and I’m still pretty excited about the MediaRoom).

-Parker

One of the first companies to successfully introduce accessory-enhanced games into the mainstream was Sony with its Singstar and Buzz franchises.

Then there was the final breakthrough: Guitar Hero, first just being bundled with a plastic guitar, later even with a drum set. This step was a huge risk: Bemani games were pretty much relegated to a niche existence in the West, no one knew if people were willing to spend significantly more on a game with a toy guitar, and the competition for scarce retail space was intense.

The risk, however, paid off: People loved the new interfaces, which allowed them to immerse themselves in the gaming experience deeper than before. Dreams of a rock star career were easier to pursue with a plastic axe than with a joypad.

Apart from appealing to people who never might have played video games before, another advantage is obvious: Games can be pirated, peripherals can’t. You want to play your Pirate Bay Rock Band with a controller? Sure, bore yourself to death.

We had also better get used to the thought of these new interfaces. Kids these days often play their first games on the Wii. As this generation grows up, it won’t understand why it can’t control FPSs in a similar, active way. The couch will be deserted, that’s for sure.

But then again, a second trend might keep people right there: Increasingly, consoles take over the functions of computers.

Think about the Xbox, for example; it was basically introduced because Microsoft wanted to carry the dominance it had in the office environment over into your living room, a space which at that stage was mostly in the hands of the PlayStation.

Soon you’ll be able to access your Facebook profile with it, update your Twitter status and listen to Last.fm. These are very significant developments. Microsoft might have won, we just haven’t realized it yet.

This Offworld piece makes some very good points:

“The announcement that I thought was missed was the opening of the Xbox Live Dashboard interface to the internet,” [industry analyst Michael] Pachter told Gamasutra. “Later this year, Microsoft will allow members to access last.fm and to select music, to access Netflix and instantly watch films/TV shows, to access Facebook and interact with other friends, and to access Twitter and post/read tweets.”

Pachter argues that the gaming media entirely missed the significance of this announcement, which puts the 360 firmly in the same territory as Apple’s AppleTV, only with a library of awesome games. With so many 360s already installed around the world, MS have a good chance to become the default choice for web media on your TV.

The author adds:

If the 360 does start to support all these things (there’s no confirmation as to whether Last.FM will be able to run in the background as a soundtrack to your games), it’ll become the kind of gaming machine that I want to spend my time with for more reasons than just because it has some games that my PC doesn’t.

It will become a device that has more of the networked infrastructure, and more of the media tweaks and toys that I take for granted as part of my desktop computer.

The thing is: This development does not only apply to stationary consoles: Just think of the iPhone and its growing success as a gaming device. People play on it because they always take it with them and it combines pretty much everything you can ask for: wifi, email, surfing the net, games, etc. Before my iPod Touch was stolen (donations welcome!) I totally neglected my DS, simply for the fact that the iPod combined all my entertainment needs.

The PSP is taking the same direction; its new incarnation, the PSP Go, will come with an app shop (albeit without a touch screen).

When thinking about these developments, keep in mind the falling price of the 360. As the Offworld piece points out:

Rather than having to release a new console, the 360 just gets cheaper, and makes more sense, to more people, because it does something that it didn’t do before: Guitar Hero, Last.FM, Twitter, motion-tracking control… A spiralling feature list, a net that gets bigger and drags in more people.

The Xbox indeed develops back to its PC heritage and becomes increasingly flexible. It fulfils a PC’s functions, but with the convenience of a console. Sony does have a lot of competition on their hands, and yet they don’t seem to do much about it. In view of the PS3’s impressive hardware architecture, it’s difficult to say if they are able to lower its price, but that would be a first step in the right direction.

All this doesn’t even take into account the effect of cloud computing. Maybe the 360 will be the last console you ever buy, because the rest will be done in the cloud. Not only would this apply to applications but also to gaming.

This demands the questions: Will one platform be obsolete one day? What will happen to the PC? Surely it won’t disappear, but it will suffer. Eventually you might simply end up with another Microsoft product.

What do you think? Are consoles the future of computing?

-Jens

Now, we’ve got someone else to do that copy editing: Adam Gorley. He’s a Toronto-based professional copy editor, and he volunteered to have a look at each of our posts before they go live. I’ve never thought I was a perfect writer, and I’m sure that long-time readers of this blog will have noticed a few typos, grammatical errors and even unfinished sentences here and there. I don’t envy the work he’s going to be doing on Jens’ posts.

I’m hoping that with Adam Gorley’s touch, these things will be a thing of the past.

He’s @AdamGorley on Twitter and he also maintains his own blog of miscellany at AdamGorley.Blogspot.com. While he’s gainfully employed right now, I’m going to go ahead and say that if you need any help with Copy Editing, he’s probably your man.

-Parker

(PS: I wanted this post to be a surprise for him, so he didn’t actually get a chance to edit it. Any errors are mine)

(PPS: Once I saw Adam play a 90-minute game of Ultimate frisbee wearing only sandals when everyone else was wearing cleats – that takes guts)

Engaging with new media is not about throwing yourself into uncharted waters. It is about listening to what is going on, finding out what people think about you and your brand, and pinpointing your biggest fans and haters. For anyone in the c-suite, this actually INCREASES the level of control you have both internally and externally. Becoming engaged allows companies to gather intelligence on people posting comments on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, discussion boards, and other social networking sites. It allows you to monitor not only the discussion, but also the entire online environment for your industry. You can become that elusive fly on the wall, predict when tides are turning, and take appropriate and necessary action immediately, before the sh*t hits the fan. This is not a loss of control or throwing caution to the wind.  It is understanding your industry, followers and market on a deeper, more intimate level. Your ability to control the situation and the outcome actually goes up.

Engaging in social media doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to be shouting your product, company or service to the world. But it will let you know when people are shouting at your product, company or service. I recently heard the line “You have two ears and one mouth, use them proportionately”. I think this applies tenfold when engaging online and conversing with your market.

Some free social media monitoring tools that help keep your ear a little closer to the ground include:

1. Addict-o-matic: Aggregates one search term from a number of different social media sites, video sites and blogs.

2. Google Trends is probably the most popular site to monitor and graph online trends. Trendrr and Trendpedia are also good tools to track and compare search terms.

3. BoardTracker: Monitors discussion boards. Allows you to set up alerts for ongoing searches.

4. Alexa: Allows you to track website traffic (and compare against other sites).

5. Backtype: Monitors comments on blogs and social networks.

6. Twitter Search: I find search.twitter.com is the best for searching Twitter. You can also use the search feature on Tweetdeck to keep running tabs on Twitter topics and users.

More free tracking tools are listed on Andy Beal’s “8 Essential Free Social Media Monitoring Tools” and Rob Gonda’s “Free Social Media Monitoring Tools“.

Kev, the father, is mean-spirited, quick to anger, and inappropriate. He also dislikes children and he’s insane. He’s basically the worst dad in the world. His daughter Alice has a kind heart, but suffers from clumsiness and low self-esteem. Her best friend in life is her teddy.

The blog is divided into different episodes whose story is dictated by the game’s rules. Once I started reading, I was hooked. I was curious what the game had in place for the two and how its assumptions about life would shape their path. A new, strangely engrossing form of fiction developed right in front of my eyes: Burkinshaw made some decisions, the rest was “told” by the game. (Spoilers ahead.)

Alice hungry, tired, and stressed, struggles at school and gets into arguments with her father. She gets a job at the supermarket.

When her shift ends… that evening, she has 100 hard-earned simoleons, but she is as exhausted as it is possible to be. She wobbles slightly after walking out the door, and only just manages to stop herself from losing consciousness there and then.

(…)

She takes all of the money she has just earned, places it into an envelope, writes the name of a charity on the front, and puts it into a mailbox.

You might think that Alice has the worst life in the world, but she doesn’t believe that’s true. She will turn down the chance to improve her life in order to give others the opportunity to improve theirs.

Asks Burkinshaw:

What does it mean when a character you’ve created makes you re-examine your own life through their astonishing selflessness?

It means that rules can have an emotional impact after all.

Of course one could start the same experiment with other games; yet the Sims is about life itself and not about Super Mutants (”Today I killed five locusts”), something we can easily relate to. This is why the game has the potential to make us re-evaluate our lives and tell us about ourselves (or rather, the designers’ assumptions about our lives).

It also makes you wonder which path Alice would have taken if the game received a less commercially oriented rating on account of its drastic rules. How would the story have evolved if the game was designated Adults Only and included drugs and prostitution?

At the same time, Alice and Kev is a great example of how a future could look like; a piece of art utilising screenshots and gameplay videos to be consumed on platforms like the iPhone or Kindle. Kev and Alice can even be downloaded to be put in one’s own game, everyone can live their lives, make different choices and tell their own story: instant, touching art created by play (or rather, the recounting of play).

-Jens

The short answer is that we don’t really know.

The long answer is that the site got messed up and that I’ve been super-busy with real life (work, soccer and summer drinking). Thanks to Tommy Vallier at Wordpress by the Minute, we were able to get rid of the spammy links and Javascript that had pervaded our RSS feed (if you need any blog work done, I highly recommend his services).

I haven’t been writing much for the site because I was working on a product launch for CNW Group (more on that in an upcoming post), Jens hasn’t been writing much because he’s been “working on his thesis” (which I equate to playing Xbox), and Heather has probably just been busy with her own blog, Toronto Uncovered.

We still don’t know where Espen is, but we hope you like the BlogCampaigning redesign and that you’ll continue to read our thoughts about Public Relations, Video Games, Technology and whatever we feel like.

But don’t spend too much time reading BlogCampaigning—get out there and enjoy the summer weather.

-Parker

I left a comment, but only because I really wanted to.

The process to sign up to leave a comment was incredibly lengthy. In the screenshot (below), you can see all the fields that one is required to fill out in order to register.

While I’m sure that someone in the Marketing Department of ZDNet is patting himself on the back over the amount of data he’s getting, someone else must be pulling out there hair over the fact that fewer people are commenting since the registration process was implemented. Do they really need to know how many people work for my company and what my postal code is?

As soon as you make it difficult or lengthy for your users to do something, the less likely they are to do it.

As Serena writes in the post about Social Media Releases, it should be free and easy for anyone to access your content. The easier you make it (by using formats and sites they may already be familiar with), the more likely they are to use it.

I think that this is one of the reasons that Twitter has triumphed whereas RSS hasn’t really caught on. RSS is an incredible tool for getting new information, and it really is quite simple. However, explaining it to someone and going throught the steps needed to set up and RSS reader and start subscribing to feeds sounds and is complicated. However, most people instantly grasp the concept of “following” one of their friends, and thus

One of the things I’m proud about BlogCampaigning is that it is relatively easy to login and leave a comment (maybe “proud” is too strong a word here, but you get the idea).

I’m also working at implementing the Facebook Connect plugin for this blog so that people can easily comment using their Facebook profile (it doesn’t seem to be working for Wordpress 2.7 yet – let me know if  you’ve got it figured out!).

-Parker

In the year that I’ve been blogging there, I’ve written almost 100 posts. While they aren’t as lengthy as the ones you often see here, they require just as much thought and time to put together. Just as each post here is written about something I’m passionate about, so too with my music blog.

So what is a “music blog”?

I don’t think there is anyone one definition, but I’d probably describe a music blog as one that exists primarily to talk about and share music. Some examples can be found at Discobelle or Soundtrack2. They are essentially individual radio stations of the 21st century.

According to my understanding, most music blogs are probably illegal under today’s copyright law because of the way they allow you to download mp3 files. However, I think that we are due for a shift in the way that copyright law is viewed and the entire model of the music industry. I’m happy to contribute to the acceleration of this shift.

I view what I do as contributing to the promotion of the artists, and subscribe to a Masnickian theory of economics that emphasizes the difference between infinite and scarce goods. The short of it is that mp3 files can be copied for free, and doing so doesn’t equate to stealing the track. Each track shared doesn’t result in one less sale for the artist, but rather has the potential to create one more fan. These fans will gladly pay money to see their favorite artists in concert or buy merchandise related to that artist (both scarce goods).

I’ve written previously about my beliefs on this topic in the posts “The New Music Industry” and “On Piracy and The Future of the Entertainment Industry.” While I post a combination of music that artists send in to me and stuff that I find on my own, I do it out of the love of the music, and sincerely think that I’m benefiting them by making their music available for all.

What have I learned through my music blog?

I’ve learned at least as much about PR and social media in 12 months of music blogging as I have in three years of being part of the PR echo chamber with BlogCampaigning. As both independent artists and record labels constantly pitch me to write about their music, I see the side of PR and blogger relations that many in the field might not (I also get to fill my iPod up with tons of cool new music that I would have otherwise never heard about).  I’m sure that Eden Spodek’s work at Bargainista has helped her understand the other side of the communications fence, and similarly, Keith MacArthur’s background as a journalist has surely helped him develop media-friendly stories while at Com.motion or Rogers.

I’ve also learned a ton about Wordpress. As I’ve often told people, stop learning about social media and start using it. Maintaining two Wordpress blogs and experimenting with plugins and design has taught me a ton of the technical stuff that I don’t think I would have learned anywhere else.

Lastly, I’ve learned that maintaining two blogs is a lot of work. When you’re torn between contributing to one or the other, often contributing to neither is the end result. (Summer weather, online Halo 3 and Trinity Bellwoods around the corner from me aren’t helping the after-work blogging productivity, either.)

So where is my other blog? Well, you can probably figure it out if you’ve been a particularly attentive reader of BlogCampaigning. Or I might have told you about it. Otherwise, maybe you’ll stumble across it one day and wonder if that’s me in one of the photos on it or just a Parker Mason Doppleganger, as one reader thought.

My parting advice to you is to not worry about blogging about something immediately relevant to the Public Relations/Communications industry.  I’ve said it before, but you’ll learn just as much (and maybe more) blogging about something else. As Gary Vaynerchuck once famously said, “I promize you can monetize that shit. If you love ALF, start an ALF blog. You like Smurfs? Smurf it up!” I don’t necessarily think you’ll be able to monetize that blog by selling ad space on it, but you’ll learn a lot.  And isn’t knowledge worth more than money?

Do you read any music blogs? How do you feel about sharing music online?

-Parker

CNW Group "Newsmakers" Celebrate Winning the TMX Cup

Every year, CNW Group and a number of “top corporations from Bay Street’s financial, legal, technology and accounting sectors” competed in a Scrabble competition for a chance to win the TMX Cup. The competition is in support of Frontier College, an organization with the goal of helping people improve their literacy skills.

I was pleased to hear that on Wednesday, March 11th, the “Newsmakers,” a team representing my employer CNW Group, won the TMX Cup. I was pleased about this news, but not surprised. I’ve seen some of the CNW team play Scrabble before, and they’re pretty good. Reportedly one of the members on the team played the word “Footage” on a triple-word score for 98 points.

Great work, Newsmakers.

And congratulations to the other winners, as well as TMX Group and Frontier College for organizing another successful Scrabble contest.

In related news, Futility Closet reports that if you combine all 100 scrabble tiles you can spell:

COUNTRYMEN, I AM TO BURY, NOT EULOGIZE, CAESAR; IF EVIL LIVES ON, BEQUEATHING INJURY, GOOD OFT EXPIRES: A PALSIED, AWKWARD DEATH!

Over the weekend, I started thinking about how Twitter is becoming a primary way for people to get their information. Then I started wondering why we aren’t seeing any journalists covering stories exclusively on Twitter. I imagine it would work much the same way that we sometimes see television or radio journalists covering breaking stories: they stay on the scene, and provide constant updates whenever they get additional information. Much of their reporting is observational, but other information comes in by way of eyewitnesses and official reports.

It looks like  Mark MacKinnon had the same idea – he’s been Tweeting live from Bangkok as the city “disintegrates.”

Since he works for Canada’s Globe & Mail newspaper, I doubt that Twitter will be the sole way that he’ll report his story. However, I’m sure that people who have been following his updates on Twitter will most certainly read any in-depth story he writes about the situation for the Globe & Mail. The text of some of his tweets will also probably make it into any final copy he writes, and I’m sure that he’ll be aided by other Twitter users on the ground providing him with additional information.

In all, it sounds like a win-win situation.

Are there any other examples of journalists using Twitter as their primary way to report on one story?

-Parker