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August 31st, 2010 by John Brown

Google’s priority inbox – end of the PR mailer?

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...
Image via CrunchBase

Google has launched a new ‘priority inbox’ service for its web-based email service, Gmail. Basically Gmail monitors a user’s email behaviour and ranks email’s in order of importance, bumping the most important and unread emails to the top of the reading pane.

This got me thinking, could a priority email service spell the end of the PR mailer? By PR mailer I mean a mass mailed press release with something like ‘Innovative, groundbreaking thought leader comments on market leading spanner’ in the subject line. As 99% of hacks would hit the delete button every time they received something like this, a priority inbox system would send this mailer to the bottom of the pile, meaning not even the catchiest of subject lines will make it onto the journo’s email radar.

Good PRs will always thoroughly scrutinise whether a story is newsworthy or not, select the right journalists that would cover that story and then contact them by their preferred method. Crap PRs will send a mailer to a Gorkana (replace with whatever service you use) list.

So in an industry under constant pressure to reduce spamming, a priority inbox could be the catalyst needed to encourage more sophisticated PR activity.

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January 7th, 2010 by Lisa Francis

Daily News: 07 /01

Computing.co.uk – Bad winter could cost businesses £230m per day
The Forum of Private Business has warned that severe weather conditions could costs businesses £230m per day if they do not take steps to enable staff to work from home. The figure is based on one employee per company being off for one day and not working.

Silicon.com – Windows Azure users will have to pay from next month
Microsoft will start to charge developers to use its Windows Azure cloud computing platform from next month.

BBC – Bigger Amazon Kindle DX lays down gauntlet to rivals
As the e-reader market heats up, Amazon is trying to stay ahead of the competition with the international launch of its bigger Kindle DX.

Total Telecom – T-Mobile UK, 3 UK in talks to sell Google’s Nexus One
T-Mobile and 3 UK have confirmed they are in discussions to sell Google’s first own-branded Android smartphone, Nexus One, in the U.K.

The Guardian: Boris Johnson to launch London ‘Datastore’ with hundreds of sets of data
Fund of up to £200,000 will help developers to create innovative use of 200 datasets in new free data initiative

Computerworld UK – Year-end glitch blocked email across world
Email sent in the first few hours of 2010 may not have reached its recipient thanks to an embarrassing “2010″ bug buried in the open source SpamAssassin anti-spam engine used by many Internet Service Providers.

Computer Weekly – 2009 sets new records for malware, says Panda Security
PandaLabs, the anti-malware laboratory of Panda Security identified record 25m new strains of malware in 2009. This is 10m more than the company has recorded in the past 20 years and includes a large number of new examples of banker Trojans, making up 66 per cent of the total

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December 7th, 2009 by Lisa Francis

Daily News: 07/12

Computing.co.uk – Northern Ireland to see £48 million broadband boost
Northern Ireland’s communications infrastructure will be boosted to the tune of £48m, following financial commitments from BT and the EAFRD, according to Enterprise Minister Arlene Foster.

BBC – Troubled £12bn NHS IT system to be scaled back
The government is to scale back its £12bn NHS IT system in what the Tories are calling a “massive U-turn”.

The Guardian – Forget the iPod: the iPhone orchestra really makes music mobile
A group of students will be performing in a concert next week using musical iPhone applications, programmed by students at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

IT PRO – Retailers geared up for ‘Mega Monday’
Online retailers face major traffic volumes on Monday 7 December, what e-retail body IMRG says will be the busiest online shopping day of the year for the UK. Retailers like Amazon, Play.com, Tesco and Argos will be expected to deal with hoards of online shoppers looking to buy gifts for Christmas, with a prediction that £350 million will be spent on Monday alone.

The Register – Mozilla lights fire under Thunderbird
Mozilla will step up the pace of on its Thunderbird mail and communications platform next year, to re-invigorate a “stagnant” email client scene.

The Financial Times – Apple buys internet music site Lala.com
Apple bought internet music site Lala.com late on Friday for an undisclosed amount, a development that could lead to the addition of streaming songs and new payment systems at Apple’s iTunes, the world’s biggest music retailer.

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October 12th, 2009 by admin

Your password no longer keeps you safe, or does it?

Password phishing tools and techniques seem to have evolved a great deal over recent years, but have the online services that they protect managed to keep up? Last week more than 30,000 usernames, passwords and email addresses from Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, Gmail and several other web services were phished and posted online. This prompted a lot of questions in the press about just how secure passwords are.

Recently I was content thinking that changing my password regularly would keep me head-and-neck above phishing scams, but not any more. Personal details are stolen, email accounts are hacked and used for things that we would never dream of doing. It has become an epidemic; password phishing has never been done on this scale before.

You may think phishing for personal details including passwords has been going on secretly for ages, so what is so important about this particular incident? The truth is that unlike previous scams, the phishing was executed with the use of mass phishing tools and techniques. It’s not as if some poor sod working in admin spent 40 hours a day collecting all of those passwords, far from it, the tools phishing mongers use to obtain account details have evolved and are now easily available and accessible online for any would-be scammer to use. All you need is a simple online application and you can decrypt passwords in seconds. You can watch videos of tools like this in action just by looking on Youtube.

So the question I’d like to ask online service providers is: Are passwords still the most effective way to keep personal information safe and private?

Both Google and Microsoft still think complex passwords can protect our data, but how long will it be before passwords become completely useless?

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April 29th, 2009 by Claire Jones

Speed Date: Up close and personal with… Real Business's tech reporter… Rebecca Burn-Callander

Do you feel threatened by blogs & their capacity to break news stories?

Not at all. Blogs are just another resource: a useful way to track the popularity of stories, pick up comment and find interesting angles on key issues. To be fair, Real Business is about comment and targeted stories, not a news hound. Perhaps someone like Reuters might have a different view.

How much do you use blogs to source news stories verses PRs?

PRs still generate a lot of leads for us. Although I am partial to a bit of stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com and www.strangenewproducts.com, the blogosphere is a secondary resource. For now.

Have you ever sourced a news story via Twitter?

Every day. You just have to follow the right people. And have a finely-tuned bullsh*t detector.

Do you prefer Twitter for personal or professional communications?

The lines between the two were blurred long ago. But there’s definitely an explosion in “professional” tweeting. Big Brother is watching you, after all. With the social networks logging our every key stroke, you have to be careful about the levels of personal detail you reveal.

What do you think will be the hottest tech issue in 2009?

I’m not sure if this purely “tech” but there will be a lot of noise surrounding “freemium” issue. Now that we’re in a recession, everyone’s scrambling to make some cash from their free services. Think of all the firms just spewing out online data (social networks, newspapers; email providers). It’ll be interesting to see how these companies go about making actual money from consumers as advertising revenue goes down the tubes. Especially when we’ve all got used to having a free ride so far.

What is the worst PR pitch you have ever had?

Ah, there have been so many. I just love it when PRs send me ginormous files that crash my inbox. Then, when my IT genius finally breathes life back into my computer, I find out it was all because of a picture of some suit (who is totally inappropriate for Real Business) that happens to be at billboard-size resolution. That’s always fun.

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