Half Moon

Negative Half Moon
Originally uploaded by chrisamichaels

What would the moon look like if it were a negative?

Just thought I'd play with my rendering in PhotoShop with an image I shot last night.

Death to Verizon's Billing Practices!!!!

Ok, so today I received my Verizon bill, and let's gerneally say that i now officially HATE their billing policies. Therefore, I'm looking for a class action lawyer who might be drooling over the possibility of suing Verizon for unfair billing practices. Know any?

The reason... Did you know that Verizon charges you regular airtime minutes for calling your voicemail, customer service and the payment system from your mobile phone? It's not considered IN-Network calling, even though you're calling their help lines. Often times, these minutes can cause regular plan overage, at the rate of $.40 per minute! 

That could result in millions earned every month on the backs of responsible plan users who never would have known! Arg!

So, if you're a class action lawyer, or know of a good one, let me know!

Predicting the Next Big Push

It's that time again. When we start working on the 2009 predictions of the people, technologies and trends that will change the world. It's a normal cycle in the PR calendar, where we sit down with our clients, and examine how they look at the innovation landscape.

In honor of this fun ritual, let's look at a post from Kevin Hall, of the SciFi Channel Device blog. Below are his thoughts on some 40-year old predictions that remind us of the potential brilliance or insanity of what looking into the future can hold.

"40 years ago, science fiction writer James R. Berry predicted what the future would look like on November 18th, 2008 — today. His piece for a 1968 issue of Mechanix Illustrated, "40 Years in the Future," made some impressive guesses, from flat-screen televisions to video conferencing. He also made a few understandable missteps: pollution-free air in cities, house paint that's always pristine, and — pardon me, ladies — the idea that women would still do little more than use a computer to plan recipes.

Click Continue to explore an amazing retro future that was wild, but isn't as far off as you would think.

FIVE ACCURATE PREDICTIONS…

1. Online Shopping

1968 PREDICTION "Instead of being jostled by crowds, shoppers electronically browse through the merchandise of any number of stores." 

2008 REALITY For someone writing during a time with phone-in catalogs and super stores, it's amazing Berry foresaw an age of digital distribution and online ordering. Berry's version was still a bit more like a telephone ordering system with punch-in numbers, but the services provided by Amazon and iTunes make his 1968 prediction a 2008 reality.

2. The Rise of Home Computing

1968 PREDICTION "The single most important item in 2008 households is the computer… Computers also handle travel reservations, relay telephone messages, keep track of birthdays and anniversaries, compute taxes and even figure the monthly bills for electricity, water, telephone and other utilities."

2008 REALITY Can you imagine what the world would be like without computers? Berry really honed in on the connectivity of the technology, and how that connectivity would factor into our lives. As he foresaw, the computer would not only become our household hub, but also a powerful social and financial tool for every individual. 

3. Laptop/Tablet Computers (and Email)

1968 PREDICTION "A business associate wants a sketch of a new kind of impeller your firm is putting out for sports boats. You reach for your attache case and draw the diagram with a pencil-thin infrared flashlight on what looks like a TV screen lining the back of the case."

2008 REALITY We don't use infrared flashlights to draw on laptop screens, but tablet computing is becoming more and more commonplace with the prevalence of touchscreen technology, and it's pretty common to see someone using a computer with a stylus. Likewise, designers and illustrators rely on computer tablets to create digital renderings. What does Berry's man from 2008 do when he's done drawing? He emails it to his business associate, just as we would today. 

4. Space Tourism

1968 PREDICTION "Another vacation is a stay on a hotel satellite. The rocket ride to the satellite and back, plus the vistas of earth and moon, make a memorable vacation jaunt." 

2008 REALITY We don't have space hotels exactly, unless you count the International Space Station. We do, however, have a budding space tourism industry that's sent seven people into orbit so far — first Dennis Tito in 2001, and recently Richard Garriott — with the promise of more regular orbital trips in the future. There's also Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, which may just blow space tourism wide open.

5. Robot Labor

1968 PREDICTION "Robots are available to do housework and other simple chores." 

2008 REALITY You won't come home to Rosie the robot from the Jetsons, but you can enter a house with a Roomba vacuuming your floors, or other robots mowing your lawn and cleaning your house's rain gutters. Cars are built by robotic arms, workers in Japan are greeted by robot receptionists, and robots help us explore under the sea and even other planets. It's a bit more simple on the domestic front than what Berry envisioned in the '60s, and yet it's also a rapidly expanding industry that seems to make another new step toward his vision every day.

…AND FIVE NOT-SO-ACCURATE ONES

6. 250 MPH Self-Driving Cars

1968 PREDICTION "You slide into your sleek, two-passenger air-cushion car, press a sequence of buttons and the national traffic computer notes your destination… The car accelerates to 150 mph in the city's suburbs, then hits 250 mph in less built-up areas…" 

2008 FANTASY Not only are you still driving your own car, but going 250 MPH is a great way to get a ludicrous ticket — or killed. The idea of a massive network of self-driving vehicles is one constantly explored by science fiction — and one that's even been put into practice — but we're nowhere near an age where private vehicles are banned in favor of automated ones. 

7. Domed, Climate-controlled Cities

1968 PREDICTION "You whizz past a string of cities, many of them covered by the new domes that keep them evenly climatized year round." 

2008 FANTASY Ah, the dream of controlling the climate. It's especially appealing today, when scares of global warming and a planet ruined by our presence run rampant. But we still can't get the weather right two days in advance, and I won't even begin to try to wrap my head around how we could possibly cover a city with a giant fishbowl. 

8. Modemixers

1968 PREDICTION "Giant transportation hubs called modemixers are located anywhere from 15 to 50 mi. outside all major urban centers… A major feature of most modemixers is the launching pad from which 200-passenger rockets blast off for other continents." 

2008 FANTASY Berry's modemixer is like a subway station that also has a rocket ready to blast off to anywhere in the world. Really, it's something like any modern-day airport, but with a variety of ways to travel by air. We're still stuck with jets and prop-planes, in contrast to Berry's "200-passenger rockets… [supersonic transports] and hypersonic planes that carry 200 to 300 passengers…" and "slower jumbo jets" to handle shorter, intercontinental commutes.

9. A Four Hour Work Day

1968 PREDICTION "The average work day is about four hours. But the extra time isn't totally free… A jobholder's spare time is used in keeping up with the new developments — on the average, about two hours of home study a day. 

2008 FANTASY Ha! Don't we wish. The 9-5 grind is still alive and well. Maybe it's for the best — who would want two hours of homework to do when they get home? Although, really, we all probably spend more time than that every night keeping up with pop culture affairs on the Internet and by watching TV. 

10. Automated Doctor Visits

1968 PREDICTION "Medical examinations are a matter of sitting in a diagnostic chair for a minute or two, then receiving a full health report." 

2008 FANTASY When you go to the doctor, what happens? Tests are run that take weeks to get results from, you have to see a myriad of specialists — one for an ear, say, and another altogether for your eye — and it can all be very expensive and, at its worst, confusing. Out of all of Berry's predictions for November 18th, 2008, an easy-and-quick diagnosis is probably the most attractive. Well, except for only working four hours each day.

Read the rest of James R. Berry's "40 Years in the Future" here. (via Rocketboom)"

The Research Wire-Trap

By: Chris Michaels, Sr. Account Manager, Fusion PR

Recently I received an e-mail blast of a study conducted by a company that was obviously hired by a newswire service. It claimed that service XXX was so much better than the rest because it garnered more “coverage” than any other service.

I laughed. Then I got angry. Because as I read the study, methodology, claims and results, I found that there were some very big flaws in this survey; the largest one is it's a giant hasty generalization.

Here’s what I found, and find offensive:

This first thing wrong with the survey, is that it does not take into account the newswire distribution ordered by the client (according to their parent company's earnings releases, “XXX Newswire’s clients use their YYY distribution”). It only looks at how many times someone mentioned the content of the release, regardless if it was to a desired outlet. Meanwhile other wire services allow for more customized local circuits and industries.

This survey also failed to take into account whether the client desired pick up or not. Some companies use newswires to meet disclosure requirements and as such, are not written to engage the average reporter but rather to provide key corporate information to the financial community/disclosure outlets.

The survey also didn’t take into consideration the media relations done by the client or their PR agency - who is to say that the newswire is responsible for the pick up? Because the study defines pick-up, “as any reference to the release subject matter in media published after the date and time of the release," it could claim that the wire service garnered any and all coverage. Therefore, if I did my usual proactive efforts, had an embargoed article that didn’t post until the story crossed the wire, and did my own distribution blast of the release to my client’s media “fans,” I don’t get credit for the hours of work that were put-in.

The last part is that the number of pickups is irrelevant to the number of eyeballs. Without the qualifications, I could get picked-up by 500 blogs with 3 readers, or I could get picked up by 4 blogs with 500,000 readers. According to the study, I would only have been successful had I attained coverage on the 500 blogs.

I think you get the point.

So, what would provide the better ROI?

Obviously it's something this study assumes is total coverage, regardless of outlet and article quality, and not the complete campaign effort from a PR team, in-house outreach. Instead it should have looked at combined campaigns, agency/in-house team outreach, and qualified the number of eyeballs.

Sticky-ness doesn’t rely just on the just distributing a release over a wire, but by the complete campaign efforts of a team to proactively pitch, follow-up and ensure that the news got to the right people.

Therefore the study begs the question, has this study, and the hiring agency, now alienated the entire community of PR professionals by claiming to do their work? 

Head in the Clouds??

It’s easy for people to get confused by tech concepts today, especially with the sheer number of technology advancements, software developer kits (SDK) and concepts being thrown left and right in the media. The other half of that confusion is that the many writers assume that their audience knows exactly what they’re talking about. Yes, we’re reading you because there’s some technology tie-in to our line of business, but what did that mean?

We can often get lost in the range of terms that get tossed around the brainstorm sessions, technology presentations or regular reading. And, based upon many of the inquiries from colleagues and friends, the most recent example has come from “cloud computing.” No, there’s no “Puff the Magic Dragon” and Lucy’s not in the Sky with Diamonds. Cloud computing is a pretty difficult thing to describe, but I‘ll try and do my best.

Have you ever tried to push a car? If you’re a native New Yorker, probably not, but this analogy should work nonetheless. Cars are heavy, and require a lot of force to get them rolling from a dead stop. However, the more people you have pushing, the less the workload on each individual, thus making it to the gas station much easier.

Cloud computing does much the same thing for data. Computers have advanced substantially with higher connection speeds, faster processors and more powerful hardware infrastructures and networks. But even as the systems evolve, so does our need for more advanced computations.

Remember the car example? Well, in order to process the enormous amount of data required for certain advanced computations and calculations, the data now gets separated to a number of machines, not just one. It’s the network of machines and data that becomes “the cloud.” Previously, this concept was used by the military, government intelligence agencies, universities and research labs, and large companies to tackle enormously complex calculations. Today, a number of highly recognizable companies are incorporating the cloud.

Google is a prime example of a company that everyone’s interacted with. Instead of relying on one server to search the entire Internet for a keyword or phrase, they use a network of data centers that share the information to pool your results fast.

The second aspect of the term comes from the number of ways people can interact with the “cloud,” or all of the ways you can get the car rolling. Google has their applications developer platform for Maps, Blogger, Reader, etc. For Apple, its SDK has been released for both iTunes and the iPhone. And, IBM’s “Blue Cloud” could be the next virtual server and engine for it all.

What does this mean? Well, all of these companies use their own network to power the next age of software as application services. So, as someone builds a new game for the iPhone, they’re not only writing a program, they’re writing one that will operate a portion of Apple’s cloud. So, that game on your BlackBerry came from the cloud, and the ringtones, and many of the recent Facebook applications.

If you’re still in the clouds about cloud computing, it’s ok. It took a while for the definition to be clear for the entire industry. Just don’t run out of gas trying to figure it all out.