By John D. Sutter
CNN
Engineers didn’t make huge improvements to technology in 2009. The year’s big tech names — Twitter, Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon — all existed before January.
Instead, this is the year technology changed us.
At year’s end, we’re connected to each other and to the Internet like never before. In 2009, we carried tiny computers in our pockets, through which we fed the Internet constant real-time info about where we were and what we were doing.
Our app-laden phones helped us manage our on-the-go lifestyles; our books fell off the shelves and into e-readers; our televisions and video games unchained themselves from home entertainment centers; and our mobile updates helped organize protests and even threaten governments.
We could have done any of these things in 2008. But we embraced in unprecedented numbers a digital-centered life in 2009.
Click here to see the trends
Author: ow_admin
Crisis communications in the time of Tiger Woods
By Tracy Olmstead Williams
Olmstead Williams Communucations
For the past two weeks, almost every meeting, holiday party, conference call or chance encounter has started the same for me: “You’re in crisis communications, what should Tiger Woods do?” Any answer I give is already two weeks too late. Tiger Woods broke the cardinal rule of crisis communications — report your own bad news. Why? Because if you don’t, others will be more than happy to do so, often get it wrong, keep it going longer and provide no glimpse of the true emotions of the transgressor. If Tiger had told everything, as painful as that might have been, it would have cut the legs out from under the follow-up stories. Tiger’s postings on his Web site this weekend, although finally coming clean, didn’t give us any emotional connection to him. It’s a step, but it would be far more powerful to see and hear it from him directly.
Richard Nixon wrote the book on crisis management, proving forever that “stonewalling,” his own word, failed even the all-powerful president of the United States. Bill Clinton, a Rhodes Scholar, didn’t read that book. Many otherwise extremely successful public figures didn’t either. Gary Hart. John Edwards. Eliot Spitzer. Kobe Bryant. Mark Sanford. Each and every one followed up their indiscretion by fumbling their crisis communications. It’s human instinct to want to deny and cover up.
Advanced Bionics Partners With Skinit to Customize Appearance of Cochlear Implants
Decorative designs allow recipients to personalize devices just in time for the holidays
AB has partnered with Skinit to offer custom-made covers for AB sound processors.
VALENCIA, Calif., December 9, 2009 – Advanced Bionics®, the only U.S.-based manufacturer of cochlear implants (or “bionic ears”), recently announced that the look of the world’s best performing cochlear implant system can now showcase customized designs. AB has partnered with Skinit, the leading company in consumer electronics personalization, to offer custom-made covers for Harmony® or Auria® sound processors.
“As a company, we focus on offering the most advanced technology and the best possible hearing experience to our recipients,” said Jeffrey H. Greiner, CEO of Advanced Bionics. “We’re excited to now offer far more customization options than any other cochlear implant manufacturer.”
With Skinit designs, recipients can customize their sound processors to match their mood or wardrobe or to simply make a fashion statement. Processors can be dressed with favorite colors, sports teams, motifs, or works of art. From patriotic flags to popular movie characters, from leopard prints to college team logos—and nearly everything in between—the Skinit Web site offers hundreds of designs to choose from or the option to upload graphics for a completely unique look. The designs are a great new addition to the 20 colorful caps and covers that are already available to choose from AB, making the Harmony System more customizable than any other cochlear implant system.
This Just In: There's No Positive Spin on OWC's Bowling Skills
On Tuesday, December 8, Olmstead Williams Communications members celebrated the holidays by heading to Lucky Strike Lanes at the LA Live complex downtown. Good food, drinks, bad bowling and general hysterical laughter and mocking made for a great night out.
Final Scores OWC staff: 321 OWC friends and family: 462
A unanimous decision was made to go ice skating next year.
OWC members and friends share a laugh, (L-R): Kate Martin; Ashton Uytengsu; "Bob"; Carla Collado; Tracy Williams; Trent Freeman; and Amy Punt
Private-Sale Sites Bring Luxury Goods to Bargain Shoppers, Attract Big Investors
Gilt Groupe is one of several private-sale sites attracting both bargain shoppers and investors.
By Claire Cain Miller and Jenna Wortham
The New York Times
Daniela Busciglio still winces at the memory of shivering in line for hours to get into New York sample sales, then shoving her way through throngs of other shoppers looking for deals on designer clothes.
But now the mobs are moving online, to sites like Gilt, Rue La La, One Kings Lane, Ideeli and HauteLook. On the Web, the shopping is just as competitive, but it is no longer a blood sport.
“Who wants to go to sample sales with lines out the door and girls scratching to get in?” said Ms. Busciglio, 27, now a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Online, she said, “I can take my time and not have to worry about people getting up in my face.”
The private-sale sites — a misnomer because most of these so-called exclusive sites are open to anyone who signs up — have become a thriving corner of online commerce. Sites using the same “while supplies last” approach have sprung up recently to sell home furnishings, beauty products and travel packages.
The business model is simple: the sites buy mostly overstocked clothing and accessories from brand-name designers, then discount them deeply. Adrenaline-pumped shoppers rush to get the deals because the items are often gone in a few hours.
The sites try to recreate the rush of a warehouse sample sale, minus the trampling and shoving, but they borrow as much from the Home Shopping Network as they do from Saks Fifth Avenue. After shoppers add an item to their cart at Gilt, for example, they get a 10-minute countdown before they lose the item.
For Matthew Rodriguez, 29, a Web marketer and Gilt shopper, the sales turn shopping into a game. “Knowing the sales start every day at noon makes me really competitive to get an item before someone else gets it,” he said. He recently bought a pair of Clae white patent leather sneakers for $38 on Gilt. They can sell for as much as $135 in retail stores.
More mainstream retailers are also adopting the idea. Saks, for example, is holding 24-hour half-price sales on brands like Hervé Léger.
Others are using the idea for holiday promotions. On the Monday after Thanksgiving, a big online shopping day known as Cyber Monday, Ashford, which sells luxury brand watches, discounted a different watch every two hours on its site. Blue Nile, the jewelry site, is offering a different deal every day until Dec. 23.
By discounting one item at a time, the retailers attract bargain-seekers and avoid the deep discounting done storewide last year, thereby protecting their profit margins. By 3:10 p.m. on Cyber Monday, Blue Nile had sold out of a five-carat diamond bracelet, marked down to $3,950 from $5,300.
One of the buyers, Dan Stanley of Falls Church, Va., said that he had not heard of private sales before and that for four days, he had been shopping for a bracelet for his wife. He bought it on the spot. “The ‘one day’ caught my eye, and I wouldn’t have risked it,” Mr. Stanley said.
Private-sale sites are attracting brand-name investors. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the venture capital firm that backed Google and Amazon.com, invested on Wednesday in One Kings Lane, which sells home décor. Gilt Groupe raised $55 million from Matrix Partners and General Atlantic, and Rue La La’s parent company was recently acquired by GSI Commerce for $180 million.
The concept seems tailored to recessionary times. Any guilt that consumers feel over spending thousands of dollars on unnecessary items can be replaced by bragging rights for finding a killer bargain, like a $4,500 diamond necklace that was recently on sale for $2,250 at Gilt.
Facebook Addict Calls it Quits
Ashton Uytengsu is a recent graduate of the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business where she studied entrepreneurship and global strategy.
By Ashton Uytengsu
Olmstead Williams Communications
I’m 22 and my job is social media. I am also a full-fledged Facebooker. When I moved to California from the Philippines for college, it was a great way to keep in touch with friends back home. As my network grew, it allowed me to keep up to date on upcoming events and enjoy pictures that people posted. And after graduating from college, it made staying in touch with friends who had moved away much easier.
About a month ago, however, I decided to break free from the chains of Facebook. Some of the most common reasons cited for leaving Facebook include embarrassing or incriminating messages on walls, friend requests from needy exes or a crazy uncle, constant invitations to silly events and perhaps most importantly, the existence of pictures or wall posts that could hurt future relationships and job opportunities.
My reason for leaving Facebook was a little different; it was more of an experiment. I used to spend over an hour a day on the Web site, pouring over my friends new photo albums and tracking conversations on wall posts. In fact, it was one of three sites I checked religiously every morning when I woke up, sandwiched between Gmail and WSJ.com. This was completely normal to me, as everyone I knew was guilty of the same practice.
One day, a coworker approached me with a look of amusement. “1,600 friends? How is that even possible?” she asked. I sat there for a minute before explaining that the list consisted of my childhood and high school friends, college friends and a mix of people I had met traveling over the years. Later that day, though, I got to thinking. Of those 1,600 friends I had on Facebook, there were probably 200 people that I really cared about, and 50 that I am in constant communication with. I wondered how vital Facebook was to my social life and whether I could survive not having the constant access to news and gossip.
Within days of deactivating my account, word got to me about disgruntled friends who assumed I had ‘defriended’ them. Others complained that they had to spend the extra 10 seconds to send me a text message instead of a Facebook invitation to an upcoming event. After the initial outcry, however, I honestly felt quite liberated. I didn’t miss my daily stalking routine, nor did I miss the unwanted friend requests or event invitations.
I held out for about a month before returning to the Web site. I realize this doesn’t sound like a long time, but my deactivation was merely an experiment. I’m back to my usual routine, but knowing that I can walk away anytime, I feel less the addict.
Follow the Tweets: Businesses Can Use Twitter to Predict Sales – WSJ
By Huaxia Rui, Andrew Whinston and Elizabeth Winkler
Wall Street Journal
There’s a new tool that can help companies predict sales for the coming weeks, or decide whether to increase inventories or put items on sale in certain stores.
It’s Twitter.
Social-media sites such as Twitter have made it increasingly easy to find out what consumers think and want without the limitations and bias associated with older market-research tools such as surveys and focus groups. With Twitter, users broadcast what they are doing or thinking via “tweets,” short messages of 140 characters or less. People can “tweet” about anything at any time—from the long lines at the grocery store to a great sale at the mall to a new restaurant or movie—which allows for word-of-mouth to spread at astonishing speed. Anyone can follow a user’s messages, and tweets are easily searchable using keywords.
We believe executives can make accurate predictions about sales trends by analyzing tweets that mention their products or services, and we have created a model based on Twitter’s keyword-search function to help them do that.
Click here to read the full article.
OWC in the Los Angeles Business Journal
Olmstead Williams Communications was featured in last week’s L.A. Biz Seen for its one-year anniversary party. The champagne and chocolate affair was held at the Napa Valley Grille in Westwood in late October. The L.A. Biz Seen is a section that publishes photographs of business-related events in Los Angeles. It includes parties, awards dinners, benefits and other celebrations.
From left, Leslie DaCruz, USC Viterbi School of Engineering executive director; Beth Karmin and husband Ken Karmin, Ortho Mattress chairman; Bill Allen, Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. CEO; and Tracy Williams, Olmstead Williams Comunications president; at Olmstead Williams' one-year anniversary party Oct. 28 at the Napa Valley Grille in Westwood.
Click here for a larger version of the picture
eDiscovery Moving In House To Support Rise in Requests
By Marisa Peacock
CMS Wire
The folks at Clearwell think that a storm is brewing in eDiscovery. A storm so perfect that it brings together increased data volumes, litigation, compliance standards and a growing need to cut costs, forcing companies to face their eDiscovery needs head on.
Like storm chasers who investigate the forces of nature, Clearwell wanted to learn more about the status of the eDiscovery. Enlisting help from the Enterprise Survey Group (ESG), Clearwell surveyed over 100 Fortune 2000 enterprises and government agencies and focused questions around the giant whirwind of activities affecting eDiscovery in the enterprise.
The report, Trends in Electronic Discovery: A Market Perspective, found that companies are facing increases in the number of lawsuits, and regulatory inquiries. Seventy-eight percent of respondents said that they expect the number of lawsuits and regulatory inquiries they experience to increase in 2009 compared to 2008, with nearly half estimating the number to grow by at least 20%.
Click here to read the rest of the article and the report.
Can the law keep up with technology?
By Manav Tanneeru
CNN
Courtney Love
In a case that would have been impossible even five years ago, bad-girl rocker Courtney Love is being sued for libel by a fashion designer for allegedly slamming the woman on Twitter.
The suit claims that after a disagreement over what Love should pay Dawn Simorangkir for the clothes she designed, Love posted allegedly derogatory and false comments about the designer — among them that she had a “history of dealing cocaine” — on her now-discontinued Twitter feed.
But as technology evolves faster than the laws that govern free speech online, it’s not just the famous who are finding trouble.
Consider the case of Amanda Bonnen and her former landlord. Bonnen, an Illinois resident, is accused of using Twitter to tell another user: “Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon Realty thinks it’s okay.”
Horizon Group Management LLC, the company that owned the apartment in question, sued Bonnen for libel over the alleged tweet. Horizon is seeking $50,000 in damages.
Legal experts say such Internet-related cases are being watched closely because they confront new and unaddressed areas of American law.
For example, how should a libel case be handled when it comes to social media? How can society balance accountability with free speech? And if information — from private thoughts to public data — is so readily available, how do we define what constitutes privacy?
Read the rest of the article on CNN
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