Earlier this month, the BBC technology television show, Click, reported that their developer was legitimately able to use a 3rd party Facebook application to retrieve private information from Facebook users who have specifically asked to keep this type of data private. Now, 3rd party applications on Facebook are beginning to steal user identities for the sake of spamming.
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A few months back when Google began penalizing sites for selling direct text links, I talked about a specific case where computer.org went from a PR9 to PR5 literally overnight. A few months later, I noticed it is also possible to go from a PR5 to PR9.
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In a world where profitability and return-on-investment often direct business decisions, it was nice to receive an email today from PR Newswire announcing that they will waive all China earthquake relief effort news fees. PR Newswire is showing how a for-profit organization can do its part and try to help the more than 10,000 people who have been killed by a recent powerful earthquake in China. If your company has applicable news release, take advantage of this offer and get in touch with PR Newswire. Hats off to PR Newswire and our hearts go out to the families of the earthquake victims.
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It is always nerve wracking when Wordpress needs to be updated. In fact, I just updated from Wordpress 2.3 to 2.5.1. This time, I used the Wordpress Automatic Upgrade plugin to perform the upgrade and it was indeed a treat. While it used to take me 30 minutes or more to manually update Wordpress, this time only took 15 minutes or so. There was a slight learning curve but now that is done, future updates should take no more than 10 minutes. The update process was fairly painless and the step-by-step instructions were easy to follow. Nicely done Keith Dsouza. After the dust settled and all plugins were reactivated, I noticed the query load time of this blog’s home page more than doubled from when it was running 2.3. Something in 2.5.1 was causing this page load increase and I was not about to let it go.
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Attending internet marketing conferences like AdTech San Francisco 2008 will help you stay up to date with new developments in the marketing and advertising realms. In addition, these events are also where you find new business contacts and strengthen current relationships. I just returned from AdTech and once again, the out-of-conference relationship building was just as important as the actual conference itself.
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Next week is AdTech San Francisco and I have compiled a list of people & companies that I need to meet up with. As the date of April 15 draws closer, the list seems to magically grow by itself! If it’s anything like last year’s AdTech San Francisco, my meeting list will continue to grow, especially during the days of the conference itself. I also just received official instructions on how to pick up my press pass at the event so I will be able to attend some speaker sessions and report back with any interesting findings.
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Over the last few years, I have focused more on the online marketing and business conferences. Having come from the life sciences background, it was a treat to be able to attend a health related event again. The largest health food B2B trade show in Canada is put on by the Canadian Health Food Association (CHFA). Last weekend, I attended the CHFA Expo West event in Vancouver and was able to sample lots of new, soon-to-be-released food products before they hit the market. More interestingly, I noticed some very interesting trends in the health food industry. There was no doubt that the biggest marketing trend for 2008 is going organic and all natural.
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The Massive Technology Show returned to Vancouver in 2008. I was able to catch the first half of the 1-day show and here is a recap. There were too many cool exhibitors to recap for Massive Vancouver 2008 but I do want to share 2 exhibitors in particular that I had very interesting chats with. I also wanted to share a shockingly negative experience from the Information Security panel session that I attended.

First of all, a big thank you goes out to Lindsay Smith, CEO & Executive Producer of the show. That’s me and Lindsay in the picture op on the right. As with last year’s Massive, Lindsay extended to me an All Access Media Pass so I was able to visit the exhibitor hall and gain access to speaker presentations. Thanks Lindsay.

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HealthCastle.com, the most comprehensive nutrition community run by Registered Dietitians on the Internet, is searching for the best Food & Nutrition Blog for their upcoming Top Blog Awards. If you have a favorite Food & Nutrition Blog, be sure to nominate it by 5:00pm PST March 23, 2008 for consideration.

Over the weekend, reports began popping up in various news channels that Toshiba Corp is planning to give up on its HD DVD format for high definition DVDs, conceding defeat to the competing Blu-Ray technology backed by Sony Corp. It was reported that a source at Toshiba confirmed an earlier report by public broadcaster NHK that it was getting ready to pull the plug.
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Shortly after publishing Blu-Ray is the new VHS on this blog, reports began popping up throughout the internet that Paramount, one of the major studios left supporting Toshiba’s HD DVD format will abandon ship and join Warner Bros. in their recent move to release all HD movies exclusively in the Blu-Ray format.
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For those who have been following the high definition (HD) format war between Sony’s Blu-Ray and Toshiba’s HD DVD, it sure has been an interesting ride. Up until December of 2007, the swing could have gone either way. Just a few short weeks into 2008, Blu-Ray is now the dominant player in the game. It’s not innovation or a better product that puts Blu-Ray in front, but rather, a partner decision has given it this edge.
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