Tuesday, December 23. 2008

For the PR Folks and CEOs: Report on Corporate Blogging

Forrester completed a report on corporate blogging (Time To Rethink Your Corporate Blogging Ideas ) and among the findings: these blogs are not trusted - just 16% of Americans say they trust them - that puts corporate blogs at the bottom of the blog trust scale. What does this mean?

The experts weigh in on a For Immediate Release podcast: "All-star panel discusses Forrester report on corporate blogging: Josh Bernoff of Forrester; Max Kalehoff of Clickable; Rick Murray of Edelman Digital; Steve Baker of BusinessWeek; Lionel Menchaca of Dell; and author/consultant John Cass."

FIR is my source for information on social media, marketing, communications and tech.

Update: Activists Protest Kashmir Mapping by Storming Nokia Showroom, Burning Phones

Update 12/23/08: Nokia apologized in an e-mail statement for the error and noted that its data was sourced to NAVTEQ (which it owns). NAVTEQ has the full approval of the State of India to distribute the data.

The full statement:

'Nokia India, deeply regrets an inadvertent error in depicting certain international boundaries in an older version of its maps. This was as a result of a technical error that occurred in merging various map data layers. The error has been identified and corrected earlier this year. Nokia urges all its consumers to upgrade to Maps 2.0 and access the latest version of India maps. Consumers can also update the Maps application and the maps on their device by either accessing the maps website http://maps.nokia.com or Nokia map Loader or visiting a Nokia Care Center.'

- Economic Times

--- original post 12/22/08-----

Activists from the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (the youth wing of India's main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party) entered a Nokia showroom yesterday in central Jabalpur city in Madhya Pradesh state and snatched mobile phones and burnt them.

Kashmir is now jointly administered by India, Pakistan and the People's Republic of China and its mapping as part of Pakistan provoked the action.

- Reuters (includes video)

Also: Cellular News, Economic Times

Latest Web Stats: Google Maps Gaining on MapQuest

"In November, the most recent month for data, MapQuest's unique-visitor count fell 9% from November 2007 to 41.5 million, while Google Maps' rose 29% to 38.8 million, market tracker comScore says."

Analysts note that Google's position as top search engine drives much of Google Maps success. Christian Dwyer, MapQuest's general manager, details two instances what Investor's Business Daily calls "dirty pool" which seem to promote Google Maps and move down MapQuest.

(1) In a Google search the top search result gets a lot of space, pushing all other search results lower on the page (often that result is Google's).

(2) In paid links Google seems to always come out above MapQuest.

The article confirms these observations. The good news? No one seems to think there's anything wrong with MapQuest, though the sentiment "too little, too late" comes through.

Sermo: Doctors Crowdsource Flu Data

Sermo FluMonitor is a sort of step from Google Flu Tracker which uses end-user queries about the flu to map where the disease is prevalent. The Sermo solution uses data uploaded by 100,000 doctors to do roughly the same thing - only with far more detail on the patient. Unlike Google's solution, the doctor uploaded data is aggregated to the ZIP Code level and presented in near-real time.

Among the data available to members:

-- Number of new cases in the last seven days and the increase over the prior week
-- Number of cases confirmed with Rapid-Flu and percentage increase over the prior week
-- Age range of patients
-- Top presenting symptoms

The Cambridge, Mass-based company thinks the model could be used for other diseases.

- press release
- via Xconomy

Podcast: Big Geo News in the December Lull

The year is just about over so why did so many organizations announce new products, updates, agreements and developer opportunities this week? The distraction of the upcoming holidays may mean "few are paying attention" but we are! This week's podcast shares some of announcements you don't want to miss and why they are important.

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