Often, when I’m speaking about social media to a group of business-owners, some of them start to talk about how technology has basically shut people off from each other. They worry about how people have become utter zombies praying to the altar of technology and Tweeting or Facebooking 10 hours a day. They worry about [...]

Johnson & Johnson’s response to the Tylenol tampering case more than two decades ago set the standard for crisis response and taught companies to take swift action, running to the light, rather than from it. Following the Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco accounting scandals, Sarbanes-Oxley legislated transparency. And this week, with the Domino’s viral video, we [...]

It pains me to write this. A widow and her 16 year old daughter, through circumstance and events beyond their control, will be homeless tomorrow. Tonight Elizabeth Hughes and her sixteen-year-old daughter Katy are packing. They have to be out of their Santa Clara, California apartment tomorrow. They have nowhere to go. They have nowhere [...]

The world of new media – widgets and social applications – looks like a beautiful marketing hunting grounds. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. Imagine people flocking to Web 2.0 locations where they blog. They upload/download audios/videos of specific interest to them. They congregate at business/special interest web sites to gain information and be [...]

I few weeks ago I ‘met’ Sarah Stanley (@sarahstanley) on Twitter. She was talking about her upcoming 50 mile run. At first I thought it was a typo, but as it turned out she indeed planned to run 50 miles.  With her BlackBerry, and tweeting along the way.   I don’t think I could run [...]

When it comes to children and the Internet, there is no substitute for parental supervision. It’s certainly not wrong to use parental control software, but parents must understand that software is intended to assist, not do their job for them. The problem is that many vendors don’t seem to appreciate the difference. Thanks to Norton, [...]

Some ideas are so outrageously offensive that they should never see the light of day. For example, the ‘game’ that appeared on the Apple iTunes App Store earlier this week from a company called Sikalosoft. The objective of the game?  Shake a crying baby to death. In response to complaints, Apple removed the application from [...]

Social media gives people the ability to connect with other people and businesses throughout the world with technology that allows us to interact and share ideas. Social media’s operating word is the word “social.”  We live in a world where businesses are being forced to be more transparent and interact with their customers. This phenomenon [...]

As I watched the launch of VMware vSphere 4 on Tuesday I was torn.  Part of the event was more corporate group hug than product launch, and in many ways vSphere is a logical extension of the company’s existing products. But a little voice in my head told me, “This is something big.” Some technological [...]

It came as a rude shock to our son…he was no longer one of the most sought after people on the planet – the hardcore gamer. It dawned on him after watching his sister and Mom play their Wii musical instruments, exercise with the system and do a little Dancing With the Stars. While he [...]

Last week Symantec released their 2008 Internet Security Threat Report (ISTR).  The report provides an analysis of worldwide Internet threat activity, vulnerabilities, malicious code, phishing, spam and activity on underground economy servers. The ISTR contains a lot of interesting information and I’d encourage you to read it — I’m certainly not going to repeat all [...]

Peter Dennis has two problems.  The first, according to a Canadian Press article by Colin Perknel, is gambling: “According to the unproven statement of claim, Dennis, of Markham, Ont., blew about $350,000 between August 2000 and May 2004 on various slot machines. His health declined, he became depressed and anxious. After an 11-week, $59,000 binge, [...]