by Teresa Valdez Klein on February 1, 2006
Microsoft’s new policy regarding international blogs and compliance with host country laws goes further down the path of protecting individual rights than its competitors, says PC Pro.
Microsoft “Chief Blogging Officer” Robert Scoble is certainly happy about the new policy. In his post yesterday, he directed his thanks to Rebecca McKinnon, a respected journalist-turned-blogger who has been covering the story. For her part, McKinnon said that Microsoft’s policy took, “laudable steps toward greater accountability, transparency and respect for the user.”
The incident that provoked all this happened about a month ago when Microsoft took down the blog of New York Times researcher and dissident blogger Zhao Jing at the behest of the Chinese government. Scoble had some choice words about the incident at the time: “Guys over at MSN: sorry, I don’t agree with your being used as a state-run thug.”
The PC Pro article also raised another issue worth discussing: Google. It’s well known that Google blocks certain results from searches made from within China, and this has, “landed Google… in hot political water. Not least because Google has made statements about the way it does business that are political and ethical; among them that ‘information knows no borders’, and that ‘you can make money without doing evil’.”
I wonder if the competition between Google and Microsoft will spark a new policy from Google’s end any time soon.
by Steve Broback on February 1, 2006
In the article Web Startups Try New Ad Techniques, Janet Whitman (media and advertising reporter for Dow Jones Newswires) says in contrast to the Internet frenzy of 2000, young Internet companies aren’t “tossing away millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads” anymore.
Whitman says “dot-com companies nowadays are trying to catch attention through much cheaper, ‘viral’ marketing strategies, such as blogging and word-of-mouth campaigns.”
“By far the best use of marketing dollars is to see if you can create some kind of person-to-person viral effect,” says George Zachary, a managing director with early-stage venture firm Charles River Ventures.
by Steve Broback on February 1, 2006
I haven’t had a carpal tunnel flare since 1999, when I was hand-coding html for some dotcom with a ridiculous business plan; well, make that a dotcom with NO business plan. Yesterday, my arms started to hurt and I realized I’d been typing nonstop for two days about business blogging for our book. During that pain flare, I also fantasized that [Catherine Zeta Jones](http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/catherinezetajones/) was narrating the chapters instead of the voice in my head, which is getting rather annoying (for the sidebars in the chapter, I’d like that booming CNN voice to read them). Dear readers, when you get the book, please substitute your voice for mine!
A blog lineup
We’re working hard to include more than the usual suspects in our book and much of what I’ve been writing about includes blogs like
* [CleverChimp](http://cleverchimp.com/)
* [Left Brain/Right Brain](http://www.kevinleitch.co.uk/wp/home.php)
* [New West Snow Blog](http://www.newwest.net/index.php/snow_blog/main/C458/L41)
After a short break to stretch my arms and observe sideways rain which has been pouring from the skies nonstop here in Seattle, I’m back to writing . . .
