Whatever...

When the tech industry does music...

By Claire Ayles

It’s the Friday after InfoSec and frankly we’re frazzled, so for some end-of-the-week relaxation, why don’t you take a look at CIO Magazine’s five favourite IT songs?

The standout performance comes from this guy for his version of John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’, including the immortal line ‘I hope one day you’ll join DevOps so our world will live as one’.   Yes, really.

 

 

 

The choir of programmers singing along to the tune of ‘Every Breath You Take’ from The Police comes a close second though.  Sting, cover your ears...

 

Time to exterminate automated sales calls

By Mike King

Unsolicited sales calls have long been a source of irritation, but the problem has got a lot worse over the past few years with an increase in the use of automated telephone systems that call and ‘speak’ at you in a voice that makes a Dalek sound warm and friendly.  

Yesterday’s news that UK telecoms firm TalkTalk has been fined for making too many silent and abandoned marketing calls using an automated system is welcome news.

Using such systems for outgoing calls has got to be top of the list of pointless uses of technology. Obviously, these automated systems must be a cheaper way to call thousands of people than the almost equally irritating human telesales call but, surely, the success rate for robotic calls must be close to zero?  

At best, hearing a robotic voice on the end of the line is so hugely irritating that no rational person would do anything other than simply hang-up. At worst, the automated system fails to do anything when you pick up the phone (as in the TalkTalk case) and you’re left with the silent treatment. Either way, nothing has been achieved other than annoying the recipient of the call. 

The web is full of people complaining about this issue and it is clearly a big problem. The UK government has called for a crackdown and, in November last year, the ICO published a list of the worst offenders. All of which begs the question, why do these systems even exist?

It has to be the perception of cost savings - machines are cheaper to run than people, so the telesales effort costs less. There’s some sort of logic there. If the starting point is that the old school, human telesales call was pretty ineffective, the thinking behind automating the process could be that it is a cheaper way to achieve nothing. Chucking the systems out altogether would be even cheaper.

The French media landscape is moving… again

 By Violaine Desmons

At the beginning of April, the NextRadioTV group, one of the most influential and well-known media groups specialising in tech topics in France, launched a new print magazine, a consumer “high tech” monthly publication named 01net.

While this could be considered good news, as very few publishers continue to invest in printed press today, this new publication is due to the merger of two other publications (see article published in LeMonde.fr - in French).

Despite somewhat of a general decline in publication numbers over the years, IT media in France is by no means dead – far from it. The fact is, most journalists working within the IT press before the market declined, still deal with IT news, in some form or another, though perhaps not as much as they would like.  And, despite the apparent gloom, some positives have also arisen from the decline.  New IT publications – some pure play titles such as LeMagIT.com or ITespresso.fr – have been launched by experienced journalists and specialist blogs are becoming more and more relevant for IT organisations.

Social networks (especially Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn) have also brought a new dimension to relations between media and PR agencies, who are in the best position to handle and take advantage of this evolution.

The media landscape won’t stop evolving anytime soon and that’s by no means a bad thing! The huge rise in the use of mobile devices has changed the way that people consume news and allows media to be accessed from everywhere. So, the next challenge for the French media is to adapt itself in the face the “mobile revolution”, something it appears they’re not quite prepared for , according to the analysis published in LesEchos.fr (in French) – but they’re going to have to do it anyway, and soon. 

Deal(ing) with it

By Kasia Murphy

The Creative Director of Microsoft Studios recently underestimated the power of a single tweet, causing something of a social media storm around comments linked to a rumoured new computer console.

Adam Orth took to Twitter to express his frustration at the ‘drama’ surrounding the idea of ‘always-online’ consoles.  Specifically, Orth argued "sorry, I don't get the drama around having an 'always on' console. Every device now is 'always on'. That's the world we live in. #dealwithit".  The ensuing exchange with senior BioWare designer Manveer Heir, began the slow-motion car crash:

"Did you learn nothing from Diablo 3 or SimCity?" Heir asks him. "You know some people's internet goes out, right? Deal with it is a sh***y reason."

"Electricity goes out too," Orth replied. “Sometimes the electricity goes out. I will not purchase a vacuum cleaner.”

"You've lived in LA, San Francisco, Seattle... very connected places. Try living in Janesville, WI or Blackburg, VA," Heir countered.

"Why on earth would I live there?" Orth concluded.

While there has been speculation on the side about whether these comments confirm that there is a new console from Microsoft in the works, what’s more interesting from a communications perspective is that telling people to 'deal with it' on Twitter is perhaps not the best idea. 

All brands can use social media to come out from behind the curtain and build meaningful relationships with their followers and, while keeping the corporate hat on is important, this incident goes to show the importance of media training when just one tweet is all it takes to spark a PR disaster.