Holtz Communications + Technology

For many years, being named Shel had the advantage of uniqueness. “What an unusual name,” people would say. “Is it short for something?” I was never confused with anyone else.

Then along comes “Naked Conversations.” Not only is one of the co-authors named Shel, but we wind up at a lot of the same events. We write blogs on a similar topic. In the last 24 hours, I’ve…

The Rock and Roll Geek Show‘s Michael Butler interviews FIR‘s Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz and On the Record Online‘s Eric Schwartzman at the New Communications Forum, Palo Alto, California, USA.

A 57-minute podcast. Download the file here (MP3, 39MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future FIR shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital…

Finally, the tale can be told.

Neville and I—and our agent, Yvonne DeVita, who has been fabulous—have concluded negotiations and reached an agreement with McGraw-Hill to write “How to Do Everything with Podcasting.” This will be part of McGraw-Hill’s successful “How to Do Everything” series.

There already are several podcasting books out there—and several are excellent. They’re also brief. Ours will be comprehensive; we’re expected to deliver something like 450 pages…

Google is getting a lot of attention over some of its actions—notably its agreement to filter content on its search engine in China—largely because of its oft-repeated and closely held belief that it should “do no evil.”

The fact that AT&T has never strongly asserted such a belief may explain why the company is getting less ink for some of the news it’s been making recently.…

A graphic designer has taken a stab at redesigning the spartan Google homepage. He explains his redesign in detail, and the result has its merits.

A column in the Online Journalism Review offers up six ways to improve Wikipedia.

Here’s breaking news: If somebody in your company puts something on a web page, it can be found by a search engine. Dell Computers was…

UPI is reporting that General Motors has canned Tony Kowaleski as its top PR executive and convinced former GM communicator Steve Harris to come back and improve GM’s battered image. According to the article, Kowaleski was skilled at promoting product but that Harris was more adept at crisis communication. Kowaleski was taked with communicating GM’s $8.6 billion loss in 2005. Management wants…