Holtz Communications + Technology

When a company hunkers down into siege mode, there’s one message you can count on the company delivering to its employees: “Please refer any calls from the media to Corporate Communications.”

That’s the instruction drugmakers are issuing to employees in the wake of reports that documentary filmmaker Michael Moore (“Roger and Me,” “Bowling for Columbine,” “Farenheit 911”) is turning his attention to the healthcare industry. His new targets reportedly…

More traditional businesses are finding uses for RSS. Global Auction Guide Media Group—“advertising network available to auctioneers with over 50 Web sites carrying the complete sale bills of hundreds of participating auctioneers”—has added over 70 RSS feeds to help users search for upcoming offline auctions (the kind where an auctioneers stands at a lectern with a gavel as opposed to the kind where you’re…

I live in Concord, California, in the San Francisco East Bay. I’m close to Walnut Creek, not too far from Pleasanton (home of Peoplesoft) and San Ramon. Our local newspaper, the Contra Costa Times, does a decent job of covering technology, given that part of its readership is in the Silicon Valley area and that the San Jose Mercury News is a…

If anyone has any lingering doubts about the rise of RSS, you can put them to rest. IDG World Expo has set May 17-18 for a New York conference dedicated to content syndication. The conference is being billed as an “executive-level” gathering targeting content owners and producers, media execs, corporate marketers, advertisers and public relations professionals. Two tracks will highlight the…

E-mail newsletters have become a standard communcation tool. There’s hardly a business Web site that doesn’t offer opt-in capabilities for everything from site updates to earnings announcements. Thanks to spammers, though, a hefty portion of your target audience may be turning its back on the opportunity to subscribe.

According to a study from Relemail seven out of eight people believe subscribing to an opt-in…

Other than LinkedIn, social networking hasn’t made inroads into the business world yet. The inevitable business adoption of social networking is only awaiting proof of concept, evidence that social networking can produce the kinds of results businesses care about. The launch of a new social networking site, 43 Things, could go a long way towards providing that evidence.

Lee LeFever talks about 43…