Holtz Communications + Technology

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…

In the wake of Sprint’s acquisition of Nextel, I’ve been reading that consolidation in the wireless market is the only way to compete. The PR business seems to have known this for years, with some small agencies acquired by big multinationals while others join global PR networks. While this consolidation may work in the wireless marketplace, it’s apparently having detrimental effects in the world of…

George Masters enjoys creating motion graphics, so just for fun, he created a short animated ad featuring the iPod digital audio player. He posted the animation to his site, where it generated moderate traffic. Then some bloggers wrote about it and the word spread to the point that it was viewed more than 37,000 times in a matter of days.

In…