Holtz Communications + Technology

As reported earlier, Neville Hobson and I are co-hosting and co-producing the official podcast of the 2006 IABC international conference. The podcast—ConferenceCast—debuted today and is available for download, audio stream, and RSS subscription over at the conference blog, In Session.

The blog will launch officially on Monday but is open now for the podcast (the podcast is the only post there at this…

A picture is worth a thousand words, they say. Problem is, a picture can also take up a lot of space, particularly on a web page. Leave it to Edward Tufte to come up with a solution.

Nobody is better than Tufte at helping designers and communicators understand how to use graphics to convey data and information. His book, “The Visual Display of…

I’m spending all day today and tomorrow serving as a Blue Ribbon Panel judge for IABC Gold Quill Awards. Gold Quill is IABC’s international program recognizing communication excellence. For two days, we’ll review the entries in a variety of categories that were forwarded by first-tier judging panels. This is the third or fourth time I’ve participated on the panel, and I’ve learned to bring a notepad.…

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…

eBay and Craig’s List have appropriated classified advertising from newspapers. Some believe that Edgeio and similar services that vacuum classified listings from blogs based on ad-specific tags will spell the end for eBay and Craig’s List. Google is taking a stab at classifieds—including the ability to pay for an item directly from the site—with Google Base.

Now, as if the field isn’t crowded enough, Microsoft is…

The New Communications Forum begins on Wednesday with pre-conference “boot camps,” then kicks into high gear on Thursday, March 2. The lineup of speakers surpasses that of any new media conference I’ve seen, from Lockergnome to Syndicate, and the session themes are fresh, not the same old topics recycled from a thousand past conferences.

The conference fee is competitive and it’s in Palo Alto,…