Daljit Bhurji is Managing Director of Diffusion, a PR & communications consultancy built with Social Media & Search at its core.
He specialises in helping organisations to recognise the opportunities presented by the profound changes taking place today in media consumption and creation.
He began his career in PR during the first .com boom and always a sucker for punishment has been in love with the online world ever since. Daljit has directed campaigns for some of the coolest companies in the tech space including Tiscali, NetNames, Atlas, Pitch Mobile and Tamar as well as 'Web 2.0' start-ups including Idiomag and RawFlow.
The views expressed on this blog are Daljit's own and not necessarily those of Diffusion.
The Internet Services Providers’ Association (ISPA UK) has announced the short-list for its 2008 net Heroes and Villains award.Even by the usual standards of ISPA it’s a pretty random list. Villains include BT (surprise, surprise), French President Nicolas Sarkozy for his plan to tax internet and mobile access (sacrebleu!) and most bizarrely of all David Cameron for “for buddying up with the music industry and trying to appeal to a younger audience.” Not quite sure how that makes him an Internet villain?
Perhaps I will be accused of taking what is a light-hearted award too seriously, but I think there is a very strong case for Yahoo to be on the Villains short-list. Its continued collusion with the Chinese authorities in identifying ‘dissident bloggers’ many of whom have subsequently been imprisoned was arguably the most villainous act on the net in 2007.Yes, it would be a controversial move but it would also be an opportunity for the UK’s leading online companies to send a very clear and for once, meaningful message on the importance we place on Internet freedoms.
I missed the controversy just before Christmas over Here Comes Another Bubble by the Richter Scales. The video was sent to me by a rather sceptical reader who took offence to this blog’s generally optimistic outlook. Well you can’t please everyone! In any case if you’ve not seen it already it’s simply genius…
Was I the only person on the Thameslink tonight reading about the newiTaser in the London Paper and thinking “I want one of those?” It’s the perfect gadget for the busy young Londoner, an MP3 player and a stunning (geddit!) solution to the problem of those bastards who refuse to “move down the carriage”. Now, if someone could incorporate all of that into a BlackBerry…
Happy New Year dear readers. I’ve been tagged by James at 77 PR as part of Ged’sMy Week in Media meme which looks at what you’ve been watching, reading, surfing and listening to. Many of the blogging great and the good have already responded. See Iain Dale, Stephen Waddington, Stuart Bruce and Stephen Davies. It’s not been a typical week but here you go…
In terms of reading things you actually hold, it’s been Seth Godin’s The Dip, on the train between London and Leamington Spa – highly recommend it, especially if your contemplating a new year change of career.
What I’ve listened to I have to admit to growing out of radio since leaving University, where a self imposed ban on TV in my second year (in an effort to do some work) led to a temporary addiction to Chris Moyles and Radio 4. Few things are as amusing as David Starkey on the Moral Maze. So listening to stuff has been a case of wading through my massive backlog of podcasts on my iPod, a mixture of work and pleasure with the brilliant Hobson and Holtz and the iconic Terry Tibbs – Talk to me!
The results ofSilicon.com’s latest reader survey shows that half the respondents do not believe that blogs are a good way for companies to communicate with customers. Not surprising since the UK B2B tech readership of Silicon have been slower than many other sectors in effectively engaging in blogging. The shocking stat was that just 12 months ago 14% of readers didn’t even know what a blog was. Thankfully this has now fallen to 2%, phew!
I’ve just finished reading an article in the Sunday Times on how a “virtual jihad” has hit the Second Life website. Global intelligence services believe the site could be being used by extremists for recruitment, training and money laundering.
There have been a number of attacks in the virtual world over the past six months - known as “griefings” they have typically been blamed on ‘geeky’ Second Lifers (is there any other sort?). In May an island created by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation was destroyed in what is now being termed a ‘virtual nuclear attack’ (see above). A McDonald’s has also been hit by a car bomb and a helicopter was flown into a Nissan building. These attacks are now being viewed by some as virtual terrorist attacks on Western interests.
Even with more time on my hands than I know what to do with, the attractions of Second Life still escape me. For a while I thought it was a conspiracy by a conglomerate of second-rate PR agencies looking for a source of cheap and easy coverage for their clients. Allegations about the site being used for tax-evasion and money laundering are nothing new, but a suspected link to terrorism will be extremely worrying to the creators at Linden Lab.
Reading the article there seems to be little concrete proof of any identifiable terrorist or extremist organisation using the site as alleged, so this could be classic ‘silly season’ fodder. However, it appears that it is being taken very seriously by some security services, with Kevin Zuccato, head of the Australian government’s High Tech Crime Centre, claiming, “We need to start thinking about living, working and protecting two worlds and two realities.” Dramatic stuff. It will be interesting to see how Linden’s PR agency Lewis attempts to limit the damage.
The Guardian has released what is bound to prove a controversial list of what it believes to be the hottest British dotcoms to watch. As a recent Moo customer I’m glad to see them on the list as the service was faultless. The vertical search arena is particularly buoyant at the moment so I’m not shocked to see two property search engines make the top ten in the shape of Extate and OnOneMap. However, as an avid user of ZoomfI’m surprised they didn’t make it. It seems to be taking the lead in what will be the key battle ground between these engines, namely the density and national coverage of properties you can search for.
Chris Hoskin over at Raw Stylus has come across this great Web Trends Map by Information Architects. They have taken the world’s biggest sites and ordered them together in a very cool way which I just had to reproduce for you here. Click the thumbnail below to see it in its full glory.
“It’s been seven hours and fifteen days, since you took your love away” sang the much under-rated Sinead O’ Connor and it’s been about the same time since I left Hotwire with a leaving do which will be forever remembered for the gratuitous exchanges of bodily fluids (you guys know who you are…). The feeling of being unemployed is one that is really taking some time to get used to. I think it comes down to the conditioning and routine of agency life, being greeted by 20 new emails as your BlackBerry wakes you up in the morning, the constant calls and deadlines, all the office politics, creates a level of hyper-stimulation which, despite their best efforts, Phil and Fern simply can’t match. Hopefully booking some more holidays (flights to Las Vegas are very cheap at the mo - fyi) will use up some of that energy and writing this blog will use up some of the rest. I think it’s going to be quite fun being un-muzzled and hopefully my musings on this blog will bring an interesting perspective on the wonderful world of tech PR….“since you been gone I can do whatever I want…”
