mihnea miculescu
digital pr rants & a motley of tech blabber
PROTECT IP Act Breaks the Internet
Paul Kalkbrenner at KOKO
New Metropolitan Line train
PR catastrophe: Grainger Games at the GMAs
Wow, this is an absolute treat.
This little retail chain wanted to get closer to the game media, so they sponsored this year's GMAs. But check out what their people did at last night's award ceremony:
Expertly alternating between shouting whilst sitting down and shouting whilst standing up, at one of the particularly coked-up chaps even decided to jump up on stage and start thrusting his pelvis towards the audience.
But wait... There's more. You can read the full (and rather juicy) story right here. And then the organisers' very elegant apology. (via @vikkichowney)
Infographic: The Anatomy of an Agency
(via SingleMeasures)
Frieze in (less than) 90 seconds
If you didn't get the chance to check out Frieze last week, here's a glimpse of what you've missed (courtesy of Think-Work-Play).
Guardian open up their newslists to the public
The Guardian have just opened up their news desk newslists to the public, allowing anyone to see what their news desk writers have planned for the day (looks like they're using Google Docs). It's called Open Newslist. What's even more interesting is that they're trying to link it to Twitter:
You can tell us what you think of individual stories and suggest lines of inquiry using Twitter by tweeting to the hashtag #opennews. We will retweet a selection in the panel of our tweets opposite. Alternatively, try contacting whichever reporter has been assigned to the story by clicking on the link next to their name and sending them a Twitter message.
An awesome tool for PRs, I'd say! (via Andrew)
#failberry
Yesterday morning (around 11am BST), my BlackBerry stopped working. Initially I thought it was just being moody (which wouldn't be unusual) - only to find out a few hours later via Twitter that it's not just me, but everyone in EMEA. That doesn't cover just BBM, but basically any kind of data transfer (email, browsing, apps, etc).
Ironically enough, RIM was in the middle of a media push about BlackBerry Tag, a new Bump-like method of linking phones up (sans QR code or oldschool PIN exchange). For a solid few hours, I couldn't find one story on this in the mainstream media. For the better part of the day, the main BlackBerry social profiles were silent. At this point, mobile operators were starting to issue statements in which they were blaming RIM.
Then at about 5pm, the main BlackBerry Facebook page posted this:
Needless to say, that's pretty much when I gave up. I went to bed quite late and things still weren't working.
Fast forward to this morning: I started getting BBMs, emails and so on. The BlackBerry Facebook page had posted this:
Good stuff. And fair enough, this hasn't happened to me before (since becoming a customer about a year ago).
But around lunch today, it started again.
I'm not going to treat this like a news story so I won't be posting any more updates. I just want to offer a short PR perspective and for that I needed to provide an accurate background.
This is a textbook example of a crisis, at a time when RIM is NOT doing very well anyway. There's a new iPhone hitting shelves next week. Android is still skyrocketing. Even heavy users have long been considering switching to something else. At a time like this, I don't quite understand why RIM's press office (along with its agencies) isn't scrambling so the company at least seems to be in control. Their 8-million-strong Facebook page hasn't been updated at all today (by when this post went live at least). Same goes for their 500K-strong Twitter profile. And for their press center. To be honest, I can't imagine anything worse they could've done. (image via CNET)
The games I want to play this fall
It's no secret that I give my Xbox a run for its money every time I can - but it seems I've never taken the time to actually write a review or two. I'm hoping to change that.
In the meantime, here are the games I really want to have a go at this season. I've recently finished the Gears of War 3 single player campaign (brilliant) and am now on Deus Ex: The Human Revolution - but I'm really looking forward to:
- Batman: Arkham City (Oct 18th) - Arkham Asylum was great and had a quite unique gameplay - I can only wonder what the new one will bring to the table...
- Battlefield 3 (Oct 25th) - even though I wasn't the biggest fan of BC2, I just CAN'T ignore graphics and gameplay like this
- Modern Warfare 3 (Nov 11th) - I'm a complete COD geek and still play both MW2 and Black Ops, including a lot of online multiplayer
- Assassin's Creed: Revelations (Nov 15th) - I was absolutely hooked on Brotherhood and also this is probably the best cinematic trailer I've ever seen for a game. Vittoria agli Assassini!
Obviously they've all running huge campaigns, with loads of cinematic and gameplay trailers and all that - but here are a few interesting competitions I'd like to point out: the Battlefield Facebook page is running a check-in comp while the Assassin's Creed Facebook page seems to be running some sort of "AC in 60 seconds" video comp.
