54% of Companies Block Access to Social Media
Shel Holtz writes that, “Well-communicated and consistently enforced policies will deal with most issues,” “Access to social media improves productivity,” and “Millenials will not work for companies that block.” [more]
B.L. Ochman Releases Blogger Outreach Manifesto
Ochman released a multi-point plan for reaching out to bloggers. Tips include, “Forget thee not, that what goes on line, stays online,” and “Readith what we write before thou contacteth us.” [more]
FTC Releases Guidelines on Endorsements by Bloggers
Whitney Hoffman writes, “The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has issued new guidelines that go into effect December 1, 2009 regarding the use of endorsements and testimonials in advertising that for the first time specifically include blogs.” [more]
Crowd-sourcing Could be a Myth
Patrick Philippe Meier reports on a story from Forbes magazine. The article says, “The notion of crowds creating solutions appeals to our desire to believe that working together we can do anything, but in terms of innovation it is just ridiculous.” [more]
What do you think?
After much anticipation, Google Street View for Google Maps has come to Canada. Google likes to think of Street View as being the last zoom layer on the map – when you’ve zoomed all the way in you find yourself virtually standing on the street. So far, Street View has been rolled out for Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa and Halifax.
Such a feature can help promote your business. For instance, if people looking for directions want to take a look at your building’s facade, they can. I’d like to see how Vancouver Realtors (like Kye and Ian) take advantage of this for promoting listings.
As traditional news media is evolves, journalists can link to the site of a story on Google Street view, showing where an event occurred. I like this idea as it would provide an experiential element to the news.
One of the biggest concerns with Street View is privacy. While Street View contains imagery that is no different from what you might see driving or walking down the street, Google has developed face and license plate blurring technology that is applied to all Street View images, and anyone can request the removal of an image.
I was caught by Street View a couple of times canvassing during the B.C. Provincial election:
View Larger Map
View Larger Map
The man driving the Google Car with the camera on top was very nice. He even stopped to allow me to take a Twitpic of him and would wave to enthusiastic pedestrians every time he passed.
What do you think?
Hi, I'm Michael (of Vancouver, B.C.). Welcome to my blog. Read more