A client (thanks Leah) turned me to a great keyword/adword resource called SpyFu. It allows you to search competitor keywords, adwords, organic words, advertisements, click spend and total keyword budgets, among other things. Most of this is free. The site is fantastic and can really provide some valuable information for emerging companies looking to evaluate competitive marketings and carve out a niche. You can get super-detailed reporting and information if you're willing to spring for the service, but the initial information is pretty darn useful by itself. Do yourself a favor, check out the site and get some market intel!! Then you can drop some sweet facts at your next dinner party, like:

"Hey Charlie, did you know Google has a daily ad budget between $354 and $390? Pass the salt."

"Hey Rachel, did you hear, Sprint's monthly online keyword budget is $19k. Doesn't that blow your mind?"

-posted by Justin

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to meet with one of the really “out-of-the-box” thinkers in the PR industry, Peter Shankman. He held a happy hour at the Pike Pub and Brewery, located just above Seattle’s Pike Place Market, schmoozing with Seattle PR types.

For those of you who don’t know Peter, he is probably best known for publishing the HARO (Help A Reporter Out) Newsletter three times a day, Monday through Friday. HARO includes dozens of leads for PR/media opportunities from travel to technology, business/finance to health/fitness. With all of the modern day “smoke and mirrors”-type PR, Peter’s approach is quite simple and refreshing… connect reporters and public relations professionals in order to come up with the most compelling stories. I think of the HARO Newsletter somewhat like CraigsList early on -- no adds, just a way to connect people in the most basic way possible.

Now to our happy hour meeting, Peter struck me as extremely humble and RESTED even though his speaking engagements typically take him back and forth across the country at least a few times each week. Despite having a number of people trying to schmooze with him, Peter took the time to briefly discuss his personal and professional life with me and gave me one of his unique business cards that front as a gambling chip (blog to be updated with picture soon). Little known fact, Peter continued to run marathons for years despite having a foot that was broken in numerous spots (unbenounced to him).

Pike Market, Peter Shankman and Public Relations… what an enlightening happy hour.

-posted by Andrew

Work with Word documents a lot? Ever get frustrated with Track Changes (or lack there of)? Ever wish there was an easier way to collaborate with your colleagues and/or clients on documents? Check out Writeboard, created by 37signals a developer of web-based applications for businesses. Writeboard is free, and allows you to invite multiple people to make edits and revisions to an online version of your document. Writeboard makes it really easy to view track changes, as well as compare past and present versions of your document.

Thanks go out to Mark Uehling, editor at ClinPage, for bringing this great site to my attention!

-posted by Shawnna

It's always interesting to see what our competition is up to -- and here's a very unique twist to the standard blog I see on many agency websites. Kevin Dugan, the director of marketing for FRCH Design, and Richard Laermer, CEO of RLM PR, created the Bad Pitch Blog to immortalize all of those missteps PR people make with editors and analysts. I have to say, it's worth a look -- PR Week picked it as a competitor in the "best blog" category of its latest competition.

-posted by Rachel

I just got around to reading a rather long, but fascinating article in the NY Times on the idea of resurrecting old "dead" brands, such as Nuprin, Brim Coffee, Underalls, Salon Selectives, etc.

This is essentially the situation that River West brokered with the Nuprin brand, which was a dead line of ibuprofen painkillers (once upon a time backed by the widely known “Nupe it” ad campaign). Its trademarks were acquired by River West and sold to CVS, where it is back on the shelves as a stealth store brand. (And presumably enjoying better margins than it would if, like a traditional store brand, it competed solely on low price, not trustworthy-brand familiarity.) My read was that this is what Stone thought should happen to Brim — and that Earle had mixed feelings, believing, perhaps, that Brim could come back as something bigger. Even Stone seemed at least somewhat intrigued with the possibilities of licensing a brand that was familiar but dead. “With Stanley we have to be careful — this is a famous brand; we have to do everything right and mitigate all the risks,” he says. “But with Brim, the risks. . . .” He paused. “There really are no risks.” This brings us to Earle’s ideas about the potential upside of faulty consumer memory. Maybe, for instance, you’re among those who remember Brim. But do you also remember that it was a decaf-only brand? That’s actually why you could “fill it to the rim.” River West’s research found that many who recall the Brim brand have forgotten the decaf detail.

We often play off of the idea of turning old developments into news on the theory that "if you haven't heard it, it's news to you" – but this takes it much further. Interesting stuff if you're into understanding brand recognition.

-posted by Paul

The LA Times' Top of the Ticket blog has an entertaining post discussing the recent New Yorker magazine Obama cover and reminds us all what not to do when faced with an outlandish or otherwise icky allegation.

For those of you needing a quick recap, the New Yorker ran a cartoon cover with Obama and his wife dressed as terrorists, burning the flag etc. Obama's campaign immediately went public with a strong denunciation of the cover, which drew massive attention to the image, an image that Obama obviously would have preferred quickly die on the newsstands. Instead it became an Internet wildfire.

Days later on Larry King Live, when asked about the cover, Obama delivered a great response...

"Well, I know it was the New Yorker's attempt at satire. I don't think they were entirely successful with it. But you know what? It's a cartoon, Larry, and that's why we've got the 1st Amendment.

"And I think the American people are probably spending a little more time worrying about what's happening with the banking system and the housing market, and what's happening in Iraq and Afghanistan, than a cartoon. So I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about it."

...but as the LA Times points out, it was unfortunately several days too late.

-posted by Adrienne

We've been exploring ways to use Twitter for PR purposes on behalf of our clients, so I was quite interested to see that the McCain and Obama presidential campaigns on having an "online debate" on Twitter. It's an interesting development, if for no other reason than the fact that a 140 character response will hopefully keep the answers on-point. Hopefully.

Stay tuned for our thoughts on Twitter and PR in a future post.

-posted by Paul

Most people have had some iteration of the dream where they show up naked for a final college exam they haven't studied for. The PR version of that dream is jumping on a conference call where you badmouth an editor, only to find out that the editor has been silently listening. If you're interested in knowing how that feels, you can ask the folks over at UK carrier O2, which did exactly that for a call with The Register.

I don't even want to think about this.

-posted by Paul

The other week, I had the privilege of attending the Puget Sound Chapter of The American Marketing Association's monthly luncheon featuring Tillamook Cheese.  For those of you not from the Northwest, Tillamook is one of the iconic brands of the region.  That's right... Microsoft, Boeing, Nordstrom and Tillamook Cheese.

Tillamook's roots in the region span all the way back to 1894 and it has always operated as a farmer owned cooperative.  Jay Allison, Tillamook's Marketing VP, talked about the company's iconic brand, its strategic packaging which includes its recognizable Tillamook repetition on the label and much more.  To summarize... Tillamook's cheese tastes great but its iconic image and highly strategic sales plan may have more to do with its success.

My favorite piece of trivia from the speech... there are more cows than people in Oregon's Tillamook County.  Maybe happy cows come from Oregon and not California?

-posted by Andrew

This week's PSAMA event in Seattle was packed with marketing folks eager to hear from speaker Robert H. Bloom, former Chairman and CEO of Publicis Worldwide, (where he led accounts such as Loreal, T-Mobile, and BMW). He was there to schlep his book "The Inside Advantage" and spoke primarily about the need to know your core customer. While all companies have multiple customer types, to be successful a business must be able to define precisely who it is that they must own. Bloom also spoke about how product marketing must focus not only on tangible benefits but emotional benefits as well - case in point, when he held up a small and distinct robin's egg/aqua Tiffany box every woman in the room broke into a smile.

-posted by Adrienne

After watching their presentation at DEMO '08, John Cook recently wrote about a new "current affairs search engine" in his Venture Blog named Silobreaker because of the founder's desire to break the "silos" of traditional media. Nominated as the official VOXUS Guinea pig for all things Silobreaker, my initial report is very positive - with Silobreaker offering a fresh alternative to traditional search engines. Not only can you search through current news stories, videos, research reports, and pretty much anything else imaginable, you can also track trends in media coverage of companies, people and topics. Not to mention a cool feature that shows a visual web of relationships between searched items and other newsmakers. So far, very awesome tool... more to come after further investigation.

-posted by Stephanie

Anyone who has worked even remotely with the majors (music labels) knows how unendingly painful it can be. Nonetheless, I could still feel the collective grimace go out last week when Qtrax backtracked (as the labels refuted) its claims that it had licensing deals (as reported by Reuters). Music industry veteran Bruce Houghton speculates it may have been a negotiation tactic or stock manipulation by Qtrax. It will be interesting to see what, if anything, happens now for Qtrax.

-posted by Adrienne

There was a great turn-out at the recent South Sound PRSA Chapter event which was a panel discussion on the topic of how to leverage user-generated media. Panelists included Nathan Kaiser of nPost, Paul Ellis of Tacoma-Piece County Chamber, Mark Briggs of newstribune.com, and Frank Shaw (one of my most favorite persons on the planet) of Waggener Edstrom.

We had strong audience participation and panelists not only shared tangible advice and examples, they were also damn funny. A few basic themes (for companies interesting in better leveraging new media, or just plain getting started) included:

* know your audience and your communications objective - don't just follow the latest trend
* be authentic, be transparent, or in some cases, per Shaw, be "radically translucent"
* go for it - get out there and experiment, take some risks

For more details, check out Briggs' additional commentary http://blogs.thenewstribune.com/online/

Also check out a few examples of local and non-local companies and bloggers cited by the panelists:
Blendtec
Zillow
Dell
Hotel Morano
Sonos

Thanks again to PRSA, the panelists and audience members for a great event!

-posted by Adrienne

I'm just now catching up on my reading from last month. Interesting to see that mEgo, a company that was scheduled to debut at Fall DEMO, had to be pulled from the program at the last minute. Seems the young startup got all whippersnappy and unveiled its product the week prior to Fall DEMO at TechCrunch40. That's just a big old no-no, as DEMO has built a solid reputation of giving the world its first peek at the latest and greatest technologies. Frankly, I'm surprised that mEgo chose to ignore the rules, since it had to have ponied up big bucks to play at DEMO...but then again, TechCrunch40 is free and maybe DEMO gave it a refund. Still, it created enough of a hullabaloo to make me want to see just what mEgo does, given that it's name is, well, unusual. And that may have just been the point. No, I'm not going to tell you what it does -- check out the site.

-posted by Rachel

As PR professionals, it doesn't get much better when we have clients who not only have great technology, but hold a lengthy roster of happy customers. Case in point, VOXUS client PathGuide Technologies, a provider of warehouse management systems for industrial distributors. While warehouse management systems might not sound all that exciting, PathGuide customer Red-L Distributors saving $85,000 a year based on one small product feature (lot tracking) certainly is. Read more in this month's issue of Inbound Logistics.

-posted by Adrienne

We're pleased to have lined up the following panelists for the PRSA South Sound Chapter event on Nov. 8. It should be a great discussion on the topic of user generated media.

New Media: User Generated Media & Using it to Your Advantage
November 8, 2007
8:00am - 9:00am
MetroParks headquarters
4702 South 19th Street, Tacoma

Esteemed panelists include:

Mark Briggs, Editor, thenewstribune.com
Mark Briggs is editor of thenewstribune.com, the flagship web site for The News Tribune newspaper in Tacoma, Wash. He has worked in new media for newspapers since 2000 and has contributed to workshops, seminars and textbooks on the topic. He uses his blog to track the evolution of the local webosphere and other emerging trends that are important to the South Sound region.

Frank Shaw, Worldwide President, Waggener Edstrom
Waggener Edstrom Worldwide President Frank X. Shaw leads the Microsoft team at the agency and is responsible for all global PR efforts across the account. Frank is an avid follower of the blogosphere and tracks the impact bloggers have on corporate reputations, stock fluctuations, crisis situations and product launches. Frank began writing a daily blog for Waggener Edstrom Worldwide employees in April 2003. He covers a variety of topics on the agency's intranet relating to innovative public relations and the technology industry, and offers a witty perspective on "water cooler" subjects.

Nathan Kaiser, CEO, nPost
Nathan Kaiser is CEO of nPost, an organization that promotes and facilitates tech entrepreneurship. Nathan brings a unique perspective about new media and the opportunities and challenges facing businesses operating in a web 2.0 world.

Paul Ellis, Metropolitan Development Director, Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber
Paul Ellis is the Director for Metropolitan Development for the Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber, the South Sound's largest local business organization. Paul manages the Tacoma Technology Consortium, the Regional Access Mobility Partnership (RAMP), and divisions of the Chamber throughout the metropolitan area. He also directs the Downtown Tacoma Business Improvement Area, and 84-block assessment district that maintains and markets Tacoma's city center. Paul maintains a number of blogs. He brings real-world insight on what works and what doesn't when using blogs to inform and engage the local community.


See you at the event!

-posted by Adrienne

Following up on my earlier post about David Pogue's Imponderables blog entry at the NY Times, I'd like to highlight one company's effective use of the comments section of Pogue's blog. Pogue posed the following question as an Imponderable:

Wi-Fi on airplanes. What’s taking so long?

A spokesperson for AirCell, a company that it trying to address that very issue, posted the answer (at least as they see it) in the blog comments. The comment was well written, not overly hype-driven, addressed the question directly and was signed by a company representative – as opposed to the ubiquitous "anonymous" signature line. Pogue in turn took the comment and elevated it to the subject for his next post.

This is exactly the way these things should be done. Well played, AirCell.

-posted by Paul

David Pogue poses an interesting question in a blog post on "Imponderables" ...

Do P.R. people really expect anyone to believe that the standard, stilted, second-paragraph C.E.O. quote was really uttered by a human being?

No. But a well-written quote isn't "stilted" – it should actually have a distinct voice that you can hear in your head when you read it. And it should provide an opportunity to present information that won't otherwise easily fit in the release text. If it is simply a rehash of what does already appear elsewhere in the release, the PR person needs to either rewrite the quote or kill it.

Unfortunately the quote (and the rest of the release, for that matter) sometimes gets dumbed-down as part of the editing process. Which is of course the bane of writers everywhere.

-posted by Paul

Like the bird flu going from those with wings to those with legs, the concept of "bigger is better" has jumped species...from fast food to online portals. Amazon is challenging Yahoo! with the beta launch of Askville, defined as a fun place to meet others, exchange information and ask questions. It's almost exactly like Yahoo! Answers, something the search engine established for its member community last year. It's either a genius move by Amazon to make visitors to its retail area stay on the site longer (and therefore be more attractive to outside advertisers using sponsored links), or it's a back-end way for the site to morph into an actual search engine tied to its merchandise. Either way, it'll be interesting to see what happens next.

-posted by Rachel

As long as I'm going down memory road, here's another update on a former co-worker: Erick Saks. After pushing the button to drop the ball on Times Square with Mayor Bloomberg last January (and being on the Carson Daly Show), he was deployed to Afghanistan with one of the Air Force's new Contingency Response Groups. Cpt. Saks is in charge of his unit's public information -- and he must be doing a great job, as he and his team were featured last month in a Newsweek article. We like to think he obtained his media skills from us.

-posted by Rachel

Clients often ask us about company or product awards... what's the advantage, how do you get them, are they worth it, which ones should we go for, etc. A major award from a reputable source can be worth gold in terms of the validation it provides, and we spend a significant amount of time managing award programs for clients. Much of that time is spent sifting through the various opportunities to identify the awards that are worth it – in other words, those that are reputable, on target and offer a reasonable chance for success.

Then again, there is certainly a lot of crap out there. So what are some awards worth? Not so much, given that you can win for a product that literally does nothing.

-posted by Paul

Two of my former co-workers have individually launched great blogs that talk about one of my favorite things: food. At Lunch in a Box, you can learn how to build a better and healthier lunch, accompanied by photographs that would make a food stylist scream with envy. As an example, the site recently featured cassava and wild salmon in a nifty divided box, complete with a cute grape-inspired critter as a garnish. Kudos to Deborah Lamascus Hamilton for creativity and...well...fun! And over at Cafe Fernando, Cenk Sönmezsoy comments on the food scene in Istanbul, again with glorious, mouth-watering photos. But my favorite blog entries are the ones that document his attempts to create new and interesting dishes, such as the smoked salmon tarte. Note to the boss: I need more free time.

-posted by Rachel

As we mentioned before, VOXUS is up for a Mobile Village award. It's a reader's choice award, and if you're interesting in helping out, voting steps are below. Signing up and voting takes less than five minutes; don't ask how we know. We certainly didn't vote for ourselves. We would never do that.

Voting ends 9/26.

1. Visit Mobile Village
2. Click on the top right hand "Sign Up Now" link
3. Fill in required fields and submit (“Thank you for registering!” will appear upon completion)
4. Next, click on "click here" and then "vote here" to select VOXUS in the following category: Wireless/Mobile Technology PR Firm
(you will need to confirm your email address at the end of the ballot)

A number of other VOXUS clients are participating, including AirMagnet, CipherLab and Formotus.

-posted by Paul

Dan Rayburn of media outlet StreamingMedia.com takes a press release from EdgeCast out behind the woodshed for a beating. Interesting reading if you want to know how "marketing-ese" can be perceived by the media. (And no, we didn't write it, thank god.)

-posted by Paul

At long last, the episode "Jerry was a Man" in the television series Masters of Science Fiction airs August 18 at 10:00 p.m. on ABC. Starring Malcolm McDowell and Anne Heche, the episode features Voxus client CipherLab's 1266 hand held barcode scanner as part of the set design.

-posted by Rachel

We're a nominee for this year's Mobile Village awards. More details to come...

Some time ago, ad and marketing guru John Follis coined the term "G-cred" for Google credibilty. In other words, if someone puts your name, business or product into a search engine such as Google, does it float to the top of the list? It's a measure of how far we've advanced as an Internet-based society that G-cred equates with legitimacy. I'm happy to report that if you Google "voxus," we're number one. A year ago, the top links were for "a somewhat obscure heathen music project from Germany." Ahem.

-posted by Rachel

Fake Steve Jobs offered up some interesting commentary on media manipulation around the iphone introduction:

Our biggest trick -- and it's not really a big stroke of genius or anything -- is simply to make a huge and dramatic presentation and then not let anyone actually see the phone. That way everyone can project their hopes and desires onto the object and build it up in their imagination as some great special unique magical device. We call it the Obama Maneuver. This creates a deadly combination: loads of demand and very little actual information.

After which he goes on to explain how Apple manipulates reviewers. You can argue the accuracy of this, but clearly it wouldn't work for companies without the star power of Apple. Still, one can dream...

And by the way, if you haven't checked out the full FSJ blog, you should. Hilarious.

-posted by Paul

One of the sites I visit regularly is John Gruber's Daring Fireball, and I was intrigued by this explanation of why the site is comment-free:

I wanted to write a site for someone it’s meant for. That reader I write for is a second version of me. I’m writing for him. He’s interested in the exact same things I’m interested in; he reads the exact same websites I read. I want him to like this website so much that he reads it from the top to the bottom, and he reads everything. Every single word. The copyright statement, what software I use, he’s read it all.

If I turn comments on, that goes away. It’s not that I don’t like sites with comments on, but when you read a site with comments it automatically puts you, the reader, in a defensive mode where you’re saying, “what’s good in this comment thread? What can I skim?”

It’s totally egotistical. I want Daring Fireball to be a site that you can’t skim if you’re in the target audience for it. You say, “Oh, a new article from John. I need to read it,” and your deadlines go whizzing by because you have to read what I wrote.

If I turn comments on I feel like it’s two different directions. You get to the end of my article and you’re like, “let’s see if there’s anything interesting. Let’s see if there’s any names I know.” That’s really it. Sometimes a design decision is what you don’t put in, as opposed to what you put in.

-posted by Paul

With so many of today's vendors releasing survey research, the question remains: Is vendor research objective? I'd like to say the answer is yes, but I'm sure there are instances of companies stacking the deck. A recent article from Jai Vijayan at Computerworld reviewed this topic and the information is very interesting. If you're a company thinking of releasing survey information as research data, or a agency advising clients regarding this topic, you NEED to read this article:

The Security World According to Vendor Surveys
6/8/07
By Jai Vijayan, Computerworld

-posted by Justin

Posted without comment. (via Kottke)

-posted by Paul

Congratulations to VOXUS client Nextrials and its CTO, Bob Lyons, for being named one of this year's Top 25 CTOs by InfoWorld Magazine. It's refreshing to see that the accomplishments of folks at younger companies such as Nextrials aren't being overlooked. This year, Bob was in excellent company with award winners from Credit Suisse, Narus, VeriSign, Tellabs and Motorola.



-posted by Rachel

For anyone interested in search engine optimization and marketing (and who isn't these days?), there's a conference coming to town June 4-5. SMX, or Search Marketing Expo has more speakers than you can shake a stick at, including Search Engine Land editor Danny Sullivan, industry guru Rand Fishkin, Google's Vanessa Fox, Scott Greenberg of Marchex and John Kim of Yahoo! Search Marketing, to name a few.

-posted by Rachel

Our client Attenex has three marketing jobs open – so if you or someone you know has a marketing bent, drop them a line. Attenex is a fast-growing software company in a hot market (legal discovery) and needs good people quickly.
 
Here are the openings:
 
Marketing coordinator

Marketing communications manager

Product marketing manager

Happy hunting.

-posted by Paul

AirMagnet's wireless security and performance troubleshooting solution, Laptop Analyzer, outperformed the competition in Network World’s recently released Clear Choice Test of WLAN analyzers (WLAN analyzers come of age, 2007, Network World). Laptop Analyzer received the highest score in all test categories – including features, identifying security and performance threats, documentation, reporting capabilities, management and ease of use, installation and set up – overshadowing products from Fluke Networks, Network General and WildPackets.

Here's a little text bite from the review: “After subjecting the latest products to several problem-identification tests, we found that AirMagnet Laptop is still the one to beat, as it excels at 802.11-specific analysis. Its rapid analysis and accuracy is clearly at the top of the list,” according to the Network World review. The entire review is available here.

-posted by Justin

Wired Magazine and A-list blogger Jason Calacanis are having a bit of a blog spat about the ground rules for an interview. Wired reporter Fred Vogelstein asked Calacanis for an interview, to which Calacanis agreed, providing that it was conducted via email. Which is when the fireworks started, because Vogelstein doesn't do email interviews, apparently.

I understand both sides of this issue: reporters prefer the freedom and spontaneity of a verbal interview because it can often lead to a more interesting story. Interviewees are often leery of a verbal interview because the freedom and spontaneity can lead to an unfortunately more interesting story. Fine. But it seems to me that casting aspersions in public as the basis for your stance – witness Calacanis' implication that reporters are hacks that quote people out of context and Wired's response that people that won't do a phone interview are cowards with something to hide – strikes me as a bit over the top. If you want an interview and the only way you'll get it is via email, then either agree or move on, don't call names. And if you want to use email to ensure that your responses are as accurate as possible, then say that and don't imply that the reporter is untrustworthy unless you want to start something. Clearly there are some big chips on these shoulders, and the ability to air this sort of spat in public does a disservice to blogging in general.

-posted by Paul

If you're a web designer, or just interested in design in general, be sure to check out the upcoming An Event Apart: Seattle conference. Quite the high-powerd lineup of speakers, and it's great to see them coming to our neck of the woods.

-posted by Paul

Steve Rubel is a VP with mega-agency Edelman PR. Steve has also found Twitter and been posting his goings-on. Which last Friday included throwing his unread copy of PC Magazine into the trash. Not a good thing for an exec at a tech PR agency to be posting. Jim Louderback, the editor-in-chief for PC Mag took note and called him on it. Which led to this apology from Steve. Now I have to be honest in saying that I get bombarded with tons of free subscriptions from the tech magazines. Some I read, some I toss. And what I do read is more often online than in hard copy. But this does point to the downside of Twitter... the very stream-of-consciousness metaphor that makes it so popular, and powerful, also makes it easy to type before you think. (via DF)

-posted by Paul

The popular Podcast Hotel, a conference for all things related to vlogging and podcasting that began in Seattle and Portland, is taking the show to San Francisco this weekend. Podcast Hotel 3 is being held April 20-21 at the Swedish American Hall and features folks such as tech guru Robert Scoble and Chris Pirillo, founder of the Gnomedex conference series. One of the more interesting speakers is Andrew Baron, founder of Rocketboom, who will debut Sen. John Edwards' new video podcast and talk about how this type of media will influence politics going forward.

-posted by Rachel

Lightspeed Venture Partners' blog has an interesting entry on the pros and cons of "stealth mode" for startups. It's a great summary for entrepreneurs trying to figure out the best way to launch a new company.

-posted by Rachel

If you thought the letters BBC only meant the British Broadcasting Corporation, think again. I rarely comment on our competition, but I just can't let this one go by. I have to wonder how many beers were downed before the folks at Brass Bulls Corporation, also known as BBC, came up with its name. The company offers PR services to the financial market, so in a weird way, the bullish image makes sense...but I'd have a hard time stating the company name with a straight face in business meetings. With my luck, I'd slip up and change the vowels around in "Brass Bulls" to become something else entirely.

-posted by Rachel

One of our clients, Centennial Software – a developer of IT security and asset management solutions – has seen the demand for security information associated with USB threats rise dramatically since the arrival of new U3 applications to the marketplace. If you're not aware of U3, it's a self-activating technology that enables portable devices (flash drives, iPods, PDAs, etc.) to autorun applications the moment they are plugged into a PC. This drastically raises the level of risk associated with these devices on a corporate network. However, information on the risks associated with this new technology has been scarce.

Recently, Centennial posted information on its website related to the threats surrounding the latest self-activating U3 technology and the number of ongoing visitors has since risen by more than 200 percent (with approximately 16,000 unique visitors in the first 24 hours following the post -- which is AMAZING), and references in the blogosphere has sent the Centennial-based URL to number one on link-sharing site del.icio.us.

Centennial also ranked the latest USB hacks......drum roll please:

1. Slurp: a podslurping application that can copy vast amounts of company files in seconds
2. John the Ripper: detects and cracks weak passwords
3. Nmap: can explore an entire network and identify vulnerabilities or security technology
4. Ethereal: allows the user to see all traffic passing over a network – originally used for troubleshooting
5. Showtraf: continuously monitors and displays network traffic
6. TCPDump: enables the user to display and intercept TCP/IP addresses travelling across a network
7. Nemisis: intentionally to test intrusion detection systems, can enable the bypassing of security measures
8. Netpass: recovers passwords on various guarded areas of the network

If you want a great resource for data theft and portable storage device vulnerabilities, please visit www.watchyourend.com.

-posted by Justin

You may not have noticed, but there is a serious storm brewing in the collision of Apple, network security and technology PR. It started earlier this month when Washington Post reporter Brian Krebs posted an article entitled "Hacking a MacBook in 60 Seconds or Less" about a WiFi security exploit that was demonstrated at the Black Hat security conference. The security researchers, Jon "Johnny Cache" Ellch* and David Maynor, both of SecureWorks, made a disingenuous statement that "they weren't picking on Macs here, but..." and in fact the article itself is clearly trying to exploit Apple's security reputation to grab a cheap headline. Well fine, but then it turns out that maybe there wasn't a hack at all, as the security researchers didn't actually use the MacBook's built-in WiFi hardware or software, but rather added a third-party card and driver and then hacked that. Which set off storm #1 wherein a huge number of bloggers, reporters and users said -- justifiably -- WTF?

Not content to leave well enough alone, and apparently not thinking clearly enough to provide a well-reasoned response, Krebs came back with this in a subsequent post: "During the course of our interview, it came out that Apple had leaned on Maynor and Ellch pretty hard not to make this an issue about the Mac drivers — mainly because Apple had not fixed the problem yet. Maynor acknowledged that he used a third-party wireless card in the demo so as not to draw attention to the flaw resident in Macbook drivers. But he also admitted that the same flaws were resident in the default Macbook wireless device drivers, and that those drivers were identically exploitable. And that is what I reported. I stand by my own reporting, as according to Maynor and Ellch it remains a fact that the default Macbook drivers are indeed exploitable." Translation: they said it and alluded to a big coverup so it must be true. And just to fuel the fire, Krebs added: "Again, the point was not to pick on Macs, but..." (article headline not withstanding -- maybe it was added in production, yeah, that must be it...) To which a now considerably annoyed collection of journalists, users and bloggers responded: WTF?

So then Krebs comes back with another response that acknowledges that while he inexplicably hasn't acknowledged this in his two previous articles on this subject, he has in fact seen the exploit working directly on Apple hardware/software. Um, okay, but why didn't you say that to begin with, or at least in your subsequent followup? And then the plot thickens: Apple denies that Secureworks has shared any exploit with them, with Apple spokesperson Lynn Fox rather unequivocally (?) stating: "Whatever they are claiming to have found, they haven't shared it with us." And then, Secureworks itself added this disclaimer: "This video presentation at Black Hat demonstrates vulnerabilities found in wireless device drivers. Although an Apple MacBook was used as the demo platform, it was exploited through a third-party wireless device driver — not the original wireless device driver that ships with the MacBook. As part of a responsible disclosure policy, we are not disclosing the name of the third-party wireless device driver until a patch is available." Adding insult to injury, Secureworks is apparently now not returning Krebs' phone calls asking for clarification: "I have several times now asked SecureWorks to share with me more specific information to back up their claims, but so far I have received no further details. If I hear back from SecureWorks with any more material information, I will update the blog."

So, what is really going on? Unfortunately, almost a month later, we don't yet have a clear answer from a security standpoint, which is just ridiculous. What we do know, however, is how not to handle this from a PR standpoint.

PR LOSERS: Maynor, Ellch and Secureworks, who clearly took advantage of the Mac's security reputation for professional gain and have thus far failed to substantiate their claims. If you buy into the myth that any coverage is good coverage, then I guess you'd be overjoyed. But if the objective was to enhance their reputation as outstanding and responsible security consultants, I'd say they're not doing too well thus far. A simple statement clarifying the situation was warranted weeks ago: is the MacBook hackable or not?

PR LOSER: Brian Krebs – went for a diggable headline and it came back to bury him. Had a chance to clear it up in a subsequent post but botched it. Came back a week later and tried again. Had apparently still not tried to use the usual journalistic technique of verification, and two weeks later that didn't turn out so well.

PR LOSERS: Tech Journalists – who unfortunately have also jumped on the argument from both sides, using sensationalist headlines around the story and a red herring argument: that the Mac hack was clearly done with third party hardware. Duh. We knew that on day one, and it is neither "admitting falsification" to clarify that nor a "vicious attack" to seek clarification on the true question: is the MacBook hackable? Could we see a little bit of, I don't know, actual reporting or investigative journalism? Hmmm? Maybe?

UNKNOWN: Apple. If their PR statement can be taken at face value then they are going to come out of this way ahead. If details come out indicating that they are being disingenuous, then not so much.

So is there a winner in all this? I believe so: a number of bloggers who come at this either from the Mac or from the security side have taken a well-reasoned, in depth look at the issues and, although reaching opposite conclusions, have at least attempted to sort out all of the conflicting claims and counter-claims while staying focused on the real issue (say it with me here): is the MacBook hackable or not?. As a PR professional that has been at this longer than most of the people mentioned in this post, I find it fascinating that bloggers are stepping in where journalists and columnists used to tread. Technology journalists will always remain central to what it is that we do, but we have long been encouraging clients to pay more attention to the blogging community in key markets. This confirms that recommendation. (Clarification: Rich Mogull of securosis.com, the security blog mentioned above, is a long time Gartner analyst and someone we've dealt with for clients. So one could argue that he doesn't count as a "blogger" – but it was on his blog that he tackled this issue and this is my article so I get to classify him as I please. So there.)

* as a footnote, can we please all agree that, in the tech industry at least, having a hip nickname like "Johnny Cache" makes you sound like an idiot?

-posted by Paul

Sorry for the lack of posts this week, but we've been out at Interop in Vegas -- and I'm happy to report that the networking industry's main tradeshow is definitely looking up compared to past years. Good traffic, lot of buzz. It's been a long time coming, and since our mere existence is proof of a new tech bubble (see previous entry), I have to say that things are definitely looking up for the industry (at least until the bubble pops, that is).

-posted by Paul

We've had an ongoing discussion here at VOXUS on the merits of various Northwest-focused tech news blogs and mainstream media sources. There are certainly some good ones out there, such as this and this and a few others. But interestingly, we haven't been able to find one that is exactly what we're looking for: a single source for general news on Northwest tech companies and events. We have some fantastic newspapers around the region, including the Post-Intelligencer and Times in Seattle, the Oregonian in Portland, the Sun in Vancouver BC, several great Business Journals and quite a few really good mid-market papers. Bu