Inside the world of Rob Mclean, Author

So I'm almost done getting my new PC set up. I can't believe how long it takes to load everything back on that I use to have. Anyway, as I explain in my last post, my netgear box no longer works with Windows 7 (thank you mister Gates). So I've decided to go a different and even better route and I thought I'd do a quick post because it illustrates why you do NOT need cable television and why the carriers in Canada were so focused on implementing usage-based billing for Internet connection. This is relevant to PR folks because this is a revolutionary shift in how people will get their information in the future and media strategies will have to factor the Web in even more as time goes on.  What I've done is simply plug my television in to the back of my PC using an hdmi cable. I also have my PC monitor plugged in to the same graphics card using DVI-D cable. With this set up I can now work on my desktop either from my PC or my television. What's the big de...

So my old PC kicked the bucket the other day. The whole experience has been quite eye-opening as to what is going on in the world of PCs (which ties in to the internet as well). A couple of interesting (and very frustrating) things happened in my journey to get back online... 1) My visit to Best Buy and FutureShop was shocking. They basically only had about five PC's to choose from, all of them somewhat overrpiced for what you were getting. Not only that, but the store was empty. In both FS and BB there might have been 15 people in the store total. Clearly not a good sign for the economy if you ask me and if store traffic is any indication of anything, BB isn't a stock I'd want to be holding going forward. I ended up buying my PC at Computer Canada, which while not the best experience, was fairly priced. 2) I've now had my introduction to Windows 7 and I have to say there is absolutely nothing of value that is new in the OS. Stick with XP or Vista if you can. ...

So Canada is heading to the polls in May it seems. What I find cool is that CBC has a survey application on its Web site where you answer a bunch of questions and it tells you where your views sit in relation to the various parties. I have to say I was impressed that CBC included an FAQ about Vote Compass , because one might be tempted to think the survey was some effort associated with the political parties to collect data on voter attitudes (which it is not).  I was also impressed that CBC offers live television coverage on the Web (thankfully I dumped Rogers and switched to TekSavvy so I was able to watch the feeds and not worry about how many gigabytes I was using in doing so). Anyway, I'm not sure how accurate the survey app was. According to the results my views are closest to the Liberal party. Which surprised me because I though when all was said and done I was more conservative than liberal. I don't really affiliate with any of the parties though. I'm f...

Well RIM got trashed today in after hours, down 10 per cent based on lower earnings forecast. Glad I sold the stock a while ago. Can't imagine how badly it would have been hit if it didn't have things like tablets hitting the market, which shows that it's at least trying to stay competitive. From a PR / marketing perspective I think RIM has lost its way. Even when you go to their Web site, it's so dark and gloomy. Maybe I'm getting old and my eyes don't adjust the way they should, but using a black background and medium dark grey text for navigation just feels down right gloomy. I have to squint to read most of the text. And while RIM has two central sites, www.rim.com and www.blackberry.com , one for corporate and one for product, only the product site has social media options (which are displayed as the tiniest icons possible in the bottom right corner). They've obviously tried to sex themselves up (the old site was very boring) but fuzzy imag...

Firefox 4 has just come out. I'm a big fan of Firefox and it's my browser of choice (I can't stand Internet Explorer). Having said that I don't know what they were thinking with this release. First, as far as I can tell there's no new features that my older version didn't have. Second, half my plug-ins now don't work. And lastly, and the thing that annoys me the most, they moved the 'home' icon all the way to the right side of the screen. I know it might not seem like a big deal, but it's really annoying. I (and I assume everyone else) spend 99 per cent of my time on the left side of the screen (entering urls, using drop down menus, clicking Web page links, tabbing between web pages that are open, etc.). So why they would take the button I press the most (the home button) and move it as far away from the area of the browser that my cursor is almost always around (ie. the left side of the browser) is beyond me. It's so annoying wh...

In terms of building out your brand equity and thought leadership getting coverage in the media has always been one of the staples of public relations. Despite our evolving reliance on the Web, people still see traditional 'news outlets' as an indicator of relevance.   Within this context print and television have always been the preferred media catches for most PR people. The reasons are pretty simple, both mediums reach a lot of people and the content can be re-used. When you visit most corporate Web sites you'll find a 'news coverage' section listing recent articles or videos related to the company. I've always said that collectively an organization's news releases and news coverage paint a picture of just who they are (and Twitter and blogs don't replace this reality). Whether I'm a customer, investor, or potential employee, a review of their news releases and media coverage is a huge part of how I better understand an organization. Radio has...

I read an interesting article on the CBC website today on internet piracy - Tougher Laws Won't Stop Internet Piracy - and it's what spurred this post. Essentially the article says what most people already know, that piracy is more a function of economic issues than moral issues. Pirating emerges in response to prohibitive cost-to-consumer models and lack of competition in the market which allows inflated costs to arise. What I liked about the article is that it addressed the topic of pirating the way any and all news articles on any subject should do, which is from the perspective of cause and effect. One of the greatest things about the modern-day education system is that at its core it is essentially a study of cause and effect. Whether it's finance, engineering, science, psychology, public relations, medicine, etc. - every academic area focuses on imparting students with an understanding of causes and effects. The result being that they can go out and help change th...

PC Magazine has a feature article on the top 11 PR disasters in tech. The list includes: 1. Apple Antennagate 2. WeTab Exec Fakes Amazon Reviews 3. Sony Exploding Batteries 4. RIAA Sues Everyone 5. Digg Redesign 6. Facebook Terms of Use 7. JooJoo 8. Gizmondo 9. Google Wi-Fi Data Sniffing 10. Yahoo and China 11. Microsoft Windows Vista To me a lot of the items on the list don't really qualify for PR disasters (more like PR hiccups). Disaster implies how you handled things led to the erosion of your brand equity (if your brand equity doesn't fall significantly then it's hard to call it a disaster). I definitely think Vista was close to a PR disaster with Bill Gates doing the media rounds prior to release talking about how great Vista would be (only for it to ship with bugs and issues). That definitely hurt Microsoft's brand equity in the market.  RIAA suing everyone made them look like fools (but was it a disaster? Their stakeholders aren't the...

So in my journey to play around with video I've finally stumbled across a video editor that rocks, it's called PowerDirector . While all the main video editors seem to have the same features, PowerDirector was an amazing experience. Not only were the controls intuitive to understand, but the huge difference was that outputting files was fast. In other programs it would often take 45 minutes or more to output a video file after all my video editing was completed. In PowerDirector it only took five minutes. That may sound like a small selling feature, but let me tell you, having to walk away from your computer for 45 minutes while your video is exported is a royal pain in the butt (and it can drive you insane if you make changes and have to output the file multiple times - kiss your whole day good bye). With PowerDirector, not only was the output super fast, but I could continue working in other programs while it was exporting. I can't say enough about how good this...

So I've been thinking about how this recession has been unfolding. Back in 2010 I felt that 2011 would be a critical year. I thought that the DOW would hit 12,000 by the end of 2010 or the first quarter of 2011 and that did happen. I thought the next leg up on the DOW would come from unemployment going down (and without that happening, we'd top out until it did). Since 2011 I've been thinking a lot about what I think will happen in the coming future. I'm not an economist, but as a PR person it's in my DNA to think about macro trends (as they do influence the world of PR dramatically). I've come to the conclusion that I think we've topped out in the stock market. I know, a shocking statement - how can we ever possibly 'top out' when stock prices are tied to profits (and as such destined to fluctuate up and down). Below I'm outlining the top 10 reasons I think we are going to be stuck in this recession for a very very long time to come, perhaps...