News: Z-Three at Safety and Health Expo

Z-Three Reveals Plans and Products at Safety and Health Expo

May 10, 2010 – BlackBerry® accessory distributor Z-Three will be sharing stand Q3 with BlackBerry at this week’s Safety and Health Expo. It will be displaying its complete new range of accessories for BlackBerry smartphones for professional use. These products range from high quality protective covers to data protection, and improved input/ output on the BlackBerry.

They include:

-          tough OtterBox covers for protecting BlackBerry Smartphones from drops, water, dust and other damage;

-          the authentic BlackBerry SmartCard Reader (which offers optimal data security via two-factor AES 256 encryption technology, as approved for both US and UK government use)

-          hands free solutions for total mobility;

-          wired car kits to protect calls made from a vehicle.

Read more »

An Inconvenient PR Truth

Claire Thompson, freelance PR consultant, Waves PR

Realwire has today launched a campaign ‘An Inconvenient PR Truth’.  Their research shows the huge amount of poorly targeted press releases hitting the inboxes of media:

78% of press release emails are considered irrelevant by the recipient

55% of recipients have taken action to block a sender of news

It’s a complex problem, and I do believe strongly that there should be some sort of standard/voluntary code to adhere to, although perhaps one that’s a little more practical than the Realwire suggestion. We have a problem that is hugely damaging to the PR industry.

Read more »

Who thought databases could be fun? Not me until Friday!

Claire Thompson, freelance PR consultant, Waves PR

So the first thupr event happened on Friday. A lot of fun was had, a lot of lessons learned, a lot of beer consumed (ahem!) and a lot of conversations had.  I left around 10pm, and the party was still rolling on. I hadn’t expected that from a business event on a Friday afternoon.

It worked well. There are some great things coming out of it.  There’s an awesome campaign coming up which could help PRs to serve journalists & bloggers better in future – more on that later. An attending friend had a great idea which has nothing to do with databases, but merits a separate blog. And some exciting emerging tools that those attending will share with you later.

Read more »

Putting the press release in it’s place

Claire Thompson, Waves PR

As I’m in the process of organising some get-togethers based around the tools that PR people use, I am highly conscious that making the first one about media databases and press release distribution services is going to raise some eyebrows amongst social media purists, and possibly reinforce some PR stereotypes.

In my own defence, I chose this particular subject for starters as someone had already stuck their hand up to help; because it’s quick and easy to trial the ‘get-together’ format with; and because this is a great way to see what quality of data is out there, and how easy these sytems are to use – as PR folk we cannot possibly know every single publication/blog/website out there so these databases are a valuable point of departure.

(And the second one, on social media monitoring tools, will take more research on my part as there are new tools appearing daily.)

I don’t want to make the event about press releases, but feel the need to address what place I believe the press release has in a 2.0, 3.0, P2P world.

Read more »