Mike’s Points

Poynter’s Monique Van Dusseldorp has a cool posting today, about the use of instant messaging for new personal communication. Microsoft is assisting the Netherlands in several tests by licensing commercial “chatbots” that users can added to their buddy list.

One cool one involves a couple banks: “Dutch banks already have started to use the service: Postbank and SNSBank ran trials in which IM users could get account information within the IM chat — just by typing in questions like ‘How much money do I have?’”

Then, there’s the really cool feature: getting news.

“News is indeed a good option. Dutch newspaper ‘Volkskrant‘ has been the first to launch its own IM messenger service, called Nieuwskraker, this week. Once you add Nieuwskraker to your buddy list, you automatically get a single news update when you log in, and then get automatic breaking news alerts in the chat environment. Additionally, you can ask for news at any moment by typing in some set queries — and Nieuwskraker also will do archive searches on any word you type in.”

Yes, there are news agregator sites and tools, but there is interesting potential in the use of IMs. If you can pull news, you’d definitely be able to pull RSS and related feeds for blogs and other sources.
– Mike

Technorati tags: Poynter, instant messaging, Microsoft

An amazing story is going on in India. I first posted about it a week ago, after first reading about the story from the Yahoo! Group Image Management. (BTW, Image Group is a very good PR/communications group if those in North America want a more global industry perspective.)

Basically, one Indian blogger, Rashmi Bansal, ran a review of Indian Insitute of Planning and Management’s claims about affiliations with some international institutions. The review was in JAM Magazine, where she is editor and publisher.

Then, a second Indian blogger Gaurav Sabnis posted his reactions to Bansal’s review — which, like Bansal’s, were critical. Sabnis received legal threats from IIPM for his critizism. He ended up resigning from his job — not being fired — rather than cause trouble for his employer and possibly being asked to stop blogging.

According to what the Image Management moderator posted, here are some very interesting stories and various sides to the story, which has exploded in the India blogsphere:

Hindustan Times, A leading Indian newspaper has a detailed article.

The official response of IIPM is posted in a blog. (UPDATED Oct. 28, 2005, 9:50 p.m. ET. The link is not IIPM’s site, as noted in the comments. My apologies. It’s just that IIPM’s official response was posted in the Logical Thinking blog.)

Meanwhile, bloggers have started a signature campaign demanding IIPM to apologise to the bloggers under the title “IIPM: Stop your lies.”

I think only the recent Dell-Jarvis episode could rival what is going on in India. It’s very interesting to see how the blogging is being treated and companies are responding to in two different cultures.

Definitely something to keep an eye on.
– Mike

Technorati tags: India, blogging, Gaurav Sabnis