Wildfire Tech PR Blog – Business and Consumer Technology Public Relations

This week, Wired put out a controversial article called “The Web is Dead. Long Live the Internet” which has been making waves across social networks due to its audacious claim.

We thought we’d point you toward some links which continue the debate.

Enjoy!

Is the web really dead? – Rob Beschizza, boingboing.net

Takes the graph from the Wired article and shows what happens when you change the axis from “proportion of total” to “actual total”.

Wired’s Worst Stories – Gary Wolf, Wired

From 2003 but still worth a read – insight from a Wired contributor on culture of “must-readness” at the publication which causes articles like this to emerge.

What’s Wrong With ‘X Is Dead’ – Alexis Madgiral, The Atlantic

Great analysis of how human beings try to shape the technological narrative of their worlds based on desires and intellectual leanings- in this case, Chris Anderson’s role as Editor of the Wired app and magazine but not the website.

The Chrome Web Store Is Coming and Google Has Big Plans for It – Ben Parr, Mashable

The article focuses on how iOS devices have spread the app phenomenon. However, Android now has greater market share on mobile and this will undoubtedly continue in the tablet market. All this means that the Chrome Web Store and its browser based apps are a good horse to put money on. What’s the difference between a website and web app?

Bonus Top 5 things which “have died”

• Email
• Microsoft
• MySpace
• Newspapers
• Elvis

This is a question I’ve been asking on a number of occasions over the last few weeks and, each time, technology has been at the heart of the issue.

The first was the redesign of the BBC news website [as an aside: check out this great post by one of our clients, looking at the changes in detail and what they mean for web design in general]. Twitter, and (shock horror) even the world in general, was aghast and what were, in the grand scheme of things, pretty much ‘lick of paint’ changes.

The second incident has been building up over the last few weeks as, more and more people discover that I’m reading a…dum dum dum…eBook!

I’m trying out the iBooks application on my new iPhone 4 and have been reading the new Dan Brown book (trashy, I know…) Everyone that I meet – including a random bloke on the train – seems amazed by this. Most also start getting all melancholic about it: “Argh! This means the end of lovely paperbacks, how will we cope!”

Did we go through this when tapes became CDs? Did the invention of electricity cause similar uproar? Were we all taken aback when the creation of the wheel meant getting from place to place became a breeze, but meant we all got a little bit more lazy?

I expect, for some, it did.

A psychologist would probably tell us that we like things to be ‘just so’ or ‘as they’ve always been’. We immediately get a bit concerned when things change. It’s natural. It makes sense.

But I also wonder how this very human condition has affected technological advancement. Does the slow adoption of eBooks – which will be commonplace sooner rather than later – because ‘”it’s just not the same as carting round a heavy paperback” slow the rate of advancement? [another aside: interesting to see that sales of eBooks on Amazon have overtaken sales of hardbacks]

I expect it probably does. But does it really matter?

No, of course it doesn’t. It’s how we are and we’ll never change. And yet, I try – in my role working in the technology industry – to take as open-minded a view as I can. I’m enjoying the new BBC website and, once you get used the smaller screen, love the benefits of having a book with me wherever I go.

The future’s bright; we just have to have the confidence to get there!

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Apple has announced a press conference for tomorrow and the rumours are that the company will use it to respond to criticism of the iPhone 4′s reception issues. Some are even suggesting that it could announce a full recall of the product. This speculation in particular has sent the technology company’s share-price rocketing south.

I’m amazed it has taken Apple so long to get to this stage.

I blogged at the end of June about this growing PR disaster and said that if Apple failed to do something about this quickly, it would be facing an unprecedented public backlash. The company didn’t follow this route (maybe Mr Jobs should subscribe to the Wildfire blog!) and is now in a very tricky position.

Apple is a much loved brand and so, if public reaction to date has seemed muted, then this brand loyalty (and, in some cases, obsession) could be the reason. But brand loyalty only gets you so far and, for many people, it is quickly running out. When this happens, public opinion will quickly turn to anger and the damage to the brand then could be catastrophic.

Apple’s cloak and dagger technique might work for product launches, but when it comes to crisis communications, it’s a very dangerous path.

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Apple is facing intense scrunity that is threatening to overshadow the launch of the latest iPhone.

If you haven’t come across the controversy already, new owners of the iPhone 4 (and I’m one of them) are finding that when certain parts of the outer casing are covered at the same time, the phone loses its signal entirely. This is reported as being a fault with the way the phone is put together, with the ‘groundbreaking’ new design featuring an external antenna that runs around the outer casing of the phone.

Apple’s response to date has hardly been a good example of how to effectively manage a ‘crisis’.

The technology company released a statement, which, albeit quite politely, told users to just ‘stop holding it that way’:

“Gripping any mobile phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance, with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas,” said the company in an official statement. “This is a fact of life for every wireless phone. If you ever experience this on your iPhone 4, avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases.”

Apple Chief Steve Jobs, who regularly responds to customers that email him on his freely available email address, at first went along with the official line, but then broke away from this yesterday after telling another enquirer “There is no reception issue. Stay tuned.”

This response seems to echo some of the other rumours doing the rounds that the problem isn’t related to the hardware but the software and that a fix is imminent.

If this is indeed the case, then Apple has been extremely economical with the truth and this could come back to haunt them. Rule one in crisis communications is to respond quickly, with as much factual and transparent information as posssible. Apple doesn’t seem to have complied with this.

If however it’s actually a hardware issue after all, then expect this one to run and run and potentially create a significant headaches for the company.

An interesting side story to this cropped up yesterday when the Daily Mail published a story claiming that Steve Jobs had revealed on Twitter that the iPhone was going to be recalled. The source of the story was in fact the ‘fake’ Steve Jobs Twitter account! Oops!

WWDC – Apple’s annual conference for its developer community – starts today in the US. As always, there has been a ton of speculation and guesswork around what could possibly be announced.

Steve Jobs kicks it all off today at 6pm BST with his opening keynote, where he is widely tipped to announced the latest iPhone iteration. But what else will the conference bring?

Here are my tips (in order of likelihood):

1. New iPhone – it’s a dead cert really, but will the leaks be true and what else will it include? The name is also still tbc – iPhone 4, iPhone HD? And finally, when will it be released?
2. iPhone OS 4.0 – we had the sneak peak in January, so expect the new OS to be packaged up with the new phone and probably for iPhone 3GS users too. iPad owners may just had to make do with OS 3.3 until 4.0 is rolled out later in the year
3. Refreshed Mac Mini, Mac Pro and Macbook Air – the first two are probably more likely but all three models are long overdue a refresh
4. Safari 5 – browser wars are hotting up again and with Apple’s latest fight with Adobe over flash, a browser that includes the latest HTML5 support makes sense. There are also rumours about extensions being added too
5. Itunes.com – Following the acquistion of Lala last December, this has increasingly been on the cards and with the success of Spotify, would make sense. It may be a few months too soon however
6. Free MobileMe – this service has never really taken off, but if it was free, you could expect a lot more people to take it for a test drive
7. iPod Touch - this hasn’t been updated for yonks, so is definitely due for a refresh. Does anyone care though?
8. Mac OS X 10.7 – probably too much to expect the full launch of the next Mac OS, but a sneak peak could be on the cards
9. iPad price drop – unlikely as the launch was so delayed in Europe, but this has happened with other new Apple products in the past
10. One more thing… – Steve hasn’t done a OMT in recent years, but this time round, especially after all the leaks, I wouldn’t be surprised if he something up his sleeve…

Usually you have to rely on text coverage from Gizmodo, Engadget or GDGT and the like to follow the event live, but apparently www.ihackintosh.com and Macrumorslive.com are going to be offering live audio and video streaming from the room.

Anything I’ve missed?