We’ve all heard the myths and urban legends surrounding cell phones, so how do we know which are true and which are false?

For instance, we read with skepticism a press release published last week on NaturalNews.com that claimed:

“A new review of more than 100 studies on the safety of mobile phones has concluded that cellular devices are poised to cause an epidemic of brain tumors that will kill more people than smoking or asbestos.”

The only doctor quoted in the story is cited on many websites as a “Mayo-clinic trained neurosurgeon.” However, it plainly states on the official Mayo Clinic website that:

More-common forms of radiation, such as electromagnetic fields from power lines and radio frequency radiation from cell phones and microwave ovens, have not been conclusively linked to brain tumors.

In the same press release the neurosurgeon claims

It is anticipated that this danger has far broader public health ramifications than asbestos and smoking. While one billion people worldwide smoke tobacco, three times as many now use mobile phones.

Yet, a study in 2006 by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute that tracked over 420,000 cell phone users, including thousands that had used their phones for more than 10 years found no increased risk of cancer among those using cell phones.

So, in the spirit of debatable claims like the one above, we’ve gathered a list of the most common “Mobile Myths” and debunk them one by one.

Mobile Myth #1: Cell phones cause cancer. (Still debatable)
No medical study to date has been able to show this to be true. Yes, radiation causes cancer but it has not been proven that cell phones emit enough radiation to have negative health effects. Of course the long term effects are unknown but it is highly unlikely that malignant tumors will result from cell phone use.

According to the National Cancer Institute website, “research has not consistently demonstrated a link between cellular telephone use and cancer or any other adverse health effect.”

Mobile Myth #2: Gas station fires can be caused by cell phones. (FALSE!)
Maybe it is because we laugh in the face of danger, but we personally ignore all signs asking to “Refrain from Cell Phone Use at the Pump.”  We don’t let the large vehicle with a large tank that takes forever to fill up stop us from talking or texting on our mobile.

Years ago a chain email was sent out stating that there were instances where cell phone sparks ignited gas fumes and that Shell issued a warning stating the dangers of cell phone use at the pump.

Our favorite Mythbusters featured this myth on their show; result: busted. A cell phone cannot create enough of a spark to ignite gas fumes. However, static electricity can cause sparks which is the likely source for these gas station fires.

At the end of the day however, the more people who believe this myth, the better. Why? Because the best reason to stay off your mobile phone while pumping gas is so you can pay attention to what you are doing. Those signs at the stations protect us from the folks out there who can’t walk and chew gum at the same time, let alone pump a highly flammable liquid into their car while trying to have a conversation.

Mobile Myth #3: Cell phones can crash airplanes. (Debatable)
Never has a cell phone been determined to be the cause of an airplane crash. Cell phones can disrupt the navigation systems of planes, however. As technology advances this is becoming less of an issue and soon travelers will be able to freely use their mobile and wireless devices in air.

BBC News announced in April that the European Union made it possible for travelers to make mid-air calls. Individual airlines will make the final decision on whether or not to offer the service, but this is a big step forward in showing that cell phone use in-flight can be safe. A picocell, a mobile base station, is installed in the plane and, after the plane reaches a certain altitude, the picocell is switched on providing a bubble of cell service for the passengers.

Mobile Myth #4: You can unlock your car via cell phone. (FALSE!)
Don’t cancel your AAA membership yet! The myth is that if you’ve locked your keys in your car and you have a spare at home you can have someone press the unlock button into the home phone while you hold your cell to your car and it will magically unlock. Remote entry locks use radio waves, which are not transmitted via cell phone speaker, and require the proper proximity to work. Busted.

Mobile Myth #5: Using cell phones near hospital equipment can cause malfunctions leading to injury/death. (FALSE!)
The Mayo Clinic conducted a study to test the theory that cell phones disrupted hospital equipment and found it to be completely false. If the Mayo Clinic has busted the myth I think it is safe to say that you are good to go on that next surgery or visit to the doctor’s office.

Once again, this is a case of “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should;” meaning if you are at the doctor’s office it is courteous to refrain from shouting into your phone from the waiting room. If you need to make a phone call, good manners tell you to step outside for the call. And for the love of God, if you are at the hospital and your wife is in labor, the last thing she wants you to be doing is talking on your cell phone. Trust us. So just use good judgment and be considerate of those around you before making that mobile call from the doctors office or hospital  - even if your cell phone won’t cause the heart and lung machine to stop working.

Dell releases low-cost laptops for “emerging economies.” Dell has unveiled a new line of computers designed to meet the needs of small businesses, governments and educational institutions operating on limited budgets in the world’s emerging economies. The new Vostro products include two pre-configured laptops and two desktops. Additional Vostro products designed for emerging economies will be introduced in coming months.

According to IDC, there are more than 72 million small businesses worldwide, with 23.4 million – nearly one-third of the global total – located in Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan). Latin America and EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) follow with 12.5 million and 11.9 million.

The new Vostro products were designed to address affordability, reliability and easy maintenance, says Dell.

Photoshop goes online, finally! Adobe Systems Incorporated last week announced the availability of an online version of Adobe Photoshop Express. The public beta will let users store, sort and show off digital photos with eye-catching effects. According to Adobe, Photoshop Express allows users to store up to 2 gigabytes of images online for free, make edits to their photos, and share them online in creative ways, including downloading and uploading photos from popular social networking sites like Facebook. Photoshop Express offers a variety of creative sharing options, including uploading and showing off photos and slideshows in your own online “Gallery” hosted by Adobe, or conveniently embedding or linking photos to social networking sites and personal blogs without having to leave the application.

Did you get Obama’s veep text? So did 2.9 million. Nielsen Mobile, a service of The Nielsen Company, estimates that 2.9 million US mobile subscribers received a text message from the Obama campaign over the course of Friday, Saturday and Sunday last week. How does Nielsen know this? Nielsen Mobile monitors shortcode marketing (the use of text-message shortcodes such as the 62262 “O-B-A-M-A”) through the world’s largest telecommunications bill-panel, an opt-in panel that reports on the billing activity for more than 40,000 subscriber lines in the US.

The VP message was sent in the late hours of Friday night and is, by many accounts, the single largest mobile marketing event in the US., to date. From a mobile perspective, it makes sense that the campaign chose to use text-messages. Today, 116 million US mobile subscribers (52 percent of subscribers) actively use text messaging, making it a new mass medium for marketing efforts.

Nic Covey, director of insights at Nielsen Mobile also believes that “the success of this text-campaign has Madison Avenue thinking even more about how they too can interact with a universe of 116 million text-message users in the US.”

We agree. From a marketing standpoint, good move. It got people talking throughout the week, not only about his announcement, but also his commitment to technology throughout the week – hitting a fever pitch Friday night.

On the other hand…

We knew who the veep was before we went to bed. We got the text message the next morning – because it was sent during the night. And where did we get the information? The old guard: TV news. Not the web, not Twitter, not a text message.

Information Week’s Mitch Wagner has a fantastic analysis on the old guard scooping the new media.

Was the announcement itself a success? Wagner doesn’t think so. It was successful though in getting people to opt-in [cough cough] with their email addresses. So far, we’ve received emails from Michelle Omaba, Barack’s campaign manager, and Joe Biden.

Then again, text messaging may be obsolete by 2017. In his thought-provoking post, Ed Hardy, editor at Brighthand.com says:

Five years from now, I predict that anyone in the U.S. getting a text will be surprised. U.S. carriers will turn the service off in less than 10 years.

The technology for full email access is available now, so SMS has really outlived its usefulness.

At least injuries from walking into light poles while texting will go down, right?

Verizon, meet Google. According to the Wall Street Journal (don’t look for a link, the WSJ still refuses to offer most their content online for non-subscribers) Verizon Communications is close to an agreement that would make Google the default search provider on Verizon devices. According to the article:

“Telecom companies are finally conceding that their homegrown search services have stalled.

Today, users have to go to different places to look up services such as ringtones, restaurants and Web pages. Verizon wants to create a new search platform that would be a one-stop shop.”

Revenue, says the piece, will be split and come from ads that appear in keyword searches.

Network World also has coverage of the pending deal.

Presidential race: The year of the text message? You’ve no doubt heard about Barack Obama’s plan to announce his VP running mate via text messaging (and if you are reading this after August 22, you know who he has picked). And for all the flack that John McCain has received on his tech skills, [e.g., “what’s an Internet?”] the GOP is also utilizing SMS to get its message out, mobilize supporters and reach newer voters. In Austin, Texas, the Statesman reports that local campaigns are ramping up their outreach with the help of text messaging.

Text messaging has been used in both parties, according to the article. One example given was engaging volunteers who they hope will then spread the message. A specific example was the use of text messaging to volunteers to call in to a radio show that featured an opposing view.

An interesting quote from the article:

“Fifteen years ago, it was the fax machine. Five years ago, the e-mail. Right now, the text message is it.”

Did you sign up to get election news via text? How has it worked for you? One person here in the office subscribed to the Obama Mobile text stream only to be completely left out on the big day. That’s right… even after subscribing, confirming her zip code and receiving the confirmation text from team Obama, she never received the expected text (or any other text message from the candidate’s party) around the announcement. Bummer. And, what was the purpose of sending the text at 2 am in the morning?

American teens not that into the Summer Olympics. For all the talk about the 2008 Summer Olympics being the first to really utilize online and mobile technologies, a new study from Harris Interactive Youth Center of Excellence, suggests that the 13-18 year old market expressed only moderate interest in the Olympics and weren’t exactly glued to their mobiles.

According to the report, just under half (46%) of 13-18-year-olds in the US expressed an interest in the Olympics, including just 27% who are extremely or very interested, according to a Harris Interactive Youth Center of Excellence study conducted before the Games began.

“Marketers and advertisers may think that teens are a natural constituency for the Games, since many of the Olympic competitors are the same age. Our findings, however, indicate that the Olympics have not yet captured the majority of hearts and minds of today’s teens in the US,” said Dana Markow, PhD, VP senior consultant, Harris Interactive Youth Center of Excellence.

A far smaller number of teens are interested in reading about (22%) or watching (14%) Olympic sporting events online. Similar to an overall interest in the Olympics, plans to follow the Games online increases significantly with age - consistent with the trend for youth to spend an increasing amount of time online as they get older.

Mobile data cards gaining with consumers. Wireless data cards—hardware that allows laptop and PC users to connect to the Internet over a wireless carrier’s cellular network—are fast becoming a popular means of home Internet access. According to a new report from Nielsen Mobile, there were more than 13 million wireless data card users in the US as of Q2 2008.

Recent adoption has been strong, with more than half (55 percent) of these devices acquired in the past 12 months. In fact, 43 percent of mobile data card users report they most often use their data card at home, while 15 percent say they typically use the card at work. Additionally, one in five (21 percent) data card subscribers take advantage of ubiquitous access by heading outdoors and 9 percent use their card while commuting [and hopefully not “driving”].

NBC unveils measurement of mobile usage at Olympics. According to an article in AdAge, NBC Universal has revealed usage figures for mobile devices and the Olympics. The biggest news from the report is that the Olympics as an event seem to be driving mobile video and mobile news adoption for the masses. According to a spokesperson for NBC, half of the mobile users who are watching video or getting news from their mobiles about the Olympics, are doing so for the first time.

According to the piece, NBC also unveiled a way to measure all viewers across the board [TV, online, web, cable] with something called TAMi, or total audience measurement index, described by AdAge as:

Data capture in rudimentary fashion; the numbers of people watching Olympics content on TV, online, via mobile and through video-on-demand.

The program is still in its early stages and stats won’t be used to sell ad time says NBC – at least not yet. It’s interesting to note that the larger players such as NBC are starting to acknowledge there’s a whole new audience – the mobile consumer - that wasn’t a target even a mere four years ago during the Athens Olympics, and that in response they are starting to develop custom content to meet the needs of mobile users.

MySpace: Not just crappy bands, creepy stalkers and strippers. According to Marketing Charts, MySpace numbers shot through the roof with a record 75.2 million unique US visitors in July 2008, the highest number since its launch in 2004 - and an increase of 2.5 million from the previous month.

MySpace attributes its continued growth to recent changes it has made to its site and its ability to “make money in high interactive spend areas.”

Other positive data included:

• Total minutes spent on MySpace increased to 17.3 billion (a 7% increase month-over-month) while average minutes per visitor decreased for the total Internet
• Visitors each spent nearly 4 hours on MySpace in the month
• Visitors spent nearly three times the amount of total minutes on MySpace than on any of its closest competitors’ sites.
• MySpace total minutes were up 20% compared with the same period last year.

“BRIC” countries bigger fans of mobile entertainment. Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) mobile markets are more into entertainment-theme sites than American and European markets where the draw is information and news, says The Nielsen Company. According to Nielsen,  entertainment, gaming, and music websites rank among the top five categories visited in all four BRIC countries, but do not have a place among the top US and Europe rankings.

Email, weather, news and search are the top categories for both American and European mobile Internet users. Nielsen’s research suggests that mobile Internet users across BRIC countries are more reliant on mobile phones to provide them with entertainment content, while users across the United States and Europe view their devices more as a resource for information.

Online video market: Still ready to explode, but when? The worldwide online video market is experiencing dramatic growth, says a new report from In-Stat.

Worldwide online video revenue is expected to eclipse US$4.5 billion by 2012, up from $1.2 billion in 2008, the market research firm says. Purchased/rented videos are expected to offer the most robust growth for online video in the near term, in large part due to an increase in subscription services such as Netflix, which charges a flat monthly fee to deliver an optimal combination of packaged goods and online content that can be viewed on home TV sets. [The report was released before this week’s Netflix snafu.] http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=9676

By 2012, In-Stat forecasts that 90% of US households will have access to broadband, with 94% of these individuals watching online video. On the other hand, they say 54% of respondents of their survey still favor physical discs when purchasing movies or TV shows. The DVD isn’t dead yet, folks!

I understand how the view of the PR profession was shaped for people like Robert Scoble and Marshall Kirkpatrick. If I go to Sears only to buy tools, for example, I might think of Sears as a tool store. Someone else might think of it as an appliance store, or a furniture store or a tire store.

Robert and Marshall are on the receiving end of news pitches, and must get literally thousands of irrelevant and off-topic pitches every month. Bad pitches make the entire industry look bad, which is why my friend Richard Laermer of RLMpr exposes them in his Bad Pitch Blog. And I can certainly understand that as a result, many bloggers would rather find the news themselves than receive it from a PR agency. But PR is not a “pitch store.” It’s a complete department store with many different communications tools and services that present a lot of wide ranging value to companies large and small.

Good PR agencies not only target their pitches correctly, they provide additional value to reporters and bloggers that extend well beyond the pitch and the press release. Oh, and by the way, good PR agencies also help strategize that “serendipitous” discovery of a new service too. It’s important for those who are trying to paint PR as “obsolete” or at least doomed to understand the complete context of public relations. Far from obsolete, it is specifically because Web 2.0 has created far more outlets where people get their news, reviews and other information that the need for quality PR and PR agencies is more acute.

Every client at MoPR has heard this mantra: “P.R. does not stand for press release.” It’s a pet peeve of mine, but every time I hear someone say “can you write us a PR…” I go a little nutty. There is so much more to the craft of PR than just writing press releases and pitching them.

Marshall references other activities that PR agencies do for clients, specifically messaging and serving as the voice of the company when good communications skills are needed but not present within the company. This is all true, but barely scratches the surface.

Good PR is about ideas and relationships. Not relationships between organizations and the journalists and bloggers who may write about them. It’s about the relationships between organizations and their various constituents (sometimes referred to as their “publics”; ergo “public relations”). As one means of relating to the public – and yes, it’s the biggest, certainly the most obvious but not always the most important – is working directly with the media to tell a company’s story.

There is tremendous value to a company when a respected third party, like a Robert Scoble, writes or videos a positive story about the company, its product or service. A great many people tune in to what Robert Scoble has to say, and therefore he has the ability to motivate people to do something. For example, when he covered our client Talkster at CTIA last year, his coverage no doubt contributed to the surge in users that Talkster experienced at that time.

Journalists and bloggers are a conduit to the public. I mean this with the utmost respect. If a company tells its story, a handful of people may hear it and a subset of those will believe it. If the story is told by a respected journalist or a respected media outlet, a great many more people will hear it and a higher percentage will believe it. Why? Because people understand that there is a journalistic process that requires research, multiple sources and the vetting of information. So of course we’re interested in writing news releases and pitching them to important publications.

The right story in the right publication can change the game for a company. When we recently launched Cascada Mobile, a mobile application developer tool, it was an article in Marshall Kirkpatrick’s ReadWriteWeb – a primary target on our list – that delivered the most traffic to Cascada’s service. As it should; as it was planned by us.

But let’s step back from individual news outlets. If one story is good, aren’t five better? How about ten? Should companies really consider a cross-our-fingers-and-wait approach to telling their story? Will the people who invested thousands or millions of dollars in a company appreciate this approach? I have yet to meet the CEO who would find results like that satisfactory. Not even the CEO of the bootstrapped startup (who is actually needier than the well financed variety).

When we – that is the PR industry – pitch news, we’re not after just one reporter or blogger. We’re after a long list. We don’t want hundreds or even thousands of people to get our news. We want millions. We love when Robert Scoble covers our clients. But when he does, he’s not the only one doing so. Patiently waiting for a blogger to discover a product via viral marketing or RSS feeds is a bad strategy. Especially if your competition has a PR agency.

We recently heard a fellow from a local interactive marketing agency saying that he believes he can just post a press release on his blog and bloggers and reporters will discover it. I am wholly unconvinced that’s true. How many companies are out there? How many of them are issuing press releases? If they all just passively posted their news and waited, how many reporters or bloggers will find it? Guess what, there is no standards body for tags and keywords, and that makes RSS feeds somewhat imperfect as a news delivery service.

In Robert Scoble’s post he cites how excited he was to discover something that was off the grid by having it shown to him by an associate who was part of a company’s private beta. Well that’s PR too.

Good PR agencies get involved in helping companies select the members of their private betas. Why? Because we know that some people have influential friends, and we either want those friends to see it or don’t want them to see it. A great many times we’ve reached out to influential bloggers and invited them to be beta testers themselves. Not just because we want them to cover the service, but more importantly in these instances because they see so much in their respective industries that their feedback as a beta tester is highly valuable.

So far I’ve only talked about news and the launches of new products. But some companies don’t have new products every year, and yet they still need PR. What else does PR do for businesses?

Marhsall mentioned that if there is a circle of Hell for PR practitioners, it is reserved for those who get behind companies, products or services in which they don’t personally believe. Maybe. I can tell you that good PR agencies provide counsel. Just as every defendant (even guilty ones) are entitled to their counsel, every company is entitled to marketing counsel – good counsel.

MoPR had a client that was building a service that we had to counsel was NOT ready for PR. Their service was too nascent, the competition in the space was much farther along in product development and also much better financed. Knowing that a PR campaign would deliver many eyeballs to their service, we had to tell them to wait and develop their product further. The maxim is true: you do only get one chance to make a first impression. As their agency, we wanted our client’s service to not only make a good first impression, we wanted them to have impact in their space. They weren’t ready, so we counseled them to stop doing PR until they were. It cost us a monthly retainer, but it was good counsel.

A good PR agency is also part market research firm. It has its many fingers on the pulse of the industries in which its clients play. It’s important to know about market trends, competitive news and industry developments. What company would not benefit from knowing these things? Yes, a CEO or VP of engineering could probably spend hours every week using the same tools agencies have to come up with the same reports. But shouldn’t they be running their company or building their product?

Don’t underestimate the value of knowing the marketplace. There is an art to timing news so that it makes the biggest impact. We’ve seen tech companies issue press releases on a Thursday afternoon in the midst of CES, CTIA or Interop and wonder why no one paid any attention. (If you don’t know why I referenced Thursday afternoon, then perhaps you need a PR agency too; if you wonder why you issued a press release and no one paid attention you most certainly do).

Companies may also face competition, and that competition may itself be aggressively trying to capture market share. I suppose one could wait until a product is discovered by a single important reporter. But in a competitive environment, it’s probably best to be aggressive oneself. Years ago my partner Melissa and I worked on both ends of the PR table for a company in the Wi-Fi space. Melissa was on the agency side and I was her client. We had a competitor who was not only aggressive in telling its story, it also had a casual relationship with the facts. It claimed that its Wi-Fi network was much larger than it actually was, and we had proof.

In a campaign that we dubbed “The Hotspot Coldwar,” we found the one influential blogger who could tell this story the best and we delivered to him the proof. We also opened our service to him so that he could have all the raw data from us as well, and we let him – a recognized industry expert – audit both networks (he actually audited three). His report on the true size of the respective networks was the Hotspot Coldwar’s equivalent of the “shot heard around the world.” His story was cited as though it was an industry report by trade press in North America, Europe and Asia. Oh, by the way, it was no accident that all these news outlets covered the report; we shared it with them.

In the end, our competitor was forced to adopt fair reporting standards, deemed fair by the industry. Their credibility was dashed and their news was covered far less frequently. Winning in a competitive marketplace has value too, and PR can be a big contributor.

Perception in the industry is always important for companies. Executives want their company to be relevant and important in their industry. PR agencies will speak of “thought leadership.” That’s another important aspect of PR. These activities involve winning awards, speaking at industry events and making company spokespeople sought-after industry experts. When you’re at an industry conference sitting in a panel discussion, the moderator and panelists were probably submitted by PR agencies. It’s particularly gratifying for us when we see a manager or director from one of our clients sitting on a panel with CEOs or VPs from their competitors. Perception matters.

This post has become very long, and I still haven’t covered media training, Reg-FD, crisis communications, product reviews, viral marketing, social networking, messaging and positioning, media training, data mining, press kits or even the craft of writing an executive bio. I’ve been in PR for more than 20 years and I have (I hope) a solid perspective on PR. So trust me when I say, PR doesn’t stand for “press release.”

At MoPR we are big believers in social media. Our clients all have social media press kits and use multimedia elements to tell their story. They all blog and are all extremely accessible to the media. We regularly issue social media press releases and have our own social media newswire. But I cannot stress this enough: we are not sitting on our hands hoping for one good story. We all have Twitter accounts, and so do all our clients. And we make good use of them too. But we’re not relying on Twitter for communicating news to our followers. We use it to take the pulse of our clients’ industries and markets using tools like Summize (please don’t break Summize, Twitter). Social media tools are important, but they are not evolved enough to replace proactive activities of PR agencies. We don’t want thousands of people to hear about our clients, we want millions, and one news story here or there is never enough – particularly for the bootstrapped startup looking to break its way into a market.

Image courtesy of: PopCollector.

Delta Air Lines announced this week that it will be the first and only major US airline to offer broadband Wi-Fi access on its entire mainline fleet.

It’s about time.

Members of the founding team here at MoPR remember all too well the highly successful (and well covered) launch of enterprise roaming on the Connexion by Boeing service,  an in-flight Internet service that was piloted with a series of international airlines.

Members of our team were instrumental in launching the service, garnering a significant amount of buzz for the new offering and even winning a few coveted industry awards for the PR program.

But it takes more than stellar PR for a product to truly take off (pun intended) and Connexion by Boeing never did. In August 2006, Boeing announced that it would discontinue its Connexion service, stating that, “the market for this service has not materialized as had been expected.”

When the announcement of the close of Connexion came down, some industry watchers cited the cost of the service as the largest barrier, while others were of the opinion that offering a power source in the seat was necessary if we were to use our computers to access the Internet for longer flights. Others recognized the huge financial burden that the airlines had to absorb when taking a plane out of service to complete the install of Connexion equipment. It was likely a combination of all of these factors that killed Connexion, coupled with the lack of availability on any major US airline.

Now enter Delta, two years later, and all the wiser. Delta will partner with Aircell’s Gogo service that will allow passengers to access the Internet via laptops, smartphones and PDAs. The fees are set to run $9.95 for flights under three hours and $12.95 for longer trips. This is less than the Connexion by Boeing service, and really not too bad considering most airports charge around the same price for in-terminal service.

The only foggy part is the timing. Noting “sometime next summer,” Delta isn’t too quick to give out specifics.

With this news and the acceleration we’ve seen since 2006 in mobile device adoption, it’s a safe bet that the number of business travelers will spike aboard Delta flights once this Internet offering takes effect. With the cost of flights on most major carries mirroring one another (and rising daily) travelers are now searching for the perks. Granted, not everyone will have the choice of traveling on the luxurious Emirates A380. Still, it doesn’t mean that passengers should have to sacrifice all luxuries when they board a plane. In an economy where airlines have resorted to charging for not only checked luggage and sodas, but also pillows and blankets, it’s good to see that at least one airline is looking to offer perks above and beyond (even if they come with a fee).

Are United, Continental, US Airways, and United far behind? American Airlines has also been testing the idea of using Aircell, but only on 15 of its planes. The other major carriers are throwing around the idea, though none have committed the way Delta has to an entire fleet.  It will be interesting to watch as Delta’s competitors scramble to keep up. But then again, that’s what we passengers need: A little more competition in the skies.

JetBlue has Wi-Fi on just one international aircraft, but does offer 30 or so channels of live television via DirecTV in every seat on a large number of their domestic flights.

We wonder what is more compelling, live TV or access to the Internet?  Leave a comment and let us know what you think.

Mobile users will watch ads for “free” content. According to 4th Screen Advertising’s Adlndex for Mobile research, conducted by Dynamic Logic, 88 percent of mobile users in the UK are willing to receive pre-roll mobile ads in return for free video content. Mobile pre-roll ads, which ran on O2 Active, are “attention grabbing” and increase brand recognition and favorable opinions of advertisers, the study found.

More surprisingly, 59 percent of participants said the mobile ads made them more interested in the advertised brand, and 62 percent said the ads gave a good impression of the brands being advertised.

Will Web 2.0 leave email in the dust? Text messaging, blogging and social networking have reached critical mass. More than half of adults in the U.S. surveyed said they now rely on at least one of these so-called Web 2.0 platforms to communicate with friends, family, or colleagues on a regular basis, says MediaPost reporting on an ongoing tracking study from Interpublic’s Universal McCann unit.

The study also found that the 18-34 crowd primarily uses social media as its dominant form of personal communication media, with 85% of this influential demographic group relying on one or more Web 2.0 platforms to stay in touch with others.

So, where does that leave email? Of the three conferences we have attended in the last six months, at least one presenter claims that “email will soon be extinct.”

On the other hand…

Search may overtake email as the ‘ubiquitous online experience.’ Though email is still the most common daily online activity, the percentage of consumers who use search daily has grown considerably over the past six years, according to a report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project and reported in iMedia Connection.

Based on Pew’s survey, email is the only more popular online activity, with 60 percent of users checking their inboxes on a daily basis. Search has quickly risen to second place, with the percentage of daily searchers growing 69 percent since 2002.

Coca-Cola goes for interactive media marketing gold at the Summer Olympics. Coca-Cola is partnering with Pioco, China’s biggest Bluetooth Media company, and reaching out to Olympic attendees via thousands of hotspots around Beijing. Their campaign includes broadcasting Coca-Cola Bluetooth video commercials to Bluetooth-enabled phones and broadcasting messages to users entering hotspots asking them for permission to download content from Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola’s relationship with Pioco marks the first time in Olympic history that a brand has used Bluetooth media for its marketing campaign.

Year of the Mobile. New research from The Nielsen Company shows that a substantial number of mobile users across the globe will be following the Olympics on their cell phones this summer, making the Games a watershed event for media fragmentation tied to mobile.

According to Nielsen Mobile, a service of The Nielsen Company, nearly 45% of US and 31% of UK mobile video users will be part of the mobile audience for the 2008 Olympic Games.

The data reveals that track and field and gymnastics both rank among the most popular Olympic events mobile video users want to watch on their phones.

The research also suggests that the mobile Internet will play a critical role, as 23% of US and 17% of UK mobile internet users will be tracking the Games through their phone browsers, with event results and medal counts being the most desired pieces of information.

We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that our client Viigo has partnered with The Globe and Mail to bring mobile updates, scores, medal counts, and exclusive content from the Globe and Mail sports team, to smartphones worldwide.

Most of us have been watching the Time Warner “consumption-based” billing Internet trial closely taking place in Beaumont, Texas.  The ruling on this trial will have long-reaching effects on deciding the next steps for Time Warner to move to a “price locked” Internet usage system.

Currently the monthly limit in Beaumont - which applies to new customers - is 5 gigabytes on the low end, 20 gigabytes for the mid-level speed, and up to 40 gigabytes for the 15 Mbit/s modem service. Time Warner is charging $1 per gigabyte if a customer exceeds those prescribed levels.

The kicker is the $1 per gig over the allotted amount.  Think back to when cell phone minutes were meager and running over your plan meant skipping that month’s electric bill.  Now take that and apply it to something that has never been restricted before, and you’ve got the controversial consumption-based billing.

From the initial look of it, Time Warner’s consumption cap is much lower than its competitors. Cable Digital News wrote an article stating that the initial Time Warner levels are:

Dwarfed when compared to what some other operators are considering or about to implement. Comcast Corp. is believed to be mulling a threshold in the neighborhood of 250 gigabytes. Meanwhile, BendBroadband of Oregon is elevating its cap to 100 gigabytes per month.

But I’m still concerned and think the idea of a metered Internet system is doomed.  Here is why:

1. People will be watching the clock.  No one wants to pay overage fees, and guess what that means:  less people browsing the Net at night.  Internet usage WILL GO DOWN.
2. “Metered prices may chill innovation in cutting-edge applications because consumers will have a disincentive to use them,” explains Ben Scott of Free Press. “Viewed in the context of our long-term national goals for a world-class broadband infrastructure, telling consumers they must choose between blocking and metered pricing is a worrying development.”
3. The gap will once again increase between those who can afford the Internet and those who cannot.  Especially in light of the market slump, people will be forced to opt for the lowest price option, giving them poor bandwidth.
4. It opens up doors for the operators to abuse their already longstanding monopoly.  Essentially, we will be forced to comply with their rules.  And in the end, we will be paying and unbelievable amount while they make record profits.

As for the trial in the Lone Star State, all eyes will be on the ruling. I’m afraid most Web surfers aren’t going to be very happy with it.

While those of us with Reg-FD and Sarbanes Oxley publicity regulations battle scars are waiting to see the official guidelines, some people are couching this vote as the final nail in the press release coffin. Let’s not be too hasty.

Fundamentally, Reg-FD protects investors and prospective investors by making disclosure of material non-public information simultaneous and widespread. In other words, a company needs to broadcast the disclosure of material information – information that will affect a stock price once made public – so that all investors can have access to it at the same time. Traditionally, this has meant using a newswire for such disclosure so that the information can be seen far and wide, and be easily discoverable on the Internet.

The SEC’s vote will (may?) amend this practice to allow Reg-FD disclosure on company websites in, what one IR website refers to as “certain circumstances.” Some people have interpreted this decision to mean that blogs can now be used to disclose earnings information to investors and therefore the press release is dead.

That’s probably too overstated and certainly premature. The SEC guidelines are not yet public information. What is public, as of today, is the 120 page (excluding the appendix) “Final Report of the Advisory Committee on Improvements to Financial Reporting to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission,” which on page 108 states:

The SEC has issued a series of interpretive releases and rules addressing the use of electronic media to deliver or transmit information under the federal securities laws. The SEC issued its last comprehensive interpretive release on the use of electronic media, including corporate websites, in 2000. Since 2000, significant technological advances have increased both the market’s demand for more timely corporate disclosure and the ability of investors to capture, process, and disseminate this information. Recognizing this, the SEC has adopted a large number of rules that mandate, permit, or require disclosure of the use of corporate websites to provide important corporate information and developments. The SEC has voted to publish an interpretative release to provide guidance regarding the use of company websites under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and the antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws.

Nowhere in the 120 pages of the report or the 60 or so pages of appendix will you find the words “blog” or “social media.”

That’s not to say blogs, forums or social networks won’t be impacted. In fact, in the press release issued by the SEC, Chairman Christopher Cox says, “The last time the SEC issued guidance in this area, the idea of ’social networks’ hadn’t yet been developed, and creating a social network where shareholders could meet and exchange views was barely imaginable. Ongoing developments in technology have increased both the markets’ and investors’ demand for more timely company disclosure on the Web, and in turn, raised new securities law issues for public companies to consider.”

Cox’s tenure as chairman of the SEC has been regarded by many as leading the SEC to live in the modern world. No question there is more consumable, and therefore more valuable, information available on the web than in the lengthy tables and text contained in a form 10K – the legally required content of an annual report – for example. That’s really cool, and great news for investors. It may even be great news for web design firms and companies like Wordpress. Likely this does not spell disaster for Business Wire, PR Newswire or Marketwire, nor for the press releases they issue.

No one knows yet for sure, because as mentioned before, the “interpretive release” from the SEC is not yet available. TheMoPRBlog asked Business Wire, PR Newswire and Marketwire for their reaction to this news, and all three had no comment to make because there is in fact nothing official yet about which a comment can be made. Once the SEC issues its guidance, these newswires will issue their own.

What may be of more concern to the PR profession is the notion of “under certain circumstances” as raised in the first sentence of the IR Web Report’s article. By way of analogy, think of how another government institution uses this same notion: stuff you pay for is tax deductible… under certain circumstances.

Guidelines are better when the issues are both easily understood and the outcome is binary; you either can do something, or you can’t. Tax laws aren’t binary, and therefore a great many people are forced to rely on outside help when preparing their tax returns, whether that help comes from a tax accountant or from software. The implications of adding a swath of gray to what is now black and white is troubling. Not only does it mean confusion and the possibilities of making mistakes (mistakes made by public companies can result in fines or even jail time for CEOs), it also creates an environment for potential abuse.

When discussing this issue with a corporate counsel friend of mine, he said “adding a subjective element to this process will open the door for mischief.”

Those like Brian Solis, of whom we’re big fans, who think this is the death knell for the press release are focused on form and not substance. Maybe the social media press release will replace the old text-only press releases of years past. The wire services themselves now offer social media wires and XHTML-based content, and our agency has invested in the in-house development of our own social media newswire to issue these social media enhanced news releases, so it’s fair to say that the traditional release will evolve. But changes to the SEC guidelines are probably not going to eliminate the need to cast a wide net so that material non-public information can be made simultaneously available to all investors, nor should they. Not all investors use social media, despite Jonathan Schwartz’s – and quite frankly, Mobility PR’s – desire to make social media ubiquitous.

Instead of waiting for the SEC to catch up to technology advances, social media and blogging companies may want to drive technology advances to catch up with the appropriate need for fair disclosure. TheMoPRBlog guesses that the forthcoming guidelines from the SEC will create the environment where such advances will be both compelling and profitable.

We invite your comments.

The coming text quake. We heard about the Los Angeles earthquake on Tuesday [the “little big one” as the wags are calling it] via Twitter first; not on the radio, 24-hour cable news, or even a news website. In fact, some of the bigger breaking news the past couple of months, such as the deaths of George Carlin and Tim Russert, have been relayed to us first via Twitter on our iPhone.

This means two things. One, that web users are getting their information and news from newer more untraditional sources. And two, we spend way too much time on Twitter.

A recent piece from the Los Angeles Daily News had an interesting take on how web and mobile phone users got their news during the earthquake’s aftermath.

Landline telephones were still a popular way of spreading the news and checking in with relatives; but unlike previous quakes, instant messaging, e-mail and even text messaging were used to get news and check in. According to the article, the LA mayor’s office couldn’t use its phones to contact the city’s emergency operations center and had to rely on trading instant messages via their BlackBerrys.

And, at the University of California, Los Angeles, 30,000 students and employees were sent a “Bruin Alert” text message on the quake.

Sure, the regular news outlets were still out in full force, but it’s an interesting trend and a sign that mainstream media need to think outside the box around how they can and should be delivering the news.

Women viewers turning to online network TV. According to a new report from Integrated Media Measurement Inc. (IMMI) more viewers are watching network TV shows online. The report revealed more than 20% of TV viewers watch some amount of primetime programming online. And the largest segment of online TV viewers? They’re white, affluent, well-educated, working women between the ages of 25-44.

Among online viewers, 50% are watching programming as it becomes available and appear to be beginning to use the computer as a substitute for television, IMMI said.

The other 50% are using the web to watch past programming they have missed:

•    Fill-in viewing: Either they are filling in an episode online when they have already seen the other episodes around it on TV (18.7%).
•    Catch-up viewing: Or they are catching up on an episode online after seeing the previous episodes on TV (31.3%).

The study also revealed that non-DVR owners are adopting the computer for time-shifting rather than buying a DVR. In some cases, online viewing of a particular program was higher than DVR viewing of that program, IMMI found. In general, online viewers are less likely to use a DVR.

Mobile and real-time Olympics. According to the longest press release ever (NBC internal PR, call us. We can help you) NBC is offering 2,200 hours of live streaming video of the 2008 Beijing Olympics on NBCOlympics.com.

According to the release, NBC Olympics Mobile will also present the most comprehensive sporting event coverage ever delivered on mobile phones - from live mobile TV broadcasts to breaking news and text and video alerts.

Stay tuned for an announcement from smartphone users’ favorite mobile content provider Viigo (and MoPR client!) which has some big news to share in the coming weeks around mobile coverage of this year’s Olympic games.

Mobile viruses a reality? AdaptiveMobile, a provider of mobile security solutions for enterprises and individuals, is seeing a sharp rise in the volume of mobile network virus attacks. Recent analysis of the data from the company’s mobile operator customers suggests that two virus variants - CommWarrior and Beselo – are causing particular damage on web phones.

While CommWarrior only affects Nokia Series 60 phones, Beselo attacks all smartphones, spreading via Bluetooth and MMS as a Symbian SIS installation file. Beselo is growing at four times the rate of CommWarrior.

The bottom line from AdaptiveMobile is that:

As infection rates continue to rise and higher proportions of customers are left at risk, mobile phone security will become a key differentiator for customer creation and retention – particularly among large organizations keen to ensure their staff are properly protected. The battle is heating up – and mobile operators have to make sure they are competing effectively.

Hat tip to Read Write Web’s article.

Sprint gets fee smackdown. A California court ruled this week that Sprint Nextel was wrong to charge its customers penalty fees for early termination of cell phone contracts, according to an article from the Washington Post.

According to the article:

Sprint must pay $18.3 million in cash to users who paid early-termination fees; another $54.8 million must be credited to users who were charged but didn’t pay the fees, which is open to comment until Aug. 5, when the final ruling will be made.

The decision only affects California customers, yet Sprint, T-Mobile and other wireless carriers are covering their bases from suits not only in California but in other states by “lobbying the Federal Communications Commission to adopt new federal rules governing such penalties, removing them from state jurisdiction.”

The press release: Its death greatly exaggerated. Last Wednesday the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)’ recommended that rules be set to govern how “corporations disclose their earnings and other information on their Web sites.”  This ruling could drastically impact the newswire business and shift the way IR and financial PR pros execute their communications.

Some in our industry have interpreted this decision to mean that blogs can now be used to disclose earnings information to investors and the press release is now dead.

Not so fast. Read more what we think, here.