I had the pleasure to talk to Amazon's Vice President Worldwide Architecture, and Chief Technology Officer, Werner Vogels, at The Next Web Conference in Amsterdam earlier this month, and asked him about what's next for Amazon's 'Kindle' product… just click on the arrow below to listen to our discussion, or click the image to go to utterz.com for other options.

Dr. Werner Vogel, Chief Technology Officer at Amazon.com, talks about The Kindle. And what's next, of course…

Mobile post sent by davidpetherick using Utterz.  Replies.  mp3

I first got involved in online business around 1995, when I first bought a copy of .net magazine, after I got curious about a startup company in the next room of our business centre, who said they were hosting websites.

Back in 1995, most business people I spoke to didn't know what a website was, let alone what a good one would look like, so I started to learn how to code HTML using a highly sophisticated tool called 'Notepad', and registered some domain names where a committee of actual people decided on whether or not I could own a particular domain name…

By 1998, I was designing and managing sites for companies like The Alba Centre (a Silicon Glen incubator) Scottish Financial Enterprise, The British Blood Transfusion Society, and for dozens of conferences a year.

Of course, the dot com bubble burst around 2000-2001, with so much money following ridiculously optimistic business plans, but many survivors from that period are still strong and active today.

Here comes something new…
But around about 2003, a new type of web site started to appear, as what I considered to be a natural evolution coinciding with the high penetration of broadband internet connections into homes and businesses: sites with features that broadly are known as Web 2.0…
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Gmail (or Googlemail if you're in the UK) keeps on improving. And its free. And you never have to delete anything, and it's pretty good at dealing with sp*am… yes, I like it. But I just came across a blog from Google with 5 great time-saving practical features I did not realise existed…

5. "Archive and next" shortcut
4. Share mail searches with friends
3. Browser navigation and history
2. Bookmark emails
1. "Filter messages like this"

• Official Gmail Blog: 5 little-known Gmail features you may not yet know about >>

PS: If you don't have a Gmail account, just ask me to send you an invitation - email david dot petherick at gmail dot com

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I was pleased to hear that my interview outlining my work as "The Digital Biographer" with Adam Walton of BBC Radio Wales broadcast on 12th August sounded good, was a good three minutes longer than expected, and was 'top of the hour' as the lead story.

You can listen in online (I take up around the first 8 minutes) by clicking the arrow below.

I'd like to thank Broadcaster and Speaker Jeremy Nicholas for his first class advice on preparing for, and handling this radio interview.

David Petherick is the Founder and CEO of Clarocada - but he's also "The Digital Biographer" according to the BBC…

"I've no idea how the 25 minutes or so I spent talking with Adam Walton of BBC Radio Wales yesterday will sound when it's edited down to perhaps 5, but we had a good old chat." said David.

All of this follows on from the BBC article which appeared on 16th July "Meet the Digital Biographer", which detailed how David had been working for some months as the "ghost blogger" for Thomas Power, Chairman of business networking site Ecademy.

"There were of course questions related to online identity and the corporate / personal persona. I had to clarify that I don't handle email and messages or blog comments for my customers, but do write blog content. It's a fascinating area, and Adam said he'd like more time to talk about this - one great question was — what do I do if my work for someone results in them being offered a column or guest blog? The answer… well, you'll have to listen in."

The programme goes out at 17:03, Sunday 12th August, repeated Wednesday, 15th August, and is online in the archive for a week from Sunday. You can listen in online at http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/radiowales/sites/mousemat/

David would like to thank several Ecademy Members for demonstrating social networking in action, by providing some great soundbites for him to consider on the morning prior to the interview here in the Blogs Section at Ecademy: Why has social networking become so important?.

Specifically, David's thanks go to Dan Field, Samantha Cannell, Robert Greig, Mark Lee, Iain Wilson and Philip Calvert.

We are delighted to announce that Clarocada customer The Leith Agency, just voted Marketing Services Agency of the Year, has pulled off one of the major coups of the year by beating four Russian advertising agencies to the prestigious SladCo Chocolate account.

The pitch, carried out in Moscow, invited agencies to present their ideas for a television-led campaign to relaunch their flagship boxed chocolate brand – SladCo – in Russia. The campaign, backed by a multi-million pound media budget, will break in August of this year and will run across all major Russian cities.

Marinela Simon, Marketing Manager for SladCo, said:

"We all got an excellent impression of The Leith Agency’s work. It was strategically well-grounded, creatively very good and well thought-through in terms of tone and manner. It also showed a remarkable understanding of Russian culture."

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It's official - well, it is if you rate the Wall Street Journal's front page as authoritative - if your name doesn't Google well, you can have problems with your credibility - and not just with prospective employers.

You're a Nobody Unless your Name Googles Well published on the 8th of May 2007, cites the example of  Abigail Garvey, who, when she adopted the married name of Wilson, began to be questioned on publications she listed on her CV (résumé) because they weren't finding the publications in online searches.

In the age of Google, being special increasingly requires standing out from the crowd online. Many people aspire for themselves — or their offspring — to command prominent placement in the top few links on search engines or social networking sites' member lookup functions. But, as more people flood the Web, that's becoming an especially tall order for those with common names. Type "John Smith" into Google's search engine and it estimates it has 158 million results. (See search results.)

Ask.com estimates about 7% of all searches are for a person's name, and more than 80% of executive recruiters said they routinely use search engines to learn more about candidates, according to a recent survey by ExecuNet.  ExecuNet published "Growing Number Of Job Searches Disrupted By Digital Dirt" in June of 2006,  which  found that "35% (of executive recruiters) have eliminated a candidate from consideration based on the information uncovered online - up significantly from 26% just one year ago.
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Why do people stop reading your Ecademy Profile? | Complete Certainty: Reliable Business Hosting | Do you Speaka Plain English? | Seats at David Petherick's Barcelona Masterclass: 12-Feb-07

1: Act 1 Scene 1

On the 28th of January 2006, I joined Ecademy, having come across it as part of my ongoing research and investigation into blogging, social networks, and 'web 2.0′ in general. Within ten minutes, I knew that PowerNetworker status was the only sensible starting point, and I also recognised that Ecademy had something that an Israeli company I'd been working with needed - and vice versa. I wrote to, and had a response from, Thomas and Penny Power, the very next day.

By February, Ecademy had a deal on the table with Conduit to create the Ecademy Toolbar, and I was beginning to recognise that by sharing ideas and contacts, I might not be getting paid for "the deal" in cash, but I was earning goodwill from all the parties I brought together. Goodwill, in my years of building businesses, I consider is more valuable than money - because you can't buy it - you have to earn it - and when you need to spend it - it's inflation-proof.

I started to recognise that my skills could be used in Ecademy in a very specific way: to rewrite profiles, and market place adverts. After all I am a journalist, copy writer, photographer, designer, can code HTML and tell a story. So the "profile makeover" service was created. After honing my talents on a few willing friends and volunteers at Ecademy, I finally managed to persuade Thomas Power that I should rewrite his profile in July 2006. When he published the result and posted a blog about it, I soon realised that I had just invented an industry. By October of 2006, I had a constant three week waiting list of customers, and they were almost half referrals from existing customers.

I decided that I should investigate joining BlackStar: for two reasons. 1) Some of the best networkers in Ecademy were Blackstars; 2) Many of my customers were Blackstars; and 3) The energy and focus these people all seemed to have intrigued me, as did the idea of a wealth profile - something that I kept seeing and hearing about.

In correspondence and meetings with Thomas and other Black Stars, I saw that being "a member" somehow helped other Blackstars to get to the point quickly, establish a level of intimicy and trust that seemed almost automatic, intuitive. I also read up on wealth profiles and the work of Roger Hamilton. I decided to apply in December, filled out an application form, and had an interview of about an hour and a half, at the end of which, I was accepted as a member.

I made my payment, and within two hours, was astonished to see that I had an inbox message welcoming me to BlackStar. What? How did that colleague know so soon? I looked at my profile summary, and it suddenly dawned on me: my little membership icon had changed from orange to black. I was a BlackStar.

It was the 29th of December, 2006. I did not quite know it then, but I had the most stimulating, fulfilling and rewarding three weeks of my life ahead of me, which were beautifully crystallised on Monday 22nd January, at my first ever (and I hear the biggest ever) BlackStar Monthly Meeting in London.

(Free MP3 Recorded version of this story will be available shortly - just send an email to blackstar25@searchsuccess.net and you'll get to grab it when it's edited.)

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