This wouldn’t be the first time Zuckerberg had set out to complete a year-goal – in 2009, he vowed to wear a tie to work every day, in 2010 he learned Mandarin and in 2011 he only ate meat he killed himself. So, now it’s coding. It was recently reported that Zuckerberg is worth about $4.5 billion dollars. With that sort of money, he could buy the island nation of Kiribati, declare himself king, and do whatever he wants, forever. Or, at least not write code or wear ties.

It’s clear the young CEO that has been making investors nervous by merely wearing a hoodie lately isn’t some maverick who lacks focus. Interestingly, Feross Aboukhadijeh, a former intern at Facebook told New York Magazine that Zuckerberg had a bit of a hard time coding for Facebook’s Group feature, as the team was getting the product ready fro launch in 2010. Still, it’s been a very long while since the CEO was sitting in a dorm room at Harvard, developing the social network.

Today Facebook goes for $16 billion at a $104 billion valuation. Go here for extensive coverage.

Open source development is a great thing. With NASA opening a new open source software-dedicated Web site, it allows street coders to access and improve the source code that NASA is working on. This can lead to new discoveries that the professional engineers at NASA could possibly never think of.

In 2009, the White House issued the Open Government Directive, which required federal agencies to achieve milestones while keeping their business transparent. NASA’s plan has been one of the best. They were even among those who received awards for going above and beyond hte call of duty in the “Participation and Collaboration” and “Flagship Initiatives” categories of the Open Government Directive.

“The site represents a natural extension of NASA’s efforts to inform, educate and include the public in our mission to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research,” Deborah Diaz, NASA’s Deputy Chief Information Officer, said. “Citizen involvement in our work is a critical component of our success.”

NASA Open Government launched the Web site as part of its Open Source Software Flagship Initiative. The goal is to showcase existing projects, provide a forum for discussion and guiding internal and external groups in open development, release and contribution.

“We released the site on January 4 and since have received an overwhelming response from people interested in using our code,” Nick Skytland, Program Manager of NASA’s Open Government Initiative, said. “Our goal is to provide the public direct and ongoing access to NASA technology.”

William Eshagh, NASA Open Government co-lead on the project at NASA’s Ames Research Center believes that the future of their space program will be built in the open with the help of the public working on their open source code.

For those who want to take a crack at NASA’s code, you can check it out here.

At the Google Code Blog, Fox details the problem of planning a trip and unsuccessfully searching for upcoming conferences. She says that though Google’s Developer Events Calendar has been around for a while, it only listed events Google sponsored or attended.

The new calendar allows others to post upcoming events – conferences, user groups, or parties – for the developer community. It can be viewed in calendar or map views.

A few have already added their events, like the "Jurisdictionary club" in Oklahoma City, the Bossa Conference in Brazil, and JavaOne in San Francisco. 
 

Everyone loves the visual appeal of charts. It’s hard to imagine Microsoft’s PowerPoint or the latest issue of USA Today without a chart or two. They get attention, and when crafted properly convey information rapidly to the viewer.

Google thinks web publishers should be able to do this easily for their visitors. At the Google Code blog, Steve Crossan announced the debut of the Google Chart API.

"No state, no calls, just send your data in an http request and get a png image graph back. Embed the request in an img tag and you’re done. We currently support line charts, bar charts, pie charts, scatter plots, and sparklines," said Crossnan.

The API stemmed from Google’s internal development of it to use in their other services, like Finance and Video. Crossnan said the project started as one of those fabled 20-percent-time projects in Google’s Zurich operations.

Garett Rogers at Googling Google applauded the Chart API, but questioned its long-term value to Google.

"It’s hard to imagine what the business model for this one is. Google’s basically just offering up free CPU power and bandwidth for charts without any chance of recovering their costs," he wrote.

The prudent site publisher will likely do a chart call and simply store the resulting image locally, which would remove the ongoing demand for Google to keep regenerating it on request.

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Shortly after the last chapter ran, I had not one, but two news announcements where stories either broke ahead of their intended time and voices. In one case, it wasn’t even part of the embargo process which was just unbelievable.
To the lead bloggers whom I had brokered these launches, it appeared as if I had mislead them, instead sending the news to others, even though I had assured them that they were given first rights.
In both cases, I took credibility hits and had to do an exhaustive amount of repair work to ensure that these and other relationships weren’t damaged because of the mistake, spite, or questionable activity of other ambitious bloggers.

I did take the steps to rectify things, and ultimately the "mistakes" were corrected…but the damage was already done. Any attempts to convey that to those affected may or may not regain trust.

So, rather than just share with you the ways to be successful or constantly focus on the future of PR, it’s also important to share the experiences where things don’t work out quite like we planned as a way of learning together.

In the realm of technology, this practice is all about who can be positioned as the "lead" story and tools such as Techmeme’s Leaderboard, Technorati’s Top Blogs, Bloglines Top List, Google Reader stats, and other highly referenced lists, only encourage bloggers to do what they can to increase rankings. After all, these lists influence and determine not only PR campaigns, but also where ad dollars are spent.

But it’s not just technology. There are lists that cover every market segment therefore the lessons from this post are helpful to anyone in PR.
What happened here sends an alarming signal, not just to me, but to the entire blogosphere and PR industry.

Outside of my two recent experiences. There are grumblings about foul play across the board that we should all understand.
The business of news can be ugly. There will always be an underground rivalry between top and up-and-coming writers for authority, links, views, and ultimately ad dollars.

The rumors and stories are thick with rife, including the manipulation of "time stamps," copying and pasting from other blogs and sites without attribution, not disclosing any personal or professional interests associated with the stories they run, and running controversial or early stories with checking facts first.

However, this isn’t unlike the business of traditional news media, who have always been notorious for scooping each other.

This is business and business is never clean.

These enlightenments, however, force us to rethink the process of PR launches and news distribution, because at the end of the day, it’s our relationships that will carry us forward.

The message to us is, "be careful and do your homework."

We walk a tightrope between client/company expectations and the relationships we maintain with writers and bloggers.

On one hand, those we report to want to see coverage and they want to see it everywhere. Most have no clue what it takes to make that happen, but they don’t care either.

On the other hand, relationships are the foundation for all good PR, and risking or compromising them should never factor into the news equation.

In the last post I wrote that bloggers were willing to honor embargoes as a way of participating in the business of news distribution. Many bloggers are trying to run legitimate businesses and having the privilege, and yes it’s a privilege, to receive news early is an earned right that offers mutual benefits between the blogger/writer and the company.

As I said, top bloggers are the new "wire" service. Providing them with early access to information allows news to bubble up, gaining credibility and momentum to the point where it attracts attention from traditional journalists. Bloggers have direct relations with people, your peers, and they thrive off of their participation.

There’s a difference though between top bloggers and those who aspire to take the lead, and those differences will ultimately determine who you can trust and who you can’t.

Maximizing coverage is a risky business. And unfortunately, there are many ways things can quickly go south:

- Not communicating the embargo time clearly, complete with time zones

- Not receiving a documented acknowledgment of the embargo

- Not fully knowing the reputation of the blogger beforehand

- Being careless and trying to go for too much right out of the gate without ensuring everything was set

Unfortunately however, the reality is that some of us will learn these lessons the hard way. And many times, these lessons come at a steep price, with reputation, trust, and relationships as the currency.

The best thing we can do is keep an open dialog with our best contacts. Talk with peers. Share experiences. There’s plenty to learn from others to minimize the mistakes and the steep costs associated with them.

In the attempt to earn the respect and trust of bloggers, many PR professionals are subscribing to a "Blogger Relations" code of ethics – although this draft is in dire need of revision (which will be a later post), but it’s a start in the right direction. WOMMA also offers 10 principles for ethical contact by marketers.

Perhaps many bloggers need to think about subscribing to a Blogger Code of Ethics. Breaking embargoes, changing time stamps, editing/barring comments, pilfering content, etc., is just not going to fly for the long term. And it’s unfortunate effects are that these practices will continue take down people and relationships in the process until we all do something about it. That’s the beauty of civil enforcement. Collectively we can dictate the winners and losers.

Tim O’Reilly has an excellent series on drafting a Blogger’s Code of Conduct. Forrester’s Charlene Li also got the conversation going almost three years ago with a call for Blogging Policies.

We as PR and communications professionals don’t need to support those bloggers or writers who don’t keep their word.

I know my word is everything to me and I will make decisions that only strengthen relationships and build trust, on both sides of the tightrope.
Most importantly, sometimes less is more. And, expectation setting is everything.

Breaking news with a few trustworthy bloggers and reporters may be more than enough to effectively align PR with business and communications objectives. After the first stories break, follow up with outreach to other primary influencers, but also find something unique for them in a way that helps them find a unique angle for coverage. Some will push back for not being included in the earlier rounds, and it will be up to you to consider opting them in for the future, but do so based on the discussions and trust.

Contrary to popular belief, the business of news isn’t formulaic. It’s less of a science and more of an art.

Make decisions that benefit your stories without compromising relationships.

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He found code for Jabber transports, which would allow contacting people from other instant messaging networks over Google Talk/Chat’s Jabber connection, which makes sense given the fact that Gmail’s new contact manager asks for Yahoo, MSN and AIM usernames now.

Also, he found code that seems to hint they will be enabling users to choose different colors for labels, which should make quick identification of categories of email messages possible (though how they will manage emails with multiple labels is a mystery to me). Also, you might soon gain the ability to seperate emails from a conversation, a necessary addition to the Gmail conversation management we’ve waited three and a half years for.

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So recently the Gmail team has been working on a structural code change that we’ll be rolling out to Firefox 2 and IE 7 users over the coming weeks (with other browsers to follow). You won’t notice too many differences to start with, but we’re using a new model that enables us to iterate faster and share components (we now use the same rich text editor as Groups and Page Creator, and the Contact Manager can be seen in several Google apps). A few other things you will notice are some new keyboard shortcuts and the ability to bookmark specific messages and email searches.

Google Checkout Adds 5 New API Features

* Name Parsing: Provides the first name, last name, and full name of the buyer and
order recipient in separate fields new order notifications.

* Google Promo Notification: If an order is placed under a Google promotion, you can require new order notifications, charge amount notifications, and refund amount notifications to include the promotion amount.

* Ship-to Phone: Returns the buyer’s ship-to phone number in new order
notifications.

* Billing Phone: Returns the buyer’s billing phone number in new order
notifications.

* Improved Notifications: Prevents a merchant from improperly acknowledging a new order notification by requiring their acknowledgment to specify the serial number of the notification.

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Little is known for sure, but Michael Arrington suggests that MySpace Platform will launch at the Web 2.0 Summit (which is set to run from October 17th to October 19th).  Also, Arrington adds, “[I]n a big change in strategy for MySpace, developers will be able to serve their own advertising within their applications, and keep 100% of the revenue (Facebook also allows this).”

Developers may quickly climb aboard, then, in an effort to reach MySpace’s millions of users.  Yet despite all the publicity it’s already generating, the move may not help much in terms of building (and/or retaining) MySpace’s user base.  The social network’s messy pages already had people fleeing to Facebook; with a flood of new apps, it’s not likely that things will get any neater.

Also, Orkut could make its code available to developers on November 5th, and despite Orkut’s lack of success in America, a lot of people would rather bet on Google than MySpace.

In any event, we’ll be sure to keep you updated as information becomes available.

Hit an embed link in the upper-right hand corner of any city.ask.com page and get an overlay on which you can change the size of the map and get the code for posting it to your website or blog.

Here’s a map on which I shamelessly and horrifically messed up the map of New York:

As you can see, the embedded map is just an image of the map, though with all the notations, drawing, search results and whatever else you add to it. The image links to the full map at Ask.com so users can navigate all of it there. Google’s implementation embeds an actual live map, which means you can use it create full-on mashups, unlike with Ask’s.

I’ve got to ask why Ask has Ask City and Ask Maps? They’re two seperate products, both with maps, one which searches businesses and one which does driving directions (though Ask City does that too, which is even more confusing). The two products share some of the same interface elements and clearly some of the same infrastructure, so why doesn’t Ask just combine them into one? Is there really a need for two products when one would be so less confusing?

Two other new features:

When you have directions, click adjust route and Ask City will insert a new waypoint for you in between the other two, sending you there first. In other words, you choose a start and end point, then you can add any places you want to go to in between, and it’ll send you to those places, then to your final destination. Not as fun to look at as Google Maps’ version of this feature, but more discoverable and more intuitive.

When searching by businesses, if you enter the business type and a zip code, it’ll draw the zip code on the map and show you all of those businesses within that zip code. Very convenient (and also a quick way to see your zip code boundaries.

* – Only an idiot would suggest Ask coded this in the last 20 days, though if they did, that’s impressive. My point is that Google beat them to it, not that they are copying.

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