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I was five long years ago that I wrote my first ever post here and in remarking on this, I feel a sense of achievment but also a sense of sadness at how quickly time passes.  A lot has happened since I wrote my Welcome! post.
Five years, 912 posts, 1,527 comments 1,456 spams, three skins later and I’m still blogging.
Originally, my hope had been the blog would help the handful of PR freelancers I was working with “to interact among ourselves and with the outside world of PR, marketing …

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Image via CrunchBase

Johnston Press, parent company to the Isle of Man Newspapers, is introducing subscriptions fees on their websites in a pilot scheme starting next week.
The Worksop Guardian, Ripley & Heanor News, Northumberland Gazette, Whitby Gazette (all in England), and the Southern Reporter and Carrick Gazette (in Scotland) will restrict access to non-subscribers, in an attempt to create revenues  from their websites.
The papers will allow access to the homepage of each paper, but stories away from the main page will require a subscription of £5 for a three month trial. …

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Image by Tasa_M via Flickr

Today I got some feedback about my weekly newspaper column Tech Talk, and I thought I should address it.
Apparently an Isle of Man-based company has remarked to a government official about something I wrote. It seems I’d mentioned some of this company’s competitors in one of my articles and made no reference to it.
I was surprised to hear this because no one has contacted me about the omission. I wish someone had.
Because it’s true.  I did leave this particular company out.  And I should have included …

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Image by Tasa_M via Flickr
Last evening, after a pretty trying day, I spoiled myself by sitting down in a quiet room and reading the newspaper.  For someone who usually only finds time to scan a website, it was a real treat. The Isle of Man Examiner is still published as a broadsheet, and I spread the pages out and thoroughly enjoyed myself as I ruffled and turned them and took in stories of every description from all over the Island.
You don’t often get to see a 36 point headline …

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I am doomed. I have suspected as much for some time now, but a new study makes me almost sure. I think I may be an internet addict. Evidence comes in the form of an article published by Dr Jerald Block in the respected American Journal of Psychiatry.
He argues that internet addiction is now so common that it merits inclusion in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — the profession’s primary resource for categorising and diagnosing mental illnesses.
Dr Block says that excessive gaming, viewing online pornography, emailing and …

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Imagine somebody is having a dinner party – inviting your customers, staff, shareholders and regulators – and you are not there.
That is the scenario Strive PR’s managing partner Sherrilynne Starkie laid before those attending a professional development seminar at the International Business School on March 17.
All of these people have links to you and your company and are bound to talk about you at this hypothetical dinner party, but if you are not there you cannot hear what they have to say about your products, your service or your …

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We have been trialling Google Apps in recent weeks and I have been very impressed. Google wraps several products into an excellent package to use with your own domain name. It is an offer that resembles Microsoft Office and includes email, a calendar, chat, word/spreadsheet/presentation software, a web page editor and a structured wiki site for collaboration.
Half a million companies are already using Google Apps, but these are mostly small and medium-sized businesses which appreciate that it is effortless to manage, easy to use and largely free. Some aspects of …

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When starting out in business here, it does not take too long to figure out that everyone knows somebody involved in, who is knowledgeable about or who can influence some aspect of every single deal you are involved in.
If you want to be successful here, you need to be aware of the various networks that underpin the Manx economy. Some are based on family connections, others on school affiliations, still others are based on people’s employment histories, club memberships and such.
The Isle of Man grapevine is very effective and is …

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It has now been 10 years since businesses started to ‘get’ the web.
Almost overnight, brochure sites started flying up and people have been taking the internet pretty seriously ever since. But has going online paid off for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)?
Some say no. Cranfield University’s Professor Andrew Burke has just published a study into the internet reliance of small businesses in the UK that shows only 16 per cent feel the internet has increased their operational efficiency.
Click here to read the rest of this Tech Talk column.

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About eight weeks ago, I finally succumbed to temptation and joined the ‘cult of BlackBerry’.

I had been dragging my feet about getting on board, having seen people I know become blackberry addicts — constantly checking emails and immediately responding to every missive, whether they were sitting at the dinner table or had yet to even get out of bed in the morning.
But still, I was curious and decided to take the plunge — especially after a prominent Isle of Man businessman told me that getting a BlackBerry had transformed his …