Polymer Studios::Web Consulting

Full monty

1. July 2008

Two writers have come across my radar, thanks to the tweets of others: The disclosure on journalist Jeff Jarvis‘ blog BuzzMachine is a refreshingly thorough rundown of his business dealings, stock investments, religious affiliations and political leanings. It’s also funny in parts: “I make some would say too-frequent appearances on TV and radio but I am [...]

Hitting the reset button

7. June 2008

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We recently decided to give our business a reboot. As any Windows user knows, a reboot is sometimes necessary to clean out the memory and bring the system running back to peak performance. Not that our business hasn’t been successful and all that. It has. But perhaps symptomatic of a deeper funk, we’ve been struggling for three [...]

You can have this Pulitzer when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.

25. February 2008

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And, indeed that day is coming. Meanwhile, it’s interesting to see where the old bastions of power are still hanging on. By a thread. To wit, this quote from a NYT article on the Polk-award-winning political blog Talking Points Memo: Sig Gissler, the administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, said in an e-mail message that online articles [...]

Amateur era

4. February 2008

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myRaganTV, a video site for corporate communicators, just posted an interview with Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing our Culture. I have to admit, I was only vaguely aware of Keen’s book and premise, which (if I gather correctly) is that Web 2.0 has shortcircuited the process [...]

The other bully pulpit

8. January 2008

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I’ll bet there are at least two PR departments breaking a sweat after Boing Boing (#5 blog on the planet with traffic in the bajillions) posted a couple of corporate takedowns today. One concerned Midwest airlines’ hamfisted handling of a customer complaint. The other, a bit weightier: Siemens’ profitable relationship with the Nazis during the [...]

Banking 2.0: Banks Leading the Charge
(Part 2 of 3)

13. November 2007

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In part 1, I gave an overview of core Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, podcasts, wikis and social networks. Now I’ll discuss some examples of how several banks are leveraging some of this new technology to initiate and support deeper relationships with their customers. Wells Fargo fosters an informal, ongoing dialogue with its customers Wells Fargo [...]

Banking 2.0: Core technologies (Part 1 of 3)

24. October 2007

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Web 2.0 has been gaining more and more momentum over the last year or so. Web 2.0 involves taking advantage of internet technology for creating, collaborating, communicating and sharing ideas and information. Things like blogs, podcasts, wikis and social networks are helping organizations forge stronger relationships with their customers. But should you use new technology [...]

Rebirth and conversation

24. September 2007

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Welcome to the new Polymer Studios blog. Several years back, when blogging was actually novel, before your children and their pets all had blogs, we launched our first effort in this space, called Dishwasher Safe. Our man Mark launched it and contributed faithfully, with links to intriguing articles and web sites. But in the end, we [...]