Mucho work this week so blogging will be limited.

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It seems that the auto insurance business is a zero-sum-game. Every ad on TV/radio from: Geico, Allstate, State Farm, Esurance and Progressive, all state that 'millions of people switch to them every year'. I guess those 'million' people coming to one firm had to leave another.

You never hear one firm saying, "250,000 people left us this month."

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The Paceline has photos of Lance Armstrong in rehearsals for Saturday Night Live. You must register to view member items at The Paceline.

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Hyku is moving. I am closing my Celebration office and switching to a completely virtual solution. I have been traveling and speaking quite a bit over the past few months, spending less and less time in a four-walled location. When I reviewed the past 30 days and saw that I had spent approximately 3 days in my office it seemed pretty clear. The next few months has me spending quite a bit of time in Jacksonville and a few other locations around Florida. Throw in a few trips to Atlanta and once again it's less time in the 'office'.

Home base will be Winter Haven, FL, but the majority of the time I'll be working at a wifi location somewhere around Florida/Atlanta or at a client location. I am fortunate that all my clients really don't care where my 'office' is, just as long as they can communicate with me and the majority of the time that's via e-mail/IM/cell or at their location.

The new contact info is:

hyku, llc
PO Box 2003
Winter Haven, FL 33883-2003

863-226-4711 phone

My cell remains the same and so does everything else, i.e. e-mail, IMs, Skype, etc. I am still debating on whether or not to even bother with a fax. I think over the past three years I received at most six things via a traditional fax.

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Lee Hopkins did the math and computed a number of blog-valuations. The values are based upon the Weblogs, Inc./AOL deal, i.e. dividing the purchase price by the number of inbound links the blogs have. Your blog value is determined by multiplying your Technorati link count by a dollar amount.

My blog's value? $112,343.46

I'll make you a deal though, $75,000.00 and it's all yours.

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I am getting tired of Blogger-based RSS feeds. Not a day goes by that a few of them 'rebuild' and show up as completely unread in my newsreader. One repeat offender normally had 30-40 items in his RSS feed and not a week went by that they would all become 'unread'. Unsubscribed!

I put this on the same level as sending me 3-4 versions of the same e-mail newsletter. I can only assume that the blog authors do not know this is happening.

Anybody else seeing this?

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A new blogging service has been launched: Blogzerk. Blogzerk is a service of Orlando-based Red Rocket and Adaptive Hosting Solutions. Blogzerk uses the Blogware back-end to power the blogs.

According to the Blogzerk blog they offer five different plans which range from $5.95 to $40.95/month. There is a free 30-day trial for all new blogs. The service is similar to TypePad in many ways. Blogzerk users can choose from a number of templates and customize them as they wish. All the usual bells and whistles are there, i.e. RSS, podcast support, photo galleries, etc.

I've been playing with the service for a few days now. (How many other blogs do I need....let's see MSN Spaces, Yahoo 360, TypePad, Blogger). The back-end is not Blogger simple, but that's a good thing. Like I said previously, it's very similar to TypePad. I noticed a few small issues but Chris Scott and his team have been very responsive with support. That's always good.

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Today's presentation for the Orlando Advertising Federation comes to you from the Enzian Theater.

It's a shorter presentation than I normally do, but I'll be hitting all the major points. My plan is to record the session and post a MP3 later 2nite.

Update: I have uploaded the MP3: OAF-Presentation.mp3 (Although I didn't start the recorder until a few minutes after I had begun.)

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Those in the PR industry should pay attention to Marcom Blog. Sure the posts are good, but pay particular attention to the comments. The majority of comments are by PR students. They are the ones that will be working in the industry within a few years, and perhaps leading it in a decade. Read how they view blogs and their impact/relation to PR.

They are the first of the 'blogging graduates'.

Tom Murphy recently blogged:

Man I am getting older. When I read Stephen Davies' question about what PR was like before the Internet arrived I realize I am getting long in the tooth. I was there in the stone ages. Discussing PR before the Internet deserves a post in its own right. All I'll say right now is that we were still busy, but busy on different things. And don't get me started on research before the Internet....

Things are changing, but we can watch it happen.

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Around 4 p.m. this evening the sun was out, the winds were calm and it was cool. Around 60 degrees cool. Wilma was a non-event for the Polk County area. Some in the Orlando area lost power and a semi-truck was blown off an I-4 birdge, but the majority of the damage was to the south from wind and flooding.

Here's a tour of the blogs:

• The Naples Daily News staff had a fun night in Alico arena.
• Pamibe was running a laptop off a car battery while surveying the damage.
• Florida Cracker is across the lake staying with the in-laws that have power and a chainsaw.
• Bill Ward surveys the damage in Naples.

That should be the last of the hurricane posts (we hope) for the year. Back to work.

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So far in Winter Haven, FL we've just had heavy rains and moderate winds. There is the occasional gust, but nothing major. The weather service says winds will most likely be 30-40 mph in our region. No power outages yet (knock-on-wood-desk).

When a heavy gust comes through I am waiting to hear shingles rolling along the roof. A sound we grew accustomed to during Charlie and Frances last year. Looking out the windows there are small branches down around the neighborhood and quite a few leaves in the driveway/yard.

The storm has moved quickly across the state and things should be back to normal by late evening (we hope).

I continue to update my list of Hurricane Wilma Blogs.

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A round-up of links from this morning's landfall.

- The only update this morning from the Naples Daily News (at 8:11 a.m.) covers the landfall.

- Bill Ward begins to wonder why he's staying in a hotel with no power in Bonita Springs.

- Florida Cracker had breakfast with Wilma.

- Brendan Loy has his standard comprehensive storm coverage.

- CNN's Wilma photo gallery (mostly Mexico and storm prep now)

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Dave Weinberger is having some issues with his MovableType upgrade to 3.2. I experienced the exact same issues when I upgraded.

The biggest issue that we both faced was the apparent loss of comments in the conversion. Dave and I were both using the Berkeley DB, while SixApart suggests MySQL. I wasn't able to convert over to MySQL initially because the default script kept breaking. Working with tech support I did get a revised mt-db2sql.pl script that worked like a charm.

Once I converted over to the new database all my problems went away. Good luck Dave!

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My friend Barry Friedman over at the Lakeland Ledger started a Wilma Newslog earlier this morning. Lakeland, Winter Haven and the rest of Polk County seem to be riding out the storm without too much damage.

Meanwhile over at the News Chief there is nothing. Unless you count that one small link under 'Community News'.

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Andy Kent reports that there are 5020 people at the Germain Arena (Google Map) a little bit north of Naples, FL.

The latest head count just exceeded the 5,000-mark (5,020), but you wouldn't know it based on the sounds -- or lack thereof. Most of the people are either asleep or carrying on quiet conversations, and you could almost hear a pin drop.

Outside, the rain is coming down a little harder, the winds are whipping up just a bit and the humidity is suffocating. Yet a few brave souls still felt compelled to light up a smoke in an act of defiance aimed at Wilma....

...As I am signing off for the night, with the clock reading 2:50 a.m. and Wilma just about three hours away from making landfall, I can hear the rain pounding the outside of the building, which was built to withstand a Category 4 hurricane.

Now all we can do is sit and wait -- for what we still don't know. But this sure doesn't look like a place supposedly planning to host a hockey game five days from now.

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Our 4-year-old son has a bit of a stomach ache and the associated 'symptoms'. You add that with Hurricane Wilma and it becomes a long night. Hence the post at almost 4 a.m.

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The Naples and Bonita Daily News staff moved from their offices to Florida Gulf Coast University today in advance of Hurricane Wilma. Writing in his blog Levi Chronister details the move:

Starting at 4 p.m. we loaded four SUVs (two rented, two owned by co-workers) and two cars with all of our food, water and computer gear to head to the arena. My boss bought a final installment of food, water and other supplies so, along with all our work gear and the supplies we'd already bought, we pretty much filled up the SUV. And our mini-fridge took up the entire hatchback part of one of the cars; the fridge was necessary because the one here has a weird funk to it....

...Fortunately, we seem to be set for covering the hurricane for the foreseeable future as our Internet connection here is incredibly fast. Barring a power outage (*knock on wood*), we should be able to get updates to our readers even quicker than normal. We're here for the long haul, and we're looking forward to covering this hurricane for you.

Levi writes that the paper might be sending their print edition over to the Treasure Coast for printing:

We also helped move in some of the print staff's equipment, as it appears they'll be sending their pages to our Treasure Coast paper for printing. It makes the room slightly more crowded, but it will be nice to have some other people around as I have a feeling that a more communal setting will be nice during something like this.

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A few interesting items:

- Bill Ward over at TBO.com says it's hard to look cool in a poncho:

Good thing it stopped raining because when you’ve got a poncho on, you never, ever, ever look cool. Have you ever seen James Bond wear a poncho in any of his movies? Heck, no. The only guy that can look cool in a poncho is Clint Eastwood, in one of his spaghetti Westerns—and even then he has to waste a bad guy while smoking a stogie. And his poncho was dirty burlap with a gun under it, not this cheap plastic kind.

- Jen's dog is freaking out.
- Disney is closed on Monday.
- Universal and Islands of Adventure closed on Monday.

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A tornado warning was just issued for our area, Winter Haven, FL, until 9 p.m. Remember a warning means that a tornado has been sighted. A watch just means that conditions are favorable.

The first major rain band is coming by as well. Say goodbye to DirecTV.

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The Naples Daily News has set up two new blogs:

• Reporter Andy Kent is at a shelter in Naples, FL (RSS)
• Naples Daily News web guru Levi Chronister is blogging about his first hurricane (he just moved from Kansas) (RSS)

I e-mailed Levi to ask if they were going to create RSS feeds for the blogs.

Update: I figured out the RSS feeds.

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Jake Parrillo went to game one of the World Series last night and has posted a photoset on Flickr.

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Here is another round-up of Florida-based Hurricane Wilma blogs:

Bloggers:

• Florida Cracker is in the Lake Okeechobee area (RSS) (Google Map)
  
• Eric Norlin is on Siesta Key (RSS) (Google Map)
  
• Florida Masochist (RSS)
  
• Boudicca's map of Florida Bloggers (RSS)
  
• Laughing Wolf's list of Florida blogs (RSS)
  
• Right-Wing of the Gods (RSS)
  
• Theodore's World (RSS)
  
• Something and Half of Something (RSS)
  
• Joel's Blog (RSS)
  
• Pamibe is in the Miami area (RSS)

Media:

• Naples Daily News - Storm Edition (RSS) (Podcast)
  
• Reporter Andy Kent is at a shelter in Naples, FL (RSS)
  
• Naples Daily News web guru Levi Chronister is blogging about his first hurricane (he just moved from Kansas) (RSS)
  
• Bill Ward at TBO.com (No RSS)
  
• The St. Pete Times Stormwatch blog (RSS)
  
• Orlando Sentinel's Hurricane Watch Blog (RSS)
  
• Sarasota Herald Tribune's Weather Blog (RSS)
  
• Sun-Sentinel Hurricane Blog (RSS)
  
• Lakeland Ledger's Wilma Newslog

Other media outlets that don't have blogs, but are posting updates:

• NBC-2 Fort Myers, FL
• WINK CBS - Fort Myers, FL
• ABC7 - Fort Myers, FL
• News-Press - Fort Myers, FL
• Hurricane2005.com by Naples News
• WFTV 9 - Tampa/St. Petersburg, FL

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During the World Series coverage on Tampa's Fox 13 last night the local Jeep dealers ran a regional commerical. The commercial talked about a contest where the grand prize was a trip to Cancun, Mexico.

Considering that Cancun might have received 65 inches of rain and withstood 20+ hours of hurricane winds, that does not sound like such a 'grand' prize.

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The Marco River web cam in Naples, FL has a good feed. Currently it looks sunny and a bit breezy down there. The web cam is good enough that you can see the current on the river.

You can check out the rest of the Naples area web cams here.

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Around 11:30 a.m. this morning in Winter Haven and there is absolutely no wind. It is eerily calm. There are some dark clouds to the east/southeast, but nothing else.

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A little bird named BB sent me the link to an article about Buzz Bruggeman in the St. Paul Pioneer Press (Registration required...but you can use BugMeNot).

For those of you that have not met Buzz (and that number is dwindling) the article is a good introduction. Buzz is CEO of ActiveWords a software firm based in Winter Park, FL.

Buzz has been away from Florida too long (we miss you down here buddy). He's currently driving across the US in a Saab visiting customers, friends and attending a few conferences.

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Looking over some of the blogs and news web sites, here are a few interesting items:

- This guy is going to ride out Wilma in his sail boat
- Naples News - Hurricane Wilma photo gallery
- Naples area web cams
- Two guys drove from North Carolina to Naples, FL to sell generators, opportunists or saviors?

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Just a usual Saturday in Central Florida. The latest track for Hurricane Wilma shows it going over Lake Okeechobee as it crosses the state. Earlier tracks had the storm a bit south of the lake. It will be intesting to see what the 11pm update will look like.

Earlier in the evening we went to Publix to stock up on water and other 'hurricane food'. We're supposed to get some wind and rain tomorrow in advance of the storm. Depending on the revised tracks we'll do a few other prep items tomorrow.

I am scheduled to go to Gainesville and Lake City on Monday, but all those engagements might be canceled. Travelling up I-75 probably won't be too fun on Monday.

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The Naples News has switched to a Storm Edition in advance of Hurricane Wilma. The newspaper staff explain the switch:

For the next few days, the Naples Daily News and Bonita Daily News will be publishing their online content only on BonitaNews.com in order to have one source for all Hurricane Wilma information. BonitaNews.com is more capable of providing our readers quick, accurate and detailed information about the approaching storm and its effects on Collier and south Lee counties.

The new site is being run by some type of blog software a web framework by the name of Django and features a RSS feed of headlines. The Daily News is also producing a podcast (RSS) of hurricane coverage.

The finishing touch? They have a Wilma favicon:

I've updated my list of local media Hurricane Wilma blogs.

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Yawn. At first we figured we'd be slammed on Saturday/Sunday, now the latest track shows Hurricane Wilma off the coast of Florida early Monday morning.

I'll be posting as needed under the hurricanes section.

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Wendy Kurtz posts that the 2005 PRSA International Conference which was to be held in Miami this weekend (Oct 22-25) has been canceled.

The PRSA site says:

The Fontainebleau Resort's current refund policy allows Conference registrants to cancel their hotel reservation WITH NO PENALTIES. The number to call is 305-538-2000.

In addition to posting the latest information on our Web site (www.prsa.org), we have a Conference Hotline for updated information. That number is 1-888-277-3926.

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The anonymous Publix I/S blogger is gone (or has moved to a new URL). The blog was claimed to be written by a Publix worker upset with the trend towards offshoring information systems jobs.

Things got interesting over at Marcom Blog when the author posted a series of comments. The critical blog was even mentioned in two episodes of the For Immediate Release Podcast.

Of course there is always the Google cache.

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The following is cross-posted to Marcom Blog

Over at Church of the Customer Ben McConnell talks about a passionate McDonald's blogger, McChronicles. You can read Ben's post to get all the details, but what I want to focus on is McDonald's non-response. Ben asks what McDonalds should do?

But no one from the company has contacted him. Is that a good thing? Depends on your viewpoint. It means the corporate lawyers haven't fired up their stereotypical trademark infringement claims. It also means the company hasn't actively engaged McC.

For that matter, McDonald's doesn't really engage its billions of customers beyond the typical store experience. Certainly, the company assembles focus groups to test new products and ad campaigns, and probably employs numerous secret shopper companies.

What should they do? Engaging a blogger can easily backfire if the initial communication is forced or awkward. There have been plenty of instances of blogs stating, "Look at this lame e-mail I got from X." On the flip-side, the silence can be just as bad, if not worse.

Let's look at the famous 'Dell Hell' case from Jeff Jarvis. Dell did eventually respond to Jeff, but the out-reach by Dell didn't really save them any face. But what if Dell had said to Jeff, "you're right, we'll send you a brand new laptop and refund a portion of your original purchase price." How many bloggers would start posting, "Hey my Dell laptop sucks too!" Then what does Dell do? Only refund the most influential bloggers? Then you would have every personal blogger screaming favoritism.

Large corporations that have normally shielded themselves from customer interaction are stuck in a catch-22. Yes, it would be smart to engage the customers, but they need to avoid making a knee-jerk response and causing more trouble then they had before.

Update Ben has some more thoughts over at Church of the Customer

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Sticks of Fire reports that the Tampa Tribune used Wikipedia as a source for an editorial and a recent article on intelligent design.

He's asking if it is acceptable for newspapers to utilize Wikipedia as a legitimate source.

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The defendant in our case failed to appear this morning so we were dismissed for good. Was the defendant guilty/not-guilty? We'll never know, but not showing up for your trial is usually not a good thing.

I recorded some thoughts about the jury selection process and other related items. You can listen to the nine-minute commentary by clicking the link below.

JuryDutyO2.mp3 (8.7MB)

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I did a BlogPulse trend graph for 'wilma' over the past six months. Quite a spike at the end there.

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The Great Floridian Iron-Distance Triathlon is scheduled to be held in Clermont, FL this weekend. Approximately 1000+ athletes will be coming to the area to race in the full and half distance events. A huge hurricane sitting off the coast tends to cause problems with an event of this nature. There are the obvious athlete safety issues involved, but large triathlons rely upon a number of local government agencies, specifically local law enforcement, and their first priority is to the community and not the race. If the Lake County Sheriff's office needs to use deputies for hurricane related efforts there will be no race.

The Sommer Sports web site forum is filled with posts from athletes discussing issues such as: shortening the race and athlete's responsibilities. In many cases these athletes have been training for one-two years in preperation for this event. They come from as far away as California, Hawaii, Maine and Wisconson to compete. In most cases, out-of-state athletes will want to arrive no-later than today for Saturday's race. The 'should I stay, or should I go' question needs to be made now.

Sommer Sports says they are meeting with local officials at 11 a.m. on Thursday and will post a course of action shortly after that meeting.

Sommer Sports founder Fred Sommer wondered if this was all a bad dream on early Wednesday morning.

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Nancy White who writes the Full Circle blog recently pointed to my article on event blogs for non-profits. In the comments to her post, DrumsNWhistles says that their local band booster group for Rio Mesa High School has created their website using WordPress. From the comment:

I just moved the website I maintain for our Band Booster organization over to WordPress and created a wiki on pbWiki for those of us managing ongoing fundraising projects, policy drafts and other projects we're currently undertaking.

It's amazing (and gratifying) to see the response. Parents are actually subscribing or checking the site regularly for updates and downloads, we've got people who have very little time at all actively collaborating online to help this little organization help our kids.

It's so much easier to work on a wiki than take time out for a face-to-face meeting, and the parents and board LOVE having the ability to update content without having me as the logjam!

I'm getting very excited about how the new tools being rolled out can make a difference when working in our real-life community!

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My official jury duty is tomorrow. The trial is scheduled to start at 8:30am. I can't blog during the trial but I'll post an update after the trial is over.

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Updated List: Most recent list of Hurricane Wilma Blogs

Doing a quick look around the local media outlets here are a few blogs:

• Naples Daily News - Storm Edition (RSS) (Podcast)
• Bill Ward over at TBO.com is traveling down the coast of Florida from Tampa to Venice. (No RSS)
• The St. Pete Times has their Stormwatch blog which just posted their one and only 'Wilma' item today. (RSS)
• Orlando Sentinel's Hurricane Watch Blog (RSS)
• Sarasota Herald Tribune's Weather Blog (RSS)
• Sun-Sentinel Hurricane Blog (RSS)

Other media outlets that don't have blogs, but are posting updates:

• NBC-2 Fort Myers, FL
• WINK CBS - Fort Myers, FL
• ABC7 - Fort Myers, FL
• News-Press - Fort Myers, FL
• Hurricane2005.com by Naples News
• WFTV 9 - Tampa/St. Petersburg, FL

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One of the funnier images I have seen today. Hopefully the person that created the image will continue to update it as 'Wilma' moves.

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The Orlando Sentinel have fired up their Hurricane Blog. Six posts in the past hour. They're off to a good start.

I am watching the Orlando Sentinel feed and NOAA's Hurricane Wilma feed.

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Here is a photoset of damage from Hurricane Charley last year.

This was my sister-in-law's rental car. She was in town for my son's birthday party which was canceled last year because of the hurricane. What was funny is that she called the tree people first thing Saturday morning and they were there within an hour. The man told her that they had received over a hundred calls in the next hour, but she was the first.

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Might need to cancel the weekend plans. Hurricane Wilma is heading right this way. Looking at the predicted path below, my yellow X might not be the best location to hang out in. The question is do we head for Atlanta tomorrow?

In last year's storms we suffered some pretty good roof damage from Charley with a slight follow-up from Frances.

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Victor Lombardi of Management Innovation Group (great logo) discusses the issue of corporations needing to give up control of their message in this new social media. He asks, "how much control does one give up?"

Victor points to a graph they created (PDF) to represent the various levels of control/return in three situations: Broadcast, Interactive and Social Media

The graphics and associated text are excellent resources.

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Rex Hammock says you can easily spot him at BlogOn because he's the only one wearing a tie.

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Overheard during my late lunch at Panera Bread in Orlando: Man in suit/tie, speaking to other man in suit/tie:

We have an award-winning web site

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Charlie Crist, a candidate in the 2006 Florida Governor's race has launched a Campaign Blog. The first and only post so far is dated October 4, 2005. The inital post is standard announcement stuff and doesn't really provide any exciting 'conversation' from Charlie. His blog does allow comments and the first one posted noted that the blog lacks a RSS feed.

With a low post volume and no RSS, it will be tough to keep-up with Charlie's blog.

Update: Jeremy has posted some good comments.

I think one of the big things people will be watching is if Charlie is actually writing the posts. Remember all of Katherine Harris' blog posts are written by the 'Harris Press Office'.

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