Archer Media's Blog

art of defence Picks Up Where the CSA Leaves Off

Nicole Miscioscia — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 00:05:25 +0000

Our client, Art of Defence GmbH, just released a white paper highlighting their view on plugging a gaping hole in the cloud computing: distributed web application firewalls. Check out the white paper here.

A major topic during the RSA Conference 2009, San Francisco, we saw individuals seeking, discussing and debating over various cloud solutions. One group in particular has been dedicated to improving cloud computing security, the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA). The group was officially launched at the conference, and it was there the CSA issued its white paper on the best practices guide for the industry.

Art of Defence’s paper picks up where the CSA left off. CTO of Art of Defence, Alex Meisel, explores recommendations and practical use-cases for moving a traditional WAF to the cloud.

Comptel Wins World BSS Award

Nicole Miscioscia — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 00:04:03 +0000

Last week, Comptel was honored with the Best Innovation Award at the World BSS Summit in Amsterdam. In its 13th year, the World BSS Awards helps raise awareness of the significance of billing and information management systems and processes to the communications industry by identifying key trends and rewarding BSS best practices.

This year’s winners were selected by a panel of appointed experts from the OSS/BSS community, including Teresa Cottam, research and publications director, Telesperience; Barbara Lancaster, president, LTC International; Hugh Roberts, consultant director, BSS/OSS RM events, IIR Telecoms & senior strategist, Patni Telecoms Consulting; and Olga Botero, CIO, Bancolombia.

Congratulations to Comptel on receiving this award.

To be or Not To Be

Nicole Miscioscia — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 00:02:26 +0000

I came across a great blog post the other day, which we should all incorporate in to our writing— eliminating weak verbs, such as is, are and to be. Although, challenging for all writers, if practiced enough can truly improve one’s writing. Kelli Matthews, a PR instructor at the University of Oregon suggests the following for eliminating weak verbs:

Take a printed copy of the assignment, and highlight from top every form of the verb “to be” (i.e. am, are, is, was, were, will be, has been, have been, had been, etc)
Work to change as many of the highlighted verbs as you can from weak verbs to active verbs. To be verbs do serve a purpose and it isn’t necessary to change every single one, but strong, active verbs should dominate your writing.

Additional tips Kelli shared:

Use your imagination to substitute more interesting words.
Don’t start sentences with “There is” or “There are.”
Use the simple forms of your verb of choice (listens vs. is listening, for example).
Embed the adjective before the noun you’re modifying rather than dragging the sentence out (brand-new baseball stadium vs. the baseball stadium, which is brand new).

Try Kelli’s tips next time you write, and see how your writing comes alive.

NCP engineering Wins Two Awards

Nicole Miscioscia — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 00:01:08 +0000

Within the past month, NCP engineering has won two awards for its Enterprise Management Solution. NCP Secure Enterprise Solution was launched last month around at the RSA Conference. The awards NCP won are the following:

Network Products Guide: 2009 Best Products and Services

Best in Remote Access

Info Security Products Guide: Global Product Excellence

2009 Global Product Excellence – Remote Access Solution
2009 Global Product Excellence – VPN/IPSec/SSL

Congratulations to NCP engineering on receiving these awards, and for a successful launch of its Enterprise solution!

What’s For Dinner?

Nicole Miscioscia — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 23:59:46 +0000

I came across a fun article in the New York Times, Take 1 Recipe, Mince, Reduce, Serve. Maureen Evans, a 27-year old graduate student from Northern Ireland, tweets recipes for fun. When I first started reading this article I didn’t think much of it—it seems everyone is on Twitter tweeting about something. But when I thought about it some more, and read some of her recipes it was amazing to see how she condensed a full meal recipe in to a 140 character tweet.

A favorite:

“Chocolate Cupcakes: cream4T buttr/8T sug; +egg. Sift1/8t soda&salt/6T flour/4T cocoa/.25t bkgpdr. Mix all+4T milk; fill6cups. 20m@375F/190C.”

Maureen’s tweet recipes are fun to read—and even gives good ideas for dinner.

You can check out Maureen’s recipes at twitter.com/cookbook or follow her at twitter.com/Maureen

Baby Boomers and Social Media

Nicole Miscioscia — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 23:58:25 +0000

Social media is huge today—it seems everyone is using it for everything.

However, it is assumed Baby Boomers (those born between 1946-1964) do not use social media. As advertisers and PR professionals have begun using social media as an outlet, it has become a concern, and even problematic to these professionals—how can a message reach this demographic?

No more worrying… a new study came out; stating that Baby Boomers are the fastest growing users of social media—more so than Generation Y. The Baby Boomers are using sites like Facebook and Twitter, reading blogs and listening to podcasts. Within the last year there was a major increase of usage, below is a chart which outlines the adoption of services by each generation.

Think Before You Tweet

Nicole Miscioscia — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 23:56:53 +0000

With social media, you never know who is reading what, and unfortunately a job-seeker found this out the hard way. Earlier this week, a job-seeker tweeted that he/she got a job from Cisco, and posted the following:

“Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.”

Cisco, who read the tweet, replied with this:

“Who is the hiring manager. I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.”

I’m sure no one will disagree that social media is a great tool—the resources it can provide are almost limitless. But it is important to remember anyone can read your message, so be careful with what you post or tweet.

Grady

Nicole Miscioscia — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 23:55:41 +0000

Over the weekend my sister and I adopted a puppy. His name is Grady, and he is about 5 months old. We got him from a local animal shelter on the south shore. We decided to adopt a puppy from an animal shelter instead of a breeder because we read an article last month that more people are surrendering their pets simply because they cannot afford them. Needless to say, we found it sad. The MSPCA reported an increase of 45% of pets being put up for adaption. The increase is mostly due to the recession with so many foreclosures and people losing their jobs. To make matters worse, on March 31st, MSCPA is closing three shelters also due to the recession.

Below are some pictures of when we first brought him home. He was very shy and scared at first, but within a short week he has opened up a lot! He’s a lot of fun!

Did You Know?

Nicole Miscioscia — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 23:54:22 +0000

Both the terms globalization and the information age are widely-used terms that have different meaning to everyone. Thomas L. Friedman “examines the impact of the ‘flattening’ of the globe”, and argues that globalized trade, outsourcing, supply-chaining and political forces have changed the world permanently, for both better and worse. He also argues that the pace of globalization is quickening and will continue to have a growing impact on business organization and practice.” Noam Chomsky argues that “the word globalization is also used, in a doctrinal sense, to describe the neoliberal form of economic globalization.”

What meaning comes to you when you hear these terms? For me, working in high-tech PR agency with many European clients, it is incredible to witness the influence technology has not only on an individual, but as a nation and even the world. All the technologies we use on a day to day basis have become critical components to our lives.

Did you know that students are currently preparing for jobs that don’t exist… using technologies that haven’t been invented… in order to solve problems we don’t know are problems yet? Below, is a thought-provoking video, Did You Know, I watched in one of my Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) classes that captures these ideas quite well and pretty much sums up why I enjoy working in PR.

Sweepstakes Campaign with Immunet

Nicole Miscioscia — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 00:43:20 +0000

Client, Immunet and March Communication is running a sweepstakes campaign, and giving away a FREE Google Nexus One phone when you download free, community-centric antivirus software Immunet Protect, register an account and invite just one of your friends to try it out. When your friend registers, you’ll be eligible for the prize—act quickly though, you are only qualified for the 14 days.

Immunet Protect runs either on top of existing AV software or alone. Once you register with Immunet you become a member of the community and gain Collective Immunity protection—meaning if anyone using Immunet Protect, registers a virus, all users are instantly protected against that virus. The more members involved in the community, the stronger protection Immunet can offer.

Check out what the media is saying about Immunet Protect: Mashable, CNET, Technology Review, About.com and TechieBuzz.

Follow this discussion on Twitter @Immunet, @MarchPR, #AntiVirus and #Security.