February 23, 2007

Business Blog Roundup

Google reminds the blogosphere that this is the 56th annual National Engineering Week, promoting engineering careers across the United States. Among the many programs, today is Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day. As a co-sponsor of National Engineers Week, Lockheed Martin placed this ad in newspapers across the county. Congress passed a resolution honoring engineers, noting that "the nation is lagging far behind many others, especially China and India, in the training of new engineers." Though India produces more engineers than ever, the economic boom there is sparking concern of a shortage of engineers in the subcontinent.

An ING blogger posts a fascinating article about real-world companies now doing real-world business in the Second Life virtual world, including Sun Microsystems, Amazon, ABN AMRO, and Disney. Hoping to make real-world profits, Toyota sells virtual Scion cars to Second Life motorists.

Wal-Mart has re-activated its blog, with personalized stories by corporate execs, to give its monolithic corporate image a more human face. In fact, Wal-Mart is such a large employer that it has 1.3 million human faces here in the U.S. and another half million employees in foreign countries.

GM blogs about its new Corvettes as well as the electrifying potential of its Volt concept car.

EDS blogs that the Next Big Things are innovations by Amazon, Google and Yahoo to make using the Internet more intuitive and productive. For EDS, another Next Big Thing is "full immersion virtual reality" such as a therapy used to treat U.S. soldiers returning from Iraq with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Already a leader in the corporate blogosphere, Dell has launched the Idea Storm blog, where customers and IT professionals are invited to post their own stories about new Dell products they would like to see developed. This innovative way of bringing manufacturers closer to their customers is a concept sure to be copied throughout the business world.

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February 17, 2007

Business Blog Roundup

The Boeing blog reports on the soaring demand for more pilots. Over the next 20 years, China, for example, is ordering so many airplanes that 35,000 additional pilots will be required to fly them.

The General Motors vice chairman discusses his company's success at the recent Chicago Auto Show and announces a new GM blog, the Cadillac Drivers Blog, to focus on development and testing. Another GM blogger tells of GM's sponsorship of a Car Care Merit Badge for the Girl Scouts.

An IBM blogger emeritus says virtual worlds such as Second Life and other game technologies will have as much impact on the future of computing as the supercomputing and research communities.

EDS predicts that The Next Big Thing may be Phase Change Memory replacing DRAM as the foundation of computing.

Dell blogs about setting up a Global Operations organization to integrate all its worldwide manufacturing, procurement and supply chain functions. Dell is opening new plants in Poland, Brazil and India.

Further reflecting globalization of U.S. companies, the HP blog proudly announces that its Corporate Social Responsibility policy won a European Business Award.

The growing popularity of open source software is another driving force for globalization. A blogger at Intel describes how easily software developers can leave an employer and take with them the software they had been using. A blogger at Ingres Corporation writes about how open source software boosted growth of the IT industry in India.

Accenture blogs that soon every digital device in the world will be connected to a single network (akin to Skynet?). Microsoft and Google, among others, are anticipating this trend by building massive date centers to handle all that data from millions of PC, phones and other devices around the world. "In time, you will come to regard the network not only with respect and awe, but with love."

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February 8, 2007

Business Blog Roundup

Denmark has consolidated the back office functions of government computer systems for all 300 municipalities in the country. Hitachi Data Systems blogs that KMD accomplished this mammoth task in less than six years, setting "the benchmark for e-government."

A Verizon Poliblogger, echoing insightful commentary by Esther Dyson and Dave Farber, criticizes the so-called "net neutrality" proposal for regulating the Internet. Instead of cumbersome government mandates, he says the solution to bandwidth scarcity is "to do everything possible to encourage more entry, including trying to free up more spectrum and ensuring broadband over power line networks are free of investment constraining regulation."

If The Graduate had been filmed this year, "nano" might well replace "plastics" as the word of advice for Dustin Hoffman's Benjamin. A Motorola blogger analyzes the Forbes.com list of nanotechnology highlights for 2006 -- including nanowires linked to neurons, pharmaceutical nanotubes and DNA molecules assembled into a smiley face.

Novell's Chief Marketing Officer reports that its SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 platform has now been downloaded by over one million customers in just six months.

Dell won the National Recycling Coalition's (NRC) ninth annual Recycling Works Award, for its global recycling policy, that at the end of a product's useful life, any consumer should be able to return the product to the manufacturer at no charge and as conveniently as the purchase of a new product.

The Owens Corning Pink Panther Energy blog explains the importance of adequate home insulation for frost-bitten customers unfazed by global warming hysteria.

Blogging from the Strategic Product Management & Product Innovation conference in Shanghai, a prominent Internet guru reports on the ebullient mood of the Chinese business community. China expects this year to overtake the U.S. as the second-largest exporter and then displace Germany as the largest exporter in 2008. Brands of particular Chinese companies are soon to replace the "Made-In-China" label so common around the world.

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February 2, 2007

Business Blog Roundup

HP informs the blogosphere that The Corporate Blogging War Has Officially Started, noting that HP, Dell, and IBM "have engaged in a competitive dialogue through blogs." This is one war where everyone wins.

Accenture's blogger would have been a good defense attorney, claiming "It's Not Cheating but Task Support." Three people caught cheating at poker with hidden video linked to an off-site computer sparked some musing about the business potential for "short, instantly-available bursts of expertise." Manufacturers may already be working on bringing such devices to market.

Nortel's CTO is now blogging. His overall theme is that "the companies that will thrive in the future will be the ones that look to the system or ecosystem and not simply to the individual technology." Even more informative than John Roese's Blog itself are the enthusiastic and appreciate comments.

The GE Research blog reports that GE has received a grant from the National Institute of Health to develop technology to sequence any person's genome, in just two hours for a mere $1000. Health care and law enforcement are just two aspects of our Brave New World on the verge of a radical transformation.

Verizon's Poliblog endorses the President's State of the Union proposal for electronic storage of all healthcare records. He cites an HHS estimate of $140 billion which could be saved annually. NAM President John Engler has called for an aggressive transition to greater reliance on information technology.

The CEO of Sun Microsystems blogs about his new alliance with Intel in support of the Solaris development environment. He's also thrilled about KKR's investment in his company, taking it as a sign of confidence by some of Wall Street's savviest financiers.

Boeing's blogger sees clear skies for 2007 and beyond, "thanks to a second straight year of record commercial airplane orders." Production is sold out for the next two years.

Sprint's Communications Insider blog reports that as the official wireless telecommunications service sponsor for this year's Super Bowl, Sprint helped the NFL build a wireline and wireless infrastructure at the stadium and the surrounding Miami area. High bandwith will be in peak demand on Sunday, so hundreds of millions of fans will find out if Sprint is up to the challenge. The Lobby blog provides plenty of reason to visit the Windy City and stay at a Sheraton, Westin or other Starwood Hotel. Super Bowl, Chicago... hmmmm. Alright, I'll say it. GO BEARS!

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January 24, 2007

Business Blog Roundup

It's not just a small world, it's getting a lot smaller. And for manufacturing, small will be BIG. In 10 years, a Motorola blogger predicts, "the total value of manufactured goods that make use of nanotechnology is estimated to be in excess of $2.5 trillion." The GE Global Research blog has a fascinating story, with stunning photo, about a breakthrough in self-assembly technology, in which non-oxide ceramics assemble themselves with "exquisite morphological control down to the nanometer scale."

Verizon's Poliblog warns of dire consequences of net neutrality, a legislative proposal to regulate the Internet: "The Internet is a highly adaptive and competitive environment... Legislating or trying to impose regulations in this environment makes no sense and could do harm." The Cox Communications blog, Straight Talk, agrees: "the marketplace--not legislation--should be the arbiter of what's best for consumers and for the Internet's future." The National Association of Manufacturers also opposes net neutrality.

The Fast Company blog, commenting on a Financial Times article, observes that China has declared war on imports of foreign luxury goods. Soon enough, the blogger predicts, realizing that the best defense is a good offense, the Chinese will create their own luxury brands to compete with the Pradas and Louis Vuittons of the world.

Just six months after its launch, Dell's Direct2Dell blog reports receiving 1.5 million page views per month. Noting that so far only 8 percent of Fortune 500 companies have blogs, Dell rejects the advice from some blogging enthusiasts that companies should communicate with the public exclusively with blogs, touting instead a combination of blogging and traditional press releases.

The Alticor blog announced that its Fulton Innovation subsidiary has launched a new technology, eCoupled, which charges electronic devices without using wires. Alticor also blogs about Quixtar, its subsidiary for Internet-based small business entrepreneurs, being ranked fifth in a customer satisfaction survey of on-line retailers.

IBM's top blogger bids a fond farewell to Big Blue, but not to the big blue yonder of blogging.

Metamaterials, artificial materials with electromagnetic and optical properties not found in nature, will transform the computer and telecommunications industries, says another Motorola blogger. Cloaking devices, they're not just for Romulans anymore.

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January 17, 2007

Business Blog Roundup

IBM's top blogger notes that for the 14th consecutive year Big Blue received more patents than any other U.S. company. In his post, entitled Well Functioning Business Ecosystems, he takes care to celebrate the importance of innovation by smaller companies.

GM's blogging pioneer, Vice Chairman Bob Lutz, points to signs that GM has begun to recover. Most notably, at the North American International Auto Show on January 7, the Saturn Aura won North American Car of the Year and the Chevy Silverado won North American Truck of the Year. Another promising sign for Lutz was the enthusiastic reception at the Auto Show for the Chevrolet Volt, the concept car which has both an electric powertrain and a gasoline engine.

No longer just Chairman and CEO, Bill Marriott is now Blogger-in-Chief at Marriott International. The first post in his new blog, Uncharted Territory, tells the amazing story of how his company began in 1927 as a root beer stand and now has more than 3000 hotels and 143,000 employees. A long-time visionary, Marriott foresees that blogs are likely to become an indispensable means of communicating with customers.

A prominent blogger at Business Week calls for upper management to exercise less restraint on media bloggers.

Today, Wikipedia launched its Wikiseek search engine. Though Wikiseek will only access information on the Wikipedia website, the rapid expansion of Wikipedia should make Wikiseek a serious challenger to Google. In its quest for global domination, Google is following up its acquisition of YouTube with a plan to provide real-time stock quotes. The Yahoo blog sings the praises of the new Yahoo search engine, oneSearch, specifically designed for mobile devices.

The Owens Corning Wind Blade Technology Blog recounts the benefits for consumers (and producers of wind turbines) of legislation recently passed in Washington State requiring large utility companies to increase their use of renewable energy sources. On a lighter "vane" the blog told of a man in Inner Mongolia required to give a wind turbine to his bride's family as a condition for the marriage. Maybe it was the wind that swept her off her feet.

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January 9, 2007

Business Blog Roundup

IBM's HealthNex blog rings in the new year with a call for a radical transformation of the health care system. Among the Big Blue recommendations are improving information technology and reimbursing providers for increasing patient health.

EDS predicts that the Next Big Thing will be utility computing, in which computer resources are provided on an on-demand and pay-per-use basis. Amazon, eBay, Google and Yahoo are among the leaders in providing "serious utility computing for the masses."

An Indium Corporation blogger notes that Rep. Hilda Solis (D-CA), the new chair of the House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Environment and Hazardous Materials, is promoting federal legislation similar to California's Electronic Waste Recycling Act, which bans the sale of electronic devices containing certain hazardous substances. Several other states, as well as the EU, have such Restrictions on Hazardous Substances (RoHS). We'll be watching this issue carefully.

Michael Dell's keynote address at the Consumer Electronic Show is a Dell blogger's opportunity to promote the company's new products.

Jeff Jaffe, executive vice president and chief technology officer for Novell, blogs about his company's technical strategy for 2007 and beyond: "The world's best and most interoperable Linux surrounded with management services that leverage our footprint to build a business solving customer problems in heterogeneous systems management."

GE Global Research blogs about a new way to Bring Good Things to Light, a GE Healthcare imaging system which enables surgeons to see inside the human body using fluorescent dyes.

In another sign of the decline of the dead-tree media, the D&B company Hoovers blogs about how the recent bankruptcy of global book distributor Advanced Marketing Services could cost book publishers as much as $200 million.

Amazon's blog touts the success of Der offizielle Blog des Amazon Partnerprogramms in Germany and its counterpart in Britain.

At ING's My Cup of Cha, Nobel Prize winning professor Muhammad Yunus declares that credit is a human right. This would mean that lending could become an obligation, observes the blogger. Bankers beware!

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January 4, 2007

Business Blog Roundup

Last year at this time, IBM's vice president of technical strategy and innovation predicted how influential the blogosphere would become: "Blogging, like the Web itself, will find its niche in the spectrum of communications we each use." This year, he foresees visual interfaces and virtual worlds becoming integral to personal and corporate communications, as scientists "develop increasingly sophisticated visualization capabilities to be able to absorb and interact with the results of supercomputing simulations."

Even now, millions of people spend hours per day (and spend real money, too) participating in on-line worlds such as Second Life and Habbo Hotel. IBM's vice president of standards and open sources blogs about the immense potential for real-world profits in these virtual universes.

Back in the heyday of 'Ole Blue Eyes, Sinatra fans knew their place: "It's Frank's world -- we just live in it." Today, the term Planet Google expresses how what began as just another search engine is remaking our world. The company's recent acquisition of YouTube portends a role in the entertainment industry as great as its internet dominance. Just as significantly, the Google corporate blog recounts the expansion of its corporate blogging platform in 2006 to Russia, Mexico, Japan, China, and other major overseas markets. It Was a Very Good Year for Google, and The Best is Yet to Come.

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December 28, 2006

Business Blog Roundup

At the company's A Thousand Words blog, a Kodak exec reminds us what is truly important this holiday season and throughout the year. Illustrated with stunning photos taken at the scene (with a Kodak camera, natch), she describes how her house burned down shortly before Christmas. Everyone escaped unharmed, including the dog, and the family salvaged from the embers a box containing photo albums and mementos -- miraculously undamaged.

Digital printing is also truly important, Xerox informs the blogosphere.

Season's Rantings from General Motors vice chairman Bob Lutz. GM's blogging powerhouse has this to say about suggestions that the government might increase its Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards: "Forcing automakers to sell smaller cars to improve fuel economy [is like] fighting the nation's obesity problem by forcing clothing manufacturers to sell garments in only small sizes." As a wiser, alternate strategy, he recommends more government R&D on ethanol and fuel cells.

IBM's vice president of technical strategy and innovation reports on a recent lecture by the President and CEO of the Vassar Brothers Medical Center about challenges facing the healthcare system. Dr. Daniel Aronzon, the Big Blue Blogger notes approvingly, advocates greater accountability, transparency, and efficiency. Key to resolving these issues, says the blogger, is better use of technology and applying to hospitals the methodology of lean manufacturing.

The Cisco High Tech Policy Blog touts a newspaper op-ed by the company's chief development officer calling for a national broadband plan, to prevent the U.S. from falling further behind other advanced economies in high-speed internet access.

For those interested in getting away from it all -- except the vicinity of a Starwood hotel -- The Lobby blogs daily about enticing locales around the world.

Hoover's, the Dun & Bradstreet research subsidiary, blogs at its Bizmology website about ESPN's recent agreement to broadcast at least 26 Arena Football League games next year. Cue the Hank Williams, Jr. music: Are you ready for some (indoor) football?

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December 22, 2006

Business Blog Roundup

BusinessWeek's influential Blogspotting website poses a question destined to reshape what remains of the dead tree media: "Why not publish every single letter to the editor?" Magazines and newspapers, which print just a few of the hundreds of the letters they receive each day, could instead place them all on-line. As the blogger explains, searchable, organized and interactive by readers, the letters would develop into "a very lively online forum of ideas." Who could possibly object? Maybe this guy, who laments the mainstream media losing its monopoly on political discourse. Just a couple of days later, his employer, the Wall Street Journal, faced up to the new reality and touted its own blog, in the aptly named PBS blog, MediaShift.

Having pioneered the practice of bringing together links to the corporate blogosphere at the Business Blog Roundup, the NAM's ShopFloor.org welcomes the news that Verizon Poliblog will soon set up its own corporate blogroll.

The most popular blogger at Sun Microsystems discusses the impact of the Internet on intellectual property rights, pointing out that those rights are protected at considerable cost to society. A Xerox blogger provides a glimpse of where things are heading by touting a new website for facilitating the exchange of creative ideas.

'Tis the Season for exemplary customer service. At the Dell website, a helpful blogger informs customers about the best ways to contact the company for product support during the holiday gift-giving rush.

GE's Global Research Blog reports on innovative research into bringing down the cost of fresh water by using wind turbines to power water desalinization plants. Here, Owens Corning blogs and brags about how its new composite material is advancing the burgeoning wind power industry in Brazil.

General Motors also does a bit of bragging at its FastLane blog, with a story about a man who has driven his GM car (a Saab, actually) over one million miles. FastLane regularly features stories, with nifty photos, about memorable GM cars and the people fortunate to own them.

Bragging -- that seems to be the corporate blogosphere theme of the week. Boeing blogger Randy Baseler starts with "All I can say is, 'Wow, it's been an incredible year.'" Well, it turns out he can say more, and does, with 13 more paragraphs about the company's many successes in 2006. His comments (okay, bragging) about the success of his blog should inspire other corporations to take that plunge into the blogosphere.

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December 14, 2006

Business Blog Roundup

Picking up on a recent Washington Post article, EDS blogged about the Next Big Thing in technology, NASA's plan for a moon base by 2024. Even more thrilling for EDS than the base itself would be all the spin-off technologies. The Manufacturing Institue's Bill Canis blogged about an innovative way to facilitate the manufacturing of the moon base, a space elevator.

Back on Planet E, Stonyfield Farm, a U.S. organic food manufacturer recently acquired by France's Groupe Danone, uses blogs to gather its customers into an on-line community and boost brand loyalty. The Bovine Bugle features regular commentary from an organic dairy farmer in Vermont, while at Baby Babble new mothers can read about health and environmental issues.

The General Motors Fast Lane blog celebrates the fact that Buicks are one of the best-selling auto brands in China, especially among "the young and hip in Shanghai."

Shaping the public debate about an issue is a major activity in the corporate blogosphere. A senior executive at Indium Corporation blogged recently about the European Community directive on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), which makes manufacturers responsible for collecting and recycling computers and related equipment. The business of WEEE recycling, he observes, has profit potential, citing large WEEE disassembly facility which opened in Hungary last month.

Perhaps in response, Dell blogged that despite its pro-recycling corporate ethic, the company opposes "Advanced Recovery Fees," an option being debated by federal and state lawmakers in the U.S. Too bureaucratic and inefficient, says Dell.

At the Trivergence blog, an Accenture executive comments regularly about "the interplay of Devices, Data, and Controls in a networked world." In his latest entry, he describes how Services Oriented Architecture will create new business opportunities, not just for telecoms but software companies as well.

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December 6, 2006

Business Blog Roundup

The best blogs are real blogs. Unlike some corporate webpages crafted by public relations departments, real blogs are informal commentaries written in the first-person, by a real person. And, the best of the corporate blogosphere keep the focus on a specific goal.

Owens Corning reaches out to its customers with The Pink Panther Energy Blog. "Keeping a paw on the pulse of energy conversation," this blog answers e-mailed questions about saving energy and has links to information about Owens Corning. Eastman Kodak's A Thousand Words blog, which presents stunning photos and commentary, is a "place for stories from the people of Kodak. We invite you to join our conversation with stories of your own."

In yesterday's Digital Straight Talk blog, Comcast seeks to improve its corporate image with a response to a USA Today story critical of the cable industry. Boeing's vice president of marketing blogged on Friday about the economic and environmental benefits from deregulating the commercial aviation industry. General Electric touts its advances in energy technology with the GE Global Research blog. In the most recent post, a manager discusses his proposals for wind power generation presented at GE's Future of Energy Technology Summit.

At My Cup of Cha, ING's Asia/Pacific head of e-business blogs about a Hong Kong-based project to set up a global auction website for their 120,000 employees in the region. Highly significant for the future of corporate blogging is that such an enormous world-wide financial institution as ING made one of its first blog forays in China.

The Internet is big business in China. The number of users is expected to double over the next four years, to more than 250 million. There are already 60 million bloggers in China, and that total should reach 100 million by the end of next year. Chinese is now the third most popular language in the blogosphere, after English and Japanese. Having outmuscled Yahoo and Google in its domestic market, the leading Chinese search engine, Baidu, now has the fourth-highest traffic for any website on Earth. In July, Baidu successfully launched its own blogging platform, Baidu Space. Chinese corporate blogging cannot be far away.

The NAM will be blogging every week about what's what in the blogs of U.S. manufacturers and other corporations. It's a big blogosphere out there and it's going to get a lot bigger, so contact Michael Zak, mzak@nam.org with blog news you'd like covered here at ShopFloor.org.

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November 29, 2006

Welcome to the Business Blog Roundup

Today we begin a new feature here that we plan to run weekly, although frequency will likely increase as business blog content increases. As you might know, many businesses -- and specifically, many of our members -- have started blogs. Some have been hugely successful while others are still in the early stages.

Our own Michael Zak is busy checking out these blogs and will do a weekly roundup of what's going on around the various manufacturers' blogs out there. His first installment is below.

Blogs have become a serious, integral part of the business world. More than a hundred corporations already have blogs, and many more plan to enter the corporate blogosphere in 2007.

The Securities and Exchange Commission gave its seal of approval a few weeks ago when its chairman, Christopher Cox, posted a comment on the Sun Microsystems blog. Though not yet green-lighting use of the Internet to disseminate material information, Mr. Cox signaled that the SEC is favorably inclined, writing: "The Commission encourages the use of websites as a source of information to the market and investors."

Corporations are discovering blogs to be a low-cost and effective means of promoting their communications and marketing goals. A Harvard Business School newsletter summarized things nicely: "It's time to think of the blog as your friend. Skillful blogging can boost your company's credibility and help it connect with customers."

As could be expected for the Internet, first to blog in corporate America were technology companies. This greeting -- "Welcome to Blogs.sun.com! This space is accessible to any Sun employee to write about anything." -- sets the tone for the hundreds of bloggers at Sun Microsystems. Jonathan Schwartz, President and COO, is a corporate blogging pioneer. In his November 13th post, he touts the advantages of open source software. Some 24, 000 IBM employees blog on the company's internal platform, in addition to the dozens of bloggers on the corporate website. While most technology blogs impart information about new products, Big Blue Bloggers also show a deft touch for comedy with three videos posted to YouTube. Other blogging technology companies include Microsoft and Intel.

Corporations find a variety of reasons to blog. One of the most important is to influence the company's public image, unfiltered by the media. Responding to the many blogs commenting about General Motors, the company set up its own blog. GM's vice chairman, Bob Lutz, is among the leaders of the corporate blogging pack. Recently, he blogged about accepting a State Department award for social responsibility in Colombia, an achievement which NAM also heralded.

A popular blog by Boeing's vice president of marketing, Randy Baseler, communicates directly with the people who fly in Boeing aircraft. In his November 22 posting, he favorably compares the 777 and 787 with the Airbus A350. Baseler certainly deserves some of the credit for recent decisions by Korean Airlines and Fedex to cancel their orders for the A350 and buy Boeing instead. USA! USA!

The latest post to Xerox's Big I, Little T Blog describes how the company is in the prototype stage with "transient documents," copier paper that can be re-used many times. There is also a link to a New York Times article about this important environmentally conscious new technology.

Another reason companies blog is to humanize their corporate image and advertise their products. DuPont's innovative website, Real Families, Real Fun, is a good example of this. Updated daily by a mother chitchatting about her family, the blog Citizen Mom's Family Journal draws readers to website links promoting the DuPont corporation and its products. Hallmark uses a similar marketing approach with a blog about food and another about books.

Establishing a dialogue with their customers is the purpose of many corporate blogs. For example, in addition to Verizon's Poliblog for discussions about telecommunications, the company plans to create another blog for feedback from customers. Responding to posts to this new blog will be a 24-hour response team. According to Jerri DeVard, senior vice president of marketing and brand management, Verizon will spend at least 15 percent of its marketing budget on-line.

The NAM will be blogging every week about what's what in the blogs of American manufacturers and other corporations. It's a big blogosphere out there and it's going to get a lot bigger, so contact Michael Zak, mzak@nam.org, with blog news you'd like covered here at ShopFloor.org.

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