Dr. Neil Hair

I've recently been asked to write a piece for the Rochester Business Journal on Small Business Guerilla Marketing activities. This coincides with recent updates to my Graduate Internet Marketing class for Winter Quarter, issues to be covered will include relationship marketing / CRM, blogging, email campaigns, and viral marketing. Watch this space for more details…

Wikipedia? Enough already… Permit me to get something off of my chest - students use of Wikipedia, in place of traditional encyclopedia's has just got to stop. Recent high profile defamation cases illustrate the inherent quality issues with this so called body of knowledge (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4520678.stm). The legitimacy of something comprised almost entirely from joe public and zero peer assessment (until now) has to be questioned. That's not to say that it cant play a role at the start of the knowledge acquisition process (perhaps to give you a quick opinion), but it shouldn't form the basis of a serious academic argument. It appears that it cant be trusted and is certainly no substitute for legitimate databases such as ABI/Proquest. The use of www.dictionary.com is another heinous crime in my humble opinion. Business dictionaries convey a much stronger position as they are designed specifically for business professionals. Anything that defines marketing as 'to sell' has just got to go. And I'll start crying if I see another paper with www.quickmba.com as a reference, and you wouldn't want that. The way around these quality issues? Multiple citations from multiple sources, internet, book, journal, practitioner. Just no more from those sites mentioned above. update on Wikipedia: http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,19509-1933568,00.html

My good friend Josh (www.katinger.com) recently got in touch and began hounding me for technical updates to www.neilhair.com. Thanks Josh, I agree, it's been a year since my last major update and time is certainly of the essence. Bad news: frontpage 2000 is out (and good riddance although I'll miss the unnecessary code and hidden white full stops for line spaces). Good news: I've initiated conversations with people in the know, design students here at RIT who live and work web design. Since I'd rather eat my fist then learn code I've decided to employ a wysiwyg package. Question remains - which one? News on the streets of brick city is that golive! is out and macromedia deamweaver8 is in (both now owned by Adobe). Given my joy for all things macromedia at the moment this seems like the most viable choice. I like the use of flash video for one and the onsite training programmes on campus for two. What really caught my attention though is the facility to develop mobile content. This area is huge in Europe and increasingly prevalent in the USA, the aim as always, to stay ahead of the curve. Stay tuned for developments and please do leave me comments on what you think an update should involve…

Having explored the offerings of blogger.com recently I came across this really neat feature that allows you to send voice messages from your phone to your blog. Great when you don't have access to the internet or find yourself bored on the road. Im quite impressed to be honest - both with its functionality and its quality. Have a listen, you'll see what I mean…

Macromedia Breeze

It's not often that I come across a new piece of technology that seriously impresses me. It doesn't surprise me however that it was RIT's online learning team that were immediately behind it. Introducing Macromedia Breeze - a powerful upgrade from the realpresenterplus of yesteryear. The idea is simple, bring powerpoint slides to life with audio visual. Nothing new there you argue, but the design quality of the final output is what caught my attention, seriously superior to anything else on the market (using far smaller file sizes) and child's play to produce. It doesn't end there, they also have facilities to hold virtual live office hours with the same degree of quality of audio and video plus the added bonus of archiving the results. I'm thinking live guest lectures; ecstatic distance learning students; live interactive debates from industry experts; all of which instantly archivable. Check out the link: https://ritdl.rit.edu/students/breeze/

Dear friends, It seems appropriate that I begin my career as a blogger with a life changing announcement. As those of you who know me well, Rose and I have been together now for 7 years. On the 29th of November, overlooking NYC from the highest vantage point of the Rockefeller observation deck and with the Empire State building in the background, I dropped to one knee and asked Rose whether she'd do me the honor of being my wife. To my great relief (and some might say surprise) - she said YES!! I consider myself to be an extremely fortunate man, I'm marrying my best friend and the most important person in the world to me - and I wanted to share this news with you all. Best wishes everyone, and with a big smile on my face, Neil.