If you think about it for a while, you’ll see it’s entirely true: companies that have a blog are friendly and feel closer. They care about your opinion and want you to know more. They share information with you, their customer or fan, and want to know about your opinions and input about their company and services.

In the last few months (to about a year and a half) we’ve seen the escalation of the corporate blog phenomenon (something I’ve been following and working on). Companies are finaly realizing that a good way to reach their target market (and to actually expand it) is by getting closer through the web: both speaking and listening.

I don’t really want to sound like a blog evangelist (I hate the word) but it is a fact that blogs are about building relationships, just like marketing is. Blogs get you closer to the people who listen to what you have to say, because they’re about personal content, something people care about. People who are read (like you are right now) build a “relationship” to the author of a post (often too, the creator of a product): because they’re interested, because they share an opinion, because they disagree, because they want the other end to listen to them too.

This is why blogging in businesses is important. If your company creates a good product but doesn’t listen to feedback or talk about the “how” and “why”, I’ll easily take your neighbours’s that does. Because if your neighbour cares about making me feel special when giving me insight into a product and allowing me to comment on it, that means my chances of actually seeing that product reflect my real needs are greater - and that’s a clear win for both parties.

People value honesty and straight-forwardness. Blogging is about reality, about giving people what they want to know, not what they want to hear in order to be happy. It’s about a conversation between you who create a product, and anyone else that’s a potential customer. If you want me listening to what you have to offer, start a blog. Wake up and smell the web 2.0.

I should stop posting about news because that’s not what this weblog is about, but I need to stand by Loic Le Meur and everybody else when saying John Gibson is what you might call a royal asshole. So this so called “Fox News” classic, one of the elite at the TV channel, dares to say, and I quote from this and this article (if they go down - they are an embarassment to Fox - there’s always google cache):

“Paris was exactly the right place to pick and the Olympic committee screwed up. (…) First, the French think they are so good at dealing with the Arab world that they would have gone out and paid every terrorist off. And things would have been calm.

Or another way to look at it is the French are already up to their eyeballs in terrorists. The French hide them in miserable slums, out of sight of the rich people in Paris. (…) It would have been a delight to have Parisians worried about security instead of New Yorkers. It would have been exquisite to watch.“

This was written the day before yesterday, when the olympics comittee decided London was going to host the Olympic games. And now yesterday, after the london bombings, here’s what this joy of a journalist had to say:

“The bombings in London: This is why I thought the Brits should let the French have the Olympics (search) — let somebody else be worried about guys with backpack bombs for a while”

This is exactly why I believe the big media will go down sooner or later. People (I’m someone, take me as an example) despise this sort of attitude, no matter who it is towards. I have friends in Paris, and I respect the french as a people. As such, I believe Fox News and John Gibson owe huge apologies to the world and their audience. You’re the ones who wage war and terrorism.

Lately, the open source world has been in the tip of the tongue of every entrepreneur and venture capitalist out there who’s into the web as platform. This is due to the fact that the open source world and culture has grown to a point where its power is undeniable - it already supersedes the closed, proprietary platform software it was designed to improve and substitute.

I’ve also already talked about the fact that opensource has drastically reduced the cost of entry for any web-centered or web-based project and how this is helping innovation by creating a lot of new start-ups with small investment who still get their ideas out. What I haven’t talked, though and what seems to be one of the things people are the most scared about is how openness can actually make them sell.

If you’re in the IT world to make a living, there will come a time when you’ll think business. This may happen now, or may happen in a couple of years, but whenever you realize it is an intrinsic part of your life, you will think money - and you will probably wonder about how using opensource and open culture can actually benefit a business if everything around it means “free”.

Some background

I am a supreme believer in free culture. I’ve always believed information should be produced to be free and remain free whenever and for as long as possible. This is one of the reasons I share my knowledge with you who read my blog, and this is what makes it possible for you to actually read what I have to say. (more…)

If you haven’t heard by now, this morning London woke up to several explosions in their underground system and apparently a bus. According to the latest news, this attack has been connected to Al Qaeda, and occurs while the G8 event is taking place (Tony Blair announced already that the event will not stop). France and Germany have announced being in emergency alert state.

Those of you who are looking for more information, there are pictures in the flickr tag for london and technorati is keeping up on updates around the blogosphere on the london tag.

Sorry about updating with something like this that falls out of scope of the rest of the blog, but I feel it to be necessary. I will keep updating this blog post whenever, and if, there’s new relevant information.

Update, 1h08PM GMT

Tony Blair is giving a speech at the G8 with several world leaders right now, broadcasted by CNN. He’s just finished with “we will prevail and they shall not”. This is the same kind of speech we’ve listened before in the aftermath of the 9/11 incident in the US.

At the moment there are 2 confirmed dead and 185 injured. It is expected that the number of dead to go from 10 to 50 people. Apparently there are some rescue missions going on in one of the underground stations (I still haven’t confirmed the exact station name) - apparently, kings cross.

Update, 1h20PM GMT

According to the CNN, everyone who was alive at Kings Cross has been evacuated some minutes ago and everybody left behind this far are fatalities. Some people evacuated in this operation mentioned seeing one of the actual carriages exploding, and having to step through bodies while being brought out of the station.

BBC news coverage online is pretty good too, for those following up this story without a television at hand.

Update, 1h47PM GMT

Wikipedia has a screenshot of the website that claims the terrorist attack, and is covering the whole thing well, even though there are cases of contradictory information and overstated details. Wikipedia article.

Related Link: London theatre tickets are available at great low prices.