Most corporate blogs published  by firms selling to the business market “failed to energize their intended audiences,” according to a recent report from Forrester Research Inc.

According to CIO magazine, Forrester examined 90 enterprises with corporate blogs and found 58 per cent had no more than one comment per post. Sixteen per cent received a comment while only 13 per cent had more than one post.

Forrester noted 56 per cent of the blogs “regurgitate company news or executive news.” Only 13 per cent used personal anecdotes while 16 per cent included “moderate personal insight.”

Please post a comment – anything – responding to this. Otherwise, this post will only serve to prove Forrester’s point.

“Bacheelor, MasteerMBA, and Doctoraate diplomas available in the field of your choice that’s right, you can even become a Doctor and receive all the benefits that comes with it!”

Apparently those benefits do not include a good sense of spelling and grammar. As Sharky’s colleague commented, “Wow … nominated for an MBA … and I would have settled for a Bacheelor, since I don’t have time to do a dissertation for my Doctoraate.” Really, with all this crap coming into our Outlook accounts, who does?

1. Very little chance of losing the device, unless you visit someone with really nice carpet.

2. No need for an over-inflated data plan from Rogers.

3. Encourages users to sit while speaking.

4. Dress-up style more appropriate for corporate settings.

5. For once it’s the device, not the customer, that gets stepped on.

This was prompted by concerns over the inevitable grammatical errors resulting from the use of gender-neutral personal pronouns. For example, if a user who has not specified his or her gender updates his or her profile, the site would normally generate a message to the effect that the user has updated “their” profile.

Although Facebook gives a new user the option of specifying their (oops, I mean his or her) gender, apparently the social networking giant is going to strongly encourage users not wanting to specify their gender to do so.

A product manager was quoted as saying translators and users in other countries have said translations are “too confusing when people have not specified a sex on their profiles.”

We are confident that Facebook has no ulterior motive in their efforts to ask users to specify their gender, and that it won’t be used to target advertisements.

If so, you’re smarter than a few doorknobs in the U.S. who gave their addresses to Edna Fiedler, who sent them cheques (which later turned out to be fake) asking them to cash them on behalf of someone in Nigeria who needed an American contact. The losers – oops, I mean  fraud victims – then cashed the cheques and money orders, after which they reimbursed Fiedler.

Fiedler, who pleaded guilty in March, was sentenced this week to two years in prison and five years of supervised release, according to an IDG News Service article.

The nitwits – oops, I mean fraud victims -  who fell for Fiedler’s scheme went to all the trouble to cash cheques and send her money because they got to keep some of the funds for themselves as commissions. But when the banks came calling later telling the bozos the cheques were fake, the greedy oafs then realized they had been tricked into a scam. On top of that, they were on the hook for the cash they received.

At a recent news conference, the Washington State Attorney General said he is “pushing for ways to better educate Internet users so that people don’t unwittingly help out” scam artists. We have a solution for anyone who hasn’t figured out all those e-mails from people you don’t know asking for help laundering money are fake. Unplug your modem. Staying off the Internet will save you a lot of trouble.

In an online discussion form, Phil Sorgen fielded all kinds of questions about what the world’s largest software company is doing around corporate social responsibility (CSR), from employees offering volunteer time to actual programs to benefit the community. The best part, though, was Sorgen’s ease at deflecting the obvious questions about Microsoft’s sincerity. Some gems:

1. “Your image and your reputation can be tarnished by your behaviour,” he said. Can they ever!

2. “We shifted from what some would call ‘random acts of kindness.’” Which were what, exactly?

3. “Young workers are looking for employers who are industry leaders, have high ethical standards, are innovative, have a strong corporate culture and are socially responsible.” Well, four out of five ain’t bad.

Orange, a carrier out of England, is partnering with a renewable energy company called GotWind (which needs no punchline on our end) to produce a prototype which is worn on the arm and uses “a system of weights and magnets which provide an electric current to top up charge in a storage battery. This can then later be used to recharge the phone,” according to Reuters.

So don’t just stand there, bust a move! Do the Recharge, this summer’s crazy new dance! You may look like you’re doing the Flintstone Flop, but at least your phone will work. As if you’ll be able to hear it ringing at the Glastonbury Festival anyway.

According to Google engineers, the service has been tweaked to offer “Canadian English.”

“We incorporated some Canadianisms such as ‘eh,’ ‘Traw-na,’ ‘Cal-gry,’ and, of course, ‘aboot,’” a blog post said.

Well, it’s aboot time! We here in Traw-na wouldn’t know how to get to local businesses without the help of Google, eh? Perhaps Google will promote the service online and on TV with videos featuring animated beavers! Whoops, scratch that. Bell owns those cliches. Maybe something to do with maple syrup? (After all, Google is one of the stickiest sites out there.) Oh well. If it’s pandering and banal, we’re sure a search engine like Google will be able to find it.

Elsewhere on IT World Canada Blogs:
Google shouldn’t corner the market as an agent of organization

Dear customers: Microsoft addresses the XP outcry

The company said it was expecting a huge rush on users signing up for ymail.com and
rocketmail.com, but Shark Tales is pretty sure there will be a few names that will remain free for some time, including billgates@ymail.com, steveballmer@ymail.com and rayozzie@ymail.com.

Not to be outdone, however, rumour has it that Google is already at work on a beta test of geemail.com.

“Avid technology consumers tended to score highly in personality traits such as leadership, dynamism and assertiveness — but low in modesty,” the study says.

Advice to IT departments: Don’t give users anything that will make them feel any more superior than they already do. In fact, considering exploring if the reverse is also true. Running a mainframe should make a humble person out of anybody.