iCountry Media

We see it so often that it never occurs to us it’s not true. It’s inscribed on police vehicles in cities across America—to protect and serve. The phrase resonates with the promise of security, an assurance of stability in emergency situations. It embodies the art of relationship building, a public relations strategy that emphasizes the interaction between two parties. Read more »

Old William of Ockham got it right way back in the fourteenth century: when there appears to be more than one explanation for a phenomenon, the simplest one is probably the right one. If you find a half-eaten ham sandwich in your refrigerator one morning, you could theorize that a wayward elf had stopped by for a snack on his way to the North Pole while you were asleep, OR you could come to the conclusion that your husband, who has been dieting for weeks with minimal results, was up feasting in the middle of the night. Your call. Read more »

One of the sites I own/manage crashed earlier this summer. It had some help, mostly from me. I learned a few lessons from the experience: 1) Never play around with MySQL after you've had a couple of beers and some allergy medicine, 2) Always back up your database before you begin any database modifications, and 3) backup your content every time you upload. I also learned how to recover content. Using a couple of search engines, Google and Bing, along with a free service called Copyscape.

I have proof that even a poor crisis management team is better than no crisis management team. Case in point: the Matt Bandy case. What follows is the story of how a shrewd lawyer was able to use a second-rate crisis management "expert" to direct the focus away from his perverted but quite wealthy client. The so-called expert and his web "master" used the ignorance of the computer illiterate to whip up fear of some cyber zombie that could cause your computer to download filthy pictures of small children being sexually abused and then save them to a CD and put that CD in your drawer without you ever knowing it. Ridiculous? Of course, but the retards of the world love a good evil science story, especially a hysterical made-up one.

I've been in the Web design business for ten years now, which means I've had the pleasure of dealing with any number of blithering idiots calling themselves hosting providers. You know the ones--you pay for a year up front, and they go out of business three weeks later, or they promise wonderful technical support, but when you desperately need their help, "...we're sorry, but all representatives are busy assisting other customers...blah, blah, blah." Others, like Network Solutions, did a fair enough job with customer service, but at what price?

There are early warning signs that something is wrong, those seemingly little quirks that stick right in the middle of your brow, causing you to get that slightly perplexed look. But it's usually fleeting, and most of us don't pay too much attention. It's this sort of inattentiveness, and in some cases laissez-faire attitude that leads to serious online communication crises. Is your agency or company skating on the brink of an online public relations nightmare? Here's six signs that point to 'yes':

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