Now a limited study at Landau University has found that bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby. Dr Jochen Kuhn, who carried it out, said this could provide a “hint” to a possible cause.

So what is nearby?  Given what I know about cell phones and radiation, people would literally have to be hanging around bee hives.  Of course, all this bee hive socialization would have to be a 2007 phenomenon as bee disappearance simply wasn’t an issue like this previously.

Nevertheless, it makes for great fodder as it touches on two areas people love to sensationalize – cell phones causing danger to mankind and destruction of the environment. 

Right now, I first saw this through the Drudge Report link to The Independent article (I’ve seen Drudge link to them in the past for other sensationalistic articles).  Just take a look at Technorati’s chart to see the explosive discussion since that article on April 15th.

The best part?  The final scare is the reporting of Albert Einstein having once said that “if the bees disappeared, “man would have only four years of life left”.  First, as so many do point out, his area of expertise is a far cry from the study of insects, plants and the environment.  Second, I can’t even confirm he said this or what the context was if he did say it.  But who cares, it makes great copy.

When a product like the Ninentdo Wii takes the market by storm, it can quickly spark new trends.  One new trend developing is that of exergames.

An article on exergaming from The Economist is one of a few strong indications that Exergames may be a next big thing (this was the same publicaton that discussed Second Life as a virtual economy months before the major US publications focused on the topic).   A search shows over the last year there were only seven significant stories that included exergames or exergaming in the first six months and then 23 in the next six (when the Wii launched). 

I also grabbed this quick chart from Blogpulse.  It shows a definite rising trend of sites discussion Exergame (or exercise video games or exergaming) over the last six months.

As there is more discussion about the Wii having a physical exercise impact, it is worth watching to see if this becomes a home entertainment category on its own (and if the term exergames catches on to lead this category).

As Linda Zimmer of Second Life Business Communicators notes, the Gartner Hype cycle follows media patterns, at least initially (actual broad adoption can take off well after the hype).  I did a little trend research with the media and blogosphere discussion.  As you can see, there is a clear downward trend in media (methodology at the bottom).

Methodology: We did a little research starting in June (a little after the Business Week cover story – a good hype launch point) up until December (search was for Second Life in the headline or first paragraph of all media.  For December, we searched the first have then doubled month everyone was gone.  We also did a blog search using Google as it allows us to get specific posts by date.  The number of posts were divided by 100 to create a line closer to media.  The two numbers added up for each month provided a score.  As you can see, the blogosphere is more or less flat while media has a clear trend drop.  Based on this simple finding, Gartner’s Hype Cycle forecast is just in time.

Note: Thanks to Zoho againfor their easy spreadsheet application and charting feature (read the short review here).

 

 

After seeing IPTV as a phrase pop up more in media such as The New York Times and Business Week, I looked at the trend numbers for IPTV to see if media and public interest is heating up.  It looks like it is.  Part of the coverage is due to new rollouts by the likes of AT&T and Comcast.  But part of the IPTV coverage is the fact that new technologies such as mobile TV or time shifting TV are being reported as IPTV services.  The bottom line is, I believe, growing interest in IPTV stories.    The charts below show the increase in IPTV coverage by general media (done through a headline/abstract search in Factiva), trade media (telecom, tech, consumer tech) and blog posts (I divided them by 100 sincere there where so many) and then the total of the previous three for a complete score.  The line does flatten in November and December.  However, I belive this is due to the end of year slowdown and that we will see a pickup throughout 2007.   I also say this as while there were only 5 ed cal items focusing on IPTV in 2006, there are 48 in 2007 thus showing an increased focus by editors (as searched on Bacon’s).

Why is all this important to public relations professionals that don’t work in IPTV?  Getting the proper attention for a company means showing how it’s relevant for what the media and public are discussing.    If you know IPTV will be seeing more coverage and discussion in 2007, then an analysis should be conducted to see if some messaging should be adjusted to meet this forecast.  Remember, even furniture companies got a boost from big screen HDTV when reporters wrote on the best couches in which to watch the new HD home theater.