Web Capturing and Archiving

A couple of years back, during a crisis management assignment, we experimented with a number of news monitoring options, with the intent to capture all articles, websites, blogs, etc. with references to the event, and make them immediately available to the client. Most solutions available at the time carried one or more serious drawbacks. Collaborative bookmarking tools often returned ‘non existing’ pages and screen captures would typically be limited by screen sizes and impossible to index. Iterasi, a new Web archiving service, would have made our lives a lot easier. The (currently) free service allows you to capture and archive any web page at any given moment. The added, built-in advantages are full text indexing, sharing, and automated capture scheduling. This is a great tool for OSInt, PR, competitive intelligence, crisis management operators.

Scout Labs: Brand Sentiments and Blogosphere Monitoring Matures

We have been addressing the subject of corporate and brand ’sentiment’ monitoring a few times this year (here, and here). The latest addition to this space may well prove to be most powerful and sophisticated thus far. Scout Labs, currently in private beta, will offer brand ’scouts’ (search agents) that can not only weigh the relevance and frequency of positive vs. negative ’sentiments’ in blogs and news outlets, but do so going back to January 2007. Michael Arrington at TechCrunch has taken the site for a spin and reported about it here. How this service could benefit Crisis Management teams and EW efforts remains to be seen as the product reaches commercial availability and speed, cost, and flexibility of ’scouting’ criterion become clear. Certainly one to follow closely as it may become the biggest player in this arena.

Corporate Dirty Laundry: Where is it Hanging?

Back in February we mentioned a few sources of corporate praise and blame. As we often emphasize, anyone involved in enterprise resilience today cannot underestimate the potential impact of rumors and proprietary information flowing through anonymous online forums or blogs. These are our favorite OSInt starting point:

• Anonymous Employer – This appears to be an actual business which claims to make an attempt to contact the company subject of an anonymous report. Although free, their goal is to provide consulting and technology for corporate communication. There is no company directory or name search which means a subscription is required for it to be of any use. On the plus side, it’s a ‘wait and see’ approach for corporate security since any complaint logged to the system would be directly forwarded to the employer.

• BossBitching: As the title suggests, mostly focused on individuals rather than companies as a whole. Most comments we saw bore no direct reference to people or companies and number of posts we found for search and browsing was exceptionally small. Only worth mentioning in light of potential, future expansion – today, it is of little or no value. >>>

Counterfeit Colgate Toothpaste: Crisis Summary & Updates

Updated October 31, 2007

Since May 2007, reports of potentially toxic, Chinese-manufactured toothpaste have been published by media outlets across the Americas. The issue centers on the use of Diethylene Glycol (DEG) found in a number of toothpastes under various brands, including Colgate (for more background see the Useful Links below). Here is a summary of key events as they unfolded – from latest to oldest – which we will continue updating until its relevance is considered active.

July 25: Colgate-Palmolive’s President and CEO, Ian Cook, addresses the (minimal) impact of the counterfeit toothpaste in the Q2 2007 earning call (see transcript here).

July 20: Chinese authorities shut down three chemical manufacturing companies on the basis of safety concerns. Among these is the Taixing Glycerin Factory, which has been accused of exporting diethylene glycol.

July 13: News about counterfeit and toxic toothpaste show no sign of slowdown. Additional reports of products sightings and seizures are reported in Massachusetts, Illinois, and Florida. In Palermo, Italy, one man is hospitalized with an allergic reaction attributed to a counterfeit toothpaste and the number of DEG-contaminated toothpaste brands grows to include (counterfeit) Sensodyne (only reported in the UK thus far).

July 11: “From today onwards, toothpaste manufacturers are not allowed to use diethylene glycol as an ingredient . . .” (Chinese General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine Website). >>>