Microsoft’s embarassing metadata

Johnnie Moore

Johnnie Moore

I’m Johnnie Moore, and I help people work better together

Found via Richard Gayle is Strike that Out Sam. This is a cheeky exploitation of the fact that Microsoft Word documents retain the fingerprints of the editing process. The author trawls the Microsoft site for documents and reveals the editing that went on prior to publication.

Not that Microsoft is especially villainous in this; what is shown here is quite typical of the way PR gets spun – made-up quotes attributed to people even before the identity of the supposed speaker is not known; exaggerated claims getting pared down to reality in the editing process. There is of course, a nice irony that it’s Microsoft’s own software that exposes them to this kind of analysis.

And certainly represents another way in which organisations are becoming transparent, and how hype damages the credibility of those who practice it.

Share Post

More Posts

Conversational leadership

David Gurteen tweeted this interesting article (pdf): Conversational Leadership: Thinking together for a change It makes a lot of sense to me pushing for a

Scaling or evolving?

This post really interests me: Innovation for Development: Scaling Up or Evolving? As they complete some pilot experiments in development work the authors recognise that

Jersey

I’ve just given a presentation on Beyond Branding in Jersey. It was fun to take ideas that have been percolating for months and give them

Badgers and the joy of complexity

Great article in today’s Independent. The government decided to take action to stop the spread of TB among cattle. They found that badgers were to

More on what is marketing…

Jennifer Rice continues our rolling dialogue about what marketing’s job is. I appreciate Jen for keeping a good thoughtful exploration going. David Foster at PhotonCourier

Chautauqua

I’ll be taking part in the Chautauqua online discussion of Beyond Branding, from 15th to 29th February. Fellow authors Denzil Meyers, Chris Macrae, Julie Anixter

Iranian Blog

On a tip from David Weinberger I’ve been reading the blog written by the Vice President of Iran. I recommend you take a look. It’s

More Updates

Emotional debt

Releasing the hidden costs of pent up frustrations

Aliveness

Finding the aliveness below the surface of stuck

Johnnie Moore

Coalitions of the willing

I used that phrase back in February. I think it’s a good way to describe a way of thinking about how to respond to what’s created by Web 2.0: you

Johnnie Moore

Laughing at or with

I like a bit of a stretch so yesterday I went to a workshop on Improv for stand up comedy. It was run by Steve Roe who is one of

Johnnie Moore

Social media report

Jordan Stone at We Are Social has a useful digest of the Econsultancy Social Media and Online PR report. It’s based on talking to around 500 each of clients and

Johnnie Moore

Not Vader

I’m kinda pleased/relieved that my rant about the blog conference last week seems to have generated so many comments and trackbacks. I always feel a bit hesitant about these Dr