We’ve gone through this process before. Apple carefully stages the expectations for a media event, seeding the market with fact and fiction about a new product that’s poised to disrupt the market. In the days leading up to the event, dozens of companies are reengineering their PR strategies to draft from the announcement, or at least position themselves in a way that will make them look good, or at least prescrient, when the announcement is made. I noticed at least two companies doing this last week. First, the New York Times announced it would begin recharging its Web users for “frequent use,” a odd-but-clever reversal in the days before Apple is likely to unveil some new ideas for rescuing the media industry. Then we heard from Amazon, which announced its intention to develop an ecosystem for developers building on the Kindle, the one device most obviously threatened by the Apple tablet. Brace yourself, because this is just the tip of the iceberg. You can expect many other companies to position, reposition, and even contort themselves to fit into this week’s news-cycle.

Why do we do this? Well, it’s not as though marketers don’t have a reason. Just as Apple has learned to expand its footprint in the tech world by creating ecosystems for developers, its command of the news-cycle creates and ecosystem of news stories each time it makes a new product announcement. Marketers no doubt are also fearful that making an announcement that doesn’t fit into the Apple storyline — either on the side of the protagonist (a pro-Apple story), or the side of the antagonist (an anti-Apple story) is too risky because it will get lost in the news-cycle. This comports well with the notion that the average human being (starting with the average journalist, blogger or other news scribe) can only think of one thing at a time. It’s the ADD theory of PR, and it mostly works (to keep marketing people in their jobs), so it’s no surprise that practically everyone subscribes to it.

If you have a story to tell this week, and it doesn’t quite fit into the Steve Jobs briefing book, I’d caution against the mostly rational impulse to hold your story until next week (or the following week). Before you pull the plug, ask yourself if you believe that people have the desire to hear another kind of story this week. Better yet, ask yourself if all you want to do is talk about Apple this week. As much as I like Apple — pretty sure that I will be buying the tablet — I know I’ll have at least a few other thoughts on my mind. Bet you your customers will, too. And they might be pleased to hear from you during a week when none of your competitors have the cojones to say something.

*What: Latino2, a celebration and exploration of all things Latino in the age of digital/social engagement. Brought to you by Latinos in Social Media (LatISM).

*When: April 30-May 2, 2010 in Los Angeles (Venue TBD)

*Want to help? Come to the pre-conference Tweetup: Saturday February 6, 8PM at Seven Restaurant & Bar, 555 W. 7th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90014, 213.223.0777, http://sevenrestaurantbar.com

*For more info: go to latism.org, latino2.com, or follow the conversation on Twitter (#latism, #latino2)

[The following is a post that I orginally published earlier this week on the LatISM blog.]

For those of you who know me — or at least follow my movements on Twitter — it should come as no surprise that I recently experienced a cultural reawakening, and that a new focus for me in 2010 is the emerging world of Latino communications. It all began last summer, when I was asked by the National Hispanic Corporate Council (NHCC) to give a keynote at its annual conference. The topic was the corporate adoption of social media, something I often speak about in public and private settings. But, of course, the context for this talk was the Latino market. I was less prepared for that, and I soon realized I had some homework to do. I immediately began by searching for people and groups steeped in both social technology and Latino marketing. The timing was right. Earlier that summer, a group called LatISM — Latinos in Social Media — took off on the Web like a rocket, and by the Fall they had organized a number of events on the East Coast. After the NHCC talk, I flew to speak at a LatISM in DC, connected with co-founders Ana Roca Castro, Kety Esquivel, and Louis Pagan, and we soon got to talking about bringing LatISM to the West Coast. Today — along with my West Coast colleagues David Vallejo, Antonio Altamirano and Laura Gomez — I am proud to announce that LatISM in fact is coming to California, for a weekend conference running April 30 through May 1st in Los Angeles (venue TBD).

We are now in the pre-production phase, and we are reaching out to people interested in speaking, sponsoring. or otherwise supporting the event. If you have attended earlier LatISM conferences, you will see the same commitment to the LatISM mission: to bring together Latinos — and people close to Latino communities — to share insights and best practices in digital/social communications. But there are several things that will make the “LatISM West” event different:

The scale: The western region of the U.S. is by far the largest general domestic market for Latinos, and L.A. is one of the major hubs as well as home to many of the leading innovators in social technology. For that reason alone we are designing the event to be a bit larger. We’ve already identified several locations that would be appropriate. But we are also gathering the requisite people power and sponsor support for the effort.

The scope: We are also designing the event to leverage some of the unique assets of the Southern California market: the rich clusters of talent in entertainment and media. We will also stretch up North, tapping leaders and thinkers from Silicon Valley, Sacramento and other parts of the state where many interesting projects in government, public policy and commerce are happening today. And we will also look to leaders from neighboring states — Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, others — to bring greater representation as well as a real Western feel to this event.

The season: Finally, there’s something special about the timing of this event. If I have learned anything about Latino communications in the past few months — the short amount of time that frames my personal “reawakening” — it’s that Latinos are quickly organizing themselves online, and the speed at which this is happening is remarkable. The folks at LatISM had a hunch last year that the time was right for an organization devoted to supporting — not dictating — this type of self-organization. And it’s all happening at a time when it matters more than ever that Latinos stand up and be counted — the months preceding the 2010 Census, a project that could have a significant impact on national priorities. But even without the census, Latinos have reason to stand up, be counted, and participate in the new conversations on Latino communications. The approach we are taking is the broaden the umbrella wide enough to allow for even livelier conversations. If you are “Latino too” — by origin or affinity (i.e., engaging with Latinos really matters to you) — come to Latino2. But don’t wait for April 30 to make yourself heard. If you can, come to our Tweetup (see details above) and take part in shaping the event from the start.

It’s no longer just about social technology. Actually, it never was, and you may have heard me say this before: “it’s not about the tools, it’s more about the rules.” But beyond the rules of engagement, the tools we are looking at today go beyond anything we would call social tech. We’re beginning to see the realization of an earlier prediction that the world of DIY would merge with the world of automation. There are clear benefits associated with this trend — with more automation comes scale — but clear pitfalls as well (privacy is just one of them). But there’s no looking back — in 2010, we will see more and more social tech merged and melded into automated tools, processes and products. And the opportunity for leaders here is to embrace the trend and deal with the pitfalls, not to dismiss or — worse — ignore them.

It’s no longer just about sociability, but social good. Many of us saw this coming, too. Makes perfect sense — in a world that increasingly is learning to apply social rules — and tools — for building business relationships, it stands to reason that social good would get some value. There were many hints that things would go this direction in the early days of Web 2.0 marketing — think of all the campaigns — continuing today — premised on the strategy that they would contribute to the benefit of “causes.” But there’s more hear than meets the eye. The digitization of our world has facilitated an easy convergence of interests among businesses, NGOs and government entities who now see the opportunity to collaborate on digital projects. A nice example of this is the Copenhagen Wheel (full disclosure: my business partner Peter Hirshberg helped to socialize the Wheel at the recent Copenhagen Climate talks), a concept for an electric/”hybrid” bicycle product where the social data can be aggregated for all sorts of applications with civic benefits. And notice how it also illustrates the phenomenon of “social meets automation,” the first trend that I mention in this piece. The sensor technology in the wheel hub enables the biker to share data in ways that would be impossible — if not just unsafe — otherwise.

It’s still about communication — and very much so. I had a great talk with a peer in my industry just yesterday (the last day of the year), where we both confessed that the thing we were getting hired to do was to help businesses to better communicate, a skillset learned well before the communications got digital, social, or automated. It’s still very much in demand, and the smartest companies are hiring for it. I say this not just to gear up personally for the New Year, but also to rally my peers to look at how their skills might be better applied in a world that has the potential to become more “senseable,” in the sense of the word intentionally misspelled by the MIT Senseable City Lab, the sponsor of the Copenhagen Wheel. It’s a world where commercial and non-commercial interests will learn to collaborate better, not just because it’s good for businesses to do so, but because it is good business. It’s a world where leaders will learn to use automation not just for scale but to do the things humans can’t do, and for their benefit. And, uh-huh, it’s a world where things like vision, communication, and thought leadership matter — from the trenches where many interesting campaigns are being crowdsourced, to the leadership teams at both established and ad hoc organizations. Don’t know about you, but I’m excited, because the opportunity for us all is to create a more senseable world — a place more responsive to human needs. And I believe the opportunity will present itself to us in 2010.

Happy New Year!

Using data from the social network Facebook, they made a striking discovery: just by looking at a person’s online friends, they could predict whether the person was gay. They did this with a software program that looked at the gender and sexuality of a person’s friends and, using statistical analysis, made a prediction. The two students had no way of checking all of their predictions, but based on their own knowledge outside the Facebook world, their computer program appeared quite accurate for men, they said. People may be effectively “outing” themselves just by the virtual company they keep.

“When they first did it, it was absolutely striking – we said, ‘Oh my God – you can actually put some computation behind that,’ ” said Hal Abelson, a computer science professor at MIT who co-taught the course. “That pulls the rug out from a whole policy and technology perspective that the point is to give you control over your information – because you don’t have control over your information.”

As the article concludes, there are a number of public policy issues worth pondering here — and ponder them we will. But there are other ways that a technology company using such data can misstep: issuing “false positives.” About a dozen years ago, at a time when I was employed as a theater producer in the San Francisco Bay Area, I became a big customer of dramatic literature on Amazon. Soon after my first order, I began getting recommendations for books on topics like, oh, gay life in San Francisco. I was not in the least offended, but I was surprised to see that the mighty and famous Amazon recommendation engine was actually quite crude (at least back then). When you automate things like gaydar — or any idea for identifying people based on their explicit or implicit behavior — you not only expose yourself to public policy concerns but also run the risk of looking like a stooge. My Amazon experience was the e-commerce equivalent of the Turing Test — the idea that artificial intelligence will reach a milestone when a machine can “pass” for a human being. The false positive in 1997 simply reminded me that Amazon customer service was driven by machines, not human beings. Not a good thing for your customers to feel when you are attempting to persuade them to stop buying from people. Of course, Amazon has spent the past ten years perfecting its engine. But not without great care and expense.

In case you haven’t been following the trend story, augmented reality is a set of technologies that enable consumers to digitally display relevant data over the live image of an object. Most AR projects and experiments today, however, are being conducted on the screens of smartphones. For a great demo, see the video below, by the very hot Netherlands-based AR company, Layar.

The excitement — and hype — that the Parviz article is generating is understandable. While the bundling of various technologies on smartphones — computation, video display, GPS, compass technology, messaging — appear to be driving the adoption of augmented reality, in theory there’s nothing stopping savvy technology vendors from unbundling these technologies and adapting them to the way the body naturally performs in the physical world. The Parviz lens is not the only attempt to unbundle technology. Earlier this year, a team from the MIT Media Lab unveiled a prototype for an AR-like product that enables the consumer to project data on any surface.

On a more theoretical level, just this week Nokia released a demo for a group of products that work together to create a “mixed reality” for the consumer. The most interesting of the products was a pair of spectacles that projects data — e.g., the weather, news headlines, text messages from your honey — above the main field of vision.

Critics of these various unbundlings claim that consumers will never allow themselves to be encumbered by new tech appendanges. But that’s what makes the contact lens so intriguing. There are many of us who would never wear glasses (too dorky). And there are many of us who would never wear contacts (too fussy). And I’d bet that there are even more of us who would never walk down the street pointing phones at people, places, and things (way too dorky). But with the options for “better vision” ever increasing, AR is beginning to look like it’s really going to happen. We’ve been dealing with the issues of vanity, usaability and technology-prosthetics for many generations. And we have learned a great deal. I trust that AR technologists and designers will get things right.

U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s formally apologized today for the country’s “appalling” treatment of WWII codebreaker and AI pioneer Alan Turning, who was prosecuted for gross indecency and sentenced to chemical castration in 1952. Two years later, Turing took his own life.

Today’s announcement came following a petition that collected thousand of signatures from citizens calling for a posthumous apology. In his remarks, Brown noted:

Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can’t put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted under homophobic laws were treated terribly. Over the years millions more lived in fear of conviction.

The AiNDEE™ hosted dialogue customer service system is intended to simulate a call center’s best employee with text voice and animated chat, all from a website. It’s designed to empower organizations that operate call centers with a more cost-effective first tier customer sales and support. It’s different from traditional online help systems because it is 100% autonomous, does not require a live human operator to answer each question, yet rivals a human’s ability to converse in a narrow area of expertise. Its uniqueness is its ability to carry on true bi-directional conversation, where questions and answers are given and answered by both parties for clarity and understanding. It handles the redundancy questions that typically clog a call center and it facilitates a more natural and cost-effective escalation path to higher levels of support.

I like the bits about “redundancy questions,” and simulating a call center’s “best employee.” How about the system’s ability to answer annoying questions? Much has been written about the dangers of robotic technology. But one of the big plusses is the capability of doing things that the best employee cannot — or simply will not — do.

CNet: “Does your reality need augmenting? Try these apps.” “Reading the news about a University of Washington professor’s experimental electronic contact lens, I wondered if my dream of the ultimate personal technology has finally moved from over the horizon to in sight. Here’s what I want: to be able to walk into crowded cocktail party, and know exactly who I am looking at — each person’s name, last time we met, and other information pertinent for a pleasant social interaction. I want that information beamed into my field of vision, in text floating over their heads, like the health indicators over the bad guys in a computer game.”

Neoseeker: “Koreans building massive, massive giant robot.” “Maybe some South Koreans became jealous when hearing about Japan’s massive Gundam statue. Or maybe they just saw it and thought it was a good idea. But for what ever the reason, a much larger, massive-er, crazier giant robot statue is going to be built, in South Korea. Planned to be an epic-sized, 364 feet tall permanent tower, the new addition to Google Maps is going to be a star attraction at a new robot-themed theme park, being built, inventively called Robot Land.”

For the uninitiated, augmented reality is a set of technologies that enable businesses to overlay data on top of a consumer’s view (say, over a mobile phone). The technologies have been embraced by an army of marketers and developers, mostly outside of the U.S. But with recent news that some U.S. mobile phones can now run augmented-reality applications, U.S. consumers can expect to hear a lot more about the category over the next few months.

And what is Nokia’s vision? It’s a world turned on by augmented reality that doesn’t necessarily depend on the phone. That’s a rather evolved view for a phone manufacturer. But perhaps Nokia’s world, too, has become augmented.

Wired: “Future of the Screen: Terminator-Style Augmented-Reality Glasses.” “The most efficient possible display technology would be something that bypasses the eyes altogether and sends information straight to the brain. Sadly, cranial USB ports are still pretty hard to install. The second most efficient possible display technology anyone’s devised projects images directly into the eye. The dream of a wearable virtual retinal display, or VRD, has been around for nearly two decades; it’s on the horizon, but it’s still going to be a while until it gets here.”

9&10 News (Northern Michigan): “Robots Help Kids With Cerebral Palsy Walk.” “Cerebral palsy is a neurological condition that affects body movement and coordination. Many kids have to rely on a wheelchair or walker to get around, but now technology is catching up with C.P. As Robyn Haines reports, with a robot as a teacher, one girl is gaining a new sense of stability.”