CNET is being bloggified

If you closely watch CNET News.com and CNET.com you must have seen some changes over the past weeks: CNET is being bloggified. (If that's even a word.)

Blogs are rapidly gaining in prominence on the tech Web site. One day this week the front page of CNET News.com highlighted three blog posts. While previously used for stories or short pieces that reporters and editors felt didn't really matter, blogs are now replacing the traditional short news story at CNET.

It is an interesting move in a rapidly changing online news environment where traditional outlets such as CNET feel the competition from bloggers. Joining the bloggers is one way to respond. ZDNET, also owned by CNET Networks, has been successful in doing so. Now CNET is going for it as well. (Earlier CNET launched Webware and Crave, a Web 2.0 and gadget blog, respectively.)

I wish my friends at CNET luck as they take on the blogosphere with the CNET blog network, a group of bloggers to add content to CNET's Web sites including News.com. The blog network was quietly launched last week.

New England

Before starting my new adventure in public relations at McAfee I hopped to the East Coast to meet my parents and my brother, wife and little girl. We traveled from Boston to Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard and down to Pennsylvania. A fun week, especially to see how my niece Paula is getting a real personality and understands both Spanish and Dutch. Here are some impressions from our trip through New England:

Gotta have lobster, but mom thinks it is kind of scary.

Fun on the beach at Provincetown with Paulita.

Gotta love the blossom.

And Paula loves Luke and Emily (Lynn's new twins.)

Two weeks on the job

My blog has gone silent while I kept busy with a short break in between jobs on the East Coast, hosting my parents, camping for Memorial Day weekend and, of course, starting at McAfee.

The first two weeks on the job have been intense. A new environment and a new role for me, but also for the company. This means that not only do I have to get used to the new surroundings and responsibilities, but so do the people I work with. So far, I feel, this has gone very well. (This picture was taken at my desk at McAfee in Santa Clara, CA.)



For now my goal is to meet key people within the organization and come up with ways we can improve public relations at McAfee, become more open, transparent and raise the company's profile. It is a nice challenge that is already bearing some fruit. I can't say much about it publicly though. (That's another big change, my job as a reporter obviously used to be all about telling things publicly.)

My blog will be a personal journal, primarily meant for friends and family to get a peek at my life in the U.S. I don't expect to be writing much about work.