Drew B's take on tech PR

Rubel bashing - or is that blog bashing?

Steve Rubel the blog evangelist is taking a bit of a bashing at the moment (well, he is famous, after all :-). First I notice his evangelism on how blogs are the new press releases idea cause a bit of a stir amongst other PR practitioners, and Tom Murphy has retorted with a well worded response.

I agree with Tom. Blogs replace press release?!! As if! Has the spoon replaced the fork? Only for Chavs. I rest my case.

Then there's people like Josh Hallett and Darren Barefoot writing about Steve Rubel pitching his clients inapropriately at a conference... not pretty reading.

And for the record, it's really annoying to keep on seeing PR people blogging about blogging! Why can't people write about PR instead! Up to them I suppose. But I won't bother reading blogs about blogs for much longer. Maybe I'll just send a press release about press releases out to the press. That's why Spin Bunny, The World of High Tech PR and the Lewis chaps are so much more interesting than most of the rest.

Live8 tickets, Star Wars and the tabloid Guardian

Update on PR and press goss... LinkMachineGo says that The Guardian is about to go tabloid.

The bad press eBay recieved off the back of the Live8 gig is now starting to affect other channels that consumers hawk their stuff through. But the other places have learnt from eBay's mistake: CraigsList London has asked for the press to get in touch about the fact that even though the London CraigsList is managed by its members, nobody has kicked up a stink (yet) about the Live8 tickets that are being sold there.

And IBM comms blogger Catherine Helzerman has written that apparently in Star Wars III Revenge of the Sith, there is a part where it is 'revealed' that the US will cease to exist within the next 100 years!? 

And Neville Hobson was on Radio 4 the other night - talking about his PR / comms podcast. You can listen to it here. Well done Neville.

Legal guide for blogs

Here's a legal guide for bloggers - to help authors to avoid incriminating circumstances. Thanks to O-Journalism for the link.

Abandon Brown

What's going on in the UK PR blog land place then... Andrew Smith at Object Marketing has a new blog here. This is this old one, so big improvement if you ask me. 

Linkbunnies, which I think is written in part by London PR man Justin Hayward, has a story on the current eBay row (there's always an ebay row about something). Linkbunnies is just the best.

And Spin Bunny is spitting again. Today it's about "Abandon Brown". Whatever happened to the law suit Spin Bunny? Did they back down?

M&S needle PR disaster

Marks and Spencer has a PR disaster on its hands. Kids are putting new M&S clothes on and getting cut by broken sewing machine needles. Apparently the maufacturers over in Sri Lanka are kopping it but will this be the nail in the M&S coffin?

Big Brother Blogger

Just saw a thing on LinkMachineGo called Big Blogger. Like Big Brother, apparently, except nothing like it at all probably. Rubbish.

Also, some new PR bloggers have started off. Tom Murphy has more on them here.

Corporate blogging policy

More firms are now bringing out corporate policies for staff bloggers. They've cottoned on to the fact that blogging is productive and should be harnessed and guided. I can testify that - blogging helps me with media relations, industry networking, story mining and plenty more.

• Here's loads of info on the Yahoo policy, and here is the policy document itself.
• Here's the IBM one.
• Fredrik Wacka has a concise list of firms with policies here.

California Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger has a podcast

Haven't listened yet, but can't wait!

California Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger is now podcasting his weekly radio address. Here's the feed.

Via Steve Rubel and Neville Hobson.