Tuesday, May 14, 2002
Public Relations
I explained my proposal to Lisa H. Morrice, 44, a PR agent from California: I will write glowingly about her client's pillows if she will tell me something really humiliating about herself that I will also print.
(A colleague of mine had been skeptical of this gambit: PR folks may be desperate, he reasoned, but they have their dignity.)
Just how glowingly, Lisa wondered.
Very, I said.
“My husband dumped me for a younger woman,” she said.
At this moment, I gave my doubting colleague a cheerful thumbs up.
Via my dog wants to be on the radio, Below the Beltway
I'm still reading the Cluetrain Manifesto and they don't really care for public relations in that book. And I found it very amusing that PR people would stoop so low to get publicity for their clients. At least Alicia Levine (the last PR flack interviewed in the above article) got a standing ovation for her humilitating moment in life.
Do What I Mean
Here's what's going to happen: in a few months, you'll be able to build a blog, or more precisely, a dynamic web site, with content largely selected for you by a search robot that understands what you like, who you like, and where the stuff you like is found. You'll edit a selection of stories found and presented to you by your search robot, and you'll comment if you please on the stuff you decide to include in your own Daily Dish.
Via Microcontent News, Is Instapundit over?
And in unrelated news, in a few months, you'll be able to specify the type of program you want and have it programmed for you by computer, ready to go and bug free.
Of course, researchers are undaunted by 40 years of setbacks in reaching a self-programming computer. “We're very close,” said one researcher who asked to remain unnamed due to concerns of a plot to kill his group by rogue programmers looking to keep their jobs. When asked if said group of rogue programmers have been keeping them from reaching success for the past 40 years, the researcher said no. “It's not that they've kept us from making progress, but that we just can't quite get the computer to do what we mean … ”
In other news, another 40 year project is nearing completion. “Another six months,” said an anonymous programmer with the group, “and we'll finally have a universal, democratic hypertext library that will blow the World Wide Web away.”
