This is the start of an email I received from Tami Queen at Vocus.

Countless accounts of “PR Flaks” who have spammed bloggers, mis-targeted pitches or just plain gotten blogger relations wrong fill the Internet. Don’t risk finding your next pitch blasted on your favorite blog!

As a Public Relations professional, it is your job to find every opportunity to get your organization covered and be an expert on the inner-workings of the media. However, the explosion of the blogosphere has left many confused and wondering: How do bloggers operate? What type of approach will get my news covered? How can I integrate blogs into my overall PR strategy?

The new media landscape calls for additional tactics and approaches to the PR practitioner’s toolbox. Download the FREE Vocus white paper “ Five Golden Rules for Blogger Relations” to get insights on how today’s PR professionals can successfully incorporate blogger relations into their PR strategy and build effective relationships straight from four of the top blogging experts in the industry!

It’s just so ironic. They send out a mass email about how to connect to bloggers? Really? What were they thinking? And the fact that they said “Don’t risk finding your next pitch blasted on your favorite blog!” made it just to tempting not to blast them on my blog.

Sending mass emails is NOT the way to connect to people. I’m trying to see the possibilities here:

1) They really don’t get it. That makes it so sad because they claim to be experts in this area.
2) This was their way of getting some blogger attention. I can just see the meeting now “Let’s send out a really stupid email that will get the bloggers yelling at us. There is no such thing as bad publicity, you know!”

Either way, I don’t appreciate getting this type of email.

Update: Here are some other blog entries about this same email:
Dear Blogger: Here’s how not to spam bloggers – by spamming bloggers
Check Out This Spam From a PR Flak
VOCUS Demonstrates How to Screw Up Blogger Relations
Don’t Assume We Know You
What Happens When You Spam Bloggers (Hint: It’s a Small World)

If you don’t have several hours to kill, do NOT play Desktop Tower Defense. It is highly addictive. Here is a Tower Desktop Defense Blog for tips, videos, news, etc.

Do you guys remember AllAdvantage from a few years ago? It was a program that let you install a browser toolbar that showed ads and paid you money. They had a referral program that allowed them to explode their user base. It collapsed once the internet bubble burst, but it was pretty good for a while. I made several hundred dollars from it.

Well, the founders of AllAdvantage have started Agloco. It might just have the potential to be big again. You can’t download the toolbar yet, but you can start referring people. The referrals go down 5 levels, so getting in early is great.

Sign up today!

Naked man arrested for concealed weapon.

This may be the funniest headline I have ever read. Check out the whole story, if you dare.

I’m not really sure whether to call this thing a game or not, but it’s pretty cool.

You can watch an amazing video of a “game” first.

And play it here.

Also, check out the Line Rider Blog

Now that Halloween is approaching, I’ve stumbled across quite a few costumes for pets on the web. This is just so wrong. Do people think their dogs would actually like wearing these things?

This one is a “Star Wars Princess Leia ‘Slave’ Pet” from Amazon:

and then there are these two from Wiggle-n-Waggle

We were lucky enough to see Beck play at Element, a small club in Hollywood on Tuesday night. On Monday morning we got an email telling us about the last minute show, and we were lucky enough to snag a couple of tickets.

Element is a small venue, it probably holds a few hundred people. This is great because on Beck’s current tour he is playing places that hold thousands of people. He recently played two shows in Los Angeles at the Wiltern theatre. We got there fairly early and picked out a great place to stand, on a raised platform about 30 feet from the stage. Both Michele and I were able to see the whole stage with no problems.

The show was really good, but for different reason than I thought it would be. Beck, unlike most solo artists, was not the whole show, it was the entire band that had a great performance. There were six people, including Beck, on stage for the whole concert. The other five musicians played really well and seemed really into the music. They constantly switched and changed the instruments they were playing. There were two drum kits on stage, a few keyboards, bongo drums, and they kept bringing various other instruments like guitars, basses, a recorder, a harmonica, even what looked like a big, empty bashed up tin can that someone hit with a drumstick. Beck himself had a guitar strapped on for most of the show.

Even though I’m not a huge Beck fan, and was not familiar with most of the songs (I only have one CD), I really enjoyed the show. It was cool to be able to see him in such a small club.

Johnny Lydon (nee Rotten) is on Jonesy’s Jukebox (Steve Jones the Sex Pistol’s guitarist) this afternoon, and I just heard him say the funniest thing:

Is that the best of Bread CD? Let me see it. Can I borrow you glasses, Steve, I’m as blind as a bat.

Doesn’t really sound very punk does it?

In early October we ate at the Wynn Buffet. I started this posting but never finished it. Here it is anyway, just basically a list of what we had:

Crab Legs and Clarified Butter, Heirloom Tomato Salad, Shrimp Cocktail, Tofu & Veggie Salad, Tofu and Spinach, Tuna Ceviche, Smoked Whitefish, Cheeses, Mashed Sweet Potatoes, Aloo Gobi, Sweet Potato Gnocchi

Seafood, Pizza

Sushi, Hawaiian Seafood Medley

Desserts: Pecan Pie (sugar-free), Carrot Cake, Cookies,

Lemon Bars, Eclair, Creme Brulee, Strawberry Tart

$31.95 + Tax

October 5th, 2005

Wow. This is amazing, someone actually started with a single red paperclip, did a series of trades, and ended up with a house.

One Red Paperclip