I got a free pass to DEMO! I was really happy — until I got to the last line of the attached email.

Sender: Erica Lee
To: paul@paulboutin.com
Subject: Invitation to DEMO 08
Hi Paul,

On behalf of DEMO Executive Producer Chris Shipley, I would like to invite you to attend DEMO 08, in Palm Desert CA, January 28 - 30.

[…]

Please join our exclusive audience of VCs, gurus, entrepreneurs and business executives as we spend two full days identifying industry trends and peeking into the future of technology innovation. We have a limited number of complimentary press passes and GigaOM has been selected to receive one. To sign up for your free pass, please contact me.

Successful rap producer Jermaine Dupri probably didn’t win any friends for his Huffington Post entry defending Jay-Z’s decision to sell his new album American Gangster online only as a full album. Dupri may not be a polished spokesperson, and no one wants to hear, “Why do people not care how we — the people who make music — eat?” Not when it comes from someone tied as the tenth wealthiest hip-hop mogul. Or when that person also gets to sleep with Janet Jackson. But — I can’t believe I’m saying this — Dupri is right. Of course, artists should have the right to determine how their creations are packaged. In admitting that it’s about money, too, he’s just being honest. Music is a business. It’s about coming to mutually agreeable terms with the customer, not catering to his every whim. Even Steve Jobs lets musicians sell songs on Apple’s iTunes in album-only packages. Ultimately, if consumers really have a problem with the way they do business, the artists will fail. That’s their right, too.

Source:Valleywag

PR blogger Vince Bank is peeved that tech evangelist Guy Kawasaki is using Twitter to promote his startup Truemors, instead of giving him “personal insights.” And he calls himself a PR guy? Kawasaki’s fanboys accept and defend his self-promotion. Bank even misses the valuable lesson Kawasaki taught him when Bank’s self-promoting post to Truemors was banned. He asks, “Is this a classic case of ‘Do as I say, but not as I do?’” The answer is yes. Unlike Kawasaki, Bank just isn’t brassy enough to get away with it.

Richard Laermer of RLM PR is either into some really depraved adult entertainment. Or he’s very lazy. That’s the conclusion of fellow flack Peter Shankman, an early riser who was no doubt checking out Laermer’s source code at 4 a.m. before going for a jog. The site’s code reveals links to sites featuring bestiality and “nonconsensual sex,” a cute little euphemism for rape porn. So how did Laermer let all that onto his site?

Search engine optimization experts told PR blogger Peter Shankman that if Laermer isn’t a violent sex fiend, he either copied his code from a porn site or he doesn’t have effective security in place to keep porn “bots” from writing over his HTML to boost their search rankings. (Photo by It’sGreg)

Did you get your pass to the Google Holiday Party? We understand. Email can be so unreliable. A helpful tipster saved us the trouble of digging through our Gmail spam filter to find our invitation. Don’t know if we’ll crash the December 12 event at the Googleplex. If it’s like past parties, expect a room full of tiresomely cheery Google flacks and a drive-by appearance by Larry and Sergey. If you do get any founder face time, watch out: They’ll likely bore you to tears with an explanation of why they call Web applets “gadgets” instead of “widgets.” Not that you could use any of that conversation anyway, since the event is “off the record.” Still want to go? After the jump, the full detail of the exclusive holiday soiree.

Google Holiday Media Party 2007
Incomprehensible as it may seem, we are just a few weeks away from Google’s annual holiday media fest. We hope you’ll join us for a friendly evening of informal conversation (one that’s off the record) with our PR team and a number of our execs. As always, Google chefs will prepare a great spread along with drinks.

When:
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
6:00 pm - 9:00 pm

RSVP:
Click here to RSVP
by 12/05/2007 *See below

Where:
Google, Slice Cafe, Building 40
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043
Click here to see map

*Your invitation is non-transferable. If you can’t attend and want to suggest a colleague in your place, you may do so on the RSVP form.

Options, the parody Steve Jobs novel, has totally surprised those of us who expected a throwaway. It’s 248 mostly hilarious pages, with a tight story line and a protagonist who evolves credibly. You can read my enthusiastic review in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, where it’s the business book of the week. But more important is this teaser email from Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park, where author Dan Lyons will appear Thursday evening.

Date: Oct 30, 2007 5:06 PM
Subject: Kepler’s
To: fakestevejobs
I will be hosting you at Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park CA. this
Thursday. I just wanted you to know I have someone special from Apple
Computer coming to introduce you, and his name is Steve as well.

Omigosh! Oh wait. This is going to be Steve Wozniak, right? Still. We’ll be there.

Source:Valleywag

That Google Docs in Plain English video made me want to rewrite it. It squanders a whole TV minute mumbling documents nine times before offering an actual plain English term, i.e. a newsletter article. The narrator warns, “The same document will exist in four different places — that’s a problem,” without explaining why it’s not great backup. And it detours into political correctness with a male-looking character named Sam who is abruptly called “she.” Cool if Sam were real, but as a made-up character she disrupts the lesson. So I savor the double parody of New Media Douchebags in Plain English. Of course, I want to edit this one, too.

Source:Valleywag

Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson has had it up to here with unsolicited emails from PR agencies. But he’s the beneficiary when colleagues using the tactic. Del.icio.us founder Joshua Schachter notes that his inbox is filled with unsolicited emails from Wired flacks. Sent to an email address, Schachter points out, which is on his blog, not one he uses to sign up for mailing lists. Call it the Long Tail of PR. Whether or not Anderson approves, he certainly gains from the PR mail-all list: The most recent Wired message touts Wednesday’s edition of the PBS show Wired Science, and the subject line highlights a special appearance by Anderson himself.

Finally, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang is going public with his post-100-day plan: deny, deny, deny. Amidst a tour of Europe to explain his new vision for Yahoo, Yang told the Telegraph that it would be simply incorrect to talk about what went wrong at Yahoo under now-departed CEO Terry Semel’s reign.

Yang told his interviewer:

If you look at Yahoo over the past few years, we have been generating revenues north of $5 billion and operating cash flow of over $1.9 billion, so people shouldn’t look at companies with that kind of profile and ask what went wrong. Yahoo today is a great consumer brand, one of the strongest brands on the Internet.

Jerry, some unsolicited advice. Next time, get over the jet lag before you take your interviews. You won’t sound so defensive. Sure, if Yahoo were in a vacuum, you could argue its revenues and cash flow remained healthy during Semel’s reign. But Yahoo didn’t operate in a vacuum. $5 billion in revenues? Great. Google’s doing nearly that much in a single quarter now.

The Telegraph points out that Google’s share price has nearly doubled, reaching $694 this morning, while Yahoo’s share price remains below its 2005 starting point of $35. Don’t forget, Semel was there when Yahoo had the chance to buy Google for $1 billion. It’s worth more than 200 times that now.

There are, we’re sure, some folks in Sunnyvale who aren’t in this level of denial. Oh wait: They’re all leaving.

Source:Valleywag

Last we heard from PR flack Steve Rubel, he was on his knees apologizing for publicly trashing PC Magazine. Now Edelman PR’s spokesblogger wants the world to know he’s sorry for inflating the Web 2.0 bubble. He writes, “Since I started this blog lots of people have rightfully made fun of how much I touted every little new site to come along. Their criticism is accurate.” Don’t worry, Steve. It’s not your fault. You’d only be guilty if you’d actually succeeded at imitating Michael Arrington.

One curious thing about the Wall Street Journal story reporting that Facebook was looking to raise as much as $260 million — but not the $500 million celebritard blogger Fake Steve Jobs suggested. The Journal’s Vauhini Vara cites “a person” or “people familiar with the matter” six times. What does that indecipherable journalism-speak actually mean?

Attributing a statement to “a person familiar with the matter” is perhaps the loosest sourcing an uptight outlet like the Journal will tolerate. It means, in short, someone who knows what he’s talking about, but can’t even let his employer, position, or even connection to the subject of the story be known.

And why is that the case here? Because, we hear newly minted paper billionaire Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has threatened to fire anyone caught leaking to reporters like Vara. Gee, Mark. I don’t know if that’s really wise. Don’t you think it might get a bit lonely without all your pals?

All the record-label kevetching that the Internet is killing their livelihood may actually be true. But it’s not college kids sharing files in broadband-equipped dorms that they need to worry about. Radiohead is releasing its new album sans label. Novel, but the interesting bit is that the band is giving a choice to consumers: Pay $82 for a super-fancy, boxed edition of In Rainbows, or download the album — for whatever you think it’s worth. This follows a similar campaign by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails who says once his band’s label obligations are completed, it will release digital albums for about $4. Of course it’s not just the music industry that should be concerned.

Amazon.com touted the fact that it had secured Radiohead for its new MP3 store, after the band had long refused to sell on Apple’s iTunes. But how valuable will this relationship be if fans can essentially obtain Radiohead’s music for free, with the band’s blessing?

Source:Valleywag

Starbucks has a rumor response website that it uses to dispel nasty gossip about the company. We wish all companies had this sort of thing so mock scandals can be quashed before they get out of control. [Barron’s]