Naw, this is just for the people who care too little to do three minutes of homework before making a wasted five minute pitch; who email and immediately call to follow up; who just can’t tell when they’ve crossed the line; or who just don’t know how to lose your email address, no matter how many times you ask. People like Andy Marken of Marken Communications (andy@markencom.com), whose name has become infamous in tech journalist circles for representing everything dysfunctional with certain old models of PR.

I know for some it can be hard work, but don’t be Andy. Your company and/or clients will thank you.

I’ve also heard rumblings that CBSi COO Steve Snyder and CEO Quincy Smith may not make it through the year in their current executive positions, but that sounds a bit more speculative at this point. Of course, neither CNET nor Kortekaas would officially confirm or comment on anything for me — nor can I say with certainty whether those let go are only part of a larger number of employees being laid off. Either way, definitely a bummer for all those involved.

First, Dan sets up Vudu as an example of the little company trampled underfoot by Apple. “Vudu was winning rave reviews… now Apple is selling or renting more than 50,000 movies a day, and Vudu is laying off staff.”
Rave reviews? Hardly. I thought the content selection on the Vudu was disappointing, the walled-garden approach (i.e. you can’t do much with it once you’ve bought the content) was off-putting, and it suffered from most of the same plagues that put pretty much EVERY other startup set-top box manufacturer — from Akimbo to Moviebeam  — out of business. Oh, and not Laptop, CNET, nor MacWorld gave the Vudu anything higher than a 3.5 out of 5.

“[Apple] operates the only store that can sell music, movies and software programs for [the iPod and iPhone].”
Movies perhaps; music, definitely not. There’s plenty of free video and paid video content online, but no certainly no shortage of DRM-free MP3 music stores (like competitors Amazon, Rhapsody, Napster, and even Microsoft’s Zune Marketplace) that sell content that works on the iPod and iPhone.

“Apple sets prices and takes 30 percent of the money.”
On applications. If they’re not distributed for free (which Apple does for no cost). And on music and movies, Apple’s margin is far, far less. It’s been said that Apple gets less than 10% of music, for example — that kind of content is generally a break-even or, at best, mildly profitable effort to sell iPods. In fact, that’s the record labels’ biggest contention with iTunes: Steve won’t let them turn up the price because he wants music to be affordable so iPods seem like a better ecosystem value.

“One iPod accessory maker… gripes that Apple takes up to 75 percent of the sales price, leaving him with zero profit on some of his products when he sells them in Apple stores.”
I used to do technology retail. In fact, my first job was as upgrade / accessories manager at a CompUSA. If Apple gets 75% of the sale price of an accessory at retail markup, the anonymous company in question is probably getting a pretty good deal. Most accessories are marked up more than just 400% — multiply that by four or five, and you’ll enter a reasonable ballpark. Even for stuff like speakers, whose margins are far lower than cases or cables, those numbers don’t sound completely off to me.

“The problem is that if Apple squeezes too hard, some partners may go out of business, harming the ecosystem.”
My editor instincts tell me: this is a great place to give an example. But he doesn’t. Probably because he can’t. I’m racking my brain and even did a little googling to give Dan the benefit of the doubt, but I’ve got nothin’.

“… a woman has filed a class-action lawsuit because her new 3G iPhone won’t always attach to a 3G network, which provides faster wireless Web downloads.”
What Dan doesn’t mention is that Apple gets two, sometimes three class-action lawsuits filed against it every week. I wish I was kidding. Unfortunately for Apple (and the woman who stands to lose a lot of money on lawyers’ fees), for the most part, the issue in question has a lot more to do with AT&T’s early, raw 3G rollout, which tends to lack network capacity. Remember, a class-action lawsuit is no different than any other kind of lawsuit: it’s just one person (or group of people) who think they have a case and decide to sue.

Maybe it’s just me, but I think Dan did a much better job at cutting to the heart of what makes Cupertino tick when he was doing so with subversive parody. Trust me, there are many, MANY things to groan about Apple over — its obsessive control in all aspects of business, its reluctance to try genuinely new markets and products, the way it handles media — but these complaints are not those things.

Update: Dan (kind of?) responded to some feedback, but didn’t really back up anything I mentioned. Although I will grant him, it does get a lot harder when you have to say real things about the companies you cover.

It’s been a year since we hung up our mics at Engadget, but we’re finally back with our new gadget podcast, gdgt weekly! The first episode’s already up, so head over to gdgt to grab it / subscribe. Oh, there’s another bit, too.

We’re also announcing our first two advisors to gdgt, two good friends of mine: Josh Topolsky, editor of Engadget, and Brian Lam, editorial director of Gizmodo. Yeah, I know, just blew your mind: people from Engadget and Gizmodo collaborating on something. Together. Of course, the reality isn’t all that weird when you think about things.

It may not have shone through in the various articles trumping up the Engadget / Gizmodo rivalry, but believe it or not, Brian Lam and I are actually pals outside of work — have been for years. In fact, a side story neither of us ever told publicly was that I actually tried to hire Brian when he was on his way out of Wired, just before Gawker snagged him for Giz. I pitched hard, but in the end, as he put it recently, “It wouldn’t have been as much of a challenge.” Of course, he was totally right — he accepted the greater challenge and put Gizmodo back on the map.

Josh, of course, is one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever met — someone with a natural eye for content and gadget world, who I’m totally proud to have take over as Engadget’s editor in chief. So maybe it’s time to look at this space a little more holistically; or, as Brian said, get some Voltron action going on.

“Organizations… create these lists to solidify their power and influence, and to promote their own authority. [Nailed it!] This generally works, with the most exceptional examples like Time’s Person of the Year actually acting to amplify the publication’s own profile. …

For less-known organizations, like NowPublic, having a list like this acts as a phenomenal engine of promotion. … On the web, we call this link-baiting, but offline, it’s simply called flattery.

The rest is here. It was originally written in reference to two separate lists cataloguing web personalities. (And hey, guess what, I happen to make appearances on both, but the linkbait’s only taken on my about page.)

It seems like life in the (rapidly shrinking) print bubble has severely distorted the AP’s outlook in the midst of an increasingly predominent all-digital media landscape. If I were them I’d be careful in the coming weeks and months — unlike the print pubs that syndicate their news, there isn’t any real need for the AP on the internet, and at this rate I’m not sure they’ll be missed.

Although to be fair, they do disclaim being guilty of the same, and I’m sure the site’s editorial staff doesn’t approve of that kind of advertising nor want it on the site. Trust me, I understand as well as any editor that the people making the content don’t always have much or any say in how their property advertises — but that’s both a double-edged sword and a conversation for another time.

Owned
Ars Technica – CondéNet (Condé Nast)
Crave – CNET (CBS)
Engadget – AOL (Time Warner)
Slashdot – SourceForge, Inc.
Wired blogs (Danger Room, Epicenter, etc.) – CondéNet (Condé Nast)

Independent
BoingBoing – Happy Mutants, LLC
GigaOM – GigaOmni Media
Gizmodo – Gawker Media
PaidContent – ContentNext Media, Inc.
Silicon Alley Insider – Silicon Alley Insider, Inc
TechCrunch – Interserve, Inc.
VentureBeat – VentureBeat, Inc.

Independent, on hire
Fake Steve Jobs – Forbes
Scobleizer – FastCompany (Mansueto Ventures, LLC)

Anywho, aside, for those interested in hearing me ramble about what’s up with Apple doing music subscriptions, I’ll be on G4′s Attack of the Show tonight. See you there!

I’ll leave you with this pull: “If I see the world as all black and you see the world as all white and some person comes along and says it’s partially black and partially white, we both are going to be unhappy. You think there are more facts and better facts on your side than on the other side. The very act of giving them equal weight seems like bias. Like inappropriate evenhandedness.”

The theory used to be that because exposure came party to an ephemeral medium (print), one could usually find value in bad press for its ability to act as a mechanism of discovery and interest-upkeep. This value thought to be inherently greater than any lasting damage, especially when that medium — print — is such a finite commodity, and getting any press at all presented a major challenge. And hey, either way tomorrow morning it’s out of sight, out of mind.

The democratization of niche micro-publishing, though, completely killed the concept of good bad press. Whereas before your press had positive or negative value equatable only to the number of eyeballs who bought and scanned that piece of paper, now any and all exposure you receive is equally findable, be it on the New York Times or on Jim’s Yet-Another-Wordpress Blog. In fact, scratch that — usually the more negative or salacious the exposure, the greater the weight it seems to carry (and thus more probable it is to be highly ranked in search). See: Sarah Lacy.

And, of course, all the upsides to the good bad press seem obviated; the medium is no longer ephemeral, there’s no barrier to entry for publishing OR consuming, and there’s certainly no limit on how many bad things can be said about you (or your company, product, movie, etc.). Anyone can hide from tomorrow’s paper, but no one can hide from nigh-immortal data that’s indexed, cached, and forever more findable.

What’s it mean? Well, maybe that’s not for me to say. But I certainly hope we, as a society that now both consumes and contributes to media at large, can think a little harder about things before hitting the all-powerful publish button.
Photo via Worth1000