I've been working way too hard and have never played Scrabulous. But knowing rabid fans of the orginal Scrabble game, I can see where they would be immersed in playing against people 24/7 all over the world. Rights over the online game, unsanctioned by Hasbro and pulled offline so they could post their own version, have generated debate on and offline about social networking's impact on I.P. Will players boycott Hasbro's game? Does it strengthen the position of the Scrabulous owners? More

Over the weekend, I had a great time visiting with friends at a 50th birthday party. Maybe it's our age group or the amount of time required for people to engage with new technology, but by and large, the opinion on Twitter was - What is it? Why would you waste your time? Who cares what people are doing?

As entrepreneurs, work is time-consuming enough for us. There isn't time for much else. But as usual, I need to understand why people are into it. So, I signed up and I'm diving in to see how Twitter is finding traction for business applications. You've got to believe journalists would appreciate a 140-character-or-less story idea. But do you need Twitter as a tool...or should you be doing that anyway?  More

It's a tough economy and the news industry is getting creative -- and sometimes desperate. Read about Las Vegas TV anchors being used as product placement opportunities for McDonald's iced coffee (photo here provided to the NYT by the station). For me, it crosses the line, even if they "rarely touch the cups." You just can't take them seriously. What do you think? More

Our guest today, TJ Walker, has two minutes of advice for your next media interview. The first 30 seconds of what you say should be the basics -- the who, what, when. Don't make the reporter dig for it.

For most people, it's the "what comes next" that makes them nervous -- because that's the big unknown. What questions will they ask? Will I sound smart, or will I look stupid? That's why it's a good idea to anticipate what the questions might be. In fact, it's an excellent idea to be as prepared as you can be so you're not caught off-guard. (Handling that situation is another session.)

But TJ's point is, don't spend all your time thinking of every potential question there is. Stay focused. Know what you want to say. That will help you answer the questions, no matter what they are. More

OK, I'll say it -- I like my Blackberry and unlike those great commercials, Vista has been fine for me. It's really the Sony Vaio screen I love, but it all works. But many of my friends are passionate about Apple, and for good reason. The products are awesome. Even my parents have two MacBooks and a Mac desktop -- wireless and retired in Florida. Things to aspire to...

Just a few weeks ago, as we were scheduling the next meeting, you guessed it. Everyone reached for their iPhones -- but me. "Clare, you need an iPhone!" they exclaimed, with no small amount of pity. I had been holding out for the new BB this fall, supposed to be iPhone-like.

Do I need the G3? I'm not even sure I'm worthy. Are you? More

Ouch! Where to begin? I'm not sure which is worse -- this story idea sent to Joe Nocera at the New York Times,  his public ID of the writer who is either looking for a job or has been promoted for getting so much attention -- or comments from the peanut gallery. (Now you can add this blog post to the mix.)

It's not new -- a journalist reaches the tipping point and decides it's online payback time. Not pretty. It's another pointed reminder that although email seems like one-to-one communications, it's just one click away from Forward and Reply All, to be "shared" with many unintended readers and critics. When corresponding with a reporter, there is no off-the-record in email, either.

I'm going to chalk it up to a slow blog day and check-out lanes overflowing with supermarket tabloids. Perhaps you both could use a time-out.

Prophet's Kevin O'Donnell says there's a "secret sauce" for being innovative, but companies that come up short are often lacking one ingredient: inspiration.

Where do the best ideas come from? Learn more about a new study on best practices in innovation, an example of Lego Mindstorms and how to define model innovators from this Ad Age article. More

I've featured John McIntyre in this blog before, but here's a full-length feature on McIntyre and his reflections on the state of the newspaper industry, as the reporting staff continues to dwindle and even copy editing is outsourced: "It is the shakiest of situations." More

And if words have more meaning to you as visual art, here's the previous post, courtesy of Wordle.

View this photo

Waaaay back in the early days of my career, I really enjoyed advertising focus groups. They were -- and still are -- an excellent way to break through to the brain of a business exec. On a good day with a smart client, you could see the impact almost immediately -- how stunned they were to realize their internal reality was so off-base from what their customers really thought about the company and their products / services.

Of course, that was before we knew computer scientists were secretly using something called the Internet. Today, you have social media surveys and focus groups. I love the WSJ story about a bride who polled (and actually listened to) her guests who said they didn't need to be served alcohol. She also reported they left almost immediately afterward: "The polls were definitely misleading."

Those are survey tools. On the monitoring side, I'm a fan of Google Alerts, a great way to track where news about my PR clients appears and what people are saying about them online.

And now there's Summize, positioned as Conversational Search, so you can find out who's saying what about your brand. Popular searches are -- you guessed it, the candidate is a brand -- Obama, Hancock and The Dark Knight. Try it! More