(That’s me being sheepish).  One of the downsides to being a PR agency social media specialist/online tart (*delete as applicable) is that you (by which I mean I) get dragged in to almost every pitch the agency does.  It just seems that no self-respecting pitch these days is complete without some social media goodness, courtesy of ‘web boy’.  Now don’t get me wrong, that is as it should be and these sorts of opportunities are why I moved to WS in the first place.  But with seven pitches/creds in the last two weeks, my posting here has suffered.  That, and the fact that I have been caught red-handed focusing on the social rather than the media, goes some way to explain my conspicuous absence from these gloriously hallowed pixels.

Although I am desparately sorry to those of you that care for my opinion and insight (hi Mum), I shan’t make contrite ‘must do better’ statements - I refuse to be a slave to this blog - but I am confident things will calm down over the next few weeks and I’ll be able to give this exquisite vessel the attention it so richly deserves.  To be honest, I’m most excited about showcasing some of my superduper colleagues’ blogs over the coming weeks - one of the first things I tasked myself with when I joined WS was to get some of the brilliant people here blogging.  It’s finally beginning to happen, so please watch this space.  You’ll find out about them here first…

Anyway… what’s new?  Well, lots as it happens.

• The Razorlight album, which is absolutely brilliant and has supplanted Sufjan Stevens’ Illinoise as my iPod favourite listen du jour.  It’s almost perfect. I should confess I have a bit of an irrational thing about Razorlight in that I think they are the dog’s proverbials (weird how that sometimes happens with some bands and not others…).  Still, I urge you to buy it
• Coca-Cola’s new web initiative - welcome to the Coke side of life - which at teh time of writing hasn’t yet made it over this side of the pond, but I fully expect to (same-size print: The Coca-Cola Company is a WS client).   At first glance it looks like a classic social media exploitation, but I strongly believe this one will work for them a) because they are giving away proper, valuable prizes, b) because Coke has the sort of brand that people already socialise/mash and c) because coca-cola.com provides a fairly large global shop window for wannabe creatives to showcase their smarts.
• On the subject of sugary drinks, check this out.  Just can’t get enough of this sort of stuff - it’s astonishing, and actually has some fairly strong implications for regionalisation of PR/comms.
• It had to happen - here is a magazine aimed at Second Life entrepreneurs.
• This is new too - genius.  How long before there’s one at every transport hub, office and pub?  Not to mention in planes and trains…
• If you fancy being wowed (in a slightly geeky way) then watch this - the future of computing interfaces is here (it’s another of those brilliant TED videos).
• And, because I promised in my blurb I’d write about wine occasionally, if you’re after a nice rose (and in this weather, why on earth wouldn’t you be?), I can heartily recommend this.  Even non-rose fans will enjoy it, I promise.

Back to pitching, and here’s one that has generated plenty of bitching: agency.com put its pitch to Subway up on YouTube.  Brave, certainly.  Clever?  My honest opinion is there’s not a great deal here to convince me to appoint them.  As future pitch strategies go, however, it certainly provides a lot of food for thought.  And Subway are being talked about throughout the marketing blog echo chamber - so maybe agency.com have made their point.  I would like to have seen some more of their ideas and thinking made public - *that* would have been brave (and a bit more 2.0).  Plus - if they’d really shared their most creative and strategic thinking, irrespective of whether they win Subway or not, they would have had other brands beating their door down.  I think this was almost good - but not quite good enough.  There’s a very fine line between brilliant and tragic in the social media space.  But I hope they have the balls to put the next stage up there too.

As a PR blogger I feel duty-bound to reference the Longtail - here’s a spoof (?) trailer for the book.  Love it.

Finally, I can’t resist speculating as to the announcements due at next week’s Apple shindig.  THere’s been all sorts of conjecture and pontificating as to what Mr Jobs will unveil.  My client Microsoft has tried to trump any iPod related announcement by pre-announcing Zune - which admittedly sounds exciting.  But why oh why oh (spells…?) does Msft always pre-announce its products?  The reason people get *so* excited about Apple product announcements is that they know they’ll be able to get their hands on the product, in store, the very next day.  It does make the whole announcements that more, well, exciting.  So what’s in store next week?  In the greatest Apple tradition, I’d like to see the goalposts moved, with the introduction of a truly wireless iPod (by which I mean mobile 3G-esque wireless as opposed to wi-fi) connection to the iTunes store and my iTunes ’server’ - erradicating the need for masses of storage and connecting me to my existing and *new* music wherever I am (with free plays of tracks it thinks I might like).  Would require an update of the interface design etc, but, hey - we can but dream.  And the expense of the wireless delivery could be offset by incorporating (location/time/mood contextual) podverts into the delivered content.  What do you think?  I’d like to see a mobile computing device too.  As The Economist pointed out last week, the future of the PC is mobile.  Apple is nowhere in this space (with the current functionality/interactivity of the iPod, that is).

Off to a wedding this weekend, so light blogging ahead (joke - the blogging bit, not the wedding).  If you’re really lucky I might even get around to finishing my ‘why PR 2.0 is real’ post, which i started writing over a month ago.  (How’s that for an Eastenders-like cliffhanger, eh?).