Dust-up wrap-up 

Stowe Boyd wraps up the recent back-and-forth about the social media release (sooped up press releases), quoting lots of the best posts and comments. I've noticed that PR types are getting testier and more defensive about criticism from the blogosphere. I don't think the attitude is going to drum up much sympathy except among their own ranks. Be sure to make it all the way to the end of Stowe's post. Also very worth reading are the comments to his original post about the topic on Friday.

Week 2 answer 

Could you identify the clip this round? Here's the answer.

Can you engineer an 'aha' moment? 

Interesting idea from Jon Udell that user experience is the tax we pay for use experience. He illustrates by describing his campaign to get his dad to become a podcast consumer.

He also tells about a suggestion to his new employer that I've been trying to advance in my workplace, too: peeling off the audio layer from the webcasts we offer to members. They wouldn't all work as audio-only casts, namely those that rely on lots of charts and refer to "this graph" without saying what the graph conveys. Others would work just fine as audio podcasts, and would serve that group of people who don't care to sit in front of their computers to get the information.

Straight from the heart 

Several bloggers, including Terry Scott, thought George McGovern's talk at the National Press Club last week was worthy of verbatim transcript treatment on their blogs. They think the words need wider circulation than the mainstream press is giving them. Me too.

Do read it, even if you're not like me, a bleeding heart who voted for the guy who carried only one state in the 1972 presidential election. It was my first presidential vote, three months after my 18th birthday. Before that year you had to be 21 to vote. Hardly anybody had the heart to oppose changing the rules at that time, when the average age of dead soldiers in Vietnam was 19.

His plea to the president is straight from the heart, and covers all Bush's deadly missteps in a way that's gentle but firm, with a grandparently, "why did you do this" tone.

McGovern has been doing a limited press tour for his new book, Out of Iraq, which recommends the thing candidates can't risk saying, even if they believe it: withdraw now.