Fools Rush In ... to new Social Media Sites

• iPods are personalized media makers - From USA Today, a nice little article on the personalized media push with iPods.
  
  Is it just me - and, yes, I have no iPod, so speaking on a theoretical basis - but is it that good that we have a bunch of people walking around in their own little world no longer interacting with other humans in real-time, face-to-face? Just a question to put out there.

• Hey, how can I find that abused women's shelter? While I think A9's new Yellow Pages is an amazing piece of technology - here's an example for florists in Phoenix - USA Today's article did point out a few problems: lack of privacy for a few addresses that need to be kept hidden. Such examples were abortion clinics and women's shelters.
  
  Still, all in all, it's a great service. This is just a small PR issue to take care of, and easily rectified by editing out certain addresses and photos.
  

• Maybe it's not PR's fault, but, well, pundits lack ethics.
  
  Here's the argument. First, we have Williams-gate (I refuse to call it Flakgate or that PR firm gate). Then we have the recent admissions by Maggie Gallagher and Michael McManus for taking money to write on marriage. Now, a recent Washington Post article highlights that right-wing pundits Charles Krauthammer and Bill Kristol helped out with the inaugural address.
  
  This leads me to wonder: are columnists supposed to abide to the same journalistic ethics as editors and reporters? If they are going to use the excuse of pundit, are columns even worth reading, or are they signed, sealed and delivered by special interest groups.
  
  When you usually see a fake article in a newspaper, there's that fun "paid advertisement" banner all around the article. Maybe newspapers need to start doing that with Op-Ed pages.