I’ll admit I was a bit worried when I read “Apple founder fears new dotcom collapse” in today’s Daily Telegraph. While I can watch bankers and estate agents lose as readily as the next man, technology is an altogether different affair…having gone through the dotcom and telco meltdowns (1.0) a repeat is not a happy prospect. And this isn’t just any technology comentator, this is Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak (”Woz” to his friends) who reckons we could be on the verge of another one.

He claims that it’s time the cycle of replacement and upgrade that the IT industry has been in for the last two decades came to an end. Woz says products have a life - and then they die.  The iPod will, he predicts, also become yesterday’s technology one day.

I started to think about all of the technology I’ve used (and PR’d) in my 20-year love affair with it.  My first car had an 8-track (the tape version of a 78′ vinyl for anyone born after 1980); I cheated on my Walkman when the minidisc came along. I dated an MP3 player when my Sony discman started to look past its best before marrying an iPod. Each time the end of one technology heralds another.

So, in these days of doom and gloom it’s worth remembering the companies that innovate relentlessly - in product development, in marketing and public relations and in the way they approach business - will survive as the fittest. But then I heard on the radio this morning that even evolution is dead these days!

Lyndon Johnson

In a bid to dispel the notion that PRs are all air-kissing champagne-quaffing types, a team of us decided to enter Commando Challenge a couple of months back. Since then, Paul, Emma, Beth, James and I have been out pounding the streets, and even subjecting ourselves to British Military Fitness classes in a bid to beat the likes of Citigate Dewe Rogerson this Sunday.

For those that have never come across the event, Commando Challenge involves running seven miles around a Royal Marines assault course through bogs, rivers and submerged concrete cylinders - not to mention tackling the fearsome sheep dip.

Team Berkeley is raising money for the Devon Air Ambulance Trust and Help for Heroes. If you’d like to make a donation - however big or small - for these worthy causes, you can do so here.

Jo Jamieson

Just when we thought the summer silly season was over, the Mail on Sunday informs us that eight per cent of us dread going into work because we can’t stand our colleagues. Quite how this statistic is relevant to the sponsor of the survey - supplier of printer consumables CartridgeMonkey.com - is unclear.

With the change in the weather, no doubt the headlines will soon be filled with traffic chaos caused by leaves on the line or a five-minute smattering of sleet on the roads. Makes a change from the credit crunch, I suppose…

Jo Jamieson

The greatest speeches of all time - what do they have in common? Is it an astonishing turn of phrase or is it actually just a strong and well thought-out message at their centre?

I was immensely impressed with my newest client on our first journalist briefing last week. Not only had our spokesperson read and considered the briefing document that we had written, he had also contemplated what he wanted his contribution to the feature to be. There was even a metaphor prepared to bring his experiences to life for the journalist. PR gold!

In general, a PR agency does not expect its clients’ press briefings to replicate iambic pentameter or to be filled to bursting with similies and metaphors; all a journalist really wants is to paint a picture for his readers.

As a technology PR spokesperson, you are the expert in the field; the journalist just needs to see how your experiences are relevant to his readership.

You don’t have to be a poet to be a proficient spokesperson, you just need to consider what you’ve got to say, how you’re going to say it and ensure the journalist can tell a story which, preferably, has you at the centre.

Rebecca Wheeler

Public relations is all about communication. So imagine my dismay when the Guardian’s Bobbie Johnson revealed that people are lying left, right and centre by email. It seems that our nation finds it much easier to deceive someone via their inbox than any other form of communication.

Is it any wonder, then, that journalists are often happier to speak to a spokesperson directly? Perhaps there’s also a lesson to be learnt for the technology PR professional - take the time to pick up the phone and you’re more likely to get an honest answer to your pitch. This is certainly what I’ve found from personal experience.

Public relations is all about getting the right message across - let’s make sure it’s the real message as well.

Rebecca Wheeler

My technology PR career was in its formative years in 2001 and I often wonder about technologies I wrote about, pitched to journalists or just struggled to understand back in those early days. Reading a piece in today’s Guardian by Charles Arthur made me think about how much technology has moved on over the last seven years.

Google, as part of its tenth anniversary celebrations, is generously giving us all the opportunity to take a retrospective look at the top sites in 2001 - so I wondered what would happen if I put some of the most popular searches into the Google engine… Here is what I discovered.

Twitter didn’t exist , but Roget’s Thesaurus defined the word twitter as “to move to and fro in short, jerky movements”.  I’ve not fully embraced this social networking phenomenon for the enigmatic… but having seen friends of mine that do, it’s a fairly accurate description of what they end up doing if they’re away from their PCs for too long!

The other social networking leviathan - Facebook - does, surprisingly come up but it’s still wearing short trousers.  The foundation of the site we know today is described as a “searchable database of all students and faculty at Harvard”.

The only iPod, which I suspect struggled to sell in multiple millions, was the Aperta IPOD (Image Proof of Deposit Document Processing System) promises to bring the advantages of imaging technology to organisations.  You can’t load your entire music back catalogue on to it though.

The much vaunted Next Generation wireless Networking technology, WiMAX, was cardio-kickboxing and more in 2001.  It doesn’t say what the “more” is, but I’m guessing it wasn’t mobile broadband.

The only RAZR available in 2001 was a company called American Safety Razor (with the stock symbol RAZR), and Ericsson announced it would no longer make mobile handsets (probably best if you look at some of the phones it was making back then).

Search for Microsoft Vista back in 2001 and top of the list was a small Russian software house developing applications for MS Word.  It’s still going today, but if the website is anything to go by, probably hasn’t had the same success as the company founded by Mr Gates et al.

And, finally, what of that must have gadget of 2008 - the Apple iPhone?  Surprisingly, for any non-geeks at least, there was an iPhone online back in 2001 - only it was made by Cisco in the olden days and you couldn’t use it as a Sat Nav.

I’m often asked what relevance online and Web 2.0 has in public relations. Try searching some of the same terms in the 2008 Google engine… it should become clear.

Lyndon Johnson