Over the past few weeks, I’ve been hanging out with the PR industry more than usual. This kicked off after I was on a panel the other week at a PR shindig talking about, well, PR and technology writing.

It’s been nice, really, as people in PR tend to be courteous, and willing to have a drink and a laugh. So there’s that.

I want to make two quick points that have come up through my recent conversations that are worth scribbling down, if you’ll allow me the moment:

1. ...

Since I’ve joined the TechCrunch crew, I’ve been asked a similar set of questions by quite a few people. I love you all, but repeating myself is becoming dull. So, here are some answers:

Q: How is it going at TechCrunch?

A: So far everyone has been exceptionally kind and welcoming. I’m having oodles of fun, and dig my new coworkers. Also, there is free jerky in the office, which is a key perk.

Q: Ugh, Alex, TechCrunch? I freakin' hate TechCrunch!

A: I really don’t...

Today Microsoft dropped a $900 million bomb onto the tech world in the form of a writedown stemming from “inventory adjustments” regarding the Surface RT tablet hybrid.

Holy ouch.

That cost the firm $0.07 per share, and given that investors didn’t quite know that it was coming, it helped Microsoft miss expectations, and firmly decline 6% in after-hours trading. That’s what, around $18 billion in evaporated market capitalization? Not all Surface RT related, of course,...

Ingrid has the latest on Nokia’s financial performance:

More negative numbers for Nokia today, as the company reported its quarterly earnings for Q2, but it also noted sales of 7.4 million Window Phone-powered Lumia devices getting sold — the most in any quarter yet.

Nokia remains an unhealthy company mired in a messy struggle to rebuild its business from the ground up as a public company. It’s no small task. Quarterly pressure from disgruntled investors remains high.

Though it...

It’s time. I’m writing this as short chronicle.

I have had bad email management since I joined Gmail either in late middle school, or early high school. The time to fix this is now.

I hereby swear to be more inbox proactive. However, I cannot pay for past sins without a complete revival.

Current inbox status:

So I did this, and it worked. Took Gmail about 2 minutes of “Still Working” to get it done. New inbox:

How about that.

A

ps. If I owe you an email, email me....

In response to this article on Forbes, I shall lean on the New York Times:

Zee Kane, the chief executive of The Next Web, said the company was aware of the accounts but had never paid for fake followers or retweets. He said a likely explanation was that the company had created a tool, called spread.us, that allows people to automatically tweet its content. He said the company stopped marketing that tool eight months ago because it did not add quality traffic to the site.

As excerpted in The Quotable Hitchens:

Way back in Reagan’s first term, I was invited to CNN’s Crossfire studio to debate something or other. The usual form was - and still is - that some right-wing big-mouth would be asked to say how bad Communism or terrorism or child abuse or drug addiction was, and some liberal or leftist would be given a few moments to say that they weren’t so bad after all. Two conservative moderators, one extreme and one rabidly extreme, were on hand...

///It’s Friday, so expect a typo or two. Email corrections to imkidding@goaway.com.

Yesterday at Facebook the technology media showed up in full force, counting in the hundreds by my estimation, to gawk at whatever Mark and his merry band had created. The result: Facebook Home, an Android launcher - if you didn’t know what that meant until yesterday, you are in surprisingly large company - and a handset in conjunction with HTC.

There isn’t a need to go over the specifics...