I’ve known Sam Whitmore for as long as I have been a computer journalist: he was running PC Week when I got my start there in the mid-1980s and we have kept in touch over the years. Sam runs his own shop called MediaSurvey.com and offers a variety of services to public relations pros tracking what the tech media is doing. I’ll be speaking with him on a live Webcast next Tuesday 12/19. He asked me to come up wth some provocative topics and I’d thought I would put out a few links for people to examine prior to my presentation. (You have to be a paid subscriber to hear the broadcast.) While there have been many stories about Web 2.0 tools, what I am interested in is the notion that PR pros actually use the stuff to get their jobs done. The evidence so far is … Well, you’ll have to listen in.

• Paul Gillin (formerly of Computerworld and Tech Target) has written a book called The New Influencers. This chapter on tools is very instructive.
• Suzanne Stefanac has written another book called Dispatches from Blogostan. Here is a chapter on blog design, although there are others (not online) that have moretechnical information about Web 2.0.
• Digg Labs has two visualization tools (Swarm and Stack) worth a look that show where all those links go.
• Michelle Leder, a blogger for footnoted.org, uses SEC and other public documents to research what is going on inside many companies. A story here on the AlbanyTimes-Union talks about her discoveries.
• Contantin Basturea’s list of all PR bloggers here and also has another list of more than 250 CEO bloggers (as of October).
• Debbie Weil has written the Corporate Blogging Book and has plenty of great advice and case studies too about corporate and CEO bloggers.
• Then there is the hubbub guys, who are using Wikis and blogs to build their own PR business.
• Auburn professor Robert French has a blog on new media topics for his students here
• The folks at SocialMedia Club is focused on identifying best practices in the social networking space that seems geared towards PR people, including a template for new media press releases that they developed last year
• Jen McClure’s Society for New Communications Research (where I am one of their fellows) has conferences and a journal to identify trends and issues
• Steve Outing’s The 11 Layers of Citizen Journalism is a great starting point from the journalist perspective
• So is Dan Gimor’s Center for Citizen Media project
• Finally, you’ll have to listen to the broadcast to hear what I have to say about the continued lack of follow-up with my own PR contacts.