Steve Rubel stirred up the search engine optimization industry last week by taking issue with some of the tactics used to build links to sites, including creating content aimed primarily social sites like Digg where highly Dugg content secondarily generates additional inbound links to the mentioned site.

Rubel explained in a post titled, "SEO Shenanigans Pose a Clear and Present Danger to Social Media," how the world will come to an end if SEOs work with clients to create content that people love enough to Digg, share with friends on YouTube, or Stumble. Okay, that's not exactly how Rubel put it. But he does think that creating content with the sole purpose of increasing search engine rankings is bad for online communities.

Search engine optimizer - including me now - took the bait and called Rubel an idiot for suggesting that what SEOs do is any different from what PR people do for a living. Rubel called the SEO's counterargument "poppycock":

That's complete poppycock. There is no comparison. The reason is that over the last several years the PR industry has largely learned its lessons - often the hard way.

Call me an optimist, but in 2008 most in the PR business take a clean approach to social media. A key reason is that when our clients engage, their participation needs to be transparent for it to be credible.

I guess Rubel is saying that PR used to be an industry full of slime balls using slime ball tactics, but that all changed when we bought new calendars on January 1st.

Of course, this ignores the fact that you can hire PR firms today who will pay Facebook users to say nice things about your company. You can hire other firms who have teams of YouTube users ready and willing to rate your "viral video" high so it will end up on the front page.

Steve, why not just admit that your industry has its share of social misfits too?

Consider for a second that content that effectively generates traffic in links from social networking sites tends to have one important ingredient: value. People won't link to content they don't find valuable.

PR firms face a challenge if they guarantee value in an online world. They tell a client that they're going to run a "viral marketing campaign" where a video will be created specifically for YouTube where a zillion people will share it with all of their friends. Only, the firms have no control over whether something goes viral . . . unless they hire people to be their "friends" to get things started. Sure, the first 100 "friends" weren't truly organic, but once things got noticed it took off, which is the point of PR right? You're just trying to help bring attention to a very important message from (__INSERT_CLIENT_NAME_HERE__).

Expect to see many more online PR disasters in 2008 as firms continue to overstep as they attempt to leverage the audiences found on social networking sites.

When Apple introduced the iPhone, it hit my personal sweet spot of a device so perfectly that I knew I'd have it with me all the time. As my lifestyle has increasingly become an always-on, always-connected one, having the ability to communicate in a variety of ways (voice, SMS, Twitter, moblogging), instantly look up a phone number, address or some obscure fact (the latter which always receives that "not again!" look from my wife), use the new Google Maps features (which I now prefer to my in-car navigation) means that this device has woven its way into my psyche and you'll now have to pry it from my cold, dead hands.

In my eight months of iPhone ownership, I've discovered that anything besides casual use (even when connected to Wifi) is less than optimal and heavy Wifi use sucks the juice from the battery at an alarming rate. Sometimes when waiting or bored, I'll break it out and surf sites, but pinching-n-zooming gets old real fast. The tradeoff for having the internet-in-my-pocket with my phone (and always available) is gazing at it through a tiny screen and for now, I'm more than willing to make that compromise with this delightful device.

When Apple introduced the Macbook Air, I thought that finally, here was the perfect computing device for both my bride and I to augment our main computing boxes (she a 24" iMac, me a Mac Pro with Apple 23" display). Especially her, someone who travels globally and where every ounce she packs matters, is someone I thought would leap at this device. For me, someone who strongly desires a "more portable, portable" that is a step-up from the iPhone, chances were good I'd be buying one.

Not gonna happen for either of us.

The two of us -- who also own the latest Macbook Pro's -- the Air's compromises for amazing portability is it's just too far under the threshold for power and storage. My bride travels to tradeshows where she'll take 1,000 photos per day (meaning storage and speed is an imperative) and upon her return she'll connect it at home to a big Apple display (and the MBPro can drive such a display nicely while the Air cannot) to sort images for her reports.

With my MBPro, I have a box that can nicely run InDesign, Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, Screenflow, and Final Cut Express. It has expansion ports allowing me to connect up all sorts of external devices. For all but my most power hungry requirements (e.g., video editing or transcoding a video into Flash which I do on the Mac Pro), my MBPro is perfect.

What I find, however, is that I'm walking all over the place with my laptop and so is my bride. We watch TV with them since we're always looking stuff up (which was fun during the Academy Awards) and often pause our DVR to have conversations about some fact one of us has discovered (and we even fact-check when something doesn't smell right on a news show).

John Markoff of the New York Times had this post today called Reading Steve Jobs. In it, he reads the tea leaves as it's clear he has a sense that an "iPad" (or some such tablet-type form factor) is in the offing.

I'd concur and think they will. It makes no sense that Apple would hit a home run with the iPhone and iTouch to not accelerate down the "touch" road with other form factors. If you read my post on MSNBC's primary coverage which started off, "This, my friends, is the future of television" you'll understand how I'm seeing the need for Internet-connected computing devices to augment (or maybe replace) some of the activities we're doing today like TV watching, reading books and newspapers and so forth. (Note: the last debate streamed by MSNBC was, by all accounts, horrible).

Yes, I believe Apple will unveil an "iPad" in the near term and it will be an under $1,000 device sized somewhere between a journal and a tablet (8.5" x 11"). My questions are, "Will I feel about it like I do the Macbook Air? Underpowered and too compromised?"

Knowing Apple, they've asked them all (and many others) and will come out with the best possible feature set to hit the broadest market segment possible.

It's a hot conference, and what do I get?  A damn cold!  And I just had a doozer back in January, too.  Is this the worst, hellish year for colds and flu that you can remember, or what?  It sure is for a lot of people I know....

Anyway, I'm sucking it up (oh, god, that's bad), tryin' to keep up.... I did my live-Twittering thing yesterday, after getting well practiced at DEMO. See my 40 or 50 something tweets (I lost count) here.  Then chatted over wine with Aaron Fulkerson (MindTouch), Dan Carroll (Somr.org, former Twin Citian, now Mountain View), Chris Messina (DISO guy), Maria Sipka (Linquia, a fellow Aussie and surfer), Chris Gammill (a buddy from LA), and others -- all while uploading my pix on Flickr.

Afterwards, attended part of AppNite (couple of cool ones!), then managed to hear most of Tim O'Reilly's keynote at 8:00 -- it was good, very inspired. Tim is amazing. Took a lot of notes, but was all out of Twitter juice by that time. So, dragged myself back to my hotel (a very cool little boutique place called the Sophia). Now it's Tuesday morning, and I'm seriously looking for a Walgreens so I can load up on cold medicine...  :-(

[Cartoon drawn on Julio Fernandez's business card.]

It’s not official quite yet, but the iPhone App Store is live and you can download version 2.0 of the iPhone software - which is all you need to run the 552 applications currently available.

We’ve been gathering videos and overviews of many of the applications and have held them until now. We received demo vidoes for dozens of applications, ranging from basic games to complex GPS-enabled social networking applications. Below are some of our favorites.

Among the apps that we didn’t include below (primarily because of their simplicity) are Recorder (a voice recorder), Movies (movie showtimes), and iMaze (a basic maze game).

Social Networking On The iPhone:

The iPhone, with cult-like users and location aware technology, is the perfect social networking device. Earlier this year we speculated that someone would emerge with a killer social networking app for the iPhone. It turns out that there are lots of contenders.

Loopt

Loopt - We’ve been tracking Loopt’s efforts around their iPhone application for months now. In April we posted early screen shots of the app without saying who had built it. Think of Loopt as a simple social network to find local businesses, message friends and send status updates with where you are (using the iPhones location technology). And a key difference with Loopt and many of the other networks below: you can meet new people who are nearby, if they choose to share that information. If everyone used this, you could see who’s single in a bar before you approach them (and flirt with them by phone first), and know the first name and job of everyone at that cocktail hour at the tech conference. We’re big fans of Loopt, and will have more news on them later today. For now, download the free application here.

Limbo

Limbo - Limbo is another geo-aware social network that behaves like a mashup of Twitter, Loopt, and Whrrl. One of the app’s most compelling features is its grid-like diagram that visually groups your friends according to what they’re doing (for example, all of your friends that are Out Drinking will be lumped together, even if they aren’t necessarily drinking in the same place). The app accomplishes this feat by forcing users to select from a predefined hierarchal list of activities (while this might sound restrictive, the list is pretty comprehensive). This categorization allows users to see what they’re friends are up to without having to sift through each of their messages.

On the geo-positioning front, Limbo allows users to interact users who are within a close radius (about a quarter mile), in a manner that is similar to Loopt. You can download the app here for free.

MySpace

MySpace - The MySpace iPhone app is everything you’d expect from a multi-billion dollar company: the app integrates seamlessly with the massive social network, allowing users to add friends, exchange messages, upload photos, and do just about anything else they could do from their computers at home. They aren’t yet integrating with the location features, but expect that in the near future. If you are a MySpace user, you’ll be using this constantly. You can download the app here for free.

Shozu

ShoZu - The ShoZu iPhone app allows users to interact with a number of social websites, including YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, and a number of others. Users can upload photos to these services, comment on other users’ profiles, and send status updates, depending on the site involved. You can download the app here for free.

Utilities and Reference:

The introduction of the iPhone app store has effectively made the iPhone the ultimate utility belt. We’re seeing no shortage of apps that aim to make life easier for users, and while many of them are a little too simplistic (how many tip calculators do we really need?), others will be godsends for some people, serving up the latest sports news, on-demand drink recipes, and restaurant recommendations.

Save Benjis

Save Benjis - Save Benjis is a shopping tool that will look up a product’s price according to its model number. Using model numbers instead of product names helps take the guesswork out of pricing comparisons (for example, it would be much easier to compare two computers with their model numbers versus a name like “MacBook Pro”). The app integrates the Safari web browser, so users can browse and purchase goods on a website from their phone if they find a better price. You can download the app here for free.

Pocket Express

Pocket Express - Pocket Express is a news and information service that is available for a number of smart phones. The app allows users to browse through news articles written by the Associated Press on topics that include politics, science, and world news. Users can also browse through sports scores, weather reports, and movie information. You can download the app here for free.

Urbanspoon

Urbanspoon - Urbanspoon brings a fun (and gimmicky) solution to choosing a restaurant for dinner. After using the phone’s GPS to detect restaurants in the area, Urbanspoon presents you with a slot machine-like listing of cuisine types and price. To activate the slot machine, you give the phone a hard shake (the accelerometers inside the phone will measure the movement). The dials will spin around a few times, and you’ll be presented with a suggested restaurant (you can shake again if you’re not satisfied). You can download the app here for free.

Cocktails

Cocktails - Cocktails is a well designed reference for “potent potables” that will put traditional bar-tending guides to shame. Users can browse through a large index of drinks, search by ingredient or drink name, and label drinks as favorites for future reference. The app also includes information about the type of serving glass to use, as well as the date that each recipe was created (there are often multiple recipes available for each drink). You can download the app here for $9.99.

ForeFlight

ForeFlight - ForeFlight is an iPhone app that is aimed towards pilots (both recreational and professional) rather than your average consumer. The app allows users to find nearby airports, maps, diagrams of airports, and lookup of plane information by tail number. The app also includes the A/FD, the Airport and Facilities Directory, which includes location data like field and approach information and location data on hotels. You can download the app here for a whopping $69.99 (the highest price in the store).

Audio and Video

App providers will make use of the 3G iPhone’s speedy network with streaming audio and video apps that will allow users to consume a near-limitless amount of content without having to sync up with their computers. Unfortunately, the iPhone is still unable to record video, so all media uploading will be limited to photos for now.

Kyte Mobile Producer

Kyte Mobile Producer - Kyte’s Mobile Producer is a mobile image uploading app. Users can upload the images they take from their iPhones directy to Kyte Channels that they’ve embedded in their blogs or onto their Facebook profile through Kyte’s facebook app. Users can also compile their images into slideshows, complete with captions and polls, which can also be played through the their Kyte Channels online. You can download the app here for free.

mdialog

mdialog - mdialog’s iPhone app allows users to browse through content that have been uploaded to the video site. The app is reminiscent of YouTube, allowing users to share and bookmark their favorite channels, leave comments, and browse through a “What’s New Section”. Users can also attach polls to their videos. You can download the app here for free.

Pandora Radio

Pandora Radio, our flat out favorite application so far, is an audio app that streams music to the iPhone over Wi-Fi, 3G, or Edge. Pandora is a popular music service that creates a “Music Genome” to analyze music a user likes and then recommend new artists. Users can enter the name of an artist or song they like, and Pandora will generate a streaming playlist, even if they haven’t created a profile. You can try out the app here for free.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Once again, Steve Jobs is on the cover of Fortune magazine. He is there because Apple is the most admired company in America. No, wait. He is there because investigative reporter Peter Elkind wrote a 12-page takedown of his Steveness. It turns out both are true. Jobs is steering the most admired company in America and he is a “reckless” CEO whose “behavior put the company and its shareholders at risk.”

I am all for balanced reporting, but which one is it? Not to be completely cynical, but Apple is a big advertiser for many Time Inc. magazines. And I imagine that Jobs would have no compunction about threatening to pull all of Apple’s advertising to kill a story he did not like. And he did not like this story. (He refused to talk to the writer). Pairing the story with another one on the cover that says “Apple is No. 1″ does soften the blow. (Jobs had no problem talking to another Fortune writer for that interview, in which he reveals how great he is).

This isn’t the first business magazine to go negative on Apple. Fast Company laid out what could go wrong with Apple in its December cover story, but at least it focused on strategic and business pitfalls that could take everybody’s favorite company down. (It wasn’t very convincing either). The Fortune story is more personal about Jobs himself. It digs up a lot of dirt we’ve heard before about Jobs’ personal life, temper tantrums, and family history. You learn for instance that Jobs’ 76-year-old biological father, who put him up for adoption, now “works as food and beverage director at the Boomtown Hotel & Casino near Reno.”

The article also spends a lot of time on the options backdating scandals at both Apple and Pixar that came to light a couple years ago. Elkind paints a picture of the Apple board (and Pixar’s before that) letting Jobs get away with pretty much whatever he wants. Of course, we already knew that. (”Can I have a plane, guys?”). After months of investigating, the only important new revelation Elkind can come up with is that Jobs and Apple’s board hid his cancer from shareholders for nine months before disclosing it. Jobs explored special diets and alternative remedies before opting for surgery.

That’s pretty bad, right? The not disclosing part. Except that, if you read the article all the way through, near the end you find out:

When the CEO of a publicly traded corporation is diagnosed with a serious illness, what is his obligation to inform shareholders? There is no clear answer.

During the mid-1990s, for instance, Intel CEO Andy Grove did not disclose his own cancer for a year and nobody ever complained about that. Oh well, perhaps the trouble is not with Steve Jobs. It’s with the story.

(Full disclosure: I once worked at Fortune).

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Jennifer Jones the host of Marketing Voices continues to improve in quality, with her strong background in broadcast TV, she continues to bring professionalism by interviewing the top leaders in the marketing industry.

Her latest guest, who needs no introduction is famed Guy Kawasaki. Featuring his latest project Alltop a preset bookmarking service organized by verticals.

Every day, I’m seeing new companies that are pushing technology to meet business needs, and in my honest review, I gave Guy a great review on the marketing of his services, but a less than steller review on innovation.

Initially, when I did that review, there were only a few sites available (egos, sports, etc) recently, he’s launched one that may have more value to my focus area called social media. I’m taking the ‘Kellogg’ challenge and am starting each day with this site, to see if it can enhance my information collecting, so far, so good.

In a fun and metaphorical way, Guy gives me a real good lesson that I’m going to take to heart, and positions me as the young, naive samurai.

Damn, I guess I need to buy Jennifer a new table.

It seems odd, but yes, there’s a unique need for marketing executives that must know traditional marketing strategy, but also the social media space. Perhaps not in the Fortune 5000 ranks, but for the many social media companies that are appearing (only a handful are thriving) this specialized skill set is critical.

Good friend Jennifer Jones interviews Matt Raggio, an executive recruiter who finds Marketing Executives for Social Media companies. I met Matt recently (I was the analyst he mentioned) and captured my findings. Earlier this week, I learned from another recruiter focused on this same market, who shared some of the challenges he’s had.

If you haven’t done so already, subscribe to Marketing Voices, a podcast focused on Marketing+Social Media. The content is tight, succinct, and high value and hosted by former colleague, Jennifer Jones, who teaches me something new about VCs, PR, and Marketing every time I chat on the phone with her.