Some contacts of interest over the past week. I’ve been busy in the background looking into interesting topics. I’ll be posting about them in the days to come.

Marc and Tom of marcandtom.com were so kind and responded to my email. They called and we were able to talk for quite awhile. Some interesting insights into their viral ‘hire me’ site. I’ll post that this week. They were pretty funny, too.

Steve Hall, of Adrants.com, was also very kind and responded to my questions about the viral ad featuring a terrorist bomber, of all things. The ad purported to be a VW spot. VW has disavowed the ad. I’ll post Steve’s comments later, too. His response was much appreciated. A very nice guy.

And, out of the blue, yet another nice guy writes to me. Dee Rambeau sent his encouragement for our class blogging exercises. This, as you can imagine, was a pleasant surprise.

Dee founded DVCO, a “virtual agency.” The company’s products epitomize the positive use of CMS in PR. Dee’s company is responsible for the PR Newswire MediaRoom and a long list of other CMS “Online Communications Tools.” Visit Dee’s blog, Adventures in Business Communications for more.

Finally, I had a visit from Jason Calacanis. He is likely a nice guy, too, but I’m afraid he didn’t like what I wrote in this blog.

Jason is the owner of Autoblog.com and about 70 other blogs at WEBLOGS, INC. NETWORK.

Autoblog is one of the “900 lb. gorilla” blogs. In link popularity, for example, the blog compares to other sites like this:

Blog/Site & Number of links
www.autoblog.com 619,214
www.iVillage.com 672,155
www.michaelmoore.com 800,640
www.GeorgeWBush.com 1,014,162
(Source: Marketleap Search Engine Marketing Tools)

I give Jason credit for his stance and appreciate the sentiments he stated here and the David Thomas comments at Autoblog. All good points, with which I agree.

Maybe I’m wrong, but sadly – I don’t think Jason will be visiting here again. Bummer. I’d love to have students interact with Jason.

By the way, the whole VW controversy has been resolved, as Autoblog reports here.

However, that is the nature of blogs. And, there is no stopping you from going to his blog and engaging Jason in conversation. So, head on over to the jason calacanis weblog on Media, Entertainment, Technology & Business.

Overall, a pretty good week with just one pothole that I may have dug myself. Don’t worry. I’ve stopped digging.