This week’s PRobecast, Alison Raymond, Tony Sapienza, Amy Krigman and Renatta Siewart talk California’s bill that makes it illegal to impersonate someone on the Web, cardless check-ins at the gym, business logos and more. Here are the issues we covered:

CA Bill says it’s illegal to impersonate – California recently passed a bill that makes it illegal to impersonate someone else on the web – and this means person or corporation. While instances like the whole Phoebe Price bullying case, would make me want to agree with this bill. What happened to freedom of speech?

Fingerprints at the Gym – An article in DailyFinance talked about a gym in the Silicon Valley installing fingerprint scanners at their front desk – as part of their national cardless check-in program. So gym-goers will scan their right and left index finders and the machine would keep in on file. The article brings up a good point, identity theft is already a problem but at least you can get a new account number. You can’t get a new fingerprint. Would you scan your print so you didn’t have to remember your card?

What to Consider when Creating a Business Logo – A mashable article talked about the 4 key things to consider when creating a logo and these included: Make sure your logo gives a good impression, Make your logo “sticky” – meaning non-changing, Find a great designer and introduce yourself into the social marketplace. I think this article brought up a good point – logos really need a good first impression. If it doesn’t look good, your audience will likely look elsewhere. And, secondly – introduce yourself to the social sphere, but think about where you want to go. Don’t spread yourself too thin. You want to make sure you have a plan as to what you want to accomplish and then proceed to do so.

Firefox 4’s Beta 4: Hello, Sync and Panorama – Mozilla just released its beta version of Firefox 4 which includes 2 features: Panorama and Sync. Panorama is a visual tool that allows you to see all of your open tabs in a group. It has a drag and drop interface so you can more easily manage them. Which is helpful for the tab-fiends. The Sync allows users to synchronize all their bookmarks, history, passwords, etc. across multiple computers. What are your thoughts on these new features

Could ‘Social Network’ hurt Facebook? – There’s a film coming out in October called “The Social Network” that is supposed to be about Mark Zuckerberg and how facebook was created. Apparently Zuckerberg didn’t have anything to do with the film and the film casts him in some bad light. If true, do you think this is going to effect how people will think of facebook?

Lindsay Lohan’s Potential New Radio Gig – Lindsay Lohan just got out of rehab and there is talk of her calling the East Coast home again. A radio show in Long Island is now offering her and her mother Dina $1M to host the morning radio show and talk fashion, tips, etc. Do you want tips from Lindsay

The Most Dangerous Celebrities to Google – McAfee recently put out a top 10 list of the most dangerous celebrities to Google. The Top 3 being Jessica Biel at 3, Julia Roberts at #2 and Cameron Diaz being the top dangerous celebrity. According to McAfee, the risk is greater when you include “nake” or “nude,” which isn’t really surprising. This really just goes back to the fact that you have to be careful what you click on, whether it’s a link that was sent to you or on Google.

The 15 Most Bedbug-Infested Cities in the US- There was a recent study of the top 15 bedbug-infested cities in the US and Boston came out as number 11. Gross! What are your thoughts on this epidemic?

Lastly, this week we are starting a PRobecast PR Power Ranking – which we go around the room and everyone votes on what story did the best job PR-wise. This week’s winner is Terminix who released the study on the top bedbug-infested cities. Not only does this story have the “yuck” – it also grabbed a lot of attention.

So, Congratulations, Terminix!

Hope you enjoyed PRobecast, Topaz Partners’ loosely edited weekly podcast!

Let us know what your thoughts are on these matters!

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Technorati Tags: bedbugs, Facebook, free speech, Lindsay Lohan, Terminix

While down the Cape this weekend with a bunch of friends, we frequented this bar Harry’s on Main Street in Hyannis. (Fun place BTW.)

On one of our trips there, the bartender, Rick, was talking about Pandora. Hearing half of the conversation, my friend raised her wrist saying, “I have a Pandora.” Well, Rick wasn’t talking about the bracelet, he was talking about Pandora Radio. (On a side note, four of us at the bar had Motorola DROIDs, which is where the conversation spawned from.)

This got me thinking…

It’s essential to market your brand very carefully when a company has the same – or a similar name – as another brand, or you could cause a brand identity crisis.

While this was just the case of not hearing the brand Pandora in the right context, if not branded correctly, you could be sending your customers on a wild goose chase – causing them a lot of aggravation on the way.

Creating your company’s URL with the exact company could divert some of the confusion. Let’s take the above situation as an example: if you type in Pandora.com and you are looking for Pandora jewelry, you will be directed to Pandora Radio. Which would be a problem, if I was looking for Pandora Jewelry.

So what if you can’t brand a company’s URL to the exact name? Make sure your customers – or future customers – are aware of your actual homepage link when you market yourself. Try and get your link as similar as possible to your company name. Or, in the very least make sure your URL is easy to remember!

For example, I heard a radio ad for Volvo on the way to work today. They were advertising New England Volvo retailers and made sure to let listeners know that their website was http://www.nevolvo.com. Note the N-E to make sure listeners didn’t just visit the general Volvo site.

How’s your URL branded? Is it your company name? Something similar?

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Technorati Tags: Branding, Pandora, URLs, Volvo

It’s only midweek and we’ve seen four news stories that signal fresh attacks on free speech and other personal freedoms. A banner week, and one that has implications for tech PR. Let’s look at the headlines first, then the PR angle.

Example A: Philadelphia (can’t you just feel the brotherly love?) has decided to charge bloggers an annual $300 fee for the right to blog. Of course they are calling it a ‘business privilege’ tax, but you just have to love the free-speech aspects of this move. If you’ve ever lived in Philly you already know there’s a tax on everything – head taxes, work taxes, township taxes and more. But taxing the right to exercise freedom of speech – in the city where the Constitution was penned and adopted by the Constitutional Convention – boggles the mind. Someone ring the Liberty Bell, quick.

Example B: California (uber alles – we’ll have that Jello Biafra test later) has passed a bill to make it illegal to impersonate someone on the Web. So much for Fake Steve and other parodies. All that’s needed now is the Governator’s signature and we’ll all be safe in the ether again. While we can see why it’s good to discourage mean girls and other pranksters who see the Internet as a great place to stage attacks on others, we agree with the Electronic Frontier Foundation – there’s way too much opportunity in this bill to squelch freedom of speech.

Example C: Two airports – Logan and Las Vegas – have approved full-palm patdowns of air passengers going through the already slow and invasive security checkpoints. It’s not enough to take off your shoes and get a full-body scan that’s as strong as a CAT scan. Now you get to be up close and really personal with a TSA agent, probably that guy or gal you refused to go out with in high school. So much for personal space. Assault, anyone?

Example D: A Connecticut high school – in swish New Canaan, no less – is considering adding RFID tags to student IDs. No more sneaking out of study hall for a quick trip to McDonalds, kids.

So what does all of this have to do with tech PR? The RFID tags are a tech story, and a pretty convoluted one – a Connecticut RFID company is pushing the plan after applying for a National Science Foundation grant to ‘conduct scientific research.’ Line the kiddies up, we’re all friends here, and while you’re at it, how about a quick cheek swab? The pat-downs are a study in how proven and legitimate technologies such as explosives sniffers and scanner technologies are being ignored. The blog tax is something that affects anyone who blogs – and there’s the fact that taxing speech really pushes the limits of a government’s right to collect revenue from its citizens. And the e-impersonations? Again, free speech is at issue.

Any attack on free speech, constitutionally-protected personal freedoms and human dignity is an issue for all of us. For PR people, it means we need to do a better job explaining the technologies our clients create – those airport scanners, for example. We need to give our clients better advice – that Westport, CT company needed to be talked off the cliff by a smart PR strategist.

And we need to be better citizens. We need to have, and give, some respect.

What do you think?

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