Loic Le Meur chides France Telecom for still delivering paper telephone books as he thinks that people "prefer their DSL line".

I disagree. I still need my paper phone book, or rather Yellow Pages. The internet is fine for looking for and buying some services. But not for everything. If you want to find a local plumber, electrician, mechanic etc then the paper Yellow Pages wins hands down.

Most of those people don't have websites but they do advertise in the Yellow Pages. This gives me a clue to what they are about before I phone them. I know if they are members of their trade association (which gives me some reassurance that I won't be ripped off.)

All I would find for most of them on Yell.com is a simple listing with their phone number.

Via the London Marketing dinner I've just come across BusinessBricks, the self-styled "UK's liveliest small business newsletter". I like the look of it and will find out more about it. They have a good George Bernard Shaw quote which is very good for reminding the normally reserved British why networking is a good thing to do:

"If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas. "

My main criticism is that despite having some good ideas it makes them hard to access. The newsletter is only available by visiting the website or subscribing by email. Why no RSS feed? The interesting sounding Meet-ups mean you have to send an email to find out more. Why not use a service like Meetup?

Recently I've been talking to more and more people about the potential of blogs as a business or public sector communications tool. But if people aren't familiar with blogs (which most aren't) it can be hard to explain what they are, unless you're in front of a PC while explaining.

I've been trying to craft an elevator pitch to explain it and so was please when I spotted the 'Blog Elevator Speech' title in Feedreader. Kevin Dugan has posted his blog elevator pitch.

However, I don't think it works for my audiences. It's still way to complicated. For a start I couldn't possibly use the words 'aggregator' or 'RSS' as both would require an elevator pitch to explain what they are.

I'm going to keep working on it and will share my thoughts here. In the meantime if anyone wants to chime in I'd be very interested in your thoughts.

There are already several write-ups about the London Geek Dinner with Microsoft's Robert Scoble.

I enjoyed it and meant some really interesting people, some that I already 'knew' virtually. These included Neville Hobson, Lloyd Davis, Cindy De Smet and Erwin Van Hunen of Dopplerradio, Hugh MacLeod, Niall Cook and lots of others. One thing to come out of meeting Cindy and Erwin is that I've been playing with both iPodder and Dopplerradio and found not much to choose between them; however, now I've discovered that Doppler is European and not American it is my new preferred podcatcher!

Most people have been very complimentary about Scoble's speech (MP3 download). Me, I'm not so sure. I often get very frustrated about the 'blogosphere' and some of Scoble's comments reinforced my irritations. Particularly his claim that blogging somehow meant the end of traditional advertising.

Poppycock (I could be stronger, but this a family blog). My view about blogging is that it is simply another communications channel. It has its own nuances that you must understand if you are to use it effectively. But just as the web and email haven't yet killed off the printed newspaper or TV advertising, neither will blogging.

My very strong belief is that any business that is not blogging very soon will be making a huge mistake, but it's not going to change your world. It's another tool that communications professionals must understand and adopt.

And it is communications professionals that need to get in there and start to shape how blogs develop for organisational and corporate communications. PR professionals, if they get their act together, are in the perfect position to take the lead on this. True public relations has always been about two-way communications and how organisations behave, which is why blogs should be such a useful tool for us.

Let's ditch this ridiculous idea that if PR or marketing people get their hands on blogs they will despoil blogdem. Nonsense. We live in the real world and if what happens on a blog can positively or negatively impact on an organisation or company then it needs to be managed. That's not the same as controlled or censored, but it is about rules, conventions and understanding.

So let's inject a bit of reality. Blogs are simply another communications channel. Stop evangalising, stop dismissing and let's start using.

There is space for everyone from the teenage diary and the geeks to the 'fake' Captain Morgan's rum blog and GM's FastLane. Some will work well, others will fail. Just like every other channel. You increase your chances of success by working with professionals. As GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz said "My advice about blogs... have good advisers who understand the blogosphere."