Freelance journalist Charles Arthur (the ex-technology editor at The Independent) has an interesting piece on what appears to be an imminent instant messaging standards war with AOL/AIM, Yahoo and MSN all said to be planning updates that won't let third party apps work.

So where does the poor old user figure in all this? I have important contacts on Yahoo, MSN, AIM, Skype and Google Talk (my mum because it has the easiest to use interface).

Will I want to suddenly stop communicating with these people? No.

Will I be willing to run five separate IM apps. No.

Will I try to impose my choice of IM on everyone else. No.

Will others impose their choice on me? How could they if they all choose different aps?

Where does all this leave the poor user.

In my case it probably means Skype wins. I already use Skype for business telephony and will continue to do so, therefore its IM app wins by default.

Steve Rubel posted some free PR advice for Dell and now Trevor Cook has responded with his thoughts. I'm with Trevor on this. Personally I think the idea of taking a bunch of critical bloggers on a magical mystery tour of Dell's HQ is a really bad idea.

I've never been a big fan of the old-fashioned "wine, dine and schmooze" PR which is basically what Steve's suggestion is. Very rarely is that the best way to achieve your corporate communications objectives and build better relationships with journalists (or bloggers).

One reason so many PRs do it is that it is very visible to clients and senior management. You are seen to be doing your job. In fact it can be a lot of work for very little return. Journalists are very busy people and would usually much prefer a nice, juicy story or feature than a corporate schmooze fest.

I remember in a past life where my predecessor had regularly organised lunches for senior managers with national newspaper journalists. When I arrived I reviewed the policy by doing something radical and asking the journalists if they thought it was a worthwhile exercise. Out of about a dozen journalists, only one thought it was valuable. I kept doing the lunches with that journalist and canned the rest.

Result? Very happy journalists, but very unhappy bosses for me. "What was I doing all day? Didn't I know what my job was?". The fact was that I vastly improved media coverage, including several front page exclusives in weekly trade news magazines in sectors that the business plan prioritised. My PR efforts were focused on the bottom line, but some senior managers preferred the fluffier aspects of PR.