The second of my two appearances on G4 TechTV’s The Lab with Leo is now available on Google video, so I’m embedding it here.

Leo and I chat about using sites like Facebook to keep in contact and grow your personal network, and using Apps, Marketplace and Groups to reach a larger audience:

A few months have passed since this aired, and it’s funny to me how dated it already seems, with how quickly things evolve online. It is also very frustrating having to hear myself say “um” and “uh” for six straight minutes. I hope it’s considerably less painful for you.

Many thanks again to the folks at The Lab for having me on!

My site was down for a spell there; it seems I may have inadvertently made a boo-boo while test driving new FTP apps on my new Mac (Yes, there is a learning curve).

But I’m back up now (thanks Gwyn and Rob) so to get caught up, here’s a quick ‘news’ post:

Over at the Strutta blog, I’ve been posting pretty frequently; today I posted about a “Hardware Drive” we’re doing here in our neighborhood for donations to Free Geek, a non-profit that “helps the needy get nerdy.” There might be a Free Geek chapter in your area, so give it a look.

Apologies for the quick catch-up post; we’ll return to your regularly scheduled programming soon .

Please stand by.

Step aside Jeff Francis, because Darren Barefoot might be Canada’s best pitcher.

For those of you who have already put two and two together; yes, I am referring to his ability to pitch in the PR sense of the word. See what I did there, with the baseball reference? Sorry Google, but this post ain’t about baseball.

A few months back I referenced Mr. Barefoot’s pitching abilities when he emailed me about a video campaign he had put together. Later I saw that he was using video to pitch bloggers individually (yes, a separate personalized video for each of his chosen publishers) about a photo contest for one of his clients. Obviously he understands that it takes time and care to connect with bloggers and enlist their help when campaigning. And at the moment, he’s doing it all from a quaint villa in Malta on a working vacation.

Well, now he’s outdone himself yet again. And I’m not just saying that because he’s pitching me. Just moments ago I received an email from Darren asking if I’d like to demo a product for one of his clients, Brother Printers. In addition to a short personal message, the email included this comic strip:

Yes, those are a few of my own Flickr photos in the strip, and yes, I did chuckle aloud when I saw it. Nice work Darren.

And now, as an example of pitches gone horribly wrong, I point you to an item published on Darren’s site, where he touches upon the recent Chris Anderson (of Wired magazine and “the Long Tail” fame) dust-up. Anderson published the email addresses of hundreds of PR “professionals” and email newsletters that had (in his opinion) spammed him. I don’t want to get into whether the punishment of such a public outing is fitting of the crime, but I will say this: If you’re on Anderson’s list, you can learn a lot from Darren and Julie at Capulet Communications.