Post written by Doug Quenqua Note to PR professionals: Let your press release do the talking. That is what it's for, no? Your client or company has news to share, so you write up a press release and e-mail it to the relevant reporters. This is a good system. But a troubling trend has taken hold.

It was the girls' night out at the movies and Facebook this weekend with the release of " Sex and the City ." Offline, women organized cosmo parties before heading out to see the movie. Online, more 80,000 people signed up as a "Sex and the City" fan on Facebook as of early Sunday, many writing enthusiastic reviews. "OMG-This is the Girls at their absolute best!," wrote one fan. )Who's counting, but fans of " Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,

Online video is a knife that cuts both ways for rapper 50 Cent . While ClickZ today examined how 50 Cent uses online video to to build brand loyalty, a video on celebrity gossip site TMZ is bringing attention to problems in his personal life. A multi-million dollar home - and the center of dispute between 50 Cent and an ex-girlfriend - was destroyed in a suspicious fire. Six people, including 50 Cent's 10-year-old son,

If there's one album you don't want to grab off of a P2P server, this would be it. Rock the Net , the nationwide coalition of musicians and labels that support net neutrality )841 bands, 177 labels and counting(, are releasing an album to benefit their very worthy cause on July 29. Wilco, Bright Eyes, DJ Spooky, They Might Be Giants, Aimee Mann and more have dontated tracks to the compilation, which will be released by indie Thirsty Ear Recordings .

Miamisburg, Ohio-based paper supplier NewPage wants paper buyers to think locally, and has set up a simple Web site to get them to do so. The destination, at Paper Tells a Story , will use a blog, whitepapers and other tools to argue that paper produced in Asia carries environmental risks. Rick Willett, president and COO of NewPage, put it this way in a statement: 'The goal of the 'Story' campaign is to get people thinking about the journey of a single sheet of paper,

The opening today of " Sex and the City ," the movie, got search engine marketers into action, using paid search on Google and Yahoo to promote everything from bling )GiltyCouture and Ziamond(, to ringtones, to an online video site )MyHubTV(. What, no Manolo Blahniks? Yahoo paid search results, below.

Comcast had an unfriendly wake-up call this morning. The site was apparently hacked, and the Comcast.net domain taken over. Earlier this morning Comcast e-mail subscribers were greeted with a message saying the site was under construction, coming soon, according to a report on Product-Reviews . The Internet service provider has e-mail flowing again, but it stresses the importance of changing your password, and making it more complex than the name of your pet. Maybe now,

Corporate blogs aren't typically the place for investor-aimed details about proxy votes, but then again, corporate blogs aren't typically Yahoo's. The company, of course, postponed its annual meeting and is embroiled in a proxy battle with activist investor Carl Icahn. Here's what Nicki Dugan at Yahoo tacked on to the end of a post about Jerry Yang's and Sue Decker's appearance at The Wall Street Journal's All Things D conference. Yahoo!

Lots of people in digital marketing are promoting the concept of tracking engagement - instead of giving credit to the last ad clicked on a Web site. But what exactly does "engagement" mean? That question was posed to a panel at the American Association of Advertising Agencies ' digital conference today in New York City. And, if David Smith, chief executive of MediaSmith, had his way, he'd head back to the drawing board - or Webster's. Keep in mind,

The auditorium in the new TimesCenter , part of The New York Times headquarters, left some laptop toting visitors attending the AAAA digital conference hungering for a little power. Turns out the auditorium has no place for visitors to plug in their laptops and recharge their batteries. While that's common in older venues, it's surprising for a site built for the 21st century. On the plus side, there's wireless Internet service.

Shares of U.K.-based Yell Group are up on rumors Microsoft has approached the directories publisher about a possible sale . The acquisition, if it came to fruition, would be Microsoft's first merger in the local business and residential look-up arena, and could be interpreted as a play for search share. For instance, Yell's online properties, including Yell.com in the U.K., YellowBook.com in the U.S., and PaginasAmarillas.

Ikea is pulling out all the interactive marketing channel stops to promote the opening of its new Brooklyn store. The campaign - aimed at getting New Yorkers to the new big box retail location in a seldom-visited area - utilizes e-mail directing recipients to play a game played both online and via mobile device. The Ikea Brooklyn Get There Giveaway asks viewers to locate boxes hidden on the pathways leading to the store on a map interface built in Ajax.

"So let's assume that Google has won at search, or close enough to make no difference. Is Microsoft better off trying to reimplement cat and ls [old UNIX utilities], or trying to figure out what's still missing from the Internet Operating System? While they are locked in penis envy, all the really cute girls are going out with startups." -Tim O'Reilly, arguing Microsoft's search obsession has distracted it from important work it could be doing in service of Web users.

Forrester Research put out a report on media consumption among Gen-Yers )18-27 year-olds(. The big takeaways aren't surprising. This group spends more time online than watching TV )Indeed, according to the report, they "Spend less time watching television today than they did in 2004."(. They spend more time playing video games, watching DVDs and checking out Web and mobile video content than the general population. To make sense of it all,

Creative agencies are increasingly opting to outsource their production work to overseas firms, in order to minimize costs and maximize profits, reports the Wall Street Journal. Companies from territories such as Eastern Europe, South America, and Asia, have adopted effective and lucrative business models, carrying out behind the scenes ad production work for major agencies at substantially lower prices. With online advertising becoming increasingly global and targeted,

Online video platform Brightcove has launched a majority-owned Japanese subsidiary, branded Brightcove KK, to grant it instant access to the Japanese market. Headquartered in Tokyo, the Asian offshoot will operate a localized version of Brightcove's on-demand video platform, offering video distribution and advertising services. The operation is backed by a $4.9 million investment from four leading Japanese digital media players,

Tired of seeing the same in-stream video ads over and over? The people selling them are getting sick of it, too. According to ad execs speaking at yesterday's Streaming Media East conference in New York, one reason for the lack of variety is a lack of creative. "We don't get multiple creatives," said SVP Digital Sales at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Christine Cook,

Federated Media has set up a new mini-network in the green publishing category. Its new Green Federation launches with four sites )Inhabitat.com, Giga Omni Media earth2tech.com, Next New Media's ViroPOP.com and GM-VOLT.com(, with subjects ranging from design to green tech to video. Ads on those properties today are mostly generic display executions for consumer and telco brands. FM's mission will be to bring environmentally-themed advertisers and products into the fold.

Disgusting. That one single word made Countrywide Financial CEO Angelo Mozilo look like an ogre this week. It all started when Daniel Bailey Jr. used language from a form letter to ask the lender to revise the terms of his adjustable-rate mortgage so he wouldn't lose his home. Bailey's note went out to about 20 Countrywide addresses, including Mozilo's, a ccording to the latimes.com .

"The salacious and the stupid have been traditionally the avant garde and the advance guard of the more high-minded and definitely more profitable fare. The Internet will be no different. YouTube is celebrated as a completely revolutionary concept - and it is. The ability for anyone, anywhere to create and distribute short-form entertainment that can be seen by anyone else, anywhere else is an extraordinary development. But in many ways, YouTube is very old news.