NASA avoided some PR drama when it agreed to name something in its new International Space Station after comedian Stephen Colbert: the treadmill. Colbert encouraged his fans to write in his name in the contest to name the new wing of the station, and NASA responded to the outpouring of votes saying they have final say in the naming of the node.

Astronaut Sunita “Suni” Williams appeared on The Colbert Report on Tuesday night to announce the naming of the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill (COLBERT).

“I think a treadmill is better than a node…because the node is just a box for the treadmill,” Colbert said. “Nobody says, ‘Hey, my mom bought me a Nike box.’ They want the shoes that are inside.”

With technology changes on the horizon for the healthcare industry, Dell launched a social media site to generate ideas and solutions that would improve the improve the “delivery, efficiency, and quality of healthcare using IT,” the company said on April 6.

The site, called IdeaStorm for Healthcare and Life Sciences, is a branch of IdeaStorm, a brainstorming site which was launched in 2007.

Kerry Bridge, head of digital media communications for Dell, told PRWeek that the site is targeted at large healthcare organizations as well as influencers and key stakeholders in the healthcare blogging industry.

“It’s a huge social media community, specifically looking at healthcare IT,” she says. “And these are the people we want to be talking to, share ideas with. Dell would like to be a valuable member of that community.”

Dell plans to promote the site within healthcare social media communities, on its blog and company Web site, and through the newsletters that the sales force distributes.

“It’s definitely a stake in the ground,” she says. “…[to show] that we’re committed to the healthcare industry.

PepsiCo and Porter Novelli joined forces earlier this month to host a Twitter party discussing the latest trends. The April 1 event brought together 100 of Pepsi’s top communicators, as well as social media experts Peter Shankman, Stephanie Agresta, and Maury Postal. It was run by PN’s Marian Salzman.

The discussion reportedly generated over 1,400 tweets with topics including the use of social media in marketing.

“The goal of the event [was] twofold,” writes Bonin Bough, global director of social media at PepsiCo. “First is to send the message that PepsiCo is here to support, enable and participate within the social media space, and the second goal was to hear what the world had to say about global trends.”

Still trying to figure out what the hub-bub is about the Twitter? Check out this from PRWeek and a story from

Blogs and Twitter are abuzz with , the coined after several books were removed from the ranking system on Amazon.com. The books, largely with homosexual themes, included Brokeback Mountain, Ellen DeGeneres: A Biography, and Heather Has Two Mommies. It seems ranks have now returned to some titles, but some blogs are keeping track of those that were affected.

Mark Probst, the author of gay romance book The Filly, first noticed that his book was de-ranked and contacted Amazon. After receiving a response saying it was due to a policy where “adult” materials were not included in rankings, he blogged about it. But when consumers pointed out that some heterosexual “adult” materials were still included in rankings, Amazon said the original de-ranking was due to a .

The news has quickly spread through social media like Twitter, and some groups are urging a of the retailer. Amazon does not have a press release up on its Web site and representatives from the online retailer and its PR agency OutCast Communications have not yet returned PRWeek’s calls for comment.

UPDATE: Patty Smith, director of corporate communications for Amazon, replied to PRWeek with a statemtn via email, saying “This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection.”

Who’s winning on Twitter in the political sphere? Left or right? One blogger on the right’s use of to build a conservative movement on the microblogging site.

Much of the chatter in the media has been that the left, via its awe-inspiring, marathon-length successful campaign for Barack Obama has spawned the first tech presidency. But Blog P.I.’s William Beutler of New Media Strategies argues the right is harnessing at least one channel better - Twitter.

These new conservative projects are often built around Twitter itself. Sometimes this results in really annoying tweets, but at this point the right is doing more interesting things in this space.

Thoughts from others? From TweetLeft?

The Phoenix Suns, which has been a leader in social media in the NBA, launched its own Twitter-based platform, which will collect Tweets from fans and Suns players and staff and display them on its Web site.

The new platform, Suns Twackle, was developed in partnership with Octagon Digital and, in addition to fans, will pull in Tweets from Shaquille O’Neal (@The_Real_Shaq), Steve Nash (@The_Real_Nash), the Suns Dancers (@SunsDancers), various staffers, and Alvin Gentry (@AlvinGentry), the NBA’s first head coach to join Twitter.

All eyes are on the G20 in London this week, increasingly focused on the instead of the . The Financial Times, which has interviewed a number of world leaders attending the summit, has conducted wide-ranging media outreach this week to promote its coverage.

The newspaper has pitched editor Lionel Barber, US managing editor Chrystia Freeland, and Washington bureau chief Ed Luce to cable broadcast outlets as experts on the event, and also notified media trade publications about the series of interviews, said Darcy Day Keller, Financial Times head of communications for the Americas, via e-mail. The outlet has also reached out to bloggers via Facebook and , she said.

The PR for new online community Daughters.com focused on what the site offers: advice and an interactive community designed to help families raise girls ages 8 to 15.

New Moon Girls Media, the company behind New Moon Girls magazine and Web site, worked with Cahill Media Group on the March 10 launch, reaching out to mommy and grandparent bloggers, telling them of the “parent to parent” discussion board, searchable collection of articles about raising girls, and ways they can submit questions to experts. Additionally, the PR campaign targeted traditional media nationwide.

Founder and CEO Nancy Gruver contributes to one of several blogs on the site and said in a statement, “After nearly 17 years of creating groundbreaking communities for tween and teen girls, we’re thrilled to provide parents and caregivers with the first place they can visit 24/7 to find answers to all of their questions about raising daughters.”

Two things that many in the financial communications probably didn’t expect to see together in the same sentence anytime soon: IR and Twitter.

On Friday, eBay announced on its blog, eBay Ink, that after three quarters of reporting its quarterly earnings via blog and covering the earnings calls on Twitter, the company has created some best practices for the earnings blogging going forward.

Those practices include a separate legal page to the Ink blog, rotating financial info every 90 days on the blog and Twitter, and special language that will designate some Tweets as a live-blogging session for the earnings announcement.

Ebay blogger Richard Brewer-Hay wrote that he was worried when he had to approach his legal team for the first time to talk about best practices and couldn’t find other companies who were using these social media tactics for their earnings announcements. But his fears were unfounded.

“I was worried I would be forced to cease this innovative way of reporting company information to our constituents,” Brewer-Hay wrote. “Thankfully that was not the case. Rather, it was mutually agreed that we could take this opportunity to set up a best practices approach to live-blogging and reporting company information via the Web - beyond traditional conference call and press release.”

After a night at the PRWeek Awards (my second), I’m going to need some new business cards. Not so much because I passed so many of them out to industry contacts who were tolerant of my glad-handing, but because mine don’t have my Twitter handle – - on them.

As evidenced by the of #prweekawards messages, tweeting throughout the awards and other events is a big hit with PR folks. And no less than three industry contacts asked me if my card had my Twitter information on it.

Who knows? Maybe by the time the 2010 PRWeek Awards rolls around, Twitter handles will be so commonplace, attendees won’t have to ask.