For those of you interested in the Edelman Vista campaign, here’s a free link to a story capturing Rick Murray’s thoughts. .

News hits that the FDA, via a draft ruling, is saying cloned meat is safe, leading towards its eventual sale. And, thus, yet-to-be-determined spokesperson for the cloned meat lobby, you’ve been inducted into our list.

It’s amazing how quickly presidential campaigns are changing in the age of the Internet. With John Edwards officially his candidacy for president today, the field has begun to take shape more than a year before the Iowa caucuses. It wasn’t so long ago things were different. In 1991 Bill Clinton, for instance, announced his candidacy a mere three months before Iowa.

These days the announcements are PR events, timed for maximum exposure (Edwards chose the slowest news week of the year) and driven by the need to get a leg up on fundraising. Edwards, ever the populist, made his announcement in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward and returned to his well-worn “two Americas” theme that helped make him his party’s vice presidential nominee in 2004. Following the announcement he made the standard rounds on the morning talk shows.

But in 2008, no one is going to be caught off guard by a rogue web-savvy campaign (see Howard Dean). As part of the whole shindig Edwards released a YouTube video and sent out an email overnight to his supporters, and was live blogging on his site from New Orleans. And yes, conveniently you can contribute right there on his web site. Those politicians really catch on quick huh?

As part of a recurring feature, we decided to ask some of the PR bloggers we read why they blog. Next up: Georg Kolb, EVP, Text 100, who blogs at text100.typepad.com .

I blog for both personal and business reasons and do it on separate personal and business blogs.

From a personal perspective, blogging helps me to organize my thinking. Writing things down is a reflective process that often rewards me with a little epiphany. I’m not the kind of blogger who could crank out several valuable posts a day. I would like to blog more, but then again many should blog less (kidding).

As a German expat, my personal blog also turned out to be the best format to share my American adventures with family and friends in Europe. I can upload large files without clogging their inboxes, and they can still talk back to me, if they want. From a business perspective, we needed an ear and a voice in the online talks on our industry.

As a corporate blogger, I can directly connect with those who are interested in our business, without having to go through PRWeek all the time (even if that remains crucial, of course!). More importantly, my readers can directly respond to me, not only in comments on our blog, but also in posts on their own blogs.

For example, when we announced our new office in the virtual world of Second Life, I was much busier listening and talking on other blogs than on our own. This kind of dynamic is significant, because it is poking holes into the wall between writers and readers that existed for hundreds of years.

Readers are becoming writers and writers are becoming readers. As a result, communications are improving, which is probably the most important reason why I blog.

Ford’s new chief executive, Alan Mulally, and Mark Fields, the head of Ford operations for the Americas, met with Fujio Cho, chairman of Toyota Motor, and other top Toyota executives in Tokyo last week. According to the International Herald Tribune, the meeting was held at the request of the Ford executives. Toyota described the meeting as a courtesy call.

Ford has had what could easily be described as a bad year and may be looking for guidance out of its current mess from one of the top automakers in the world. In fact, many believe Toyota will become the biggest automaker on the planet next year. The two have a history together that dates back to the 1950’s.

Toyota and Ford officials indicated that the talks focused on the development environmentally-friendly technology and manufacturing efficiency.

Chevrolets and John Mellencamp (the Cougar is optional). Two things as American as apple pie. When you bring those two things together, the patriotic explosion is enough to sell both SUVs and CDs, right?

Or, you can end up with pie all over your face.

Chevy has featured the song “Our Country” off of Mellencamp’s newest album in its for the Silverado SUV. But the album doesn’t actually come out for another six months. According to the (sub req’d), this has aroused belated fears in the record company that listeners will grow tired of the song, or think it was designed to be a jingle. Even more frightening, the ad has been parodied on .

So the counter-campaign has begun with radio release of the song and an interview with Mellencamp planned ASAP. Honestly, I thought this was an old Mellencamp song, which might be a bigger problem for him than over-exposure on a TV commercial.

Ha! Judging by this from the Associated Press, hackers have descended upon MySpace as fertile ground for spreading Internet viruses. I guess raiding eBay users’ PayPal accounts has lost all its charm.

This was only a matter of time. MySpace has about as much edginess as AOL, and no street cred to speak of, so it seems a logical place for internet thieves and miscreants to go hunting for late-to-the-party bumpkins.

Some of the hackers are sending phony friend invites promising nude photos of women. The smarties, like the chap in the AP story, quickly change their passwords to avoid getting hacked.

I’m still not sure whether to file the bird flu under “things to be worried about” or “news item to start skipping over.” There’s no doubt the virus is real, and that it presents a level of danger to be concerned about in certain regions, but I still can’t ascertain what the probability is of a global outbreak.

According to the , the virus has claimed the lives of 154 people worldwide as of Nov. 29. Today comes news that a 26-year-old man has become the tenth victim of the avian flu in Egypt. (Check out these handy maps to get a feel for the pandemic worldwide.)

The challenge with the virus, unlike SARS, doesn’t seem to be quelling public panic, but instead raising awareness. Jackie Chan has already been brought in by the WHO to feature in PSAs that encourage kids to stay away from sick or dead birds. The WHO is also trying to spread the word in other quarters that immediate action and funding is needed to increase vaccine supply in the right places.

The question remains whether the communication efforts can effectively stamp out whatever risk there is (I’m still unsure) that this virus will rampage around the globe. Luckily, Jackie Chan seems to be pretty effective when he’s up against it.

There was an interesting pre-holiday piece in the New York Times about how the warm weather was havoc on the heavy coat trade. 

The holiday season, ultimately, is a hugely stressful time for seemingly everyone, especially those who are trying to get products in the ever-important gift guides or trying to get their story pitches into the city dailies.

But this is one story the coat trade wished wasn't written.  

As evidenced by the afore-blogged beauty queen scandal, anything becomes big news during a slow news week. Another good example - House & Home section reports that January has been declared Get Organized Month by the National Association of Professional Organizers. Their 4,000 members are ready to help the masses get it together. But there are some, including the scientists interviewed for the story, who say cluttered living is a sign of a vibrant mind and a full life. This article was #1 on the Most Popular list as of 2:30pm on the Friday before the Christmas weekend.

And on and on the article goes. There are three books mentioned on the topic, anecdotal evidence from experts, a quote from Einstein, a study from a staffing company, and flowery assertions such as “Mess tells a story: you can learn a lot about people from their detritus, whereas neat - well, neat is a closed book. Neat has no narrative and no personality (as any cover of Real Simple magazine will demonstrate).”

I think the real lesson here is that if you have a client, product, or event that could be tricky to get PR for, this is the time of year when you should be working the phones and email, pitching features to big-time media outlets like the Times.