• Dave Satterfield of Sitrick & Co. said that he has texted reporters to answer questions and make clarifications  during major announcement events, while they were all in the room together
• The Vatican has been send text messages to followers and the media since 2003. Kevin Dugan of the Bad Pitch Blog said one of the reasons was to reduce the possibility of Vatican-related hoaxes being picked up by the media as legit.

One thing that has changed since 1997 — there are a LOT more Starbucks in downtown SF. No duh. There are Starbucks EVERYWHERE in the U.S. — 6,700 total locations [probably excluding franchisees, such as those in museums and Barnes & Noble].

Now there is going to be reliable, free WiFi hotspots all over urban/suburban America in Starbucks starting July 1.

As soon as I heard this news, I immediately started reconsidering my expensive $60/month broadband wireless card. Yes, it comes in handy when I really need it, but it is becoming less and less necessary as more free hotspots crop up. And if I drop it, with the money I will save, I can always splurge on hotel WiFi when I need to.

But this isn’t about me.

This is about the larger question of free municipal WiFi — something that you may remember was touted as a slam dunk by now, but hasn’t happened. Why? Because it’s harder to do than it looks, and where it is installed, it’s largely unreliable.

Now, there’s going to be a free, RELIABLE alternative — Starbucks, and likely the sidewalks right around your closest ‘Bucks, and probably around lots of other coffeeshops that will no longer be able to insist that you buy something before letting you use their WiFi. [Not to mention the 11,000 McDonalds that already offer it]

What Starbucks did for lattes — made them easy to get and reliably prepared — I predict they are going to do for WiFi.

Brilliant move by Starbucks — but — what about the money? Starbucks charges ~$3-4 for a premium cup of coffee, but they are giving away the WiFi — how’s that going to work?

The answer to that is in the second part of their release, about the Starbucks Digital Network. For now, they are talking about the free content that their WiFi users will have access to, but just you wait — they will figure out ways to separate you from your money through this network, I’m sure of it. And that’s how they will make some money on this, while changing the equation of whether you need your own network access service anymore.

And that’s where this story starts.

I love step aerobics — it’s very challenging, it’s a derivative of dancing, which I love, and it’s high energy.

But step is dying. Gym members don’t really want to take step compared to other classes that are offered. Why? One big reason is that it’s hard to learn — even the easy steps. You’ve got to invest a few weeks looking and feeling like a dork before you can really feel at home in a step class.

That doesn’t fly with today’s gym-goer. They want a good experience from the get-go — and really, who doesn’t?

[Stay with me here -- this really does relate to marketing.]

The very first time I tried Spinning, I loved it. I got on a stationery bike in a room full of exercisers, and I pedaled and got a good workout. Yes, there was guidance from the instructor, but it was up to me to follow along as much as I wanted to. There was a nice music soundtrack to keep things lively, and the instructor’s job is half to run the class and half to shout out encouragement. I’ve now been back a half-dozen times, and can’t wait to go again.

Here are the marketing lessons I see in Spinning:

• It’s easy to get involved, but it’s not simplistic — there’s plenty you can do once you’re acclimated
• It appeals to everyone — if you can pedal, you can participate
• It treats everyone fairly — there’s no competition among participants, since we’re all on stationery bikes. You can exercise as hard or as easily as you want, and no one can tell the difference
• It’s a lot more fun because it’s being done in a group

Spinning class seems to be a metaphor for how people want to be treated in today’s world. That’s why I wanted to write about it.

Last thought: Spinning and Facebook have a lot in common.

I’m not a particularly “clever” PR person. I don’t come up with lame excuses, I don’t misdirect people to divert their attention. I like to help clients sort out their story, position themselves strongly, and then tell the world about it.

So I loved picking up this line from journalist/author Sarah Lacy on a recent Bulldog audio conference. Like me, she prefers that people just give it to her straight and clear, rather than trying to grab her attention with something they think is “clever.”

Love it.

After his public apology on Friday, Tiger now knows what it’s like to completely swing and miss — at least metaphorically. May he learn and grow from the experience like the rest of us.

I’ve been resisting writing because, hey, what else is there to say? Every single pundit who gets paid to share their opinion has already done so, covering all the possible bases, and for those of us who do it for free — hey, we have lives over here.

But before the “historic” moment passes, I wanted to pass along a few thoughts:

• First of all, why ’swing and miss?’ Because if he was going to go to the trouble of giving a public apology, he should have been willing to take questions. I train people to take questions for a living, and believe me, it’s not that hard to get ready. If Tiger can learn how to use a sand wedge, he can practice taking hostile questions. Be a man fer chrissake, Tiger.
• Also why swing and miss? Because the whole thing sounded like a guy trying to save his corporate bacon. Jeez Tiger, you’re in your 30s and already a multi-gazillion-aire. Do you really need more sponsors and commercials? What if he had said, “I don’t need another sponsor in my life. From now on, my foundation is my sponsor. So there. I’m going to be myself.”
• If you want to read the best dissection of the speech, go here — Bill Simmons on ESPN.com.
• I thought he sounded like the script was written by his therapists, and that he hadn’t been outside that cocoon in weeks. He sounded brainwashed, and like a dried-out alcoholic who “has seen the light” and now thinks that promising to follow the straight-and-narrow is the same as actually doing it. Believe me, Tiger, you WILL be tempted to screw gorgeous women who aren’t your wife again. I wouldn’t make any blanket promises if I were you.
• And on the last point: exactly who was hurt by Tiger’s sexual excesses? Not the wife, who knew his history before she married him and will now live free from want the rest of her life. Not the kids: they’re way too young, they’re kids of a celebrity, they’ll get over it. Not the sponsors, not the babes, not his mom (he’s a grown man, mom), not his dad (sorry, he’s dead and can’t feel anything).
• Really, only the PGA tour and his fellow golfers (whose sport is less interesting when he’s not playing) are truly damaged in this, and that’s the one group still getting screwed (sorry, no pun intended) because Tiger indicated he wasn’t done self-flaggalating so he won’t be playing golf anytime soon. i don’t feel the least bit sorry for them, but if you’re looking for victims, they are in fact right at the top of the list (sorry, I don’t think the wife was a victim. Naive, yes. But a victim, uh, no).

More — more! We need to see more of him using his brain and words to govern, not just to give speeches. That’s who we elected, that’s who I, for one, was looking for: a leader who would engage intellectually with the great problems and opportunities of the day.

Who’s next: the Democratic Causus? That would be a great one. Then, let’s talk con-law with the Supremes!

That’s right, the new thing is to make your pitch via video. It’s certainly simple enough to do — plan your video, shoot it with an inexpensive video camera, upload it to Youtube and spread the link.

Makes a lot of sense, too. Video is such an incredibly powerful medium, and now, through the evolution of technology, we can all be fast and cheap video producers.

The key thing here is that a “vitch” can’t just be you reading your boring, stilted press release into the camera. You need to show something — the newsmakers, the location, something, anything tangible. This, by itself, takes PR people out of their jargon-filed comfort zone.

I just picked up on this word so I don’t have any good examples of video pitches and their results, but the whole thing makes a lot of sense to me. I plan to try it this month just to see what happens.

It’s pretty simple: just go to that page, type in as much of the name as you know, and get a set of matches. For instance, here’s a link to a search for Smith.

And here’s a page for one of the journalists on the site, Nick Parker of The Sun. They post whatever contact info they have, as well as links to recent articles and other similar journalists.

For a free resource, it’s pretty cool.

Tiger should go full-steam ahead and plant his flag as “the new Hugh Hefner,” or in my shorthand (trademark pending), “The New Hugh.”

I’m serious here.

Hugh Hefner has made a bloody fortune screwing beautiful women and leading the party life. But he’s ooollllddd. I can’t believe he’s still going strong, supposedly.

Hugh ain’t gonna last forever. We need a new role model, a new Adonis to do all the things we dream about: Tiger.

He’s incredibly handsome.

He’s incredibly rich.

He’s one of the greatest athletes in the world.

He’s one of the greatest commercial pitchmen in the world.

He’s perfect.

Go for it, my man.  Stock your mega-yacht Privacy with hot-and-cold running hotties, Cristal and pate, enjoy it and cash in on it.

You have nothing left to lose.

Among HuffPo’s top 11:

• iPod: little needs to be said, except, do you remember your life before having gigabytes of music in your pocket to listen to on demand?
• iTunes: made digital music downloads mainstream
• TiVo: the neutron bomb that hit TV. Do you remember when you had to watch TV in the order it was presented, or pop in a VHS tape to “time-shift”? How last millennium!
• Blackberrys/crackberrys/iPhones/PDAs in general: a computer on your belt or in your purse that is way more powerful than the computer you used to have on your desk, and it’s a phone and it’s connected to the web too!
• Kindle: still on the upswing, but do you remember where you were when Gutenberg invented the printing press? (don’t worry, it was 1439). You’ll tell your grandkids about seeing the first e-book. Yes, it’s that big.
• USB flash drives: flash memory in general is an absolutely revolutionary tool, as it allows us to record visual images (photos, video) on tiny devices that can go anywhere and record anything (which can then be uploaded on the worldwide communications platform we call The Internet). It also allows us to carry up to 300GB of data in our back pocket and hand it (say, nuclear secrets) to anyone we want.
• HDTV: 50 years after the commercialization of TV, the next step in picture quality, opening up all sorts of possibilities, but mostly, allowing men to watch football on giant screens.

Huffpo’s list is mainly “gadgets,” in other words tech hardware with some nifty software inside. What about things that were either sold or used only as software, on existing hardware? No diff really, but Huffpo skipped those, so here are a few I’d add:

• Google: came out in 98-99, but it didn’t gain popularity until 2000. Changed web search from a frustrating and incomplete exercise into an extension of our brains and thoughts.
• Facebook: changed online personas from sock puppets/imaginary selves to real people knitting their lives together.
• Twitter: it’s the first wave of the ‘real time web’ where information is shared almost as soon as it is created
• Blogging/content management systems: Took the creation of web content away from computer professionals and put it in the hands of everyone.
• Wikipedia: the open documentation and organization of all the world’s information
• YouTube: the first major step toward moving TV/video content onto the web. Trust me, by the end of the next decade, you won’t use a satellite dish or cable or rabbit ears to get TV content. It will all come over the Internet.
• Skype: buh bye, copper phone lines. Hullo, cheap voice and video phone calls over the web.
• BitTorrent: An amazingly simple way to share huge files containing entertainment (movies, concerts) over the net. I can now download a three hour, 1GB Springsteen show in about 15 minutes. At the beginning of the decade I was trading audio tapes by mail with people. How easy will it be in another decade?