Internet Archive director and co-founder Brewster Kahle made the announcement at the end of a presentation about the organization’s philosophy of open e-book publishing. OLPC being local, it was a hot story—and thankfully, the Boston Public Library has excellent, free Wi-Fi , so I was able to file a story right from the auditorium. (Which reminded me of another OLPC-related scoop that I filed live from an auditorium, on the unveiling of the foundation’s second-generation laptop design. That one brought Xconomy a huge amount of traffic after it got Slashdotted.)

The e-book session was hosted by prolific New York Times technology columnist David Pogue. I got a chance to meet Pogue in person after the event, and was impressed (as always) by his friendly, extroverted, at times hyperkinetic demeanor.

Pogue took a moment from the e-book session to perform a little musical number parodying Steve Jobs and Apple, and I’ve included my video of the performance below. The enigmatic company is rumored to be working on a tablet-sized device that could become a competitor for existing e-book reading devices such as the Amazon Kindle and the Barnes & Noble Nook. Pogue said that as far as he was concerned, the Apple tablet is still just a rumor—but he couldn’t resist using the occasion of the panel to do a rendition of a song he once wrote about Jobs’ departure from, and return to, Apple in the 1990s.

[Update, 10/30/09: My full writeup of the Boston Book Festival session, including material from an interview with Sony Reader president Steve Haber, is up on Xconomy -- see "Sony, Google Point the Way Toward a More Open Future for E-Books."]

Maybe you’d like to have a sleek, attractive blog or website for yourself or your business. Maybe you’ve looked around at some of the free blogging or lifestreaming platforms like Blogger, Posterous, Tumblr, TypePad, and WordPress.com and you’ve been underwhelmed by the cookie-cutter sameness of the sites you see there. If either of those things are true, today’s column is for you.

The free platforms used to be the only way for a beginning blogger to take advantage of Web publishing technology. But it’s now possible to set up a good-looking, full-featured, highly personalized blog, simply by buying a customizable site template and setting it up on an independent hosting service. It’s much easier and cheaper than it sounds. In fact, I did it last weekend, and I’m going to walk you through it.

First, though, a word about the pluses and minuses of the free platforms. I’ve used quite a few of them. What’s great about them, of course, is that they’re free, and that they let you set up an account and start blogging instantly. Blogger, Posterous, Tumblr, and TypePad all make it extremely easy to create posts—in most cases all you have to do is write an e-mail. And they let you post several kinds of material, including text, photos, videos, and audio.

What’s most dismaying to me about the free blogging platforms, though, is that all of their blogs tend to look alike, with a style that’s curiously Web 1.0. Blogger, TypePad, and WordPress.com are the worst offenders: you can pick from a range of templates or “themes,” but most of them look like they’re straight out of 2004. Innovation is much more alive at Posterous and especially Tumblr, which allow more customization, but those platforms lack many of the extra features—such as integration with photo-sharing or messaging tools—that bloggers need to keep up with today’s social media explosion.

If you want a full-featured blog with a spiffy, up-to-date design, the truth is that you need professionally designed theme running on top of a powerful content management system like WordPress. The good news is that you can get these things quickly and easily. I saw a bumper sticker on I-93 yesterday that said “Websites designed for $500.” Buying a WordPress theme and setting it up on a hosting service yourself will cost you far less than that.

Continue reading this column at Xconomy.

But unfortunately, judging from a discussion going on across several PR-related blogs today, it seems that quite a few public relations professionals in the audience felt neglected, devalued, or outright offended by some of the things the panel said (or didn’t say). I wanted to try to clarify some of my own thoughts about the value of public relations—thoughts that will, of course, continue to be from the point of view of a journalist.

First, I want to apologize, because I took the time to write out a little statement before the panel about the value a startup can get from a good public relations firm, and when or why a startup might want to think about engaging one. When Mike asked the question that would have given me the opportunity to recite my statement, I whiffed on it. I guess I felt like I’d already talked too much. But here’s what I wrote:

A truly great PR firm would know the local news landscape, have personal relationships with the key journalists, help you craft the most interesting parts of your company’ story into a pitch, be able to reach out to journalists on a personalized (not form letter) basis, and get stories placed. They’d also help you anticipate issues (e.g. your funding is public information once you file a Form D with SEC) and deal with crises. If you are news savvy and you like journalists you can probably do a lot of this stuff on your own, or if you have angel or VC investors you can probably lean on them for help or advice. If I were an entrepreneur directly responsible to investors and to my board I probably wouldn’t start spending money on a PR firm until I was into my 2nd or 3rd year and earning some serious revenue.

I think a lot of entrepreneurs (and their angel or venture backers) are with me on that last point—that PR is a costly investment that you should put off as long as you can. My understanding of the point of last night’s panel was that the audience wanted to hear suggestions and strategies for doing that, and for stretching out the period before you need professional help. I don’t think the premise was that companies ought to do without professional PR forever—just that there are ways to bootstrap this part of your business, like almost every other part. Of course, it really helps if you’re the kind of person who likes to talk about your company and enjoys the whole social media whirl.

Some PR-industry friends who were in the audience, including Bobbie Carlton, Chuck Tanowitz, and Lora Kratchounova, have said in their blogs today that they felt the panel came down pretty hard on the PR biz. It’s true that we all have our funny or sad stories about bad assumptions or goofy practices on the part of PR folks. But I imagine that PR folks have just as many stories about journalists. Journalists and PR people are frequently at odds with one another, because at bottom we’re all trying to put our own separate spin on the basic information. So I think the inevitable effect of getting four journalists up on the stage was that the audience heard a certain amount of complaining, without any balance from the other side.

I really do think public relations firms play an important role in the innovation ecosystem (which is the part of the business world that I write about), not least by freeing up busy entrepreneurs from having to spend so much time worrying about publicity. They can also help with crisis management, and they can educate entrepreneurs about all the little things they aren’t likely to know ahead of time about working with the press. The absolute best PR people are also constantly thinking about their own craft, and about how the PR business is evolving (just as journalism and the startup process itself are evolving).

I agree with what both Chuck and Bobbie wrote today, the gist of which is that there’s a lot more to public relations than just media relations, and that startups need to be thinking about ways to engage whole broad communities of people—customers, partners, investors, and occasionally journalists. A really good public relations firm or consultant will be able to help with that. As Chuck put it in his blog: “PR is about developing a broad communications program that includes building a long-term strategy that establish lasting relationships with your core audiences, creating content and managing conversations that engage those audiences directly; and reaching industry influencers (media relations gets lumped in here). Tactically this means that the communicator or agency you hire should have skill sets that include: writing ability; audio and video skills; creative thinking and the ability to connect with influencers.”

That’s definitely the skill set I would look for if I were seeking help getting my message out. (And Chuck, who’s formerly with Schwartz, says he’s working to launch a new firm with just those qualities.) So, the bottom line: Yes, PR is valuable, if you can afford it, and if you hire the right professionals. But you don’t have to wait until you can afford PR help before you start reaching out to the press or building the kind of broader communications program Chuck talks about. You can start by shooting a reporter a plainspoken e-mail summarizing your company’s business and inviting further inquiries. (In fact you can send them my way at wroush@xconomy.com.)

Scott Kirsner of the Boston Globe, Peter Kafka from the Wall Street Journal’s AllThingsD blog, and Bob Brown from Network World will also be on the panel, which is being moderated by Mike Troiano, himself a serial entrepreneur. I hope to see you there!