I sincerely do not think I am being idealistic when I say you should not let companies dictate what you can and cannot write (within the bounds of obviously applicable restrictions such as libel laws)--advertising or no.

I used to publish a magazine. A major label record company promo president once said I could only have an interview with an artist if I promised to put that artist on the cover--even before I heard the artist's album or did the interview. I politely told him no and then stopped taking his calls. It simply didn't matter to me if no longer received access to their artists (which didn't happen). My first thought was to never feature that label's artists again, but I realized that such an action would hurt the artists as much as the label*, and perhaps even the latter was unfair based on one employee's stupidity.

If your business model relies solely on access to one publisher's material, and you intend to cave to their whims, you need another business model.

I don't like the idea that anyone prizes their own vehicle more than their readers (no more needs to be said about that) or more than the material/parties they cover. But it's not crazy to think that a publisher values the exposure your vehicle can contribute.

* (To the degree that restricting coverage in my magazine could hurt anyone.)

If you want to see this in action, but can't get there in person, you can see the tractor ferry taking Hercule Poirot to the island in "Evil Under the Sun" (2002, A&E in US, David Suchet -- not the older Peter Ustinov version).

I wonder about the kinds of keyboard use that will benefit from this. I realize edit suites (video, audio) have had keyboards with colored keys for a while, and I recall Quark and other apps shipping with keyboard overlays (at least for function keys), so there must be a market. For users like me, however, who almost never look at their keys, this seems quite extravegant.

It seems likely that she was prepped and drilled and rehearsed ad nauseam and then couldn't adapt on the spot. She just seemed to string all the pageant buzz words together and ended up sounding like George W. Bush off teleprompter.