The BBC reports that Odeon’s reversed its decision to boycott the upcoming Alice in Wonderland film “following talks with Disney”. If you’ve not followed this story, Odeon got narked after Disney announced it was to ignore the standard ‘17 weeks to DVD’, dropping the gap by four weeks. This, argued Odeon, would screw over UK cinema chains by setting a new benchmark that would reduce their potential revenue.

Disney’s stance is that by getting the DVD out sooner, it’ll reduce bootlegging. I have two helpful hints to Disney in this regard:

1. A brilliant way to stop bootlegging is to stop screwing over the international market. If you release all of your films at the same time everywhere, rather than many of them in the US first and six months later everywhere else, people will be more likely to rush out to see them, rather than reading about them in some mag, twiddling thumbs for a few days, reading more online reviews from the US, getting impatient and then torrenting the films. Note: happily, this will also deal with the ‘disappointing international box office returns’ you keep whining about regarding Pixar films that are out on Region 1 DVD by the time they finally arrive in cinemas in the UK and elsewhere.
2. You cannot bootleg a cinema experience. It’s pretty clear that many films—including a lot of those by Disney—are as much about the environment and the big screen these days as the story. To that end, reducing the potential amount of time films stay in cinemas by at least four weeks is stupid.

TechRadar and a billion other sites confirm Microsoft won’t be offering any upgrade pricing for Office 2010. In the UK, you’ll pay £109.99 for Office Home and Student version, £239.99 for Office Home and Business and £399.99 for Office Professional, which reportedly comes with an aversion to actual work, a slick hair-do and a propensity for leering after digital secretaries.

Microsoft’s reasoning is that “Office Home & Business 2010 represents a substantial saving over [the] comparative Office Standard 2007 suite while including an additional application (OneNote) and Office Web Apps” and claims “the majority of users will immediately benefit from the greater value and simplified setup experience offered by Product Key Cards”. The lack of an upgrade path has nothing to do with Microsoft “wanting more of your money, scumbag users who are locked into our product and yet don’t realise they don’t really need to upgrade if they’re happy with what they have—mwahahahaha”, or “sticking our fingers in our ears and going lalalalalalalalala, I can’t hear you, whenever OpenOffice.org and other dangerous competing products are mentioned”.

On Twitter and elsewhere, there’s a bit of a debate brewing right now about whether PRs should be ‘first against the wall’ when the revolution comes, or whether journos are a bunch of grumpy sods for moaning about being deluged by stuff they’ll likely be interested in writing about.

In the technology field, I find it strange journos are getting angry due to receiving press releases. Sure, many are irrelevant, and far too many are written in an absurdly needy manner, but even though I get dozens of these weekly (sometimes daily), I’d rather have more than fewer press releases. They enable me to find out about new stuff for zero effort, and if I’m not interested, a quick ‘delete’ banishes the release forever. (Note to journos claiming they’re annoyed by constant interruptions from PR emails: don’t check your email every time a new one arrives; alternatively, set up notification so you can glance at incoming email and only tend to urgent messages.)

That all said, there are three increasingly common things that irk me regarding PR guys, and so here are some helpful hints:

1. Only phone me for first contact or if something’s urgent. Do not phone me about a 0.0.1 app upgrade that you’ve decided is “revolutionary”. Phone calls are a major distraction—unless your call includes extremely exciting and interesting information, I will hate you.
2. When you’re pimping something you’re doing on the other side of the planet (say, the west coast of the USA or Australia), and I kindly inform you that I’m UK-based, don’t then try to convince me that I should show up via several more emails and phone calls. Yes, I’m sure I’d like to be at CES right now, but unless you buy me a ticket, I’m not going to visit just to see your new gizmo.
3. If you want me to check something out for review, send it to me. Don’t try to convince me to buy it myself because it’s the “Best Thing Ever”. I get very regular requests of this sort, and so even with 59p iPod games I’d be broke by the end of the month if I bought them all.