Nothing like the venerable New York Times to jump-start a public relations campaign. The newspaper provided Vonage with some invaluable coverage by doing an interview with chairman - and P.R. savvy - Jeff Citron. Here are the highlights:

- On how he felt after the stock dropped like a stone following its $17-a-share IPO earlier this year: “I was a little, I guess, confused." Confused? Citron's confused by how investors soured on the company's prospects in light of large losses, huge marketing expenses and increasingly intense competition from cablecos?

- Vonage is now in "good shape". Hmmm, I wonder how Citron defines good shape. If it's by the number of subscribers, I guess Vonage is doing okay given it will soon announce it has two million customers. But what about churn, which compels Vonage to spend more than $300-million on marketing?

- "We definitely believe the shares were undervalued" in explaining his decision to buy 188,000 shares for $1.3-million. After losing two-thirds of their value, Vonage was either under-valued or maybe just trading where it should. Don't give Citron credit for stepping up to make a "value" buy. It was a P.R. move to reassure investors, particularly those who still held their IPO shares, analysts and customers.

- “I want nothing. I’m just generally a very happy guy.” Nice way for the NYT to end the story but why wouldn't Citron be happy. He's made a mint off Vonage despite the stock's performance. He has also hit the entrepreneurial jackpot twice before - Island ECN and Datek. We could all be so lucky.

One more thing: Vonage shares closed Friday at $8.90, which means they have lost 47% since the IPO hit the street. Andy Abramson, who knows the P.R. and VoIP industries like the back of his hand, calls the NYT story "pure spin control". 21Talks also makes some good points, particularly about one analysts believes Vonage needs five million customers to be profitable. Russell Shaw describes the NYT story as pretty close to a "puff piece". Ouch!

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been extensively using a two blog publishing tools - Qumana and Microsoft's Windows Live Writer. In many ways, they are pretty similar and, overall, do a solid job. That said, I like them in different ways. Qumana stands out because it provides a "database" of previous posts so it's easy to edit your work to add updates, trackbacks and additional links. Qumana also offers the AdGenta advertising network, which would be a useful service if Qumana can improve the quality of advertisers on the network. As much as I'd like to use AdGenta more, I'm often frustrated by the lack of relevant advertisers. I mean, can you really provide a link to BizRate.com for everything and anything? As well, Wordpress.com recently decided to stop accepting AdGenta ads. Microsoft's Live Writer is pretty good. Don't expect a lot of bells and whistles but I've been impressed. In particular, I like how easy multiple blogs can be set up, and how drafts can be saved and quickly retrieved. I expect more features will be added as the beta evolves but so far, so good. Finally, I've been fooling around with Larry Borsato's Breezer, which is a nice, no-frills tool (this post is being written using it). It could definitely use some more bells and whistles but it's a good start, it's free and it works with all kinds of blogs.
Update: Here's a Qumana vs. Live Writer comparison done by Qumana's Tris Hussey.