Hey, do you read Wired? I don’t (Catherine has a subscription), but I am taking notice of Wired now – the cover of their August issue is certainly a departure from covers’ past and I must admit I recognize the pretty face, though many of you may not. Under the headline “Internet Famous: Julia Allison and the Secrets of Self-Promotion”, the August cover features Julia Allison, an NYC-based blogger who, among other things, covers sex and relationships for Time Out New York. She was recently dubbed “the modern day Carrie Bradshaw” by The New York Times because she writes about her personal life on her blog. Allison just launched a new blog/web portal called NonSociety.com with her best friends Meghan Asha and Mary Rambin. Now it should go without saying that thanks to platforms like Word Press, Blogger, Tumblr, and Type Pad, everyone from your crazy next door neighbor to my Grandma can blog, but usually one doesn’t end up on the cover of a major magazine like Wired as a result. So what’s Allison doing there and why should you care?

The Frisky just started tooling around on Twitter and a few of our staff have iPhones, which we kind of know how to use. But maybe we could learn a thing or two about putting these handy-dandy technologies to use in business by talking to one of our local streetwalkers. Apparently, the internet has become a useful tool for sex workers to spread their gospel, and, in the wake of the Eliot Spitzer scandal, also do a little public relations spinning. “Sex workers are sentient beings and we are very capable of speaking for ourselves,” Audacia Ray, sex worker advocate and author of Naked on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads and Cashing In on Internet Sexploration, told Wired magazine. “We are organizing politically and we do have opinions about the ways that sex work could be responded to differently by government and media.” When the Spitzer prostitution ring story broke, sex workers who are actively involved in the community wanted to have their voice hear on the issue, and used devices like the iPhone and programs like Twitter, Google Docs, and RSS feeds to be on top of hearing and responding to the breaking news. When did hookers become so…nerdy? [Wired]