* Prewritten use-as-is stories or tips

* Audio or video clips, especially for music performers

The more lively style in which all of above comes across, more likely you are to get journalists passing through to stay awhile and start thinking about how they can use what you've provided. Corporate-speak may please internal bosses, but it gets in way here and may even provide fodder for many sites that make fun of pretentious marketing blather.

Keep in mind that on Web, media from all over world and from outside of your industry can access your press room, so avoid acronyms and insert kinds of background explanations that would be found in a quality news story. Dates are especially important to present unambiguously. Jakob Nielsen reported a case where a European reporter dismissed a company's news as old because it was dated 10-3- 2000, which to him meant March 10 rather than intended October 3.

Nielsen also pointed out that journalists, whom his team observed in their actual work environment, often were using old software or hardware which crashed when trying to access PDF files or Flash sites. Remember that despite apparent convenience of downloadable files, some media folks may for many reasons still prefer to receive a physical copy of your photos or your product - or a traditional all-in-one-folder, expensive-to-mail PR kit.

An online press room meets some needs, but not all, so be prepared to fulfill old-fashioned requests as well.

I could go on and on. The point is this: Life will always have ups and downs. The secret is to flow with tide as best we can. Complaining about what is keeps you from spotting or even creating new opportunities.

In every panic, in every generation, men and women with eyes wide open saw and seized opportunities.

Whether it was George Washington who went on to become president and build his own fortune, or P.T. Barnum who went on to prosper during Civil War, fact remains:

Circumstances don't make you, you make you.

This "bad time" might become greatest period of prosperity for you.

Maybe you just have to relax your demands. In 1941 Bruce Barton wrote, "I have been out of a job three times in my life. Each time I made a survey of my surroundings and discovered that there was work to be done, though not same kind of work I had been doing."

Barton was a best-selling author, Congressman, popular speaker, and founder of one of largest advertising agencies in world, BBDO. He also became a millionaire.

And don't fall for trap that past was better than present. In 1907 famous tycoon John Rockefeller said:

"People sometimes talk as if we older men lived in a day of peculiar opportunity, as if there were no chance today for a young man to do what has been done by my generation of men, as if all avenues were closed, all big things done. Nothing could be more mistaken. Why, time in which I opened my eyes was a midnight of darkness, and this is blazing noon."

A word to wise: Listen, act and prosper.

There are opportunities around you.

Which will you see first and act on now?

This is your time of blazing noon.