It may not be a leading economic indicator, but the number of unsolicited emails in my mailbox about technologies and companies I don'­t cover seems to be creeping up. Nothing like the bubble days, of course, when dozens of useless press releases -- the spam of a bygone era -- found me each day, and phone calls from script-reading young flacks made it hard to get any work done, but perhaps a hopeful sign.

When I wrote a column about the profusion of clueless flacks during the bubble, I called it the Jennifer Problem. Sam Whitmore wrote at his Media Survey site that this was vaguely sexist. I didn'­t think so. A majority of the press-release posse was female, and Jennifer was the most common name for girls born in the US during the 1970s, and a high percentage of the perky PR pushers in the late '90s were named Jennifer. I would routinely have 500 deleted emails from people I'd never met named Jennifer.

Jennifer, come back, all is forgiven.