One of the core tenets of a PR person's job is thinking of creative ways to say something that in other terms may be boring or unappealing to the average person.

The latest example: cloud computing. It sounds much more interesting than "web-based software" or "web services," doesn't it?

Portfolio's Sam Gustin thinks we have Google's PR team to blame:

The new candidate, the mind-numbingly awful term "cloud computing," has been in the news this week thanks to the novella published in last Sunday's New York Times business section by Miguel Helft and Steve Lohr, and a cover story in BusinessWeek rhapsodizing about the power of Google's "clouds."

Both stories appear to be part of an organized public relations campaign played to near-perfection by Google's PR maestros.

Donald Leka, the chairman and C.E.O. of Transmedia, an upstart tech firm that offers a suite of web-based services called Glide, told Portfolio.com that in his view, "cloud computing" is little more than a fancy buzzword that could only have been concocted in the brain of a public relations professional.

"It's a PR stunt," Leka said, though he added that the term has been around for years. Only through the best efforts of journalists do such terms achieve wide propagation.

A PR stunt? Maybe. An effective buzzword? Well, the results speak for themselves.