Before we get to this week’s links, we’ve found the New York Times’ City Room blog to be a wealth of information and reflections on 9/11 if you need some time this morning to remember.

After taking a moment to pay tribute, we have some recommended reading for you this week…

• Sam Lawrence argues that 9/11 accelerated our desire for deeper, quicker connection with people and services and, by extension, accelerated the development of social software and networks.
• Former IBM executive Irving Wladawsky-Berger reflected recently on why (and how) he blogs.
• Customer experience doesn’t require anything fancy, just quality work and listening ear.
• Is there any such thing as a small oops in the Internet age? Apparently not.
• Google has begun the process of digitizing newspaper archives by scanning microfilm currently housed at libraries and depositories nationwide.
• This New York Times article, “The Brave New World of Digital Intimacy,” captures how online social networks do more than empower gossip, the constant updates they provide on friends somehow fill a need for closeness with friends and community.
• Can this browser add-on really help you spot spin? Perhaps.
• The Economists reports that more and more people are online.

Could it be that what it takes to survive as a small business owner is making me too hard? I was in New York the other night, having a beer with a guy who works at a major advertising firm. He was sharing the great amount of stress that’s infusing his agency right now. My response was, “People talking about stress doesn’t move my meter. It’s what I deal with every day. It’s what I dealt with at the beginning, worrying about making my mortgage every month, what I deal with now, worrying about building the business, taking care of employees, etc.” His response was, “Yes, Jeff, that’s true, but your payoff, monetarily and otherwise, is much greater.”

I have to give it to him, that’s a very good point.

So maybe I am getting a bit too hard.

Who cares.

Is my wife secretly a man? — We’ve all heard the occasional story about some dim witted man who accidentally marries a man living as a woman. I’m starting to wonder. Consider this exchange. Two days after getting a haircut I mention to my wife that she didn’t even notice. Without missing a beat she responds, “Honey, you always look so good that I didn’t even know anything was different.”

The stupidest town in America? — I was in Pennsylvania this weekend. In the heart of one town, hanging above a traffic light is this sign: “Wait for green.”

Do I really want to hear this from my daughter? — God made my daughter very pretty. She’s a freshman in high school and is very much enjoying the attention she is getting from the boys at her new school. “The whole baseball team likes me,” she reports.

Happy September (already)! Here is this week’s recommended from your friends at Blogenberg…

• What’s that Seth Godin? New companies don’t need publicity? Who will hire us? Actually, he’s right—organizations need relationships at least as much as publicity.
• Media Bistro offers five tips for networking at social events.
• Watch out for these most common social networking mistakes.
• Laugh with us… McDonald’s offers intervention for us snobby Starbucks drinkers.
• Don’t just say something. Do something!
• Creative partnerships can drive marketing for your start-up business.
• How to leverage the power of the crowd to drive the future of your business.

I used to get my haircut at a very basic salon. The guy who owns it closed it and opened a fancy day-spa 5 miles south. I followed the woman who cuts my hair because I still get the old price. Last week, I sat down in this very fancy day-spa to get my haircut and noticed the place was empty.

I asked my haircut lady about it. Nearly all of the stylists who worked at the old salon refused to come to the new day-spa. Seems that the owner gave the stylists all of two days notice. Now, he’s got a very expensive spa with very high overhead in a very high rent district. What he doesn’t have are customers.

He got all excited about his new product and forgot about his old relationships.

The guy had two constituencies he needed to worry about: his stylists and their customers. Once he knew he was moving, the owner needed to hire us. We would have put together a communications strategy for both constituencies. We would have helped him with messaging about the move, determined the best way to connect with stylists’ customers (probably in-salon and direct stylist-to-customer communications), and timed a rollout that addressed all business concerns (including, I assume, a need for secrecy for some period of time).

We would have worried about his relationships while he worried about his fancy new product.

Instead, I just made sure the woman who cuts my hair calls me when and if this new day-spa shuts down.