This week’s recommended reading from your friends at Blogenberg…

• The Poynter Institute offers an interesting approach to how journalists can use Twitter.
• Victoria Haynes asks why people even use Twitter in the first place.
• Ad Age’s Mike Bush shows (confirms, really) how companies are using new forms of media to connect directly to consumers.
• An interesting chart about newspaper circulation over the last twenty years.
• Some lessons from Netflix.
• The Room for Debate blog asks why Japanese culture values aesthetics so highly.

Sometimes the only bad thing about business is that you can’t hit people. That’s been my view of business all day today. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not looking to hurt anybody, just hit somebody.

So I have a new product I’m going to market: hockey helmets for work. But we’ll call them Corporate Concussion Control Units, or CCCU. So if I feel like smacking you upside the head, you can put on your CCCU and I can whack you, but you don’t get hurt. Beautiful isn’t it?

By the way, if you’re thinking it was you I wanted to hit today, it wasn’t. There was nobody specific I wanted to hit — I was just annoyed in the aggregate today.

I think we’re going to sell millions of Corporate Concussion Control Units.

This week’s recommended reading from your friends at Blogenberg (none of which have anything to do with Balloon Boy)…

• Google and Microsoft duke it out in the search results arena with recent announcements. Richard Scoble weighs in.
• The Wall Street Journal suggests that the email era is over.
• Lisa Barone at Small Business Trends does a great job at summing up some specific strategies for small businesses from Blogworld Expo ’09.
• Technorati has released its 2009 State of the Blogosphere report. Some interesting findings.

First of all, Blogenberg has perfected zero-blogging, the practice of using no words to blog — even more minimalist than micro-blogging. Some would think that Blogenberg simply forgot to post last Tuesday, or was traveling and unable to post. Actually, it was zero-blogging.

How do I know I’ve perfected zero-blogging? Because our numbers last week were extremely good. So clearly, many of you were visiting and savoring the fact that Blogenberg said nothing. In other words, you were visiting to experience the joy of seeing me shut up.
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I love clients’ money more than anything. But we also love our clients. I like to think that’s one thing that makes us different. We care deeply about their success. We just put in more than 80 hours over two weeks on a project for a client. We didn’t get paid 80 hours worth. We sacrificed other billable hours. Because sometimes all you need is love because in the end, I trust, it pays off.

This week’s recommended reading from your friends at Blogenberg…

• Seth Godin considers the secret of creating sustainable competitive advantage.
• BusinessWeek blogger Stephen Baker discusses why he would be found in noncompliance with the Washington Post’s social media policy and in so doing demonstrates why the policy is absurd.
• At Harvard Business Review, Peter Merholz outlines why typical approaches to design thinking falls short of bringing more creativity into business processes.
• If you’re anything like us, you have many different streams of information you try to manage and have a hard time filing notes, links, articles, photos, video clips, and the like in a way that is accessible at work, home, school, and your favorite coffee shop. This article does better than most at explaining that Evernote (or a similar clipping application) can help you manage this process a little better.
• Gawker explains how the FTC’s exploration into blogs and the health of media organizations is completely out of touch.

I’ve come to realize that not everybody loves working with me. Some people, apparently and utterly dismaying to me, can find me a bit pushy, maybe even overbearing, some times flippant with an odd sense of humor. None of them are clients, but still I’m terribly perturbed. I’m going to take a personal retreat and reflect.

(reflect, reflect, reflect)

Okay, done. Did I mention that none of them are clients?

This week’s recommended reading from your friends at Blogenberg…

• The FTC rules that bloggers must disclose payment for reviews. Church of the Customer says this is a good thing. Jeff Jarvis argues it is government regulation of free speech.
• Even Google can lose steam on a project.
• Guy Kawasaki goes on the offense, showing how to use Facebook as a weapon.
• A tale of Old meets New.
• In light of Conde Nast’s recent announcement that it will be shuttering production of 3 magazines, we bring you an older post from publishing CEO and longtime blogger Rex Hammock, who dispels 9 myths about print magazines.

I am losing my house. I may be the man of the house, but I am being gently eased into a figurative closet by the women in my home. How do I know this? My dog told me. Really.

I fell asleep on my recliner last night in front of football. When I awoke, my dog was no longer at my feet. I found her, quite content, upstairs, lying next to my wife who was watching something that was not football. It’s time to put my manly foot down. Tonight, I am going to declare that I am keeping my hunting jacket.

I don’t hunt, of course. I’ve got nothing against hunting, it’s just never interested me. But on Sunday, my daughter and I went shopping. (She explained to me that taking her shopping would be good father-daughter bonding time.) We wandered into the Ralph Lauren Store. I tried on this jacket that’s meant to look like an old leather hunting jacket. It even has pockets for bullets and any ducks I kill. My daughter thought it looked great on me so, rather impulsively, I bought it. My wife, I learned about an hour later, hates it.

I was going to return it. But not now. I’m not going to be pushed around anymore. You may take my dog but you will have to wrestle my hunting jacket from my cold, dead, well, really nice wooden Ralph Lauren hanger in my closet. Because I got some duck to put in that special pocket in my new jacket. I just have to call the Ralph Lauren Store and ask which pocket is for the plum sauce.

This week’s recommended reading from your friends at Blogenberg…

• Ever wonder how innovators think?
• The five pillars of a small business social media system.
• Make sure you check out this great documentary on a group of citizens whose mission is to welcome home members of the military.
• The Washington Redskins find a workaround to the NFL’s strict and severe social media rules.
• From the Newsweek blog, Techtonic Shifts, an argument for letting Newspapers die out.