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

• Your website should involve several different personalities. John Jantsch shares what those should be.
• Scott Monty discusses how social media is incorporated into Ford’s communications.
• How can you make Twitter useful and not just add to the noise?
• What social media lessons can we glean from the Conan/Leno/NBC debacle?
• The WebUrbanist shares some clever bench ads.

I am not one of those fathers who demand that my children have a clearly articulated career plan by the time they are sophomores in high school. Rather, my approach has always been, once you have a goal, I’ll do whatever I can to support you. Well, it appears my 15-year-old daughter has developed a plan.

She wants to be a sports trainer…Cool.

She wants to be a trainer for a professional sports team…Cool.

So she can meet and marry a professional athlete and be rich…Oh.
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Not exactly the career plan I had in mind for my beautiful, highly intelligent daughter. But I am enjoying the fact that she is really into watching the football playoffs with me and her brother. She’s passionately rooting for the New Orleans Saints. Turns out, she informed me, that Reggie Bush has great abs.

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

• Doug Haslam asks whether journalists make good PR people.
• Hub Culture ranks the best cities on the planet.
• Tom Martin considers whether Amazon’s Kindle is enabling Amazon to make a move into publishing new and upcoming authors’ books.
• Mediabistro.com gathers the reactions of sports PR execs to Mark McGuire’s confession to using steroids during his career.
• Jeremiah Owyang gathers critical social media stats for 2010 in a single post. Check back as he’ll update throughout the year.

The televisions in my office are not working, and have not been working for a week. Comcast, striving to achieve its benchmarks of incompetency, has missed one appointment, cancelled a second, and now says a technician can’t be here until next Tuesday. Devoid of a working TV, I am seriously thinking of shutting down my business.
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My daughter literally said to me: “It’s my body and I can do what I want. I’m fifteen.” (She was talking about a second earring piercing.)
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I am a single dad once again, this time, thankfully, just for three days. I’ve already managed to leave the freezer door cracked overnight so everything could defrost.
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But, no matter what, I am having a better day than Martha Coakley, the single worst politician in the history of Massachusetts since Thomas Hutchinson, the last Royal Governor of Massachusetts who was so hated by his countrymen that he had to flee America and live his last days in Britain.
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And finally, free job hunting advice: if you held any paid position in the Coakley campaign, no matter how small the job, do not put it on your resume.

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

• BNET offers 7 ways to build a loyal team.
• Carol Phillips shares some interesting insights on Generation Y.
• TheWebUrbanist highlights 22 ads “from bizarreto brilliant.”
• If rain keeps you from renting cars, just hire a figher pilot to shoot a missile into the clouds to change the weather. (seriously)
• Ilan Brenman has a cool job; he’s a storyteller.
• Pepsi’s innovative social media marketing campaign, Pepsi Refresh, is being undercut by technical problems.

Elton John sang to me today in the office:

It’s hard, so hard.
It’s a hard, hard situation.
And it’s getting more and more absurd.
It’s hard, so hard.
Why can’t we just take a nap.
Oh it seems to me
That grinding seems to be the hardest work.

When you feel like a grinder, that’s when business is toughest. When you’re getting on a plane at 6:30 in the morning, only to fly back that same day at 11 at night, you are a grinder. When you’re just pushing on current deadlines, and all of the strategy for building new business has to wait, you’re a grinder.

I’m a grinder these days. Sing with me and Elton: What have I got to do when P&L statements strike me. What have I got to do. What have I got to do. When grinding seems to be the hardest work.

Happy New Year. Here is your first 2010 installment of this week’s recommended reading from your friends at Blogenberg…

• Anil Dash discusses Twitter’s recommended users list.
• Duct Tape Marketing is hosting a free live training on Facebook for small businesses on January 21st. Go sign up.
• David Armano, blogging at the Harvard Business Review, projects some interesting social media trends for 2010.
• Newsweek ran an interesting story this week on Israel’s PR problem.
• WebUrbanist covers a cool use of crowdsourcing: using tourist pictures to create 3D models of frequently visited places.
• Stephen Baker asks if journalistic ethics are dead or just changing.

I tore something in my knee New Year’s Eve, so I fell down and was flat on the floor with none of the fun of getting there.

I learned that me and my 15-year-old daughter both love that Taylor Swift song, You Belong with Me. I also learned that my 15-year-old daughter does not think it’s as much fun when I sing along with her in the car as I do.

And I also learned that my 15-year-old daughter really, really loves me when I take her to the mall and buy her $120 worth of make-up. $120?

I saw a lot of movies. “It’s Complicated” is very funny but the chair and fake tree in my office have more chemistry than Alec Baldwin and Meryl Streep. “A Single Man” is very good and very intelligent, though the end is unsatisfying. “Sherlock Holmes” is fun — and it has Rachel MacAdams (need I say more).

I instructed my oldest son how to fix a toilet in his old apartment long-distance by phone. Now that is manly.

Oh, and I learned that not having the Christmas bone available when the family opens presents in the morning can really tick off a dog.

Happy New Year.