I’ve been working on a little eBook project for the past couple of months and now it’s ready!  Members of my mailing list saw a preview of this eBook a few weeks ago.  Based on some feedback, I tweaked it a bit, including a title change.

Social Destinations of the Web is now available for download.  Click on the title to bring up a copy OR right click on the link and download it to your computer prior to reading.  It’s 37 pages long, in Adobe Acrobat Reader .PDF format, and it’s just under 10 MB.

In short, this eBook was compiled from a number of newspaper columns that I wrote in 2007 – 2008 and has a number of short write-ups about some of my favorite Web 2.0 sites.

It’s more of an overview for people who aren’t very familiar with Web 2.0 and the range of possibilities it provides.  If you’re an expert, or even an intermediate user of Web 2.0 sites, you probably won’t find anything new.  However, if you have a friend, co-worker, or family member who just doesn’t get things like Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, RSS Readers, maybe this document will help them out.

Happy New Year (in advance!)

Instead of talking about predictions (right or wrong), goals for 2009, and what I feel my best blog post(s) were from 2008, I’ll zig from the pack a bit. At least for today.

Here are ten bone-headed moves that I made in 2008, mainly in the areas of social media and content creation. I’ll look at what went wrong, what went right, and how I’d handle these occurrences in the future. Maybe you can learn something from my errors.

1. Too much time spent chasing social news supremacy

What went wrong:

In late 2007 and the first quarter of 2008, I spent too much time trying to build up my authority on Digg.com Continue reading ‘10 mistakes from 2008 that I hope I learn from’ »

Books, eBooks, white papers, you name it: bloggers and other social media practitioners are spreading their wings and going for long form content creation. It is starting to seem like writing and publishing long form content is one of those merit badges or resume bullet points that people are starting to collect like MBAs, internships, volunteer work, and choice job postings.

(Disclosure: it’s a goal of mine to get a book published – someday.)

I don’t have the perspective that’s large or detailed enough to validate this, but I get the feeling that more and more bloggers are getting published in print in addition to their electronic homes. Of course, it’s not just bloggers who are making the printing presses hum and clank: just about anyone who could be considered knowledgeable or authoritative in some vocation (or avocation) could be getting their name embossed on a book spine sometime soon. Or at a minimum they’re thinking about it.

What’s interesting to me is that more and more bloggers whom I encounter online are dipping their toes in the print publishing pool. After all, this is the digital age: paper shouldn’t matter much anymore. Right?

Actually, it sure seems to matter, just as much as it always did.

Let’s take a quick overview of who’s doing what in the publishing world: Continue reading ‘A traditional way to build authority – write a book’ »

Hope everyone had a good Christmas/holiday season!

Here are three books that I bought myself to read with my Christmas gift cards:

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

Steve Pavlina – Personal Development for Smart People

Michael E. Gerber – The E-Myth Revisited

Reviews will be forthcoming as I read them…

Some of the books that I almost bought, but didn’t make it this time around include:

Guy Kawasaki – Reality Check

James Surowiecki – The Wisdom of Crowds

Also looking for books by Clay Shirky

How about you? Planning to read any good books? Got any suggestions?

I won’t be posting regularly during the next week or so with the Christmas holiday season just about here.  I do hope to get in at least one good post per week during the next couple of weeks, though.

If you celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah (or if you don’t, for that matter)  I wish you peace, joy, and good tidings as 2008 draws to a close.

It’s been a real pleasure to write for you in 2008 and I plan to do even better things in 2009.

Thank you for taking the time to read Broadcasting Brain and to connect with me in any way, big or small.

Before you pull the pin, before you damn the torpedoes, before you leap off the cliff, before you charge into battle, before you commit…

Think again.

1. Do you understand the situation well enough to do what you are about to do?
2. Are you reacting in anger, fear, or hurt?
3. Do you really understand the consequences?
4. Have you told the people who need to know what’s about to happen?
5. Do you know what the costs will be?
6. Has anyone else tried something like this before and been successful?
7. Is this really going to get you want you need (as opposed to what you want?)
8. Do you really know what you need at this moment (as opposed to what you want?)
9. Is there a better way?

If you answer “no” to any of questions 1 – 8 and “yes” to question 9, maybe you’d better stop and think again.

It’s up to you, but if it were me, I’d feel better knowing that I’d thought these questions through.

Just a suggestion.