Just for a change of pace, I want to turn the podium over to you (in the Comments section, of course).  What’s out there that YOU would recommend to the readers of Broadcasting Brain?

This isn’t about Foursquare (despite the photo included in this post) or #FollowFriday or anything like that.

I would really like to see you all recommend a good blog post, website, or other online content that you think would be valuable to all Brainiacs who read this blog.  Maybe it could be something light hearted.  Or, it could be something more substantial or meatier that we might want to read over the weekend.

Have at it, mighty ones!  Give us some good stuff to read, watch or listen to.  BIG HINT:  it can be something that you created.

EDIT: ok, I’ll kick things off with one recommendation: Blogging Fears and How to Overcome Them – Part 2 by Remarkablogger (Michael Martine).  For example, Michael makes a great point about the following:  things that we write about that might seem to be too obvious and simple to us might not be too simple or too obvious to our readers.  Check it out.

Image by y2bk

Here are some of the blog posts and websites that caught my attention this week;  I think they are worth sharing with you:

Disambiguation:  Behind the 8-Ball – Ian M Rountree writes about the phrases that we use in Western civilization, where they come from, and how they require context to be understood.  He links to a recent post of mine about the phrase inside baseball.

How to write about your life – Penelope Trunk, founder of Brazen Careerist, talks about a few things in this post, including what’s boring and what’s interesting, plus her own experiences with writing a memoir.  The post ends with three good pieces of advice about writing.  Bonus:  she also wrote a great post called Twitter can save your life, which made a lot of sense to me despite the link-bating title.

in which the impact of twitter on my life is examined, and thanks is given to @ev and @biz – writer/actor Wil Wheaton also weighed in on Twitter this week, talking about his experiences with writing, publishing, and communication.  Here’s a snippet to give you an idea of what this one is about:  Just being an entertaining author or filmmaker or performer isn’t enough; you need to get your work in front of an audience, especially if you hope to make a living from your art. There is a whole lot of reality at the root of the old cliché about who you know and networking. I didn’t expect it, and it’s not even my primary reason for using it, but Twitter has ended up filling that gap in my professional life, and the results have been nothing short of astounding. Well written, @wil.

Why French Fries are Like Marketing – this short post by Matt Blumberg is over five years old, but it’s a goodie.  Just click through and read it; it makes a lot of sense.

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• Net Noise (rebecca-rosenblum.blogspot.com)

Here’s some link goodness from the past week:

Random rules for ideas worth spreading – the man behind Unleashing the Ideavirus, Seth Godin, provides a list of ideas about… how to work with ideas.

The Dowager Shadow – Ian M Rountree and Leila Evans have started to publish a new web novel, in installments.  Looks like it’ll be full of mages, adventures, and other fine things.  This link takes you to a teaser page leading up to the start of the novel.  Keep clicking through to read the prologues, Chapter 1, and more as it’s published.  Worth checking out if you’re a fan of swords and sorcery, fantasy fiction, and all that magical stuff.

How To Break A Social Network – on his own blog, Ian M Rountree provides some interesting insights about his use of social networks, including an encounter which makes you wonder about how some people use them.

Would You Sacrifice Love For Greatness – Tara Hunt writes another moving personal anecdote about pursuing not just career success, but a life purpose and the sacrifices that you make when you do that.  Read the comments section, too – Kathy Sierra weighs in with some great thoughts.

How To Write a Blog That Matters – Justin Kownacki gives five reasons why your work probably sucks and three reasons why your blog should matter.  Plus, five ways to ensure that your blog matters.  Check it out, bloggers!

gapingvoid’s thoughts on blogging, 2010 – Hugh MacLeod serves up a dish of analysis with ten observations about blogging (he’s been doing this for years).  Bonus:  you might also want to check out Remember Who You Are.  (By the way, we’ve got ten thoughts from Hugh coming up here on Monday, so please check that out!)

Tell me, what have you found that made good reading this week?

Michael Martine (aka Remarkablogger) has a great group post on his blog this week where a number of his readers weigh on in ways to come up with ideas for blog posts. The post is called Open Discussion: How Do You Come Up with Ideas for Blog Posts? I weighed in in the comment section.

Another way to come up with ideas for posts (or any content) is to try the Content Idea Matrix that I wrote about earlier this month.

Just as a note on the final weekday of January 2010: this has been an AWESOME month at Broadcasting Brain.  Traffic, comments, engagement, etc.  have been the best they’ve been in over a year.  This, folks, is very heartwarming.

I hope you all stick around for the months and years ahead!  (And feel free to invite some of your friends, too!)

I think that people are not linking to blogs and websites as much as they used to before the advent of Twitter.  As people have noted in the comments section of this blog, it’s become far too easy to ReTweet or Tweet a link instead of creating a link from within a website.

One of my resolutions for 2010 is to link to other people more often within Broadcasting Brain.  Here are some interesting and worthwhile links that I’ve found recently that I want to share with you.

SPOS #184 – Social Media Exploration With Jason Falls – the Six Pixels of Separation podcast features an interesting and thoughtful interview with Jason Falls of Social Media Explorer, LLC where they talk about social media, digital marketing, and so on.

How I Wrote a $30,000 eBook (And You Can Too) – Glen Allsopp’s post is worth reading if only for the amount of detail he puts into this post.  I don’t know if you’re interested in publishing an eBook or not, but this is a fascinating case study.  I met Glen in person recently and he’s a smart guy who’s going to go far.

You Are What You Choose To Care About – Justin Kownacki has become one of my new favorite bloggers and this post is a good example.  I love this parting thought from his post:  Whatever you choose to care about, or whether you choose to care about nothing at all, remember one thing: nobody can make you care.  Except you.  And that makes caring the only true freedom we have.

Lucas Looks Back On Movie-Making – interview with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross – some really cool thoughts and info shared by the celebrated filmmaker and creator of Star Wars.  Available via podcast.

Just How Bad Is The Overshare? – Ian Rountree gives a thoughtful analysis of how we share (sometimes too much) via social media.

I hope you enjoy these posts and podcasts – I did!

A number of bloggers are publishing the “best of 2009” lists for their blogs.  I was tempted to do that, but I decided to take a different approach.  I’m going to highlight posts from Broadcasting Brain that I really liked writing but didn’t seem to get a whole lot of traffic.  Unfortunately, traffic can be a bit fickle sometimes and timing can make or break the amount of traffic to a post.

Here are ten of my favorite posts from 2009.  None of them had even 10% of the page views of  The Reasons Why Other People Ignore You, which got a decent amount of search engine traffic this year.  Nonetheless, I liked these posts and I’m hoping you’ll give them a look.

Image by photo.buddha (no, this isn’t really Underdog, but it was tagged as underdog on Flickr, so work with me…)

Mark’s 2009 Underdog Posts

The blogosphere is as real as the public in public opinion – this post was a reaction to Paul O’Flaherty’s nearly radioactive post about the blogosphere (the collection of blogs and bloggers out there in today’s world).  I suggested that the blogosphere is not real because of all of the different types of bloggers and different points of view.

Rehearsal or redundant practice – where is the value? – put simply, in an age where we now outsource our memories and brains to electronic devices, is there any value in practicing skills when they are just a mouse click away?

The smirkability factor – your gateway to content creation success – OK, I was being a bit tongue in cheek/smartass when I wrote this post, but nonetheless I think that content that at least makes you smirk has some decent value.

The danger of letting your enemy define you – this post was inspired by various marketing posts which suggested that a way to define yourself or your organization is by selecting a target and positioning them as the enemy.

Is creativity in danger of becoming the new Web 2.0? – musings about how we tend to misuse, overuse, and downright abuse terms, focusing on the term creative.

The cost of keeping an open mind – the pros and cons of being open minded (or subject to whims, rash decisions, etc.) using the example of a (possibly fictitious) story about writer Douglas Adams and his “backwards writing” technique.

How to lighten your mind to create better content – how to scrub out and release those nasty surface thoughts that tend  to sabotage you.

The secret origin of blogging that no one discusses – how I believe that blogging and Web publishing was strongly influenced by zines, amateur presses, and publishing by photocopies.

Folk media – the roots of social media – the roots of public communication.

Top ten things to do while Twitter is hosed – OK, this is just pure snark.

I hope you enjoyed this retrospective as 2009 winds down.  I’m working on great content for 2010, so stick around, will ya?  And, since I haven’t made a point of asking lately, why not subscribe so that you never miss my different thoughts about thinking differently in 2010 and beyond?