I was reading this week about the development of the EU and came across this quote from Dimitris Chryssochoou. The quote is about theory but I believe that as leaders - or indeed brand managers if we changed the word theory for strategy then it is extremely relevant for creating engagement in the business world

"Theory generates pluralism, pluralism produces choice, choice creates alternatives, alternatives formulate debate, debate encourages communication, communication increases awareness, awareness minimizes dogmatism and in this way there is a propensity to develop greater and better understanding...."

Yes, I know posh words for this blog but I love the linkages....too many leaders forget the link, they see communication as a task when in reality it is the lifeblood of understanding.

Suppose you’re not really the social type at all, and would rather play around in some serene playground. Well, we have something for you, too! Take a break and chill out in Vector Park. They have all sorts of weird things to click on, like three-legged headless acrobats, an odd assortment of objects to be balanced on hangers, and a dog-or-bird-like creature that chases your spider. See the giant head, pick at its nose until bubbles come out, and more. However you choose to do it, enjoy playing around in Vector Park.

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Ok, one more. You can’t leave the party without meeting Otto. He’s an infinite cat. That’s it! Thanks for coming, be it in person or virtually, and most especially, thank you for reading, commenting, and helping ScienceBlogs reach 1,000,000 comments!

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During the past week, Technorati has published a series of articles on the state of the blogosphere in 2008, the first such report in nearly 18 months. Like previous reports from Technorati, this latest one goes beyond just the raw numbers. It also includes brief interviews with some bloggers about the role of blogging in [...]

I've got the opportunity to interview Clay Shirky on Tuesday this week thanks to the lovely people at Incisive Media.
I'm a big fan of Clay's work particularly his recent book Here Comes Everybody. (currently available with £8 off at Amazon)
I'll be video recording the interview to share later - using one of the just-arriving Flip Video Mino's. Just been sent one to test by Alex Myers - who responded to my bleating tweets for something simple to shoot and share with ( I am a-cursed with a 3G unjailbroken iPhone - no video recording!).
You'll see the results on this blog later this week.
And you can help shape the results right now: simply post a question you'd like to put to Clay in the comments below and I'll do my best to include as many as possible in the interview.

Hey everyone, I’ve been meaning to redesign Winning the Web into more of a magazine-style format for the longest time now - and I was finally able to get to it this week using one of Brian Gardner’s amazing Revolution Wordpress themes. I’ll soon be writing a detailed post about all of the changes and their [...]

As some of you that follow my profile on Twitter may know, I’ve got a few Wordpress plugins and other related items in the works and today I am releasing my first ever Wordpress plugin (thanks to some help from and collaboration with the fabulous Joost).

It’s called Customize Your Community aka CYC. And, not only is this plugin kick ass, but it’s also free (though donations never hurt).

A while back, I moved this blog to allowing comments from registered users only. And because this meant users were now going to see the backend of my blog, I went around installing various plugins to limit what they could see in the dashboard as well as try and customize it as much as possible to match my site.

After a lot of searching, I finally found a plugin that themed the registration and login type pages and in combination with some other plugins, was able to limit what registered users could see in my dashboard. But I found absolutely nothing to customize the user profile page. Zip. Nada.

While I liked the fact that my login and registration pages were seamless with the rest of my site, that ugly non matching user profile page was driving me nuts. So I enlisted Joost’s programming skills to create something that will allow you to create a community on your blog that is branded you and not Wordpress (not that we don’t appreciate Wordpress).

See the CYC plugin page for full details of what this awesome plugin can do. Also, if your goal is to create “community”, I’d also recommend using the new user email setup plugin to create a personalized email for your community as well complete the effect.

Hope you guys find CYC as awesome as I do. And make sure you subscribe to the feed or the newsletter (see the right sidebar) because it won’t be long before I release my next plugin.

This post originated at the Sugarrae internet marketing blog, home to internet marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Introducing Customize Your Community

With jellies on the rise and overlapping with more and more people, it is good to know how they got their sting. According to some new research, it seems ancestor jellies might have gotten their defense capabilities from a bacterium via horizontal gene transfer. Read more at Nature.

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Technorati recently released its 2008 State of The Blogsphere report. Blogging continues to grow from a number of different perspectives: 1) The number of blogs (approximately 184 million blogs worldwide and about 26 million in the U.S.) 2) The number of blog posts (now approaching one million posts per day) 3) The number of blog readers (77% of active Internet users read blogs)

The biggest financial bailout in US history will soon be put to the test when the Congress starts voting on the package tomorrow.