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I wrote a guest post last week for a highly regarded Social Media website Social Media Examiner  (Technorati Top 100 Business blogs) on the strategy on building relatiosnhips on Twitter and my favorite tools that serve that purpose.

The post absolutly blew-up

As of this writing, the post has

• 1494 Retweets
• 139 Comments
• 366 Facebook Likes

Lets just say we did good :-)

If your goal is to forge new relationships on Twitter and make those connections run deep, this article will get you there. Enjoy.

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/indispensable-twitter-tools/

Here is a kind of a fundamental look at the issues aspiring bloggers face, few things I wish I knew when I started, and few things I'm still working on myself.

Its a list of 9+ steps I wrote for a friend, a fellow blogger and a Twitter superstar Aaron Lee and its hosted on his well regarded Social Media centric website http://askaaronlee.com 

I hope you check it out. 

Blogging: How Do I Get Started in 10 Steps or Less?

I wrote a funny little bit about girls, dogs, men and marriage.

The text version of the post is hosted by my friend Edie Jarolim at Will My Dog Hate Me and can be accessed here.

There is also an audio version hosted by another one of my good friends Roxanne Hawn on her blog Champion of my Heart  and can be found here.

Hope you enjoy it :-)

...let me start with a confession. I use Social Oomph to automate my welcome message.

In other words, if you follow me on Twitter you will receive this DM (Direct Message in Twitter parlance)

For me, the alternative would be NOT to send a DM since I'm too busy (and lazy) to greet everyone with a personalized message at the "door".

So I send an automated DM because it’s better than nothing. But wait…there is more.

The circle of Twitter

Many of my Twitter friends reply with a personalized message telling me little bit about themselves.

Restricting someone to 7 words creates psychic tension that demands slack

And what do I do with that information?

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Would you like to be the next big thing in the book world? Here is the recipe.

• Write fiction; it sells better than nonfiction.
• Write in conversational rather than academic tone.
• Write about a topic that has a broad rather than narrow appeal.

Got that? Do you meet all the criteria?

Most writers don’t, nor do they aspire to.

Regardless of whether you meet the above-listed criteria, let’s talk about your odds of making it big.

Read the the rest of this article

Or give it a listen if thats your preference.

Ella is a lovely 5 year old Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.

Ella has severe syringomyelia. 

Syringomyelia (SM) is a terrible condition that affects particularly Cavalier King Charles Spaniels. You can read more about it here or watch a video syringomyelia in dogs.

In its severe form, syringomyelia is extremely painful and debilitating disease. 

Ella already had her surgery, which seemed successful at first. Six months after surgery Ella seemed to have been doing great. 

However, this dangerous surgery is not always successful.

Some patients die shortly after the surgery and some experience a relapse when their bodies try to heal themselves at the surgical site.

Scar tissue can develop and cause the symptoms to return. 

This seems to be Ella's case. Her symptoms are coming back, she started seeking solitude and hiding. Ella needs another MRI and probably will need another surgery. 

Annie already used all her resources for the first surgery and treatment and has now nowhere to turn except to us.

Give Ella Your Umbrella

You may not be able to donate, but we can all help.

• Tweet this. 
• Place the link on your Facebook page
• If you have a website, copy the embed code into your blog. (ChipIn has a nifty "copy" button in between "Info" and "About". 

Let's kick syringomyelia's ass :-)

To swim against the current of human intuition is a difficult task.
The human mind is built to identify for each event a definite cause and can therefore have a hard time accepting the influence of unrelated factors.
~Leonard Mlodinow; Author of The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives (Amazon affiliate link)

In 1965, Daniel Kahneman -who was at that time a junior Psychology Professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem- was tasked with teaching a group of Israeli Flight Instructors on the conventional wisdom of behaviour modification and its application on the psychology of flight training.

One of his students disagreed.

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Might as well be the little green men. I certainly don’t have a better explanation for what happened to me last night.

I was slated to participate in a panel discussion on How to Run a Successful Niche Blog with my dog posse (Join #dogtalk on twitter every Monday night at 9PM EST).

Alas, the gods of mischief had a different plan for me that night.

I was scheduled to appear in good company.

Mary Haight of http://dancingdogblog.com and Jana Rade of http://dawgbusiness.blogspot.com/

The good folks behind #dogtalk have prepared about 20 questions between the panel and the participants.

Four of those questions were aimed directly at me.

So in preparation for #dogtalk, I set down to think through the answers and prepare something useful for the participants.

However, Tweetchat had a different plan for me last night

Tweetchat engaged their Project Mayhem subroutine to foil my Social Media domination :-p 

It all started innocently enough.

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It doesn’t have to be Mexico. Pick any country that’s often (incorrectly) described as a Third World Country.

Side note: “Third World Country” is a Cold War terminology denoting a regime which is neither a capitalism nor communism but something else. The original meaning has nothing to do with the technological up-to-dateness though these days the term is used primarily to imply an underdeveloped nation.

One of the most common statements I hear from people who have visited another country is how dogs are sooo skinny "over there".

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Humans_Were_Born_of_Risen_Apes,_Not_Fallen_Angels,_and_the_Apes_Were_Armed_Killers.mp3 (2553 KB)

Humans were born of risen apes, not fallen angels, and the apes were armed killers besides.

And so what shall we wonder at?

Our murders

and massacres

and missiles?

Or our treaties whatever they may be worth;

our symphonies however seldom they may be played;

our peaceful acres however frequently they may be turned into battlefields.

The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk, but how magnificently he has risen.

We are known among the stars by our poems, not our corpses.

~Robert Ardrey

I came across this brilliant insight in A.J. Jacobs' book The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World (aff).

I love that quote and I love A.J. Jacobs' books. His other works are The Guinea Pig Diaries (aff) and The Year of Living Biblically (aff).

His writing style is unparalleled and his humor; his informational and emotional content is unsurpassed by even the Malcolm Gladwells of the world.

I strongly recommend A.J. Jacobs to anyone looking for a great read. This man is one of the greatest authors of our generation and is widely NOT recognized as such. That’s a shame.

You can follow A.J. Jacobs on Twitter or visit his blog.

Who is your favorite author?