thinks

Children’s birthdays, college bowl games and playoff football. They’re a dangerous combination for productive reading and writing during a week. It didn’t seem to limit these folks much, though; you’re looking at the best writing of the past week. If I missed something, feel free to let me know in the comments.

• Mike Moran always brings an interesting point of view. This time, he wants to know whether or not consumers want us to upgrade our sites.
• Kathy Sierra picks up that thread and looks at why you should stand user reviews on their heads.
• Robbin Steif wants to know why websites make customers nervous.
• Joseph Jaffe takes a look inside the head of a CMO
• Meanwhile, Peter Kim at Forrester Research looks at the same topic in a different way, asking “So you want to be a CMO?”
• John Jantsch gives future CMO’s this advice: “Marketing is What You Do and What You Say”
• Finally, David Armano (my man-crush for 2007) provides an inspirational point of view, reminding me why Imaginary Gifts are the best.

Just a quick post showing what I enjoyed reading the past week…

• David Armano has a great post where he shows his thoughts on the new role of design. Also, it’s got a link to SlideShare, one of the seriously cool products of the last year.
• Discussions of Google’s market share abound this past week. Mike Moran has one of the better perspectives on the subject.
• Digital Web has some interesting thoughts about microformats, which<bold prediction alert> will do in 2007 what RSS did in 2006.</bold prediction alert>
• John Jantsch (a must read), asks the brilliant question “Could you compete in the straw market?” Nothing like a healthy dose of perspective on competition now and again.
• Darren Johnson may have just helped me convince my wife we need a Wii. Thank you, Darren. As a side note, one of my favorite people in the world was the product manager for the Wii’s Opera browser implementation. Nice job, Tami.
• Finally, a shout-out to Anne, for tagging me and for generally being one of the best reads in the ’sphere.

Cheers and Merry Christmas, everyone.