"Don't follow trends, start trends." Frank Capra

"There are only 3 colors, 10 digits, and 7 notes; it's what we do with them that's important." Ruth Ross

"The first thing a great person does, is make us realize the insignificance of circumstance." Emerson

Create your own social network for anything - in less than two minutes - for free. That's what Ning now has on offer. Kudos to Marc Andreessen. Get all the details here. Marc has also written a good post about The three kinds of platforms you meet on the internet. Level 1 - Access API (e.g., Flickr, Delicious); Level 2 - Plug-in API (e.g., Facebook); Level 3 - Runtime Environment (e.g., Salesforce.com). A good read here.

Being #1 requires no explanation: As true today as when it was first said by Paul Drew. Kudos to programming ace Brian Kelly and his team. 103.7 KISS FM is again #1 18-34, with double digits no less. While it's only a trend you can bet the farm (without worry) that these guys have a lock on #1. When next you hear or read that the youth market is not listening to radio don't buy it. Brian Kelly and his team are proving this notion to be nonsense. The truth of the matter is too few understand how to put on a show for the youth market and fewer still are getting it done. Brian Kelly is the exception that makes the rule. Teens and the 18-34s will listen when you give them something worth their bandwidth.

Today's image: sometimes the road gets rugged and it's hard to travel on... by dlemieux. The image was one of the top fifty finalists in the Smithsonian Magazine's annual photo contest. Congrats to Diana! Awesome image, thank you very much for sharing.

Courage: The Dan Rather story is sad, very sad. You may read the work of Gold, Reich and Parker, Dan's 32 page complaint here (in PDF, thanks to TMZ). Read the view of Mary Mapes along with 295 comments, and counting here. Read Rather Revolting, the post by Michael Rosenblum with comments here.

Bonus: The 10 rules of Twitter (and how I break every one) - Scobleizer. 62 comments and counting. Rock on Robert! There is only one rule - there are no rules!

Bonus 2: Xobni. Are you an Outlook user? You can not live another day without Xobni. Very cool, very smart. Not open to the public, yet. Chase all the action on their blog here. The thesis is your email usage is a social network - agreed. Genius!