There have been a bunch of new business books launched recently.

The stack on your night table is about to get a whole lot higher. Here are ten new business book that are worth checking out right away:

• Connected - The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives by Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler. Many people are calling this the online social networking book for the TED crowd. I've just started to dive in and it's some high-brow thinking (in the best possible way).
• Crush It! Why now is the time to cash in on your passion by Gary Vaynerchuk. I finally got to meet Gary this past week on his book launch tour, and he is the real deal. His book (which hit #2 on New York Times' best-seller list) is a shot-to-the-gut reality check on how New Media is changing everything.
• Inbound Marketing - Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (The New Rules of Social Media) by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah. Dharmesh presented shortly after me at Mesh Marketing the other week. This book brings together some new thoughts and new techniques on how to change the way you market your business. Here's a visual: this book will help turn your business into a magnet for customers.
• The New Community Rules - Marketing on the Social Web by Tamar Weinberg. Weinberg is the Blogger behind Techipedia, and she knows everything there is to know about how to grow and manage a community. This book is perfect for companies trying to figure out the role online communities will play in their business and how to find the right people to help manage them. 
• Socialnomics - How social media transforms the way we live and do business by Erik Qualman. I have not had a chance to deep-dive into this one, but it is next on the pile. This books looks at the latest trends in Social Media and what it means to businesses the world over.
• Superfreakonomics by Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt. You know Freakonomics was an incredibly fresh and fascinating book. Superfreaknomics seems just as challenging and fascinating.
• Trust Agents - Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith. Good friends, co-hosts of Media Hacks and overall caring and giving guys. Their debut book is a New York Times Best-seller and it deserves all of the attention and praise it is getting. If you don't have trust (online or otherwise), you're going to struggle in building your business. These guys know trust. They live it. And, in this book, they teach it.
• Viral Loop by Adam L. Penenberg. Penenberg first wrote about the concept of a viral expansion loop in Fast Company magazine (Ning's Infinite Ambition). That article lead to a major book deal, and that book just came out. The article was fascinating and I can't wait to read - in detail - how new companies grow their market share.
• Web Analytics 2.0 - The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity by Avinash Kaushik. I wrote a testimonial for Kaushik's latest book. Here is what I sent him (unedited): When it comes to the Digital Marketing channels and understanding what and why people do things online, there is no one smarter than Avinash Kaushik. His first book, Web Analytics - An Hour A Day, should be on every Marketer's desk. Now, with Web Analytics 2.0, there's something to put on top of the first one. When people ask, 'who is the smartest guy in the room when it comes to Online Marketing?' only one name comes to mind: Avinash. I'd tell you to buy this book, but I would prefer if you didn't. I'd love to keep these concepts and theories all to myself and my clients. Yes, it's that powerful, awesome and actionable.
• What the Dog Saw And Other Adventures by Malcolm Gladwell. If it's at all possible for the business book industry to have a rock star, that person would be Gladwell. HIs latest is a collection of 19 essays from The New Yorker, and each one validates his rock star status. If you just finished Outliers and need another fix, this is perfect and will hit the spot.

The long haul - there are a lot of people who say, "ok, I started a Blog about a month ago, what am I doing wrong? Why are there no comments? What can I do to build my audience faster?" Always remember, that this is not an advertising campaign where you can buy attention. You have to earn it. Building community and trust takes time, effort and then more time (for more on this, please read the book, Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith). It's not easy. So, even though you may be doing everything "right," building community does takes time. You will be earning it one person at a time, and it's important to stay the course (you can read more about this right here: In Praise Of Slow).

This one is a tough one for me! I'm always impatient. I know that to be successful, you need to keep at it, be consistent and be in it for the long haul. Once you sow the seeds, wait.... and they will grown.

The fact that Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk hit The New York Times bestseller list at #2 after one week's sales is great... though not necessarily so remarkable. What's interesting about this story is that he is living proof that the free tools of the Internet do work! I hear over and over, from authors as well as my colleagues in house, "OK, but does Twitter sell books?" (I don't know why they are so reluctant to believe...)

Gary built his brand using these free tools (Facebook, Twitter, Ustream, Tumblr, etc.) and he used the tools that he wrote about in the book to succeed with the book itself. Yes, the mainstream media did play a role, but not at first, and Twitter and Ustream have been every bit as big a driver of sales as traditional media.

If you have not checked out his book site, do it! It is a marketing masterpiece and a lot can be emulated and learned from, for sure: www.crushitbook.com Some of it is just "so Gary" -- I don't know if there's anyone else out there who could pull it off... but even the typical stuff you see on an author's website (i.e. About the Book, About Gary, etc.) is more interesting than what you usually find on a typical book website.

Here are some of my favorite aspects:

• The Experience -- Be sure to watch the videos. If you're going to watch just one, watch the 35 books video. This clearly has Gary's DNA all over it, but I can think of a zillion supersize bundles for other authors too (e.g. for the self-help author: 35 book gets you an hour session with the author; for the novelist, 35 books gets you a call to your book club from the author; etc. etc. etc.)

The Tour -- This is not your run of the mill back-breaking killer book tour. Check out the RSVP links that go to Facebook fan pages and the follow up links so people can post their pictures and comments after the event. And here's my favorite: The Hudson Hustle Tour http://crushitbook.com/hudson-hustle-tour/ 6-cities, 24 hours. Who does that? The man is a maniac. Do not try this at home.

Special Offers -- I don't even know where to begin. Gary has partnered with people most of us would never even have considered. Buy a custom Wordpress theme? Get a copy of the book; Fan of Click Time? Get a copy! LOVE the Digital Bonuses. Moral of the story: Think of a partnership for everyone you encounter and make an offer. Clearly people are open to this type of thing.

The Street Team -- This is like a political campaign. I'd think you'd need some serious momentum from your tribe to pull this one off. But noted for the future!

For Professors -- Think your book is good for college course adoption? Offer a Discussion Guide and Key Points E-book

Twitter Avatar for the Book -- Seems hard to pull off, but Gary has 611 people with his book jacket on their Twitter Avatar. Opportunity available for anyone to do on Twibbon.com

There's a TON more in there, from Forums to the World Market Tour -- so be sure to click around.

So while you might not be right for TVs in gas stations , and highway billboards aren't what's going to sell your book, there are a ton of ideas in here that any author can copy and do their own version of what Gary has done. The days of having to wait for the media to give you the opportunity to tell your story are over.

By now, if you're a Twitter user, there's a good chance you've seen Twitter's new list functionality.

Here are some ways your brand can use Twitter's new on-site functionality:

• Segment and grow your local customer base: If you're a global brand with a local -- or even hyperlocal -- customer base, enable your consumers to connect with each other through you. For instance, a world-famous chain of coffee bars could set up meetup groups through local lists, and when it's ready to execute on some local programs, it already has its local influencers lined up.

Reference list for who's really paying attention to you: Your brand may have thousands upon thousands of Twitter followers, but are they really paying attention?

When I worked at Tribune Interactive and the Chicago Tribune, as Colonel Tribune, I tried as hard as I could to thank all of my new Twitter followers. On my personal Twitter account, I still do keep track of my new followers, and I thank people who are local, or people who share the same passions as I.

At the end of the day, you can't thank everyone who follows you; just those who are very engaged. Lists are a great way to identify them.

(NOTE: I recently started sending "thank you" direct messages to people who added me to their lists; I've noticed I'll usually get an instant response.)
- Daniel B. Honigman

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The wonderfully talented Russian graphic designer, Pavel Kulinsky, has created an awesome series of posters for a promo company in Moscow. The posters feature Matryoshkas (Russian nesting dolls) that have been stylized to suit popular rock bands and artists.

Check out the rest of these traditional dolls with modern flare here!

By Catherine Faas.

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Looking to add a creative Twitter bird to your website, but aren’t sure how? Check out the ten best tutorials for drawing a Twitter bird. The lessons are divided by style and program requirements, which range from Photoshop and Illustrator to Corel Draw and even Expression Blend. The lessons feature a wide variety of bird moods from cheerful to quirky.

Even if you’re just learning the ropes of web design, these tutorials are valuable tools.

By Catherine Faas.

My name is Nick Kallen (@nk) and I'm the project lead on Lists, a new feature we're testing with a small subset of users. The idea is to allow people to curate lists of Twitter accounts. For example, you could create a list of the funniest Twitter accounts of all time, athletes, local businesses, friends, or any compilation that makes sense.

Lists are public by default (but can be made private) and the lists you've created are linked from your profile. Other Twitter users can then subscribe to your lists. This means lists have the potential to be an important new discovery mechanism for great tweets and accounts.

We started working on this feature because of the frequent requests we received from people who were looking for a better way to organize information on Twitter. Of course, that means not just twitter.com—the Platform team will follow up in a few days with information on the Lists API. This will allow developers to add support for Lists into your favorite Twitter apps.

We're just doing limited testing for now. But once we've tested the feature out a bit, we'll launch it for all accounts!

MINNEAPOLIS (AdAge.com) -- Don't like the new fall season's storylines? That's OK. The subplots about Monday's shows may be more compelling in their own right.

AP

Brett Favre

--> Fox moved its hit "House," about a medical malcontent who seems to make many patients sick before he gets them better, to Mondays, and has the highest broadcast ratings of the night.

CBS's sitcom "The Big Bang Theory" features geeks who may not inherit the earth, but inherit the best sitcom timeslot on TV, and build upon "Two and a Half Men" to become TV's most-watched comedy.

Indicted former House Majority Leader Tom Delay tries to prove a right winger needn't have two left feet as he's a featured contestant on ABC's "Dancing with the Stars."

The season's seminal shift of Jay Leno from late night to prime-time is upstaged by his talk show rival's sex scandal.

But wait! The least likely Monday media narrative is this: A soon-to-be Hall of Fame quarterback, so paralyzed with indecision he makes Hamlet look resolute -- decides to join what was his biggest, bitter foe -- and leads them to 4-0 days before his 40th birthday. In the process, Brett Favre also leads the game to the most-watched event in cable history.

The ratings record for the Minnesota Vikings victory over the Green Bay Packers also proved again that it doesn't always take big markets to get big numbers. It just takes a big story. Fans responded, as the game was watched by over 21.8 million viewers and 15.1 million households, receiving a 9.0/23 rating and share in the ad-centric adult 18-49 demographic.

As for broadcast, Fox won the night with an overall 4.2/10, but in a pattern repeated by other shows on rival networks, once the game started at 8:30 p.m., nearly every show was flat or down from last week. "House," for example, fell 12% from last week to a 5.4/13. (Lead-out "Lie to Me," however, was improbably up 7% to a 3.1/7.)

Second-place CBS (3.9/9) saw slippage, too: "How I Met Your Mother" (3.4/9) skidded 6%; "Accidentally on Purpose" fell to a series low of 2.8/7; "Two and a Half Men" (4.4/10) had 8% less adults and "Big Bang" (4.7/11) fell 11%. At 10 p.m. drama "CSI: Miami" (3.9/10) was off a scant 5%.

See how all the shows did in the ratings.

ABC (3.1/8) was third, as "Dancing" (3.5/8) had two-tenths of a ratings point lower than last week, and "Castle" (2.2/6) held even.

NBC's fourth-place finish (1.9/5) was due to a season low 2.4/6 for "Heroes," a series low 1.7/4 for "Trauma" and a 1.5/4 -- which is actually a tenth of a ratings point higher than its series low -- for "The Jay Leno Show."

As for David Letterman, full Nielsen data isn't yet available. But preliminary estimates indicate an overnight household rating of a 4.2, which if it holds would not only have beaten late-night rival Conan O'Brien's "Tonight Show" (1.7 preliminary household rating) but primetime's Jay Leno as well (3.0 household rating.) Based on how uncomfortable Letterman looked, or how Leno may feel after seeing the ratings, both might have wanted to tune into the Vikings-Packers game themselves, just to get away from it all.

14 Practical Ways to Use Evernote

Guy Kawasaki (Alltop)

Sep 18, 2009 -

I use a service called Evernote to fulfill my pack-rat and archiving needs. Evernote is a service “in the cloud” that you can dump notes, documents, photos, and tweets into for future access from any computer with Internet access. (Jennifer Van Grove also talks about it in her article.) Here are fourteen uses of Evernote that can help you organize, archive, and share information.
 

1. Take notes. Taking notes in Evernote is way better than searching for that pad of paper that’s lost or at home. It’s also better than a text document on your computer because either you won’t remember the name of the document, you won’t have that computer, or you will have deleted the document inadvertently.

2. Take pictures. Got into a fender bender? Take a picture of both cars, the other car’s license plates, and the other driver’s license. Drink a great bottle of wine? Take a picture of the label. See a book that you must read? Take a picture of the cover. Evernote has a great iPhone app that enables you to upload these pictures directly to your account.

3. Save documents. When I receive a document (PowerPoint, Word, Excel, or PDF) that I’ll need again, I forward it to Evernote for safekeeping. This is easy because Evernote provides a unique email address to enter documents in your account. I do the same for pictures that people send me. This is very useful when you use more than one computer to create documents or send/receive email.

4. Photograph business cards. Rather than collecting a pile of business cards that you’ll never go through, photograph them with your iPhone and send their images to Evernote. Evernote recognizes text on the card, so you can search for names such as “Apple” or “John” when that’s the only thing you can remember about the person. If you’re using Evernote on a mobile phone, it can also geotag the photo so that if you can only remember that you met the person in Cupertino, you can still find it. And you can save trees: When someone hands you her card, take a picture of it and hand it back.

5. Track expenses. When you get a business receipt, photograph it, and send it to Evernote. Then you or your secretary can grab it later for expense reports and tracking. I lose many of my receipts, but if I stick them in Evernote, there’s a backup when I need them. If you’re really anal, you can configure your scanner to send your receipts to Evernote so you have great looking scanned receipts.

6. Track checks. My bank enables me to see the scanned image of checks one by one, organized by check number. If I knew the check number, I would probably know the payee and amount. Photographed images of checks in Evernote are much faster to find because Evernote recognizes the text so that you can search for it across all your checks. This is very useful when you have a spouse who writes a lot of checks.

7. Track deposits. My bank shows me scanned images of checks, but unless I used an ATM that prints a scan of the deposit, I’m hosed. Even then the scanned image is so small, I sometimes cannot read who the check is from. Photographing and storing a deposit in Evernote is a good system even if you only use it as a backup. This is very useful when you have a spouse who makes a lot of money.

8. Archive your prescriptions. When I get a prescription, I photograph the receipt of the pharmacy. This enables me to remember who prescribed it, when the prescription ends, and which pharmacy filled the prescription. This information is very useful when I want to get a refill.

9. Store your online passwords and receipts. Whenever I buy something online or create an online account, I forward the confirmation or receipt to Evernote. Now when I forget my password, registration number, or date of purchase, I don’t have to go through all sorts of gyrations to recover them. (This happens approximately once per week.) You can, by the way, encrypt portions of documents at Evernote for greater security.

10. Retain news and content from websites. As you come across interesting article, use the Evernote web clipper to review and use later. It’s much more likely you’ll read these articles than if you bookmarked it unless you’re a fanatic about processes such as organizing, synching, and reviewing bookmarks. Even if you are, bookmarks often break when URLs change. It’s much better to have captured the article once and for all.

11. Record the wisdom of whiteboards. Think of Evernote as a poor man’s Smartboard to convert text on a whiteboard to a digital format. This means that after the enjoyable day at the company offsite, just take a picture of the whiteboard and send it to Evernote. Evernote will scan the text so that you can search for the word “mission” to find the fifty-word mission statement that you promptly forgot. This works for projected slides, too.

12. Archive voicemail messages. I use a service called SpinVox that transcribes my voicemail to text and emails me the message. I can then forward the email to Evernote to have a record of the call if I ever need to recall the content of the voicemail or call the person again.

13. Dictate your thoughts. The Evernote iPhone application enables you to record your thoughts and then upload it to your account. This is perfect for when you have a brilliant thought and want to ensure that it’s not lost among the detritus in your brain. If you give your secretary access to your account, you could make a dictation on the fly, and he can listen to it back at the office.

14. Preserve your tweets. You can archive your tweets by linking your Evernote and Twitter accounts. Then if you include the text “@myEN, Evernote will grab it for you” (not that most tweets are worth archiving). To learn how to do this, click here.

To summarize, here are all the ways you can get notes and photos into Evernote:

• Forward email to your unique Evernote email address.

• Upload text, photo, or voice recordings via an iPhone, Palm Pre, or Windows Mobile phone.

• Drag-and-drop audio, images, PDFs, and files into Evernote on the desktop.

• Attach Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF documents to an email and send them to your Evernote email address.

• “Save PDF to Evernote” from the printing dialog box.

• Clip websites and blogs.

• Send documents directly from a scanner.

• Tweet text with the string “@myEN”.

• Upload from cameras directly to Evernote using the wireless EyeFi card.

I’d be surprised if you can’t use Evernote in one or more of these ways.

On his or her first day, every new VaynerMedia employee is directed to a list of recommended reading. These are sites and blogs that we feel are on the cutting edge of “what we do”: social media, branding, business, web design & user interface, technology, etc. As our first blog post, we are going to introduce you to that list. We don’t expect you to read each of these sites every day (we know you don’t have that much free time), but please take a look, find which sites best fit you, read away, and of course, feel free to suggest other reading through the comment section.

Social Media

• TechCrunch – A top tier blog that covers the tech scene in a big way.

• Mashable – Another top tier blog that does a great job putting out useful content while also covering the latest in social media.

• ReadWriteWeb – One of the best when it comes to covering technology in an in-dept and unique style.

Aggregators/Social Bookmarking Sites

• popurls – A great snapshot of the web. For one reason or another, this has been a mainstay in my daily reading.

• TechMeme – When it comes to covering the tech industry this is the quickest way to get headlines of what is important.

• Hacker News – A great mix of technology, entrepreneurship, design and development.

Web Design & User Interface

• Smashing Magazine – My go to place for everything that makes the internet “pretty.”

• Design Newz – I haven’t read too much from this site, but one of our (awesome) designers swears by it.

Personal Blogs

• Fred Wilson – A great blog that covers the business side of entrepreneurship and start-ups by NYC Venture Capitalist Fred Wilson.

• Mark Cuban – A great blog by Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban which focuses on business with some tech mixed in.

• Seth Godin – A blog written by author and web entrepreneur Seth Godin covering marketing, advertising and all things web.

• Gary Vaynerchuk …Maybe I’m biased on this one, but my brother Gary Vaynerchuk does a great job talking business and web on his personal video blog.

Mixed Bag

• AdAge – A great website / publication that covers a lot of mainstream advertising and marketing news.

• LifeHacker – One of the most popular blogs on the web dedicating to making your life better, more interesting and more efficient.

• Mixergy – A great video blog run by Andrew Warner that interviews entrepreneurs with business tips and success stories.