My friends over at Interaction-design.org has put together a massive two-hour long interview with Tom Erickson - a veteran researcher in social computing at IBM Watson Research Lab - and an even longer 9,000+ word chapter on the concepts surrounding social computing.

You might have already read "The Shift, From Print to Digital and Beyond", but here is the visualized version of the real problem facing the world of publishing. Subscribe to get the book for free.

Earlier today Google launched the long awaited Google+ Pages. Like Facebook pages, It is profiles for brands and businesses. You can head over to Google's blog to read all about it. But how do you start a page the right way? I'm not talking about the technical setup (that's easy), but how to do it strategically.

A couple a weeks ago, Facebook came out with a new "Insights" dashboard. It was a big improvement from what we had before, mostly because the metrics are all based on people instead of interactions.

Last week I decided to try. I reduced to the price of "The Future of Social Commerce" from $9.99 to just 99 cents. And then I started promoting it. I wrote an article about the new price. I tweeted about it continuously and I change the website to highlight new price under each article. I did everything I possible could to promote this book - at a price of 99 cents.

Over the past 10 years, many companies, futurists, and researchers have been conceptualizing the "smart home". In it they try to solve this problem by placing a computer in every room. In your bathroom, you will have an interactive mirror where you can read the latest news, check emails or post to Facebook. In your kitchen, you will have an interactive refrigerator so that you can watch TV or look at digital recipes while cooking.

Many companies are planning their 2012 budgets - you may be one of the them. The question, of course, is what should you spend your money on?

In the Microsoft Future article, I wrote about how the future is not to have ten computers in your home. It is instead to use the cloud as the foundation, your mobile as the app platform, and every surface around you as your screen.

Many have sent me stories about authors selling their book for 99 cents. Amanda Hocking is just one but there are many others. And each story is even more fantastic than the other. One story I received last night told of an author selling her book first at $9.99, and got almost no sale. Change it 99 cents and sold 3,000 in no time at all.

One thing you will notice is how everything is connected, but not in the you might think. The devices that "control" the experience are the ones you you bring with you. The "TV" in the hotel room is not a computer or a separate device it is just a viewer for your mobile phone.

Kiss Metric has put together a "Viral Marketing Cheat Sheet" based largely on my article "7 Tricks to Viral Marketing" (from 2006.) It's a handy guide to put up on your wall in your marketing department. You can get the big version here.

So let's say you have a score of 54, and a number of people (in other industries) do something spectacular that raises their scores. Then your score will drop. Even if you are doing the same thing. Even are just as influential as before. Your score will drop because other people (not related to you) have become more influential in their area of expertise.

A third reason being the ease of use. We can have a long debate if print is really easier to use (try searching for an article or a specific quote inside a book, and you will find print to be really annoying.) But print is just one simple navigation that works across all printed material. You don't have to think, to set it up, download a file, or figure out some iPad navigation fanciness. You can just focus on the content.

If I want a map of Iran I will go to Google Maps (or maybe Bing Maps.) I would never go to a newspaper. Same with a recipe for "icebox peanut butter pie." Why would I go to a newspaper to find that? I would go to one of the many recipe sites (or apps.)

A few months later, I was notified that the company had bought the most traditional web shop system out there. It was a separate web shop and not integrated into the website (which meant they now had to maintain two sites.) The layout of the shop was focused entirely on the frame (the shop itself) and the products were just presented in a long list with standard labels (no selling, no call to action.) You could not even link directly to each specific product because of the way it was implemented