COOL DIGITAL/SOCIAL/WEB 2.0 SITES

Thanks for coming to see us at SxSW Interactive. As promised, we’ve posted a long list of some really cool inspiration websites to get your digital brain thinking. Feel free to send us more ideas via Twitter – @sxswadpro – and we will post.
And for those of you who read, there is a cool book section once you scroll down.

THE LIST:

http://edwardboches.com/
Creativity Unbound: ” I’m Edward Boches. Chief Creative Officer and Chief Social Media Officer of Mullen. I’m also a copywriter, dad, husband, road cyclist. I’m young enough to have kids in grade school. And old enough to have fallen in love with all things media from admiring the print ads in Life magazine back in the 1960s. Somewhere in between then and now I’ve been a newspaper reporter, speech writer, account executive, public relations counsel, copywriter and creative director. I’ve been lucky enough to have helped build a full-service ad agency; work with dozens of noteworthy brands; launch high-tech and internet start-ups; collaborate with world famous directors, photographers and editors; co-write television commercials with Ellen DeGeneres; present ideas to Oprah Winfrey (she actually liked them); create award winning websites; and launch an emerging social media practice. More surprisingly, I’ve survived for 30 years in a business that typically eats its young. Woody Allen was right when he said “Ninety percent of success is just showing up.” Anyway, I’m still here. Who could leave now? The explosion of technology, the changing face of communications, and the opportunity to invent new applications make this the most exciting time ever to be in the marketing business.”

http://www.megankgreen.blogspot.com/
Social media, advetising and marketing: a millenial’s point of view

http://www.fubiz.net/
Daily dose of inspiration

http://www.forbes.com/bow/b2c/main.jhtml
Forbes magazine’s Best of The Web

http://usefullunacy.typepad.com/useful_lunacy/
Useful Lunacy: thinking about thinking, creativity and the power of ideas.

http://www.adverblog.com/
I started Adverblog in May 2003. It’s an hobby but also a great opportunity to keep myself always updated on the latest ideas and trends in interactive. Adverblog is the place where I share the links to the best interactive marketing campaigns I happen to see around the Web, and it has become a daily destination for those who share my same passion.

http://www.linksocial.org/
Link Social is a social network and resource for the global creative community. It enables creatives to share the little gems that go undiscovered by most-ideas, inspiration and cool stuff they created or found online.

http://www.buzzmachine.com/
JEFF JARVIS, author of What Would Google Do? (HarperCollins 2009), blogs about media and news at Buzzmachine.com. He is associate professor and director of the interactive journalism program at the City University of New York’s new Graduate School of Journalism. He is consulting editor and a partner at Daylife, a news startup. He writes a new media column for The Guardian and is host of its Media Talk USA podcast. He consults for media companies. Until 2005, he was president and creative director of Advance.net, the online arm of Advance Publications. Prior to that, Jarvis was creator and founding editor of Entertainment Weekly; Sunday editor and associate publisher of the New York Daily News; TV critic for TV Guide and People; a columnist on the San Francisco Examiner; assistant city editor and reporter for the Chicago Tribune; reporter for Chicago Today.

http://www.amsterdamadblog.com/
This blog writes about Amsterdam advertising; its hotshops, its people and – of course – its great advertising. Amsterdam is one of the fastest growing creative hubs in the world. The reason is that – apart from museums, coffeeshops and red lights – the city is a cosmopolitan village that cradles an exciting mix of cultural events and original minds – all within the space of only a few square kilometers. Amsterdam Ad Blog is run by a group of independent creatives.

http://www.brainpickings.org/
Mostly, Brain Pickings is about ideas — revolutionary new ideas that no one has seen or thought of before, and old ideas that most have seen, but no one has thought of in this way before.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/
ReadWriteWeb is the second largest information technology blog in the world. ReadWriteWeb provides analysis of Web products and trends to an intelligent audience of engaged technology decision makers, Web enthusiasts and innovators.

http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/
Social Media Explorer is the online home and blog of Social Media Explorer LLC, which is my consulting company. I’ve been called all sorts of things by folks around the social media, public relations, marketing and communications industries.

http://www.adpulp.com/
AdPulp is the work of three men obsessed with making better communications and making the communications industry a better place to be.

creative is not a department http://davidgillespie.wordpress.com/about-david-gillespie/
My name is David Gillespie. I’m from Australia originally (as seen on Animal Planet) but since December ‘08 have been based out of Toronto. I currently work for McCann Erickson, where I sit and drink coffee and irritate people with extended ramblings around the subjects contained on this blog. You can call me on +1 416 643 8647 if you’d like me to irritate you too.

http://makethelogobigger.blogspot.com/
About advertising and a bunch of other stuff

http://www.thoughtgadgets.com/
Advertising, marketing and media…what works.

http://adscam.typepad.com/my_weblog/
A well intentioned rant about the current state of Advertising, with particular emphasis on Big Dumb Agencies (BDA’s) Because, no matter how bad you think it is, it’s actually a great deal worse! “Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill pail.” George Orwell.

http://persuasionism.com/
There are times you just need someone to come in and get the job done quietly and efficiently. A good percentage of our engagements are behind the scenes, away from industry press coverage. We create big, organizing brand ideas. We collaborate with marketers, designers, strategists and agencies of every stripe.
Our weapons are experience, focus, and caffeine. We hate layers. We despise inefficiency. We’re huge fans of tomorrow.

http://technorati.com/
Technorati was founded to help bloggers succeed by collecting, highlighting, and distributing the global online conversation. The leading blog search engine, Technorati.com indexes millions of blog posts in real time and surfaces them in seconds. The site has become the definitive source for the top stories, opinions, photos and videos emerging across news, entertainment, technology, lifestyle, sports, politics and business. Technorati.com tracks not only the authority and influence of blogs, but also the most comprehensive and current index of who and what is most popular in the Blogosphere.

http://technorati.com/blogs/top100
Technorati Top 100 as ranked by Technorati Authority. The Top 100 is updated once per day.

http://www.permissiontosuck.net/107/
PermissionToSuck.com is a Blogazine about inspiration for passionate creative professionals across all disciplines of commercial arts and music.

http://www.barbariangroup.com/posts
The original. The pioneers. The Barbarian Group is a digital services and creation company that delivers the best possible experience for the consumer through the integrated and disciplined use of the best possible practices, good ideas, people and technology.

http://www.tumblr.com/dashboard
Tumblr lets you effortlessly share anything. Post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos, from your browser, phone, desktop, email, or wherever you happen to be. You can customize everything, from colors, to your theme’s HTML.

http://alexbogusky.posterous.com/
Posterous is the dead simple way to put anything online using email. Founding Partner of Crispin Porter + Bogusky / Chief Creative Insurgent of MDC Partners. Fear is the mortal enemy of creativity

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/
Founded in September 2006, Smashing Magazine delivers useful and innovative information to Web designers and developers. Our aim is to inform our readers about the latest trends and techniques in Web development. We try to convince you not with the quantity but with the quality of the information we present. We hope that makes us different. Smashing Magazine is, and always has been, independent.

http://www.copyblogger.com/
Copyblogger is all about helping you get traffic, attract links, gain subscribers and sell stuff.

http://www.talentzoo.com/beyond_madison_ave
The #1 site for Ad, Marketing, & Digital Pros

http://bigthink.com/
Big Think is a global forum connecting people and ideas. At Big Think, we put you in contact with the ideas of very smart people.

http://www.woostercollective.com/
woo·ster (noun) A street in the Soho section of New York City. col·lec·tive (noun) Of, relating to, characteristic of, or made by a number of people acting as a group: a collective decision. The Wooster Collective was founded in 2001. This site is dedicated to showcasing and celebrating ephemeral art placed on streets in cities around the world.

http://ffffound.com/
FFFFOUND! is a web service that not only allows the users to post and share their favorite images found on the web, but also dynamically recommends each user’s tastes and interests for an inspirational image-bookmarking experience.

http://www.adtechblog.com/
ad:tech provides media, marketing and technology professionals with the tools and techniques they need to succeed in a changing digital world.

http://www.bitrebels.com/
Our articles are meant to give you that second perspective on any given topic, that perspective that you might have missed if not for the Rebels sites.

http://the3six5.posterous.com/
Everyday for 365 days, a different person will write an entry about their experience that day. It doesn’t have to be about a specific topic, the key is that it somehow relates to what is happening in the world that day and how it relates to them. By doing so, starting from January 1 to December 31 of 2010, we will have a snapshot of the entire year, told from the perspective of 365 individual voices.

http://www.adverblog.com
My name is Martina Zavagno, I’m an interactive marketer and I work for a premium sports brand. I started Adverblog in May 2003. It’s an hobby but also a great opportunity to keep myself always updated on the latest ideas and trends in interactive. Adverblog is the place where I share the links to the best interactive marketing campaigns I happen to see around the Web, and it has become a daily destination for those who share my same passion.

http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com
Get your daily fix of digital honey with the new Digital Buzz Blog! Featuring the latest digital ad campaigns, hot new websites, interactive marketing ideas, virals, industry news, social media, insights, and other great digital trends from all over the world.

http://www.bannerblog.com.au
Banner Blog started in June 2005 to showcase online advertising, much of which goes unnoticed. It was also seen as a good opportunity to pimp our own work too!

http://adsoftheworld.com/
Ads of the World is an advertising archive and community. The archive showcases campaigns from around the world categorized and updated daily. In the forum you can discuss your professional life and post your work for critique. The blog features advertising stories.

http://www.coloribus.com
Creativity, Technology, Innovation – Coloribus – the world’s biggest advertising archive has a collection of more than 2 million ads from around the globe – currently available and rapidly growing every single day. This unique selection brings you the best and most creative ideas in advertising – for easy downloading or browser viewing in just one click.

http://www.ted.com/
TED is a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design.

http://creativitycat.com/
Creativity and Technology Conference 2010

http://www.thefwa.com/
WA stands for Favorite Website Awards, an industry recognized internet award program and inspirational portal, established in May 2000. FWA is the most visited website award program in the history of the internet, with over 75 million visits as of January 2010.

http://gigaom.com/
Gigaom: Trusted Insights and Conversations on the Next Wave of Technology

http://techcrunch.com/
TechCrunch was founded on June 11, 2005, as a weblog dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies. In addition to covering new companies, we profile existing companies that are making an impact (commercial and/or cultural) on the new web space. TechCrunch has now grown into a network of technology focused sites offering a wide range of content and new media.

http://www.Abduzeedo.com
Is a great place to find design inspiration as well as articles to help improve certain skills

http://www.dafont.com
Fonts

http://stndrd.org/
An open source approach for establishing standard and practices in digital production

http://mashable.com
Great bucket for all things social media/tech/digital

http://wordpress.com
One of the best site building systems. Easy to get into and massive community support

http://odopod.com
Cool digital design company

http://bnet.com
Solid info for industry insight

http://vocomoco.typepad.com/digitalmeteor/
check in for more digital content news

http://deeplocal.com
brilliant think tank located in Pittsburgh

http://42entertainment.com
company working in the right space

http://www.contagiousmagazine.com
Get your new world of advertising mag on

http://stamen.com/
design and technology company you have to see

We asked folks what were their favorite books that got them interested in all things digital; or books that taught them a lot. Here are some of their responses. What else is out there? Let us know.

A READING LIST FOR PEOPLE WHO DON’T WANNA BE DINOSAURS:

The Open Brand by Kelly Mooney
Many of the best brands today are of geek pedigree, powered by the technologies, traits and trends of the ascendant digital channel. Amidst the decline of mass marketing, push marketing tactics have been superseded by new forms of influence. These include the creating, sharing and influencing behaviors of an online population no longer content merely to consume, and the potent pairing of digital notoriety and network effects, which has given rise to the icitizenry. From these sociocultural forces emerges a radical business imperative: to open up to consumer involvement in a brand’s messages and offerings. Published under Peachpit’s New Riders imprint in partnership with AIGA Design Press, The Open Brand illuminates both the risks and immense rewards of doing so, and describes the essential consumer experiences that are requisite for cultural relevance—On-demand, Personal, Engaging, and Networked experiences, representing the chief values of the web-made world.

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing withouth Organizations, by Clay Shirkey
Blogs, wikis and other Web 2.0 accoutrements are revolutionizing the social order, a development that’s cause for more excitement than alarm, argues interactive telecommunications professor Shirky. He contextualizes the digital networking age with philosophical, sociological, economic and statistical theories and points to its major successes and failures. Grassroots activism stands among the winners—Belarus’s flash mobs, for example, blog their way to unprecedented antiauthoritarian demonstrations. Likewise, user/contributor-managed Wikipedia raises the bar for production efficiency by throwing traditional corporate hierarchy out the window. Print journalism falters as publishing methods are transformed through the Web. Shirky is at his best deconstructing Web failures like Wikitorial, the Los Angeles Times’s attempt to facilitate group op-ed writing. Readers will appreciate the Gladwellesque lucidity of his assessments on what makes or breaks group efforts online: Every story in this book relies on the successful fusion of a plausible promise, an effective tool, and an acceptable bargain with the users. The sum of Shirky’s incisive exploration, like the Web itself, is greater than its parts.

The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, by Chris Aderson
The New York Times bestseller that introduced the business world to a future that’s already here–now in paperback with a new chapter about Long Tail Marketing and a new epilogue. Winner of the Gerald Loeb Award for Best Business Book of the Year In the most important business book since The Tipping Point, Chris Anderson shows how the future of commerce and culture isn’t in hits, the high-volume head of a traditional demand curve, but in what used to be regarded as misses–the endlessly long tail of that same curve.

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, by Charlene Li
Corporate executives are struggling with a new trend: people using online social technologies (blogs, social networking sites, YouTube, podcasts) to discuss products and companies, write their own news, and find their own deals. This groundswell is global, it s unstoppable, it affects every industry and it s utterly foreign to the powerful companies running things now. When consumers you’ve never met are rating your company s products in public forums with which you have no experience or influence, your company is vulnerable. In Groundswell, Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff of Forrester, Inc. explain how to turn this threat into an opportunity.

You Are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier.
For the most part, Web 2.0–Internet technologies that encourage interactivity, customization, and participation–is hailed as an emerging Golden Age of information sharing and collaborative achievement, the strength of democratized wisdom. Jaron Lanier isn’t buying it. In You Are Not a Gadget, the longtime tech guru/visionary/dreadlocked genius (and progenitor of virtual reality) argues the opposite: that unfettered–and anonymous–ability to comment results in cynical mob behavior, the shouting-down of reasoned argument, and the devaluation of individual accomplishment. Lanier traces the roots of today’s Web 2.0 philosophies and architectures (e.g. he posits that Web anonymity is the result of ’60s paranoia), persuasively documents their shortcomings, and provides alternate paths to “locked-in” paradigms. Though its strongly-stated opinions run against the bias of popular assumptions, You Are Not a Gadget is a manifesto, not a screed; Lanier seeks a useful, respectful dialogue about how we can shape technology to fit culture’s needs, rather than the way technology currently shapes us.