Lego! Lego! LEGO OF ME!.

I love Lego. Every bloke loves lego don't they? My six year old son gives me the excuse to build stuff out of lego more often these days than would usually be permitted in polite adult society.

The piece of 'Lego art' above is clearly head, shoulders and guts above the usual (my usual) make-shift space rocket.

Yet with all that apparent time he has to spare, the lovely white floor and the lack of odd multi-coloured pieces, you've got to wonder whether the builder actually has any children at all! Remarkable!

I shot the Serif

Now you might say I am clearly easily pleased, yet every now and then you see something that is so simple yet so brilliant that you really wished you'd thought of it first. This brilliant image is one such something. "I shot the Serif" courtesy of artist Tom Gabor

Retro chairs in Pixar movies

It is a little known fact that this beautiful chair features in Toy Story 2, however more excitingly than that it's being reintroduced by Vitra. Long live the Pretzel Chair.

Personal Branding.

Self-help is not a new idea. Samuel Smiles wrote "The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual" back in the late nineteenth century (golly, how he could have made a name for himself today...).

Anyway, the logical next step on your road to a better personal space - once you've built up sufficient confidence and penned your life strategy with help from the world renowned Tony Robbins - is Personal Branding. In the grand scheme of things Personal branding has been around for about 37 seconds and yet it has a massive following and a multitude of experts.

One such expert is Dan Schawbel, ...the leading personal branding expert for Gen-Y... Dan's dream is ...To become the bridge, where qualified applicants can cross to land the positions they deserve. To create a personal branding class in every school internationally, helping students follow their passions.

Personally, like Smiles before him, I think he's a genius, a pioneer on the steep face of webnology mountain. And for individuals (or of course businesses) who are not quite there yet and are seriously exploring Social Media as a self-marketing tool, I suggest he's your first point of call.

My tip for today: You could do a lot worse than starting by visiting Mashable: The social Media Guide.

Stop advertising and people start to talk

More than 48% of US adults believe that a lack of advertising by a retail store, bank or auto dealership during a recession indicates the business is likely struggling...

...At the same time, a majority of consumers think businesses that continue to advertise are competitive and/or committed to doing business.

All this from the Marketing Vox blog. Read More

How does your office compare?

The above are just a few images of the Google offices in Zurich. Each room has obviously been thought about to put the employee's in the right 'creative' frame of mind for some serious 'blue sky' thinking.

The caption reads:

"Here really I understand it, for work as for a holiday. Many employers should learn as it is necessary to provide working process and leisure of employees. Work about which it is possible to dream only..."

However, this employer thinks it's a right royal waste of money. There are some perfectly good local swings if you want to behave like a child.

Ignore email at your peril

According to Econsultancy, and I might add that I agree with them, email is still the most popular choice of communication amongst business users. From my experience of trying to get clients to buy in to project management/crm systems such as Basecamp (from US based 37 Signals) it is still email that remains firmly in the comfort zone of the majority.

In this article E-consultancy reminds us of how best to utilise email; to remain in the thoughts of our prospects and within the law.