This week's links dabble aimlessly across the pallet of design and social media.

• Social Media Marketing (SMM) and tracking ROI are not necessarily the most synonymous of concepts. Learn how to make Social Media work for your company.

• WAIT! Don't click that 'publish' button. Scan over this checklist before every post you make. Print it off. Study it. Memorize it. Practice it. Blog by it.

• Good copywriting is good interface design.

• Typesetting wasn't phased out with the printing press. '5 Principles of Setting Type on the Web'.

Two websites I've been really digging lately:

• NEWWORK Magazine
• Muxtape

Meet Melanie, our new Intern. She's 19 and migrated all the way from Quebec to THAT Agency. It's her first day and she's already posting blogs. The following is her take on achieving a chic and effective Web design.

These days it is all too easy to forget that Web design is actually a form of design, which should follow the same rules and principles found everywhere from art and clothes to magazine pages and architecture. Elements of design are important to consider when creating a website, because the way a Web page looks is just as important as its content. I say this because the design of page is the first thing people notice about a website and if the design is horrible, the reader may not even go on to read what is on the page.
So what are the five main elements of design to be considered when building a web page? They are: Balance, Proportion, Rhythm, Dominance, and Unity.

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It's nothing privy, I just have a thing for words; and because today is National Literature Day (it's not), I've filled this post with some word-relevant odds-and-ends. They're designed to facilitate creativity, alleviate writer's block, and inspire.

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• Here's a quirky little print ad for Swedish Fish that works.

• Here's a bizarre ad for canned mushrooms that doesn't work and gives the innocent, pizza-topping fungi a bad rep.

• Unibody—A free font designed to be used solely at 8pt. Good for captions and illustrations.

• 10 typographic mistakes that everyone—myself included—makes. Blame MS Word. I do.

• The New York Times gets a little too excited over semicolons.

A little under a year ago I took a trip up to Chicago and slept on a friend's hardwood floor. It wasn't a very inviting prospect; a few layers of comforter and a sofa-cushion, packed up against a brick wall of an old firehouse-turned-loft. There are no other words to describe how I felt, towering over my new bed, other than bummed. It may have been the combination of long days and even longer nights, but I have never sleep as comfortably, or as sound, as I did on that small, awkward cot.

What I gathered from the experience is that first impressions are misleading. If I had never slept on that floor for a week, I would have never known its true comfort and, instead, mocked which ever poor sap had to sleep in that misfortune.

Now, I won't deny that I have the potential to be a dork. A fun time to me is a cup of coffee and a game of Scrabble; but when it comes to copy, particularly print ad copy, the smallest mistake sparks a figurative powder-keg within me.

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I recently encountered a situation with a website we were working on and, yes, I know that there are hundreds of lines of code out there that do exactly what I am about to discuss, but to me, this is probably the simplest solution and could be easily configured to do what you need it to do.

What was needed you ask? Well, a simple thing really. The client wanted their request form to be a little intuitive. If their users selected an option from the dropdown that was the U.S, then show the U.S. States; if not, then show a textbox for the user to input their area, city, whatever. Granted there is no Database associated with this site, nor did they want one created. So I wrote this little piece to make it do just that.

So to begin let's grab some stuff you need.

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New York Times' Brian Stelter begins his latest editorial with a list of demands; "Pick up the remote." Simple enough. "Turn on the television." Again, nothing too strenuous. "and watch YouTube." Busted! Not Stelter or even the New York Times, but Google.

In my last blog, I mulled over Google's latest targeted advertising campaign in which video is their delivery boy. I wasn't a fan of the whole concept then, and they have yet to sell me on it. At least now, however, I understand how they're planning to drive me further from my television.

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Find eight great tips for business to business blogs at Search Engine Land.

A new vertical search engine is launched by two ex-Google employees. The property is called rentBits.com and is aimed at lead generation for the real estate rental industry.

Great piece from Search Engine Watch on the use of podcasts as search marketing tools.

Viacom was denied punitive damages in YouTube suit against Google. The suit was over alleged copyright violations.

Hulu the video joint venture of News Corp and General Electric's NBC Universal, will debut Wednesday, with mainstream content including sports.

Google is taking aim at display ads which represent 32% of the total US online advertising spend.

Google, please tell me, just what do you think you are doing? Peddling targeted video advertising. You, the king of information, functionality, simplicity, and monetization.

Adsense was a hit and you own Youtube; breeding the two only makes sense, right? Well, I am here to tell you, Google, brother, that as much as I would love to see this work for you, I just refuse to be a part of the shenanigans; and in all sincerity, I hope you one day come to the realization that not everything need be monetized.

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