Part Psychology textbook, part business manual, part to do list, part philosophical manifesto, and mostly just an overall good read, Chris Brogan and Julien Smith’s Trust Agents guides you (in six easy steps, no less) toward a better and more enlightened approach to making the social web work for you.

Though there are actionable items throughout, the book really works best as a loose philosophical framework for incorporating etiquette, human understanding and yes, trust into your online endeavors, the result of which (the authors say) will naturally be more opportunities for business, collaboration, and word-of-mouth referrals. Their careers are proof-in-the-pudding that this approach can work. Brogan’s blog is listed as one of the top 100 on Technorati and, among other things, Smith’s early adoption of podcasting has led to countless speaking engagements and appearances on CNN, CBC, CTV, and—as he puts it—“a bunch of others that don’t start with the letter C.”

Joy Burke has created her very first font, entitled “Spooners.” To help showcase her creation, she designed a sample poster for the upcoming Big Holiday Show featuring The Flaming Lips. The poster will be presented at the gallery opening this Friday for the “Punchcutters: Re-Inventing the Alphabet, Font Design Competition and Exhibition” presented by the STA (Society of Typographic Arts), and Spooners will later be available for purchase online, so stay tuned!

This morning I ran across WPTouch from Brave New Code and admittedly was a bit dubious when the company claimed it could make my WordPress blog iPhone-friendly with just a few clicks. But lo and behold, that’s all it took and the result was super impressive.

We joined the troops on Vidly today by posting our demo reel: http://vidly.com/bH5X

What do Tupperware parties, Ponzi schemes, Hot or Not and Facebook all have in common?

According to Adam L. Penenberg’s new book Viral Loop, they all used the power of referral networks to grow at lightning speed and, in the case of online businesses, achieve multi-million and sometimes billion dollar valuations in record time. Throughout the book, Penenberg explores how Paypal, Bebo, eBay, Rock You, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Skype and several others caught the wave of viral coefficients and rode it to internet wealth and fame, sometimes in the space of only a month or two.