Chalkbot is the newest endeavor of Lance Armstrong's LiveStrong foundation and Nike's Wear Yellow campaign. The concept is simple, tweet a 40 character message to @Chalkbot or text "Livestrong" followed by your message to 31001 and this is what happens:

Per @lancearmstrong

Yes, this is exceptionally cool. Your tweets and texts can be seen by the riders and spectators at the Tour de France. Isn't this the goal of social media? Being able to communicate with people on a global, yet personal level?

What is Chalkbot?

How does it work?

This is the the opening cinematic, and may be the single greatest music video I have ever seen. In case you couldn't tell, it was directed by Pete Candeland, director of the Gorillaz music videos.

Now, for the gameplay:

Oh, and yeah, you get the greatest instrument set in Rock Band history

Oh, and once again, they ended with Bedshaped. I hope they close every show with it.

I wasn't afraid, I wasn't turned off, I wasn't overly scared, but I knew that in order to continue our relationship, I would have to learn as much as I could about it. I did some cursory searching on the internet and started to freak a bit. Reading about women who had to leave their jobs, had to go on disability, how much worse it got after having children and how it really impacted their day to day lives scared me. That being said, I wasn't going anywhere. I was in love with this woman and would face it every day with her.

Michelle gave me books on the subject to read, and while I didn't bury my nose in each and every one, I read quite a bit of each of them, trying to get as much information into my head as possible so I could understand what I would be facing having her in my life. Reading how certain types of weather, or stress, or lack of sleep could bring on a flare-up, I went a bit crazy. I acted like the typical 50s father-to-be who won't let his pregnant wife do anything for fear that she'll over exert herself. While I thought I was being the good boyfriend, then the good fiance, then the good husband, as it turned out, I was driving her nuts and acting as if she was a delicate little flower. All she wanted was to be treated normally. That concept is still difficult for me to grasp.

I try to do as much as I can to alleviate stress in her life. I figure since I have no control over what happens during the work day, I can at least make sure that when she comes home she doesn't have to worry about anything, and she can rest when she needs to rest, nap when she's tired and when she has a flare-up I know that she needs a bit more from me, whether it be a light massage of her shoulders or calves or just to be left alone so she can rest.

It took her a while to let herself be vulnerable with me regarding her Fibro. Often she wouldn't let me know when she was really hurting, and I'd ask her if she was ok, and she's blow me off or just say "I'm fine" even though I knew she wasn't. This is the single hardest part of living with someone with Fibromyalgia. When you look into their eyes, or hear their voice and you know they're tired or hurting and you can do absolutely nothing to alleviate their pain. Almost 10 years later and it still pains me to see the woman I love hurting. I know that the flare-up will pass, but during those times I just want to hold her and tell her everything is going to be ok.

Now that we've been together a while, and thinking about starting a family, the first thing I had to do was to partake in some real soul-searching. My first fear was that going through pregnancy was going to make her miserable, far beyond the normal "wear and tear" or a typical pregnancy. Secondly, I wanted to speak to specialists to find out the possibility of a genetic component to Fibromyalgia. Michelle kept telling me that it wasn't genetic, and that it couldn't be passed to our children, but I needed that corroboration from a doctor. Michelle and I both spoke with my rheumatologist and he alleviated my fears. He told us that Fibro is not a genetic condition, at least not as they understand it today. Hearing this removed that fear, but I am still concerned about the effects of pregnancy on her body.

Lucky for me, my wife is an incredibly strong woman. She amazes me every day with how much she fights through, suffering from Fibromyalgia. She never uses it as a crutch, hates to admit how much she hurts when she is having a bad day, and is getting better and better every year with letting me know when she needs me.

Fibromyalgia isn't a curse. It isn't something from which one needs to run screaming, and it isn't a deal-breaker. Loving someone with FMS takes patience, it takes strength from both partners, and most importantly it takes openness. Openness to learn about the symptoms, openness to talk about how you are both feeling, and openness from the person afflicted to be vulnerable and reach out for help when it's needed.

• The Best Way to Build a Twitter Account? Step by Step. (Dan Zarrella, HubSpot) - The data shows that the best way to build a robust Twitter account is via a stepped approach. Follow a few people (a few of them will follow you back), then follow a few more. Don't go crazy following thousands of people. Do it slowly and build up your followers gradually. 

• Social Media Marketing Budgets on the Rise (Adam Ostrow, Mashable) - According to a new study released by Aberdeen Group (published today by eMarketer), 63 percent of companies plan to increase their social media marketing budgets in 2009, despite the current weakness in the economy. Digging deeper into the numbers, 21 percent of those surveyed plan to increase social media spending by 25 percent or more, while a mere 3 percent plan to shrink their budgets

• SEO Tips for Blogs (UAE Hosting) - While not deeply profound, too many bloggers don't think about how their blog can help their company in regards to overall search.

• Email, Search & Display Show Strongest Online Performance (Marketing Charts) - A large majority of marketing executives say email, search marketing, and display ads are their company’s top performing advertising channels, and many plan to increase spending on them in 2009, according to a survey from Datran Media.

• 5 Reasons Why Design Matters to SEO (Ryan Caldwell, Van SEO Design) - The fact of the matter is that most amateur SEO professionals don’t have the slightest clue about why design matters. Most of them assume that it doesn’t. And you can tell by looking at the kind of content they promote.

• Think Beyond Google AdWords (Kneoteric) - Pay per click advertising offers enormous potential for revenue generation but is seldom extended beyond Google AdWords. In this newsletter, we will discuss a few pay per click search engines that are lesser known to online business fraternity, but can deliver better return on investment. In the end it’s all that matters!

• Social Media for Business: The Dos & Don’ts of Sharing (Sarah Evans, Elgin Community College) - Make sure you have guidelines and policies to craft your company's social media personality.

• 10 Awesome Ways to Integrate Twitter With Your Website (Glen Stansbury, net tuits) - Need to make your website Twitter-friendly? Check out these widgets and apps and you'll get more power from both Twitter and your existing site.

• Finding The Right Balance Between Search Marketing & User Experience (Kim Krause Berg, search engine land) - This is always the dilemma. How do we drive people to our site more easily, but still have the site be user-friendly? This article helps explain a bit more about the dichotomy between the land of usability and SEO.

• The ROI of Being Social at Work (Matthew Hodgson, the app gap) - Have an issue where you're on social media sites at work, and your boss thinks you're being unproductive? This article outlines the studies behind improving your working environment through social media.

• 5 Social Media Fatal Errors (Mike Rynchek, Spyder Trap Online Marketing) - Not getting what you wanted out off your social media campaigns? Chances are you're committing one of these.

• When Pay Per Click Is NOT Right For You (Brian Carter, Search Engine Journal) - Wondering if you should get into the wonderful world of PPC? Brian Carter gives a great intro into whether or not it's worth your time, effort and money to jump into it.

Now it seems you have to really rethink the idea of friending your co-workers altogether.

A 16-year-old girl from Essex was fired after she described her office job as "boring" on her Facebook page.

Kimberley Swann, 16, of Clacton, had been working at Ivell Marketing & Logistics, in Clacton, for three weeks before being fired on Monday.

"I think they've stooped quite low," she said.

The firm's Steve Ivell said of the decision: "Her display of disrespect and dissatisfaction undermined the relationship and made it untenable."

Miss Swann said: "You shouldn't really be hassled outside work. It was only a throw-away comment.

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said employers needed "thicker skins" in relation to social networking websites.

He said: "Most employers wouldn't dream of following their staff down the pub to see if they were sounding off about work to their friends."

Kimberley Swann made the mistake of friending the wrong people. Trusting her co-workers and getting burned by them. They turned her in, likely to further their own positions in the company.

What's the takeaway here? Should you not friend your co-workers? Should you censor what you say? Should you be allowed to be terminated for something said in private that was never seen by your employer? Is calling a job "boring" grounds for termination?

In my opinion Mr. Ivell over-reacted. After all, this was only her 3rd week of employment. However, the bigger issue for me is that you can never be too careful with what you say in regards to your employment situation, and need to be even more guarded to whom you make those comments.

Maybe next time take a second to think about whether you really should friend your co-workers, or whether they'll go running to management with every comment you make.

However, if you don't feed that information, on an individual level, into your CRM, it's worthless. This is especially true if you're a company selling high-dollar items with a long sales cycle. How much more powerful would your sales team find their lead information if you could tell them exactly who clicked-through on an email, which links they clicked, where they went in your website and what whitepapers/webinars/sales collateral they viewed? How many more sales would occur by your sales staff knowing exactly what the lead wanted before you even talked to them?

If you integrate your email delivery tool and your web analytics package with your CRM, you can take action on those individuals who have reached out to you with greater efficiency than ever before.

Next time you send an email campaign, think about this. Think about being able to track an individual from email open to click-through to your website to pages within your website all the way through to your shopping cart or conversion goal, and have all of that information fed directly to your sales staff with little to no effort on your end. Best part about it? Your sales staff never has to know how easy it can be for you.

• United Linen Does Social Media Right (Scott Hepburn from Media Emerging) - A solid example of a business to business company successfully utilizing social media in their marketing strategy.

• 50 Steps to Establishing a Consistent Social Media Practice (Chris Brogan) - Social media marketing go-to guy Chris Brogan gives an excellent "intro" for how to jump-start your companies' social media presence.

• 8 Questions to Ask Your "Social Media Expert" (Dave Fleet) - Piggy-backing on Chris Brogan's post, take a look at Dave Fleet's post on vetting your consultants and/or social media marketing staff. Don't go into this world blind.

• 8 Tools to Track Your Footprints on the Web (Lidija Davis from Read Write Web) - Once you've started your social media marketing campaign, how do you track it? You know that analytics are important, but in the social media world which tools do you use? Davis offers some great suggestions.

• Top Twitter Features Worth Paying For (HubSpot) - Ok, in addition to tracking your blog, SEO, keywords and social media presence, there are various demographics and analytics that can be derived from the Twitterverse that would be a goldmine to any internet marketer. Which ones would you be willing to pay to receive?

• 
  Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson in conversation with Peter Hirshberg at Google Zeitgeist from peter hirshberg on Vimeo. - How is Best Buy using Blue Shirt Nation with such success internally? (yeah, I know this is four months old, but it's a great story).