Gord Hotchkiss writes some pretty compelling posts, and lately, I've been reading them all … including the latest on The Whys of Buy: Visualizing the Buy where Gord relates a story that originally appeared in About.com Sports Medicine category on Visualization and Muscle Strength

"…Now research is suggesting that visualization can actually strengthen muscles. Researchers from the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio investigated the strength benefits of imagining exercising a muscle. They reported that just thinking about exercise helped maintain muscle strength in a group of subjects.

They split 30 healthy young adults into 3 groups. For 15 minutes a day, five days a week for 12 week, Group #1 imagined exercising their little finger muscle. Group #2 imagined exercising their biceps muscle and Group #3 acted as a control group and did no imaginary exercise. Those in the first two groups were asked to think as strongly as they could about moving the muscle being tested, to make the imaginary movement as real as possible. The researchers measured muscle strength before, during and after the training sessions.

Group #1 (the finger exercisers) increased their strength 53 percent, wand Group #2 (the biceps group) increased strength by 13.4 percent. "

Hmm… I have to try that!  Darn, maybe I can get my pinky to get stronger – or something else to get better…or whatever.  But wait – it does get better:

"…If your purchase process requires a commitment on the part of the buyer, let them visualize the path required to get to the end. Use your website to build the path required to navigate through things like financing, negotiation, customer service, delivery and selection of products and options. Don’t just stop at visualization of ownership. Think about the visualization of the act of buying as well."

This referred to the idea that we can write compelling copy – but unless we can close the loop, unless we can convey to people what it's like to purchase the product, use the service, unless we can give people all the information they need to complete the purchase – even if everything else is good…if we've forgotten to enable visualization of "buying" or "owning", then we've left a lot of money, a lot of opportunity on the table.

Again, I've been reading Gord's posts because he has really good content plus he writes well…and hell….I've been in Times Square on a summer night – I live in NYC (and it would smell kinda bad at 98 degrees on a Saturday night).

Tonight I was in the Soho going to an art opening and happened to notice the New Museum is re-opening this Saturday, tomorrow.   I decided to see if I could crash an exclusive party there, but failed…seems they didn't want the press, didn't' want bloggers and I don't know how those that got invited, did.

Dejected, but somehow feeling it was OK, I made my way back into the cold, even as I wondered what I could say that would have gotten me into the pre-opening party reception.

As I walked on Prince Street towards the West Village, I passed McNally Robinson, an independent bookstore, and decided to go in at have some tea, pull out my iPod Touch and read a few books as well.  As I passed an isle near the bathroom I noticed a book called Blogging Heroes - Interviews with 30 of the World's Top Bloggers.  I found the book very helpful and interesting and decided to buy it – I also personally know a few of the bloggers and know of others or have met them very tangentially. 

I've briefly met Chris Anderson, Robert Scoble, met Rebecca Lieb several times, met Steve Rubel and about half a dozen others know who I am … so I figured, I might as well have that book.  (I bold-ed bloggers I've met (and read, of course) and those who I read but haven't met but read often, I've underlined.

Bloggers interviewed in Blogging Heroes include:

• Steve Garfield
• Grant Robertson
• Victor Agreda
• mark Frauenfelder
• Eric T.
• Robert Scoble
• Richard MacManus
• Gary Lee
• Deidre Woollard
• Rebecca Lieb
• Steve Rubel
• Scott McNulty
• Gina Trapani
• Mary Jo Foley
• Brad Hill
• Philipp Lenssen
• Chris Grant
• Kristin Darguzas
• Brian Lam
• Joel Comm
• Peter Rojas
• Mike Masnick
• Deborah Petersen
• Ken Fisher
• John Neff
• Frank Warren
• Dave Rothman
• Dave Taylor
• Ina Steiner
• Chris Anderson

But I really think it's also a good book – and I'll probably devour it by the end of the weekend – or soon after, and certainly before I go to France, next week. 

So….. maybe not getting into the New Museum's exclusive party was not a bad thing … but a good thing – or else I'd never have sat down and read the first chapters of Blogging Heroes.

Aaron Wall at SeoBook.com is saying what I've come to believe with is that contextual Advertising via AdSense is killing the Web.  Essentially, people are seeing that many sites care more about advertising than content.

While Google can get away with it because Google is a search engine and there's still a high degree of textual relevancy while sites can't often to the same thing.

And, more and more, sites that use AdSense can't compete with Social Networks and communities that have real content.