The hot word for the week is widget. At least according to Nick O’Neill at the Social Times and Jeremiah Owyang. Based on their posts, widgets are going to become more important in developing web strategy for various targeted audiences.

Michael Morton at Marketing Monster claims that Technorati has become irrelevant. He declares that spam has hurt the search engine, forcing it to feed into “useless tripe”.

Does social media as the fifth estate cause people to become even more critical of traditional media? Crisisblogger reports on a few examples and asks the tough question.

Matt McDonald gives us a comprehensive list of posts that he claims will make you a better marketer. From content to conversation, he covers a wide base of tips from some top bloggers.

Interested in Google Adwords? Clix Marketing shares some of the most recent changes and updates to the content.

Digg users will be interested in David Binkowski’s post on the recent uproar resulting from Digg altering its algorithms. The battle between “Power Users” and the site operators continues on, although in the end it’s apparent that nobody will really come out on top from controversial change.

The lines of ethics for bloggers unfortunately continue to be blurred, and even Mark Cuban has become a victim. On his blog he cites an incident with a journalist who also happens to be a blogger, and asks us whether or not the journalist/blogger’s actions were ethical.

The real power of word of mouth marketing is discussed at the Marketing Whore. Gracie gives results from a recent study on the value of word of mouth.

Do you work from home? The benefits of telecommuting, working for yourself and flexible schedules are outlined by ReadWriteWeb, with another view by consultant Kami Huyse.

If you’re interested in DEMO ‘08, check out this website for updates on the conference from our client and friends at StackSafe. It’s a cool place to see their real-time Twitter updates, interesting links to others who are blogging or writing about DEMO, and get the overall scoop from the front lines.