Corante Network contributors are coming back to their blogs from holiday hiatuses. Here's a roundup of recent great posts that were not otherwise commented upon:

Shel Holtz at a shel of my former self calls our attention to an attention-focusing podcast series, Top 10 Sources, and writes a passionate defense of traditional websites:

"Still, the notion that all websites would be better off as blogs is yet another case of overzealous enthusiasts getting carried away."

Mary Schmidt at Mary's Blog offers "fundamental sanity check points" for getting investors' checkbooks open and, in another post, signs that mean "you may be a tech addict", including:

"4. You find yourself running late for meetings due to checking email “just one more time.” I confess – I’ve been known to do this. What’s so urgent? Usually nothing. It’ll still be here when I get back."

Evelyn Rodriguez at Crossroads Dispatches *didn't* take a blogging hiatus, but instead has been blogging about her return trip to the areas hit by the December 2004 tsunami. This post is about a carpenter whose volunteer efforts unlocked his own inner creativity:

"His original plan was to make ordinary house...[but] his artistry was unlocked and he spent most of his time beautifying the houses...Each of the 47 has an individual wood-carved balustrade, made from a range of motifs - lotus, sunflower, jasmine, parsley, rose and star. 'The patterns carry no specific meanings. I just think of images from my favourite cartoon books or mural paintings when carrying out the work,' said the carpenter, who had never done any woodcarving prior to the tsunami..."

Johnnie Moore at Johnnie Moore's Weblog posted on an intriguing use of LinkedIn to get better customer service, and continued a series of posts building on the notion of the lessons learning theory holds for branding:

" 'your job is to create an environment where the chances of the learner "getting it" in the way that you intend are as high as possible.' ...could be taken and applied to how companies think about branding: in short it should not be about telling people the truth, but engaging them in creating something new with you."

Toby Bloomberg at Diva Marketing posted on the contradictory notion of ghostwritten blogs:

"Another interesting finding was that 39% of the executives said the reason they were not writing their own blogs was due to "difficulty expressing themselves in writing." I personally find that rather sad, and at the same time frightening, that almost 40% of this sample acknowledged they were lacking a basic business skill - written communication. How the &6%! were they promoted into senior management positions?"