My recent column in BusinessWeek Online drove a bunch of feedback my way, most of it very positive. 

Thanks, Mom! 

(just kidding)

While I did get a lot of great feedback, some of it doubted my sincerity.  "Diego, you’re the biggest car dude I know, " most of it goes.  "Surely you can’t be serious about Saturn?  Don’t they suck?  That was all facetious, right?"

My answer is a big, fat "no".  Everything I said in my column was heartfelt.  I really believe in Saturn the brand and in the Saturn Sky.  I think the Saturn Sky is stunning and will provide a wonderful driving experience.  In fact, if Cadillac and Saturn were the two brands of a standalone car company, I’d be first in line to buy stock.

In other news, metacool appeared in several legitimate (read: print) business publications over the past few months:

• Learning From Blogs, by Virginia Postrel, in Forbes
• The New Instant Companies, by Michael Copeland & Andrew Tilin, in Business 2.0
• More Intelligent Design, by Jena McGregor, in Fast Company

Fast Company’s article made me want to pick up the phone and call my mom:  "… Rodriguez’s blog is a must-read for anyone who wants to incorporate design thinking into their work."

Beauty, eh?

And the title of this post?  From a book I heartily recommend: Brag!  The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn without Blowing it

I’m all about creating beautiful user experiences, so for your viewing pleasure and ease of reference, here’s an overview of Seth Godin’s visit to metacool and our conversation about his new book All Marketers are Liars:

• Design & Authenticity
• Story-Free?
• Emotional Design
• Stuff Seth Digs
• How to Create Good Lies
• About that Title…

Some business bloggers (including yours truly) are collecting their top 24 personal blog posts of 2004 over at A Penny For.  So without further ado, here’s the metacool Top 24 for 2004:

Design

• Jolie-Laide
• How will it look in a month?
• Do it to the hilt!
• Getting Visceral in Wetsuits
• Laide, no Jolie
• 
  The Bimota Tesi Millenium
• iBag
• When the Prototype Becomes the Product

Innovation

• Soichiro Honda on Enjoyment and Innovation
• Teamwork & Creativity
• Using Option Value to Win the X Prize
• You can prototype with anything
• Iridium, Steve McQueen, and Venture Design

Leadership

• A lesson in avoiding assholes, from Sir Richard Branson
• Cranium Wisdom from Richard Tait
• Vartan Gregorian on Liberty
• Vartan Gregorian on Organizational Leadership
• What if the CEO knew his products?

Marketing

• Sixten Sason, Brand Creator
• Tanks and Chunks
• It’s Cool to be Keen
• How Does One Say "Poison Your Brand" in German?
• You’ll Find Google’s Brand in the Trash
• Subaru is the New Saab