“Of writing well the source and fountainhead is wise thinking.”
—Horace

As of today, LinkedIn has reformatted itself. TechCrunch has the story here, and LinkedIn talks about it over here.

One element of the new home page that’s interesting is the “articles your colleagues are reading” component. I don’t know how they’re gathering this info, but hopefully they’ll soon make this piece a lot more customizable. What’s customizable now are search and answers modules.

Slashdot alerts us to the Encyclopedia of Life, a project that just launched with 30,000 pages and intends to ultimately serve as “an online reference source and database for every one of the 1.8 million species that are named and known on this planet, as well as all those later discovered and described.”

A documentary about a font? Yes, and more: Helvetica isn’t just about the typeface, it’s about the worlds of graphic design, marketing and advertising. It’s fascinating and funny (you gotta love the idea of taking a boring article and publishing it in the dingbat font) and if you haven’t seen it already, it ought to be at the top of your Netflix queue.

One of the common observations about the Democratic race for the nomination is how well Barack Obama’s campaign is using the Internet. This New York Times article, for example, notes that the $36 million Obama raised in January “was powered overwhelmingly by small online donations.”

Beyond cold hard cash, an indication of how well the Obama campaign is marketing itself online is to take a look at what Obama is doing in the realm of mobile phone marketing. Over here, you can access a dozen ringtones for your phone, inspirational messages from Obama set to a funky backing track.

But ringtones are just the beginning. You can also get wallpapers plus text messages from Obama, including updates about specific issue areas (Health, Education, Iraq, Jobs and Reform). Obama’s campaign is even on Twitter.

By contrast, the Clinton campaign’s mobile page offers a simple “sign up to receive text messages” page.

The two pages offer an interesting contrast in online marketing styles. Clinton’s approach is all about Clinton: “Get information about me.” Obama’s approach is all about the people visiting the site: “Here’s a bunch of information and other stuff; help yourself.”

Takeaway for marketers: Is your Web marketing about you or your customers?