When you start a new blog about a niche topic like "sports and brains", you definitely need some friends along the way to get your stories out there and noticed by readers. So, I just wanted to take a time-out to thank and recommend four terrific sites and the people behind them.

First, Guy Kawasaki has not only blogged and Tweeted my stories to thousands of his readers but has now added this site to one of the coolest news/blog aggregators on the Web, Alltop.com. If you haven't visited Alltop, it is best described as an "online newsstand" where you can pick your favorite category from a few hundred and then see hand-picked sites and their most recent stories. Of course, I have a certain bias towards sports.alltop.com and fitness.alltop.com (scroll to the bottom of each page to see why!).

And, for a mix of news, rumors and the best of the Web, stop by another Guy creation, Truemors. Besides being a serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist, Guy is best known as a popular author and speaker. Take a look at his work here: Books by Guy Kawasaki.

Second, Hank Campbell over at ScientificBlogging.com has made a home for my ramblings and provides a very active and large audience of smart science readers. ScientificBlogging partners with LiveScience.com, Space.com and the other Imaginova sites to offer a great end-to-end science news and blogging resource. ScientificBlogging and LiveScience headlines can also be found on science.alltop.com, while Space can be found on, get this, space.alltop.com.

Third, Dave Munger, of Cognitive Daily fame, (psychology.alltop.com), started a unique indexing service at ResearchBlogging.org. When citing an academic article, the Research Blogging site will provide HTML code to include in the post, so that it can be spidered and indexed and then categorized on the RB site. You can see the RB logo and citations on any post where I discuss some academic research. Dave has been a great help answering questions and supporting the site.

And, for a really cool mashup of all of these resources in action, here is a link at Truemors: Sports Viewing Boosts Brain Power, which links to my latest story at ScientificBlogging which links to my home blog here, which includes a citation that indexes it to my page at Research Blogging!!

Finally, thanks to all of you who stop by "80% Mental" to catch up on the latest sport science and sports cognition research. I absolutely enjoy researching, writing and presenting these stories and if you ever have questions or topics you would like covered, just leave me a comment! Don't forget that you can always subscribe to 80% Mental via your favorite news reader or by e-mail.