Archive for the ‘Lifestyle’ Category

What?

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

What? That’s definitely the question that is being answered most at the moment – particularly through Facebook, Google status and Twitter, as in what are you doing right now?

What are you doing?

By and large this is a question that does not usually elicit an interesting response. However in the world of news-reporting – digital media often covers the essential how, who, when and where questions of journalism, because our communication mediums are increasingly location aware, user-specific and time stamped. What is a question that requires actual human input – and in the past 3 years people have been answering it in terms of Facebook status updates, and for the early adopters – by joining the twitterverse.

Yesterday, however, the answer to that burning question reached critical mass and took on historic significance. Whilst some protested and others wondered about what was going on outside their office walls, multi-tasking employees were able to get on with their work whilst receiving a blow by blow account of history unfolding. It has been overstated to the point of cliché that the medium is the message – but yesterday the message made a medium and Twitter found its place in the global setting. Beyond the news-helicopters, simple tweets turned digital enthusiasts into citizen journalists and for once, a multitude of opinions on the same subject were heard. Suddenly all the hype made sense – some of us had tweeted previously to moderate effect, but for most of us not concerned about letting the world into our daily happenings, Twitter just left us scratching our heads.

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Posted in Events, Lifestyle, Technology, Thoughts | View Comments

Breaking Sustainability down into Markets

Sunday, March 29th, 2009

I’m always talking about sustainability, and as awesome as it is to ponder how it will save the planet and create a spiritual transcendence and all that good stuff that makes us feel warm and fuzzy inside, I thought it’d be smart to put a practical edge on the whole thing by taking a look at the actual markets that make up LOHAS (lifestyles of health and sustainability) and what type of numbers are behind them. This movement is growing fast and is creating incredible value in our economy. I believe it will gradually work it’s way into every imaginable vertical and serve to harmonize the economy into a holistic transcendence beyond capitalism. My friend Lee and I like to call it ecolism as I’ve mentioned in past posts. Here’s a breakdown of the current markets of the “sustainable economy”, what products and services they offer, and which ones are growing fastest.

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Posted in Business, Economy, Lifestyle, News | View Comments

Glocal Coupons

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009

With the current state of the economy, the Internet is being shaken down again and I’d like to propose a few thoughts on how it can finally be monetized in the coming age. Web 1.0 was a starter with Amazon, Ebay, and Google being the only survivors, Web 2.0 captured the consumer’s time with Facebook and Twitter, and the next phase of the web will finally bring every imaginable enterprise business online and engaged. And I don’t just mean the big guys, I mean every little local store will develop a web presence because they understand the importance in building their customer base through the online medium, even if they’re just trying to reach people in a small town. This is because they can leverage the established social community platforms and advertising systems, such as community groups and AdSense, to target their services locally… or glocally as we like to say. (more…)

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Posted in Economy, Lifestyle | View Comments

5 Reasons We Should Save The Environment

Friday, January 23rd, 2009

I’m not going to give you the old, if we don’t save the environment, we’re just signing a death wish for our [great]* grandchildren. I’m just going to list out a couple of reasons I give people during conversations on why we should save the environment.. here they are:

 

  1. We would be keeping the bears happy…  I mean seriously.. look at this fellow.  He’s enjoying a little splash in the water without a care in the world.   If we don’t make an effort to save the environment, this is going to be a grumpy bear without any place to go other than your back yard.
     

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Posted in Environment, Lifestyle, Passion, Sustainable, Thoughts | View Comments

Ecolism: Spiritual Entrepreneurship

Wednesday, January 14th, 2009

Innately as human beings, we desire 2 things whether consciously aware of it or not: to feel a connection to something greater than ourselves and to be able to benefit other people and the world around us. This is the essence of spirituality. If you can achieve these 2 things in life, you can cultivate true happiness and peace.

Life will always be a mystery, but can’t we agree the point is to be truly happy and free of suffering? And yet pondering this as an intellectual ideal or meditating on a mountain in Tibet for the rest of your life won’t cut it. We have to somehow feel it and incorporate it into the reality of our lives, which for good or bad largely centers around making money to provide a means to function in society. To many, money is perceived as the root of all evil and focusing on making a lot of it couldn’t possibly allow you to connect to something greater than yourself or benefit other people. It’s too competitive and you have to focus only on yourself or else you’ll be exploited by those that do.

But what if this is all wrong? What if focusing on spiritual growth, connecting to the force that powers you beyond your ego, and cultivating a sense of importance in benefiting other people, will actually give you an edge? What if the world is going through a dramatic shift from a linear system to a cyclical system, a renewable system, where a more, more, me, me mentality will lose, and a holistic, spiritual mentality will win? What will help traditional capitalism transcend into a new form of governance we like to call ecolism?

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Posted in Business, Culture, Economy, Lifestyle, Sustainable | View Comments

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