The early part of the generation, born in the second half of the 1990s, were born during a time of declining birth rates; though the youngest of the generation were born during a baby boomlet linked to the Great Recession of the late 2000s.

Due to media attention, a variety of neologisms are used to describe Generation Z including Generation I, Generation Next, The Internet Generation, Net Generation or iGeneration. Within Strauss and Howe’s generational theory they are known as The New Silent Generation.

On the average they are highly connected, many having had lifelong use of communications and media technologies such as the World Wide Web, instant messaging, text messaging, MP3 players, cellular phones and YouTube, earning them the nickname “digital natives”. Generation Z have grown up in a world with in which single-parent families are commonplace, as well as two-income families.

Conversation offers infinite possibilities. It is great for polishing thoughts and generating new ones. It is unbeatable for beating the blues or forging friendships. The ultimate bond of all personal relationships – whether in business, friendship or marriage – is conversation.

Society provides lavish rewards to those who express themselves well. (Studies show that no single factor better predicts your future income than the size of your vocabulary.) Good talkers routinely ace the interview, get the contract, close the deal, win the girl. Get on with others and you will get on in life – and enjoy it more.

There is a widespread misconception that the best conversationalists are the smoothest talkers. Conversation is not meant to be a performance art or a competition, but an opportunity for mutual appreciation. And the best conversationalists are not the best talkers. They are the best listeners.

Never speak of yourself to others; make them talk about themselves instead. Therein lies the whole art of pleasing. Everyone knows it and everyone forgets it.
- Edmond de Goncourt

The great gift of conversation lies less in displaying it ourselves than in drawing it out in others. He who leaves your company pleased with himself and his own cleverness is perfectly well pleased with you.
- Jean de la Bruyere

A gossip is one who talks to you about others; a bore is one who talks to you about himself; and a brilliant conversationalist is one who talks to you about yourself.
- Lisa Kirk

It only takes a bit of curiosity. The idea is to find out more about the other person’s attitudes, interests, nature and disposition. For too many, however, a verbal exchange is not talking and listening but rather talking and waiting to talk again. You don’t learn much that way. Or score many points.

Some insist they are poor conversationalists because they are introverted or tongue-tied. In some cases, that may be true. But those who struggle may be trying too hard to say the right thing. Far more important is not succumbing to the temptation to say the wrong thing.

Good conversation is about drawing out the other, not delivering a monologue or a position statement. The truth is we are seldom better than our conversation. What you choose to talk about – and how you choose to say it – lays you bare.

That doesn’t mean your conversation needs to be sparkling and original. Nor does it need to have a purpose or a point. Quite the opposite, in fact. The best conversations ramble. They have no pre-destination. It is all about the rhythm and flow.

In sum, good conversation is one of life’s most accessible pleasures. It connects us to one another, forges friendships, increases social esteem, raises our mood, generates goodwill, enhances our information and completes our education. And while prices rise and time shrinks, it is a luxury that remains free to us all.

True, conversation won’t make you richer, thinner, or save your life. But it may save your marriage. As Charles Dickens said, “Never close your lips to those whom you have opened your heart.”

Source: Alex Green, “The Secret of Shelter Island: Money and What Matters”

“It had long since come to my attention that people
of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things
happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”

“Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its
purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so
does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.”

“I have been impressed with the urgency of doing.
Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing
is not enough; we must do.”

“Make your work to be in keeping with your purpose.”

- Leonardo da Vinci

“I am always doing things I can’t do, that’s how
I get to do them.”

“Inspiration exists, but it has to find us
working.”

“I do not seek, I find.”

“Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle
of a plan, in which we must fervently believe,
and upon which we must vigorously act. There is
no other route to success.”

“Action is the foundational key to all success.”

“Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing
to die having left undone.”

“My mother said to me, ‘If you are a soldier, you
will become a general. If you are a monk, you will
become the Pope.’ Instead, I was a painter, and
became Picasso.”

- Pablo Picasso

“One must work and dare if one really wants to live.”

“The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm
terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient
reason for remaining ashore.”

“If you hear a voice within you say “you cannot paint,”
then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.”

“Great things are done by a series of small things
brought together.”

“Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me
from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again.”

- Vincent Van Gogh

For example, the public may be invited to develop a new technology, carry out a design task, refine or carry out the steps of an algorithm, or help capture, systematize or analyze large amounts of data.

The term has become popular with businesses, authors, and journalists as shorthand for the trend of leveraging the mass collaboration enabled by Web 2.0 technologies to achieve business goals. However, both the term and its underlying business models have attracted controversy and criticisms.

The difference between crowdsourcing and open source is that open source production is a cooperative activity initiated and voluntarily undertaken by members of the public. In crowdsourcing the activity is initiated by a client and the work may be undertaken on an individual, as well as a group, basis. So, the key is in the motivations of individuals to participate in the project.

Perceived benefits of crowdsourcing include the following:

The are four types of crowdsourcing strategies:

So, how you employ great people, actually lots of them, and over the place. How to you find and keep great customers, and great suppliers too.
Want to tap into all that brainpower to solve your most important problems? Want to know how to do it right?

Sources: Wiki, CrowdSourcing Blog, Jeff Howe

According to the paper, everybody is making more and more stuff. This helps assure that the recovery “has legs.”
Auto sales, too, came in stronger than expected in March. So it sounds like the recovery has wheels too.
What we want to know: does it have a brain? Who’s buying this stuff and where are they getting the money?

At least the economic model of the bubble era made sense. The producers produced. The consumers consumed. That worked great until the consumers ran out of money. Then, they had to borrow from the producers. And eventually, the whole thing blew up when it became clear that the spenders had borrowed and spent too much, while the producers had expanded and produced too much.

So far, so good. But now, the world economy needs a new model, right?

The consumers can’t really go back to borrowing, can they? Nope. Not without digging themselves deeper in the hole…or actually earning more money. So, the producers can’t exactly go back to producing either, can they? Nope. Not without customers.

Well, who the heck are all these manufacturers making stuff for?

Darned if we know. In theory, there are billions of ready consumers in Asia and Africa. Except they don’t have much money. And don’t have much credit. And don’t have shopping malls. And don’t have any way to get to the malls if they existed.

In India, for example, half the population lives on less than $3 per day. You can do the math yourself…even if they spent every cent on “stuff,” it would mean total spending of $500 billion, more or less – which is less than the US trade deficit in 2007. Of course, they can’t spend their money on ‘stuff’ – they need it just to eat.

On the other hand, India’s middle class is already as big as the middle class in America – and it’s growing fast. But how does it make its money? By producing, we assume. So as it gets wealthier, doesn’t it add to the world’s supply of stuff…as well as consuming it? And since Asia is more of a producer, in general, than a consumer…isn’t it adding to the world’s supply of stuff faster than it consumes stuff? And since labor costs are so low, doesn’t it add more cheap stuff?

The point we are making is that it takes time for one group of consumers to get out of the way and for another group to take its place. Even if you believe that Asian consumers will replace buying from the US and the UK, you still have to admit that this ain’t gonna happen overnight.

First, because Asian would-be consumers need to earn more money. Second, because they need to change their habits – from saving to consumption. Third, because the factories need to switch from making things US consumers want to making things that Asian consumers want. Fourth, because they also need to set up new channels of distribution and sales.

In the meantime, who’s consuming more than he is producing? We don’t know. But someone must be doing so…otherwise all this extra manufacturing just adds to the world’s inventory of unsold merchandise.

This is just a reminder about the way an economy actually works. The meddlers in China think they can stimulate production. The meddlers in America think they can stimulate consumption. Then they accuse each of “manipulation.”

We’ve seen at least four or five different arguments about what the value of the yuan ‘should’ be. One hundred and thirty Congressmen think they know. Paul Krugman thinks he knows. Everyone seems to think he knows. But the truth is – none of them knows. Nobody can know. Only the market knows. And it isn’t talking. It can’t talk. Its lips have been sealed by government order.

The yuan is supposed to be too low because it is linked to the dollar. There is no logical reason to say that the yuan is too low at all. You might just as well say the dollar is too high. But once you allow yourself the fantasy of silencing the markets and reorganizing the world’s commerce, the sky’s the limit.

Source: conservatives.com

. Start with the conclusion!

Echoing Steven Covey’s 2nd habit, it is critical to have the end in mind. In the case
of your speech, ask yourself what’s your message? Are you convincing the board to
say yes to the new IT project? Are you inspiring your committee to work as team?
Are you persuading your customers to buy your product? No matter what speech
you make, however long or short it is, you ALWAYS have a message!

Sidenote: If your speech is a relatively short one (say 5-10 mins), focus on just
one message. In that way, your audience has a higher chance of remembering it.

. Three points max

What are three reasons why this IT project is critical to the growth of your company?
What are three ways your team can follow their heart?
What are three problems that can be solved by using your product?

For every point you made, substantiate with an example or even tell a mini story to
underscore your point.

. Work on an attention grabber

The first 30 seconds of your speech is the most important as your audience will
subconsciously decide if they should listen to you for the next 9 minutes and 30
seconds. So you should always aim to grab their attention right from the start. It can
come in many forms. Here is a list of attention grabbers that you can try for size.

Startling fact
Expert Opinion
Quotation
Dramatic gesture
Rhetorical question
Videoclip
Joke
Anecdote
Reference to a current event
Live demostration

My personal favorite is the use of rhetorical questions because it gets the audience
thinking. There was once I gave a keynote speech that inspires the audience to live
for the moment. I started my keynote with three questions.

When was the last time you sat down and saw the entire sunset?

When was the last time you have ever taste your food?

When was the last time you have called your mum and tell her how much you love her?

That immediately set the tone of my keynote. My guess is that most of them have
not done the above three things for a long long time. Asking these rhetorical
questions gets them interested to know what I have to say next.

Together with your attention grabber is an answer to the following question – “Why
should the audience listen to you?” or “What’s in it for them?” This will create a stake
for them and you will have them eating from your hands.

Lastly…

Practice makes permanence! I cannot emphasize the importance of practice! Try out
the techniques as often as you can. You will find yourself getting increasingly
competent. With the extra time at hand, you can then focus on improving the quality
of your speech or honing your delivery skills. In no time, you will be on your way to
become a highly effective speaker!

“It usually takes more than three weeks to write a good impromptu speech.” American writer Mark Twain

“The very best impromptu speeches are the ones written well in advance.” American writer Ruth Gordon

“Always be shorter than anybody dared to hope!” Lord Reading, English politician

“Be sincere; be brief; be seated.” President Franklin D. Roosevelt

With these factors in mind, let us look at 10 commonly used attention grabbers.
1. Ask a question
2. Use an anecdote or story
3. Give a definition
4. Use a quote
5. Use an analogy
6. Use humor
7. Relate a personal experience
8. Give a demonstration
9. Do a survey
10. Give a quiz

Source: communicatebetter.blogspot.com
Advanced Public Speaking by Ruth Livingston

So, where to invest in 2010? A mattress? Real estate? Apple? Many experts are predicting an economic landscape they call the “New Normal,” with slow growth and less-than-spectacular investment returns. But that doesn’t mean that the space between your mattress and box spring is your best investment. In fact, with interest rates at or close to all-time lows, your best moves in 2010 may be to refinance your mortgage and find ways to shield your income from taxes. And there will be plenty of investing opportunities — there always are. Look for them in stocks that pay dividends, short-term U.S. government bonds, and foreign stocks and bonds. To protect yourself from inflation, a dose of commodities and Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS) might be a good idea as well.

Here’s one inescapable reality of 2010 and beyond: The U.S. government is looking for money, and affluent taxpayers are likely to be the easy target. Credit card companies will also be looking for new ways to get your money. We’ll give you strategies to protect yourself against both, including an explanation of the new Roth IRA rules and the home buyer tax credit. And keep an eye on the federal estate tax — opponents call it the “death tax.” It’s supposed to vanish in 2010, but it’s possible Congress will keep it alive.

You’ll want to take advantage of the breaks for borrowers, invest in a few key mutual funds or ETFs and prepare yourself for battles with the IRS and the banks. Read the stories below to learn the smartest money moves for 2010.

Stock Predictions for 2010

Whether you’re a full-fledged “new normal” believer or not, U.S. blue chips are likely to offer exceptional opportunities in 2010. As MoneyWatch editor-in-chief Eric Schurenberg recently pointed out, GMO chairman Jeremy Grantham calls high-quality stocks with stable cash flows and low debt levels the “only free lunch” in the market now. You can buy a mutual fund that specializes in such companies, such as the Jensen Portfolio (JENSX), or you can hedge your bet by owning a low-cost index fund such as The Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund (VTSMX). As the name implies, you capture the returns of the total market, but since it’s top-heavy with the largest, most-stable companies, you’ll still benefit if they do indeed outperform.

One thing most observers agree on for 2010: Foreign securities will likely do better than domestics. Guillen recommends keeping at least a third of your money “in foreign stocks and bonds of countries that will be liable to grow quickly over the next five to 10 years.” International stock funds with excellent track records and below-average expenses include Oakmark International (OAKIX), Janus Overseas (JAOSX), and Vanguard International Growth (VWIGX). They’ve all beaten more than 80 percent of their peers over the past 10 years.

You can combine high-quality U.S. stocks and foreign exposure by owning U.S.-based multinationals that generate much of their profits overseas. To do this, you can take the index route, owning an ETF such as the iShares S&P 100 Index (OEF). The Jensen Portfolio offers similar exposure. Jensen co-manager Robert McIver has noticed a migration towards such stocks in his fund, due to a weaker dollar and changing corporate strategies. “The percentage of our companies’ foreign revenues has grown from 33 percent two years ago to 50 percent today,” says McIver.

If the slow-growth thesis proves accurate, high-quality dividend-paying stocks should do well in 2010, after lagging in 2009. “One of the underappreciated lessons of equity investing is the value of compounded income from dividends,” says Swanson. “In the stock market, 50 percent of investors’ returns have come from [compounded] dividends historically.” Two ways to buy a basket of dividend-paying stocks: Vanguard Equity Income Fund (VEIPX), with a 2.52 percent yield, and SPDR S&P Dividend ETF (SDY), with a 4.02 percent dividend yield.

Bonds Predictions for 2010

Interest rates on U.S. government bonds are at historic lows, which suggests they have nowhere to go but up. As a result, bond investors should stick with high-quality, short maturity bonds or funds that hold them. They won’t gain as much as long-term bonds if rates fall even farther, but they’ll lose a lot less if rates climb. Consider Vanguard Short Term Bond Index (VBISX), which owns a mix of government and corporate bonds and has beaten 90 percent of its peers over the past 15 years.

If you prefer to own nothing but U.S. government bonds, buy an ETF that holds Treasury Inflation-Protected bonds, such as iShares Barclays TIPS Bond ETF (TIP). To help your portfolio benefit from a falling dollar, consider a foreign-bond ETF such as iShares S&P/Citi 1-3 Years International Treasury Bond ETF (ISHG), which purchases foreign government bonds exclusively.

Commodities Predictions for 2010

Inflation may be low now, but if the global economy continues to strengthen in 2010, it’s likely to start heading up. Since commodities tend to rise as the value of a buck falls, you may want to keep 5 to 10 percent of your portfolio in commodities. MoneyWatch’s primer on commodity investing can help you do this wisely. Two ideas: the PowerShares DB Commodity Index ETF (DBC) and the Credit Suisse Commodity Return Strategy Fund (CRSOX). Both track commodity futures indexes that reflect actual commodity prices, rather than investing in stocks of commodity producers or distributors. Historically, commodity futures have been a better way to diversify, since movements in commodity stocks tend to be more correlated with the broad stock market.

Financial Forecast for 2010

* An inflationary cycle triggered by a massive increase in the monetary base
* A reversal in equities triggered by the unwinding of monetary easing by the Fed or other central banks
* A shift from a weakening dollar trend to a strengthening dollar trend if the Fed decides to tighten. This would affect our gold and emerging market allocations in particular
* Sovereign debt default by a major world player or a significant downgrading of sovereign debt (the most likely candidates being Greece and California)
* Rising mortgage rates as Treasury yields rise. This would have a particularly nasty effect on commercial real estate and the US banking sector (which still holds massive amounts of commercial real estate debt)
* A geopolitical upset such as a conflict in Iran. This could put serious strain on US-Sino relations and seriously affect the commodities market

THE GIFT OF WORK: The Family Values Journal & Key
It takes a lot of work to keep things running well – whether it’s family life, a business or a volunteer organization. In every group of people, there are usually people who stand out for doing more than their share of the work. They are working hard and know the power of a job well done — and they deserve to get a little recognition for it. Use this Certificate of Hard Work to show them how you recognize and appreciate the efforts they are putting forth. Add a special thank you or even a treat to give along with the certificate to further sweeten the surprise. It’s the type of thank you that works every time!

THE GIFT OF PROBLEMS: Words of Wisdom
In The Ultimate Gift, Red Stevens recalls, “One of the great errors in my life was sheltering many people from life’s problems. If we are not allowed to deal with small problems, we will be destroyed by slightly larger ones.” We each have problems of all sizes in our lives, but it’s the spirit in which we greet them that truly determines their magnitude. Use this day to look for a way in which you can help someone discover this important insight – and also share with them the other inspiring gifts you have received from The Ultimate Gift.
We have so much to learn from those around us, especially those who have lived enough to understand how to handle difficult situations. Wisdom has the ability to turn obstacles into opportunities from which we learn and grow. Ask an older member of your family to share their “story”

THE GIFT OF FRIENDS: I’m Always with You
Friends are people we can count on through thick and thin. They are the ones who support us when we make good choices and tell us the truth when we don’t.
Friends bring us joy and remind us that life is meant to be shared. They feel a lot like family but there’s one big difference – while we can’t choose the family we are born into, we can definitely choose the friends that surround us.
But remember that you have to be a friend to have a friend, and friendships must be nurtured to keep growing to their fullest. In the spirit of The Ultimate Gift, Once Upon A Family® has created a special Friendship Card so you can remind your friends of how valuable they are to you. Download, print and fill out this card then give it to friends as an unexpected surprise.

THE GIFT OF GIVING: Gift of Values
In The Ultimate Gift, Red Stevens explains, “Conventional wisdom would say that the less you give, the more you have. The converse is true. The more you give, the more you have. Abundance creates the ability to give; giving creates abundance. This principle is true in every area of your life.”
There are very few acts of goodness in our lives that compare to the act of giving. That’s because true giving is completely selfless. It comes with no strings attached. Giving is about focusing on the needs of another while leaving your own goals and desires behind. Giving reminds us of how rich our lives are and how easily we can make a real impact on those around us.

THE GIFT OF GRATITUDE: Thanksgiving Album & Leaves
It’s so easy to get caught up in all of the frustrations and disappointments that are part of normal daily life. Sometimes we need a little reminder to help us stay focused on all of the wonderful things we have. Ask each family member to write 10 things they are grateful for on their own personal Golden List. You can help the little ones by writing it for them or having them draw symbolic pictures. Hang these Golden Lists in places where you’re sure to see them everyday, such as the bathroom wall, the bedroom doorknob or the kitchen bulletin board. This simple tradition will make being grateful a daily habit for everyone in your family.

THE GIFT OF FAMILY: Family Tree Poster & Leaves
Then, every Friday night, one member of your family pulls out a card and announces which activity the family will enjoy together over the weekend. It’s a simple, spontaneous way to connect and grow closer – plus have fun while you do so!

THE GIFT OF LEARNING: Family Tree Booklets
“In Your Shoes” is a fun activity developed by Once Upon A Family to help your family better appreciate and understand the unique lives of each one of you. Put everyone’s name in a hat and have each family member draw a name. Each person then uses a piece of paper and a marker or crayon to trace the foot of the family member selected, and then writes out three or more things that make that person different from them. These traits could include, for example, the person’s position in the family, what’s important to them, what they worry about, or what makes them happy. Talk over these differences together and create a dialogue about how important it is to respect and appreciate each other’s own special traits. Every member of the family will have a better idea of what it takes to live “In Their Shoes”. And, together, your family will have enjoyed yet another rewarding step on the lifelong journey made possible by The Gift Of Learning.

THE GIFT OF MONEY: The Birthday Book
Money is a confusing thing. Everyone says it’s not important and it can’t buy happiness, yet many act like money is very important and work as if they will be happy only if they had more. We do need a certain amount of money to satisfy our basic needs. But, as we learn in The Ultimate Gift, too much money can make people just as unhappy as not having enough. Today, as you celebrate how your efforts have helped to support a charitable cause, make it a point to explore the Gift Of Money with your family using the three conversation starter cards provided by Once Upon A Family®. They’ll help you work together to share and shape your ideas on what’s truly valuable to each of you. Then, enrich the conversation by also discussing other acts of giving you plan to do as a family in the months ahead.

THE GIFT OF LAUGHTER
Happy people generally have a positive, joyful outlook on life. They tend to look for and think about the positive aspects of people, things, situations, and events. They can laugh at themselves and brush off little setbacks that others will brood over for days. Even in our saddest moments, laughter can be the best medicine to heal our heart and mend our minds. Start a healthy family habit that will help everyone develop a more positive outlook on life. Make the dinner hour, when you are all together, a time to share with each other the best part of your day. Take turns and really listen. This simple ritual expresses a lot about who we are and what makes us happy. Use the Joy Chart to stimulate some healthy competition. Anyone who can think of three or more good things that happened to them that day earns a happy face on the chart. Whoever has the most happy faces by their name wins the best prize of all: a life full of joy and all the good things that come to someone who looks for them!

THE GIFT OF A DAY: Family Fun Box & Family Fun Pad
Although spending time together as a family is one of the most important things we do in our lives, so many other things seem to get in the way. In this modern, fast-paced life, we all need to step back and make the effort to be together. Start a tradition that reminds you of The Gift of a Day all year long, thanks to this family-connection concept from Once Upon A Family®. Place 52 stones in a jar to represent the 52 precious weeks you have to enjoy with your loved ones during the year. Remove one stone each week at a time when the family has gathered together, and share your best moments from that week. Just seeing the jar of stones sitting on your table will make you think twice about how you spend your days and how to make the most of the little time we do have together. And, to add to the sense of connection, make a day out of choosing the stones that will represent your year of togetherness. It’s an unforgettable family experience.

THE GIFT OF DREAMS: Time Capsule
Dreams are an important part of who we are as individuals. The ability to dream and believe in a dream is the foundation for success in every aspect of life. People who accomplish great things all begin with a dream, while those who don’t chase their dream are often disappointed. When we allow the Gift of Dreams into our lives and summon the courage to follow our dreams, we begin to experience life at its fullest. The key to making dreams come true is making them real. This means putting your dreams down on paper, sharing them with others and actually planning the steps you can take to move closer to making your dreams come true. Use this Share A Dream Card to tell a friend – whether that’s a spouse, a sibling or a co-worker – about your dream so they can help support your quest…and enjoy being a part of your accomplishment.

THE GIFT OF LOVE: Dear Sweet Child Letter Box (The Ultimate Gift)
One of the most precious gifts you can give someone you love is your time, especially in today’s busy world. When was the last time you invited your spouse out to dinner or took your mother to lunch? Can you imagine how special it would be if you invited your daughter on a ‘date’ where you help teach her how a man should treat a lady? Or how about planning a fishing trip with your grandson – just the two of you? Couples need to make time for their relationship to keep their love alive and strong. And children crave the one-on-one time that makes them feel cherished. None of us, no matter what our age, ever outgrows the need to feel loved and appreciated. Your time is a Gift Of Love and it’s easy to give. Use this invitation from Once Upon A Family® to plan a date with someone special in your life and let them know just how much they mean to you.

Sources:
The Ultimate Life (The Ultimate Series #2) by Jim Stovall
The Ultimate Gift (2007) DVD
El Ultimo Regalo (Spanish Edition)

My take is only slightly different: In my experience, all of us – one-hundred percent of us – spend the vast majority of our time on Earth asleep. Living in our self-constructed ruts, running on autopilot; sleepwalking through our lives, our relationships, our careers.

It is only when an event stops us … jars us out of our slumber … that we have a moment of vivid clarity. In those fleeting seconds, we are truly alive, fully sentient, totally self-aware. And for those few heartbeats, we are absolutely astonished by the reality of our existence.

For me at least, Thanksgiving has always been one of these moments. As long as I can remember, I’ve used this holiday to jar myself from my slumber; to marvel at the miracle of life and of consciousness. And as if the gift of existence alone isn’t enough, to allow myself to be amazed at the many other miracles that have made my life so rich and rewarding.

There are so many other reasons for me to give thanks this year: For my health and the health and safety of those I love. For the friendship and loyalty of my team. For my faith in God.
So, what are you thanksful for?

When’s the last time you heard somebody in the media or education system say, “We need to build up entrepreneurs,
because new businesses will become the foundation of our communities” ?

For all those who assume us money-grubbing entrepreneurs are driven by greed, selfishness and ego, let me share with you the results of a study by the Center for Data Analysis and the Heritage Foundation:

Charitable Giving by Household Income, based on IRS data:

Income Class Entrepreneurs Non-Entrepreneurs

$65,480+ 3.23% 2.42%
$37,381-$65,480 3.47% 1.84%
$21,661-$37,380 3.29% 1.14%
$10,661-$21,660 2.25% 0.74%
$0-$10,660 1.55% 0.35%
Average 2.53% 1.27%

Looks like entrepreneurs are TWICE as generous as everyone else. ESPECIALLY the ones with low incomes(!)
Why is that? What’s going on here?
It’s real simple.

Most people only understand scarcity. Entrepreneurs understand abundance.

My experience of entrepreneurs is we overwhelmingly tend to take care of everybody else before we worry about ourselves.

My friend, if you tapped every resource to pay everyone, if you went to bed not knowing how tomorrow’s bills were going to get paid, then at least you had faith in the goodness of providence and the power of imagination and resourcefulness to find a solution.

THIS is why people in the modern world have three meals a day and microwave ovens and beds to sleep in and health care
and straight teeth and computers and movies and modern music.

Because… somebody had faith in the power of ingenuity. They dreamed and schemed and innovated and gave until it hurt. Believing that somehow, somewhere, success would show up when it was most needed.

None of us can ever predict when or how solution to some vexing problem will present itself. We just have faith that it will.

I don’t know what problem you face today, but I know that one of two things is true:

1) Someone somewhere has already solved it, or
2) The ability to solve it WILL be given to you

Most of all I want to salute you in pursuing a journey that most people never even have the courage to undertake.

When you find the success you seek, you deserve it.

The talking heads on TV may not appreciate us. But we appreciate each other. And I appreciate you.

Source: Perry Marshall’s Daily Renaissance Newsletter

Basically, the U3-X is a stool with a unique directional wheel system that allows it to travel diagonally, as well as right, left, forward, and backward – a robotic unicycle if you will.

When I read the article and saw how the device worked, I thought, “Nice technology, but stupid… who would ever buy one of those things?”

It reminded me of the General Motors joint venture with Segway to develop the PUMA, or Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility (pictured below), which was lovingly described by planetmoron.com as follows:

Combining the range and speed of an assisted living community golf cart with the cargo-carrying capacity of a pair of bike shorts, the PUMA encompasses much of what the federal government hopes to get out of its investments in the automobile industry. A vehicle that is small, green, and will make people want to take public transportation instead.

It turns out, however, that I judged Honda too quickly. Honda didn’t build the U3-X thinking people would actually buy it. Rather, the U3-X is more about showing off an engineering breakthrough. In this case, Honda contributes to the legs vs. wheels debate among roboticists that has been going on for years.

And therein lies the difference between a company like Honda and a company like GM. Honda is wildly successful (although it has taken sales and earnings hits recently) because of its forward thinking and long-term (I’ve heard 200-year) strategic plan. GM, on the other hand, which thinks people are actually going to show up and buy the PUMA, is a company stuck in the past. (The director of the PUMA project for GM readily admitted: “There’s no technology that has to be invented here. It’s really just putting the pieces together.”)

Although Honda appears slightly overvalued at the moment in terms of fundamentals and GM does not currently trade, I certainly know which one of these companies I will be investing in a little way down the road. And you should too.

DAVID GALLAND: Could you provide us a quick introduction to generational research?

NEIL HOWE: We think that generations move history along and prevent society from suffering too long under the excesses of any particular generation. People often assume that every new generation will be a linear extension of the last one. You know, that after Generation X comes Generation Y. They might further expect Generation Y to be like Gen X on steroids – even more willing to take risk and with even more edginess in the culture. Yet the Millennial Generation that followed Gen X is not like that at all. In fact, no generation is like the generation that immediately precedes it.

Instead, every generation turns the corner and to some extent compensates for the excesses and mistakes of the midlife generation that is in charge when they come of age. This is necessary, because if generations kept on going in the same direction as their predecessors, civilization would have gone off a cliff thousands of years ago.

So this is a necessary process, a process that is particularly important in modern nontraditional societies, where generations are free to transform institutions according to their own styles and proclivities.

In our research we have found that, in modern societies, four basic types of generations tend to recur in the same order.

DAVID: The four generational archetypes. Can you provide a sketch of each for those of our readers unfamiliar with your work?

HOWE: Absolutely.

The first is what we call the Hero archetype. Hero generations are usually protectively raised as kids. They come of age at a time of emergency or Crisis and become known as young adults for helping society resolve the Crisis, hopefully successfully. Once the Crisis is resolved, they become institutionally powerful in midlife and remain focused on outer-world challenges and solutions. In their old age, they are greeted by a spiritual Awakening, a cultural upheaval fired by the young. This is the typical life story of a Hero generation.

One example of the Hero archetype is the G.I. Generation, the soldiers of World War II, who became an institutional powerhouse after the war and then in old age confronted the young hippies and protesters of the 1960s. Going back in American history, we have seen many other Hero archetypes, for example the generation of Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, and President Monroe. These were the heroes of the American Revolution, who in old age were greeted by the second Great Awakening and a new youth generation of fiery Prophets.

After the Hero archetype comes the Artist archetype. Artist generations have a very different location in history — they are the children of the Crisis. For Hero generations, child protection rises from first cohort to last. By the time Artists come along, child protection reaches suffocating levels. Artists come of age as young adults during the post-Crisis era, when conformity seems like the best path to success, and they tend to be collectively risk averse. Artists see themselves as providing the expertise and refinement that can both improve and adorn the enormous new institutional innovations that have been forged during the Crisis. They typically experience a cultural Awakening in midlife, and their lives speed up as the culture transforms.

A great example of the Artist archetype is the so-called “Silent” Generation, the post World War II young adults who married early and moved into gleaming new suburbs in the 1950s, went through their midlife crises in the ’70s and ’80s, and are today the very affluent, active seniors retiring into gated lifestyle communities.

The third archetype is what we call a Prophet archetype. The most recent example of this archetype is the Baby Boom Generation. Prophet generations grow up as children during a period of post-Crisis affluence and come of age during a period of cultural upheaval. They become moralistic and values-obsessed midlife leaders and parents, and as they enter old age, they steer the country into the next great outer-world social or political Crisis. Boomers, for example, grew up during the Postwar American High, came of age during the Consciousness Revolution of the 1960s and ’70s, and are now entering old age.

Finally there is what we call a Nomad archetype. Nomads are typically raised as children during Awakenings, the great cultural upheavals of our history. Whereas the Prophet archetype is indulgently raised as children, the Nomad archetype is underprotected and completely exposed as children. They learn early that they can’t trust basic institutions to look out for their best interests and come of age as free agents whose watchword is individualism. They are the great realists and pragmatists in our nation’s history.

The most recent example of the Nomad archetype is Generation X. This generation grew up during the social turmoil of the 1960s and ’70s and are now beginning to enter midlife. They are the ones that know how to get things done on the ground. They are the stay-at-home dads and security moms trying to give their kids more of a childhood than they themselves had. Their burden is that they tend not to trust large institutions and do not have a strong connection to public life. They forge their identity and value system by “going it alone” and staying off the radar screen of government. It could be very interesting to see the rest of the life story of this generation, particularly as they take over leadership positions.

DAVID: Could you tell us the general age ranges of these archetypes now?

HOWE: One Hero generation that is alive today is the G.I. Generation, born between 1901 and 1924. They came of age with the New Deal, World War II, and the Great Depression. They are today in their mid-80s and beyond, and their influence is waning.

Today’s other example of a Hero archetype is the Millennial Generation, born from 1982 to about 2003 or 2004. These are today’s young people, who are just beginning to be well known to most Americans. They fill K-12 schools, colleges, graduate schools, and have recently begun entering the workplace. We associate them with dramatic improvements in youth behaviors, which are often underreported by the media. Since Millennials have come along, we’ve seen huge declines in violent crime, teen pregnancy, and the most damaging forms of drug abuse, as well as higher rates of community service and volunteering. This is a generation that reminds us in many respects of the young G.I.s nearly a century ago, back when they were the first boy scouts and girl scouts between 1910 and 1920.

DAVID: Then following the Hero, we have the Artist, right?

HOWE: Yes. As I mentioned earlier, one example of that archetype is the Silent Generation, born between 1925 and 1942. This generation was too young to remember anything about America before the Great Crash of 1929, and too young to be of fighting age during World War II.

That 1925 birth year is filled with people like William F. Buckley and Bobby Kennedy, first-wave Silent who just missed World War II. Many of them were actually in the camps in California waiting for the invasion of Japan when they heard that the war was over. Part of their generational experience is that sense of just barely missing something big. Surveys show that this generation does not like to call themselves “senior citizens.” They did not fight in World War II. They did not build the A bomb. They are more like “senior partners.” Unlike G.I.s, they are flexible elders, focused on the needs of others. Many of them are highly engaged in the family activities of their children and grandchildren. In politics, they are today’s elder advisors, not powerhouse leaders.

There is a new generation of the Artist archetype just now beginning to arrive. They started being born, we think, around 2004 or 2005. We did a contest on our website to choose a name for this new generation, and the winner was Homeland Generation, reflecting the fact that they are being incredibly well protected. So we are tentatively calling them the Homelanders.

This generation will have no memory of anything before the financial meltdown of 2008 and the events that are about to unfold in America. If our research is correct, this generation’s childhood will be a time of urgency and rapid historical change. Unlike the Millennials, who will remember childhood during the good times of 1980s and ’90s, the Homelanders will recall their childhood as a time of national crisis.

So, those are the two examples today of the Hero archetype, and two examples of the Artist archetype.

DAVID: What about the Prophet and the Nomad generations?

HOWE: There is only one Prophet archetype generation alive today: the Boomer Generation. We define them as being born between 1943 and 1960. Those born in 1943 would have been part of the free-speech movement at Berkeley in 1964, the first fiery class whose peers include Bill Bradley, Newt Gingrich, and Oliver North. The last cohorts of this generation came of age with President Carter in the Iran Hostage Crisis.

For the Nomad archetype, we again have only one example alive today, and that is Generation X. We define Gen Xers as being born between 1961 and 1981. Actually, there may be a few members of the earlier Nomad generation still around – those of the Lost Generation born from 1883 to 1900, but today they would be around 110. This was the generation that grew up during the third Great Awakening, the doughboys who went through World War I. They were the generation that put the “roar” into the “Roaring ’20s” – the rum runners, barnstormers, and entrepreneurs of that period. They were big risk-takers.

DAVID: Is the Millennial Generation the next group up in terms of controlling or being a powerful force in society?

HOWE: It depends what you mean by a powerful force in society.

DAVID: Who is going to be in the driver’s seat?

HOWE: Let me put it this way. The generation that is about to be in the driver’s seat in terms of leadership is Generation X, the group born 1961 to 1981. In fact, we now have our first Gen-X President, Barack Obama, who was born in 1961 and who is in every way a Gen Xer, despite being born at the very early edge of his generation. His fragmented family upbringing, with his father leaving while he was young and his mother moving all over the world, is typical of the Gen X life story. A telling anecdote from his biography is that, when he arrived at Columbia University, he spent his first night in New York sleeping in an alley because no one had arranged to have an apartment open for him.

His life story has a “dazed and confused” aspect. He made his own way against a background of adult neglect and lack of structure. It’s interesting that he is the first leader in America to call himself “post-Boomer.” As a matter of fact, he talks regularly about how he intends to put an end to everything dysfunctional about Boomer politics: the polarization, the culture wars, the scorched-earth rhetoric, the identity politics, all of that. I understand a lot of people do not believe he can actually do this, but it’s interesting that this is the rhetoric he chooses. That rhetoric is one reason why the vast majority of Millennials voted for him.

Obama is the opening wedge of Gen Xers who will assume very high leadership posts. They are not yet the senior generals in control of the military, but they are taking over the reins of government and, of course, the top spots in American businesses.

Source: Casey Research
Other References:
Lost Generation (1883–1900)
Greatest Generation (1901–1924)
Silent Generation (1925–1942)
Baby Boomer (1943–1960)
Generation X (1961–1981)
Millennial Generation (1982–2001)
Generation Z (2001–?)

Source: Nightingale

“Do you wish to be great? Then begin by being. Do you desire to construct a vast and lofty fabric? Think first about the foundations of humility. The higher your structure is to be, the deeper must be its foundation.”

“Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.”

“If two friends ask you to judge a dispute, don’t accept, because you will lose one friend; on the other hand, if two strangers come with the same request, accept because you will gain one friend.”

“If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.”

“Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.”

Saint Augustine

—

“For it is in giving that we receive.”

“Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.”

“Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”

“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is Hatred, let me sow Love.
Where there is Injury, Pardon.
Where there is Doubt, Faith.
Where there is Despair, Hope.
Where there is Darkness, Light, and
Where there is Sadness, Joy.

“O Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much
seek to be consoled as to console;
To be understood, as to understand;
To be loved, as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
And it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.”

St. Francis of Assisi

—

“It is not hard to obey when we love the one whom we obey.”

“Teach us to give and not to count the cost.”

“The safest and most suitable form of penance seems to be that which causes pain in the flesh but does not penetrate to the bones, that is, which causes suffering but not sickness.”

“True, I am in love with suffering, but I do not know if I deserve the honor.”

“We should always be disposed to believe that that which appears white is really black, if the hierarchy of the Church so decides.”

Saint Ignatius
—

“Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.”

“It’s not how much we give but how much love we put into giving.”

“I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much.”

“Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.”

“Everybody today seems to be in such a terrible rush, anxious for greater developments and greater riches and so on, so that children have very little time for their parents. Parents have very little time for each other, and in the home begins the disruption of peace of the world.”

“We must have a real living determination to reach holiness. ”I will be a saint” means I will despoil myself of all that is not God; I will strip my heart of all created things; I will live in poverty and detachment; I will renounce my will, my inclinations, my whims and fancies, and make myself a willing slave to the will of God.”

Mother Teresa 1910-1997, Albanian-born Roman Catholic Missionary

—
Sources:
Poet Seers
Brain Quotes
Great Quotes

Recommended by Octavio Urzua at octavio@audiobookslearning.com

So, what is your favorite Catholic quote?
Give me your comment down below.

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Imagine cavemen sitting in comfort before a fire in a communal cave being urged by their mates to go hunting for food on a cold, rainy, winter day. They are being called on to make a sacrifice. They are being asked to give up the comfort of their cave temporarily for greater rewards. Of course, there is initial resistance. But by accepting the task, they discover their rewards far outweigh the comfort they temporarily set aside. For they will come to experience the joy of victory over the foul weather, the exhilaration that follows a successful hunt, the praise of their mates and offspring, the sharpening of their survival skills, the camaraderie of working as a team, and the intense pleasure of returning to the cave.

Life has changed in many ways since the cave dwellers. Yet, in many ways it remains the same. After all, we are bound by an immutable law of the universe that states ALL ACHIEVEMENTS REQUIRE SACRIFICES. Those who refuse to make sacrifices refuse to grow. They refuse to succeed. They refuse to discover the joy of accomplishment. They refuse to establish meaning and purpose in their lives. And when they do so, they pay a heavy price. For the pain of future failure will be far greater than any discomfort a sacrifice would have required. Don’t join the ranks of those who have yet to learn that it’s not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us successful.

We are social creatures. We depend on one another. We cannot achieve our goals without the help of others. Yet, others have their own agendas, goals, and interests. So, how can we work together without compromising? To succeed, we need to learn that we have to let go of one thing to gain another. We have to understand that sacrifice, or doing what we don’t want to get what we do want, is inexorably enmeshed in life. The extent to which we are willing to sacrifice controls the extent to which we will be successful. Or, as James Allen (1864 ~ 1912) wrote, “He who would accomplish little must sacrifice little; he who would achieve much must sacrifice much; he who would attain highly must sacrifice greatly.”

Most of us realize this, but before we can make a sacrifice, we have to overcome the resistance to doing so. How can we make our task easier? How can we reduce the sting? The greatest favor we can do for ourselves is change our perspective. That is, change the way we look at things. The problem is the word SACRIFICE has a negative nuance. It implies making an effort, doing what we don’t want to, and undergoing pain. Why not put a positive spin on it. Why not focus on the beautiful things suggested by the word?

For example, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 ~ 1882) had this to say, “Self-sacrifice is the real miracle out of which all the reported miracles grow.” So, instead of calling something a sacrifice, why don’t we call it a MIRACLE? Think about it for a moment. We are the only animals that can willingly do what we don’t want to do. That is a miraculous power. Sacrifice is the miracle that makes great things possible.

The word SACRIFICE is made up of SACRI and FICIO, which means TO MAKE HOLY. So, when we make sacrifices, we are sanctifying our actions, for whenever we raise ourselves to a higher level, we are bringing ourselves closer to our Creator. Rather than looking at sacrifice as something negative, look at it as a miracle, a holy act, a heroic act, a joyous, creative act, the means to our goal, an investment in the future, and a step to greatness. Look at it as a commitment and determination to succeed. When we look at it in these ways, it becomes much more palatable. When seen in this light, we realize that sacrifice is not about LOSS but about GAIN.

Another way of looking at sacrifice is as a source of happiness. And the greater the struggle that sacrifice entails, the greater the happiness that follows. Consider the words of the American Women’s Suffrage Leader, Olympia Brown (1835 ~ 1926), who said, “He who never sacrificed a present to a future good or a personal to a general one can speak of happiness only as the blind do of colors.” Yes, those who refuse to let go of their present, transient comfort or pleasure are blind, and don’t know happiness. Their refusal to sacrifice defeats the very purpose of their being. For we are here to experience endless growth, joy, and freedom, all of which are realized by acts of sacrifice.

Yet another way to look at sacrifice is as service. Personal sacrifice for our own improvement is a holy act, but sacrificing for others, for their enrichment, as a parent does for a child, is the holiest of acts. Such sacrifices breed loyalty from those we serve and crown us with abundant blessings. To the enlightened soul, serving others isn’t seen as a sacrifice. Rather, it is viewed as joyful giving.

Those who reject sacrifices, remain enslaved by their own weaknesses. American Author Bruce Barton (1886 ~ 1967) wrote, “What a curious phenomenon it is that you can get men to die for the liberty of the world who will not make the little sacrifice that is needed to free themselves from their own individual bondage.” It is bizarre, isn’t it, that some young men and women are willing to make the supreme sacrifice for their country, yet hesitate to sacrifice small things for their own welfare and happiness.

Everyone would like to achieve great things, but the ordinary person sees only the sacrifices that must be made and gives up the struggle. The rash person sees just the prize and jumps into the fray without enough preparation and loses the fight. But the wise see both the difficulties, which they carefully overcome, and the prize, which they win. Once you know what needs to be done, don’t delay, as many prizes have been lost not because of the inability to act, but the failure to act quickly enough.

Willingness to sacrifice is a sign of a strong character and is to be encouraged. A German saying makes this same point, “When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, everything is lost.” While we can rightfully be proud of our many accomplishments because of the sacrifices we have made, let’s not forget the sacrifices made for us by others. So, let our achievements be marked by a feeling of gratitude and not one of smugness.

Sometimes, despite the sacrifices we make, we do not reach our goal. If we are stuck in a quagmire, making no progress, it may be time to change direction. After all, persistently pursuing something that was not meant to be merely stands in the way of going after another, even more valuable, dream. Besides, sometimes the best win is to lose. How many times have your past ‘failures’ turned out to be blessings? It has happened in the past and will continue to happen. So be prepared for it and remain upbeat, changing course whenever necessary. And when you do ‘fail,’ use the accompanying feelings of disappointment and pain to empathize with others and offer them encouragement. By approaching life with open eyes and an open mind and heart, we can change ‘negative’ events into positive occurrences. Don’t think ‘sacrifice;’ think joy, growth, and freedom!

Source: Chuck Gallozzi

A theologian, essayist, orator and poet, Emerson is variously described as America’s own philosopher, our first literary giant, the father of the environmental movement, and the founder of what literary critic Harold Bloom calls “the American religion,” a distinctive blend of individualism and self-reliance.

Emerson’s philosophy, Transcendentalism, began as a ferment in the Unitarian church. It was not a religious movement, however, but a spiritual one.

There were no doctrines, houses of worship or ritualized devotions. Emerson emphasized not belief in a particular creed but rather independent thinking, good works, and the development of character.

His interest was in the principles that unite us, not the doctrines that divide us. Following Jesus’ insistence that the kingdom of Heaven is within you, Emerson sought moral universals, what he called “interior truth.”

He insisted, for example, that if the Confucians in China, the stoics of Athens, the noblest Buddhists, and the wisest Christians all met and conversed, they would find themselves of one mind.

Like Thoreau, he also believed that solitude in nature leads to true enlargement of the mind and spirit. His books, he said, “should smell of pine and resound with the hum of insects.”

Emerson’s words had a powerful effect on his contemporaries, bringing Walt Whitman “to a boil,” as Whitman himself put it.

(In turn, Whitman’s universal voice, descriptive style and free verse form became the nation’s single most distinctive contribution to world poetry.)

Emerson was not just a contemplative theologian, however. He was also a man of action. A passionate abolitionist, he spoke out forcefully against slavery, calling it not just an institution but “a destitution.”

How does this nineteenth-century philosopher speak to us today?

Like William James, the great psychologist who followed in his footsteps, Emerson recognized that most of our difficulties start right between our ears.

The first key to resolving your problems is to upgrade your thinking. “This time, like all times, is a very good one,” said Emerson, “if we but know what to do with it.”

We also fail to recognize how our problems benefit us by strengthening us, advancing our interests.

When a man “is pushed, tormented, defeated,” he wrote, “he has a chance to learn something; he has been put on his wits; on his manhood; he has gained facts; learns his ignorance; is cured of the insanity of conceit; has got moderation and real skill.”

If it doesn’t seem that way now, recognize that it may in the future. It’s often just a matter of perspective. “The years teach much,” Emerson said, “which the days never know.”

Like his fellow Transcendentalists, Emerson lived a simple life and warned of the trap of materialism. Financial success, he said, lies never in the amount of money we have, but in the relation of income to outgo.

“It is a cold, lifeless business,” he wrote, “when you go to the shops to buy something which does not represent your life and talent, but a goldsmith’s.”

Of course, much of the pressure to seek and display affluence comes not from within but from society itself. The world wants you to live according to its opinion, not your own.

“Every brave heart must treat society as a child,” he said, “and never allow it to dictate.”

Emerson is hard to categorize and impossible to sum up. He described himself as an endless seeker, devoting his life to understanding the human mind and the mysteries of existence.

American literature, philosophy, religion and social policy have all been strongly affected by his words and deeds.

Historians say he may have had more influence in the shaping of American thought than any other individual – and is second only to Lincoln as a spokesman for the country’s highest ideals.

Yet Emerson modestly claimed that he taught just one principle, the infinitude of the private man.

“Nothing is at last sacred,” he said, “but the integrity of your own mind.”

Source: Alex Green

It will most likely infect 30-40% of the U.S. population, or about *100 million people* according to flu expert Ira Longini, from the University of Washington’s School of Public Health.

Initial supplies of the swine flu vaccine, which will be available sometime between mid-September to late October 2009, are expected to be very limited — barely enough to inoculate the 160 million people who are at high risk of becoming infected. An even bigger concern is whether the fast-tracked vaccine is safe and effective — since it’s being rushed to market without the appropriate testing and safety evaluations.

A new book, “The One-Minute Cure: The Secret to Healing Virtually All Diseases,” offers compelling evidence
that the swine flu virus can be rendered powerless in the body when one self-administers a natural oxygenating substance.

Madison Cavanaugh, the book’s author, states that public fear is incorrectly placed on the swine influenza
virus itself. “Microbes, germs, harmful bacteria and viruses, such as the swine influenza virus, do not cause disease in and of themselves,” Cavanaugh states. “They do seek their natural habitat — such as an oxygen-deficient body — rather than being the cause of the disease. It’s no different from the way mosquitoes seek out stagnant water, but do not cause the pool to become stagnant.”

Cavanaugh’s assertion is consistent with the findings of Dr. Rudolf Virchow (1821 – 1902), also called the “Father of Pathology.” It is also supported by Louis Pasteur, the notable 19th century French chemist and microbiologist best known for his remarkable breakthroughs in the causes and prevention of disease, who recanted his germ theory of disease at his deathbed, stating, “The microbe is nothing. The terrain is everything.”

The terrain of which he spoke refers to an oxygenated environment in the human body, which makes for a strong immune system. A weakened or suppressed state of the immune system only occurs when the human body lacks oxygen, thereby allowing viruses, such as the swine influenza virus, to breed.

It therefore stands to reason that the swine influenza virus does NOT cause disease, but rather seeks out an
environment where it can thrive best — and that is in oxygen-deprived bodies. “A sufficiently oxygenated body is uninhabitable by disease,” Cavanaugh states, and viruses can neither survive nor thrive in it.

Therefore, the best defense against microbes, germs, harmful bacteria and viruses, such as the swine flu virus, is to keep the body oxygenated.

Cavanaugh’s book, “The One-Minute Cure,” discusses the therapeutic use of the only natural substance which stimulates the movement of oxygen atoms from the bloodstream to the cells to a dramatically greater degree than is usually reached by other means. This action creates an oxygenated environment that enables the body to cure itself of virtually all diseases ranging from influenza to cancer, heart disease, asthma, diabetes and arthritis.

The natural oxygenating substance which is the core subject of the book has a long history of therapeutic use dating back 170 years ago when it was used to reverse a wide variety of illnesses — from minor ones like colds and flu to serious ones like cholera and malaria. It has even been used to help stop the Spanish Flu of 1918.

Over the past 70 years, this safe, inexpensive and powerful healing modality has been administered by an
estimated 15,000 European doctors, naturopaths and homeopaths to more than 10 million patients to successfully treat practically every known disease. The natural remedy can be self-administered at home in less than a minute, and costs only 1-1/2 cents a day to use. For more information, click here.

Now that everyone knows how important drinking enough water is, we are experiencing yet another phenomenon: illness and death by drinking too much water. Why is this?

We know that it’s important to drink half of our body’s weight in ounces of water. That is not, however, always the case if one has a medical condition, such as a kidney disturbance, in which the water-potassium exchange in the Loop of Henley, in the kidneys, is compromised. Also, certain cardiopulmonary diseases often require fluid restriction in some cases. Always check with your doctor in regard to fluid intake if you are currently receiving medical care. Still, structured water is the key and is important for highest and best results.

The cogent mystery that needs to be solved for most people to even make an effort to drink structured water lies within understanding its nature and why it’s so essential. Structured water is liquid, crystalline, biologically active water that contains water molecules that have a hexagonal, geometrical shape to them. It is believed that, millions of years ago, the Earth’s magnetic fields were much stronger than they are today and that our water has lost much of its healing resonance. We may never know. That’s why structured water is so important.

In the 1970s, Dr. Raymond Damadian was one of the first people in medical science to suggest that MRIs could be used to diagnose cancer. In his later research, he began to study the molecular structure within the cell. Using an MRI, he discovered that cancer cells contain disorganized water, characterized by increased motion and moveability. Pollution, and possibly a weakened magnetic field, may be the cause of the water’s lack of structurability today.

Desirable structured water has less surface tension and more stabilized hydrogen bonding, made in narrower line widths, which make water more biologically alive and absorbable to our cells. The frequency of structured water is believed to be 60 to 70 hertz. Tap water measured 100 hertz or greater. Millions of dollars are spent each year removing pollutants from our drinking water; however, even the purest water may contain vibrational pollution. The more times it’s recycled, the more polluted it gets, unless its structure is revived.

Water is one of the most programmable substances on the planet. It has a memory and the alchemical ability to store and transport energy and information throughout the cells of our bodies. The best sources of structured water are the natural sources on our planet. Natural springs, streams, rivers, and water from under glaciers that are unpolluted are best.

Structured water is also found in water-rich organic fruits and vegetables grown in rich soils, especially near ancient volcanoes, and they’re wonderful because they are mineralized, alkalized, and ionized; however, the current reality is the major sources of water in the world are polluted and too warm, because people have not honored the law of equal exchange in relation to Mother Earth and the sanctity of her balance.

We cannot get all of our water from eating because we’d have to eat too much, thus defeating our purpose of maximizing our health and well-being. You can buy commercially structured water, but most of it is stored in plastic water bottles that can be toxic to our health. A pure source of water is steam-distilled and free of toxic contaminants. Unfortunately, distilled water in itself is non-living water and, again, unstructured. It is biologically dead, like a blank tape. The essential life force must be restored.

This can be accomplished in a variety of ways. You can take purified water and add micro-crystals. You can read more about this idea by investigating the research of Patrick Flanagan, M.D., Ph.D.

I do a variety of treatments to the water I drink and test it through kinesthiology, as well as using a resonance meter. I take purified water and put it in a machine that has a hexagonal filter that contains many natural minerals, including tourmaline. I make pitchers of water to drink, and I refrigerate the water quickly to help it stay alive.

The machine I’m currently testing is called the “Vitalizer Plus,” which you can purchase on the Internet. There are a variety of vortex machines becoming available. I place fresh pitchers of water on top of high-quality speakers and play my sound frequency treatments, especially the one included in my book Sound Health, Sound Wealth: The Biology of Hope and Manifestation. You can also use Jade Wu Life Force, which is included in my program The Temple of Rejuvenation.

Many people love the work of Masaru Emoto, and they write high-frequency words such as love, peace, reverence, gratitude, on containers of water. Emoto’s books with pictures of water under a high-resolution microscope are compelling. Because there are so many subjects to cover here, I have just given you a few ideas that can be investigated according to your interest level.

One important thing to remember is that, once you’ve obtained either ready-made or self-created, hexagonal water, it must be kept away from electronic devices, such as computers and cell phones. Also, although it’s healthier to drink water at room temperature, to keep water stable and structured, it must remain cool. Although nutrition is important, our overall well-being is greatly affected by the ways in which we cultivate and maintain our abilities to experience joy, personal satisfaction and fulfillment, and rich abundance in all pleasing forms.

One last note on maintaining a healthy pH: for more than 10 years now, I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon. I have tested patients and clients before and after sessions to discover that they often had a beautiful, berry-colored 7.4 pH on the medical testing strips I use. I have patients keep logs that have revealed that, many times, in spite of eating junk food, if they were in resonance of the heart, truly in the present moment enjoying themselves, they had a perfect pH balance.

You can try this, as well, if it interests you. I have even worked with patients who saw a great movie, ate Mexican food, and had a great time with friends, or patients who laughed until they thought they might die, eating “the wrong foods,” produce a great pH. Sometimes just having pure, intense pleasure can trump correct nutrition.

Source: AudioBooksLearning.com

“We may be very busy, we may be very efficient, but we will also be truly effective only when we begin with the end in mind.”
Stephen Covey

“The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about.”
Wayne Dyer

“If we become increasingly humble about how little we know, we may be more eager to search.”
Sir John Templeton

“Anything that is of value in life only multiplies when it is given.”
Deepak Chopra

“A man can succeed at almost anything for which he has unlimited enthusiasm.”
Charles Schwab

“Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”
Goethe

“Don’t allow yourself to get attached to anything you cannot walk away from in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.”
Robert De Niro

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, and the trouble is…I don’t know which half.”
Viscount Leverhulme

“Buy low sell high. Buy Fear… Sell Hope” And Book Profits
Eric Rockefeller

“The way you think, the way you behave, the way you eat, can influence your life by 30 to 50 years.”
Deepak Chopra

“It’s not how ‘good’ you are with technical skills (expertise), but rather how well you can INFLUENCE and IMPACT others.
Michael Drew

“The key to building wealth is to preserve capital and wait patiently for the right opportunity to make the extraordinary gains.”
Victor Sperandeo: Money manager and professional trader

“If you really want to sell to someone, you understand them, and you know their needs, their fears, and their hopes and dreams.”
Frank Kern

“Success happens because people provide other people with meaning, identity, experience or value.”
Kevin Hogan

“It Is Not What You Know, But Who You Know.”
Kevin Hogan

“People who ultimately fail rarely get criticized in any significant way.
People who don’t want to get criticized never fail because they never do anything they don’t already know how to do.
If you want to succeed you are implicitly asking to be criticized.
$10,000 Key Point: Because criticism can feel so painful, very few people will choose the path that has critics on it. Therefore, the path to achievement is generally a very clear road to travel IF you choose to handle rejection and criticism…and…you CAN!
Kevin Hogan

“The most valuable criticism I receive is from those people who I consult with, my most loyal customers. I pay close attention to them because I know they have my best interests at heart just as I have theirs at heart.
KEY POINT: Successful people use criticism as leverage to excel and do better, make a better product, improve service and make more money.”
Kevin Hogan

“Some things in life are invaluable. But nothing is indispensable.”
Michael Norwood

Our past and future picks are a provocative and comprehensive challenge to anyone who thinks the age of prosperity is behind us. But, as always, we value your views. Post them to our 85th Anniversary discussion forum.

As this is an anniversary event, we’ve drawn up an vintage Forbes covers to recall and classic cover stories to read.

Finally, try the When Was That Invented? quiz and see how you do against other readers.

What are the greatest breakthroughs of the last four score and five years? A collection of people, products, services and companies that have changed our lives in a profound way. This is not a list of the greatest business minds–that’s why you won’t find Bill Gates on it. It is not a roster of the deserving (Gandhi) or the powerful (Stalin) or the biggest empire builders (Kaiser). It is a history of lightbulbs that went off and changed the world. The transistor gave rise to a trillion-dollar piece of the economy and a potent deflationary force. The pill altered human behavior; the polio vaccine and protease inhibitors altered life spans; the discount brokerage changed our capital markets.
–
1917 Sneakers
When U.S. Rubber introduced Keds, the first mass-marketed rubber-soled sneaker, the company used the reigning color scheme for men’s leather shoes: black soles and brown canvas uppers. Keds remained a big seller until the late 1960s, when sneakers got a face-lift from University of Oregon track coach Bill Bowerman, whose waffle-soled running shoe would form the foundation of Nike and trigger an explosion in the athletic shoe business.

1923 Business Management
Long before Steven Covey and Tom Peters, Alfred P. Sloan (1875-1966) created modern corporate management as he rescued an ailing General Motors and made it the most powerful corporation in the world. He reinvented governance with an independent board of directors and executive and finance committees–a balance of power that has slipped lately. He decentralized decision-making for divisions that met financial benchmarks, a style widely imitated.

1923 Multiplane Camera
With his brother Roy, Walt Disney (1901-1966) turned a small animated cartoon shop into an entertainment epic, first with silent Mickey Mouse strips, next with feature films (Fantasia, Cinderella, Peter Pan), then with theme parks, his playgrounds of fantasy. Though Disney will always be remembered for characters like Goofy and Donald Duck, his biggest contribution to filmmaking was developing the multiplane camera. Traditional animation stacked cells on top of each other, giving little sense of depth. The multiplane camera got around that by placing each cell at a different level, allowing elements of a scene to move independently, giving them more realistic dimension. Moviegoers first experienced the magic with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937.

1924 Frozen Food
1924 Mutual Fund
1925 Bell Telephone Laboratories
1926 Rocket Engine
1927 Television

1928 Penicillin
After working in field hospitals during World War I, Alexander Fleming (1881-1955) struggled to find a cure for the infections that killed more soldiers than bullets did. He came up empty–until one day, cleaning up his cluttered lab and sifting through old petri dishes, he discovered that a mold killed staph bacteria. Penicillin landed him a Nobel Prize in 1945.

1929 Synthetic Rubber
1930 Jet Engine
1933 Frequency Modulation
1933 Wallboard
1934 Value Investing
1934 Nylon
1935 United Auto Workers
1937 Blood Bank
1937 Pulse-Code Modulation
1938 Xerography
1939 Automatic Transmission
1939 Helicopter
1940 Radar
1942 Electronic Digital Computer
1945 Nuclear Power
1947 Cellular Phone
1947 Microwave Oven
1947 Instant Photos
1947 Transistor
1947 Tupperware
1948 LP long player
1949 Magnetic Core Memory
1950 Diners Club Card
1951 Levittown
1951 The Pill to prevent ovolation
1952 Thorazine to reduce shock suffered after anesthesia

1952 The Conglomerate
Seeking protection from the business cycles of the textile industry, Royal Little considered diversifying into nonrelated businesses in the 1920s. But it wasn’t until the early 1950s that the ailing textile business made the idea a necessity. Little’s Textron would go on to acquire 70 companies, including Bell Aircraft and golf cart maker E-Z-Go, becoming a template for modern conglomerates like GE, ITT and Tyco. The form survives, despite a crash in conglomerate stocks in the 1970s and the recent travails of Tyco.

1952 Holiday Inn
1954 Fortran
1954 Polio Vaccine

1955 Fast Food
Though he had a nice business selling commercial milkshake machines, Ray Kroc (1902-1984) figured he’d make more money flipping burgers. In 1955 he opened his first McDonald’s in Des Plaines, Ill. The Golden Arches changed the American landscape, doing to restaurants what Kemmons Wilson did to hotels: making them predictable. The franchise concept caught on, and Kroc went national with just a dollop of capital.

1956 Containerized Shipping
Trucking magnate Malcolm McLean (1913-2001) tired of the slow speed of transporting cargo across country and overseas. Adapting a truck-trailer design to railcars and ship cargo holds allowed quick loading. The first containerized cargo ship set sail from New Jersey in 1956–spawning a new industry that set a precedent for the likes of FedEx.

1956 Disk Drive
1956 Fiber Optics
1956 Ampex VRX-1000 for analogue video tape recording
1958 Implantable Pacemaker
1958 Laser
1959 Three-Point Seat Belt
1959 Integrated Circuit
1961 Pampers
1962 Telstar I satellite telecomunication
1962 Modem

1962 Point-of-Sales Data
Former J.C. Penney management trainee Sam Walton (1918-1992) opened his first Wal-Mart in Rogers, Ark. Four decades later the retailer has sales of $238 billion and 4,300 stores. He married a genius for efficient distribution and inventory with point-of-sales databases. In the mid-1980s Wal-Mart began sharing store-by-store sales info with vendors so they could tweak product lines–and let Wal-Mart leverage better prices from its biggest suppliers. If Walton were alive today, he’d be the richest man in the world.

1964 Mainframe Family
IBM’s System/360 product line was the first that consisted of a family of commercial computers using a common program language, so that customers moving up the scale in computer power could take their software with them. The creator of the 360 line, Gene M. Amdahl, left Big Blue to create a mainframe competitor in 1970. He later went on to found three additional computer companies.

1965 Consumerism
Long before he became a presidential election spoiler, Ralph Nader was America’s chief corporate scold. His Unsafe at Any Speed targeted GM’s Chevy Corvair. The book influenced Congress to pass the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act in 1966. Perhaps more important, it provided a template for “activists” looking to target corporations for a variety of ills–real or perceived–and bolstered the market for plaintiff lawyers.

1968 Mouse

1969 ATM Automated Teller Machine
Bankers talked about automated cash dispensers for years, but Donald Wetzel, a former minor league baseball player and IBM salesman, gets credit for the first working model. The vice president of product planning at Docutel, then an automated baggage-handling equipment maker, installed the first ATM at a Long Island branch of Chemical Bank. The first machines were offline, but today some 1.1 million units are linked together across the globe. Wetzel left Docutel to start his own companies that sold banking equipment like vault doors.

1969 Charge-Coupled Device

1969 The Internet
Who knew that the military-industrial complex would become the midwife for Web porn? Designed to let scientists working for the U.S. military communicate via computer, the Arpanet started small, connecting terminals at Stanford and UCLA. The National Science Foundation later took the technology and created a network that could handle greater traffic; it still helps support the Internet today. As it became less military and more commercial, the Arpanet morphed into the Internet.

1970 Compact Disc

1970 Relational Database
Oxford-trained mathematician Edgar F. (Ted) Codd developed the concept of the relational database while working as an IBM researcher in 1970. Earlier computer databases had fields of data arranged in a rigid way; Codd’s notion was that disparate data sets could be combined by linking fields they have in common (say, a customer number). Codd clashed with his bosses at IBM, who were pushing a more primitive system. But the relational database is now standard–and the basis for Larry Ellison’s Oracle fortune.

1971 Answering Machine
1971 Microprocessor
1972 Computed Tomography Imaging
1972 Ethernet to describe the system of wires and microchips that allow computers linked locally to talk to one another
1972 UNIX/C Programming

1972 E-Entertainment
Nolan Bushnell (b. 1943) gave geeks another reason to stay indoors by introducing Pong, a crude electronic tennis game, which was later miniaturized for the home. Bushnell’s Atari dominated the videogame market, but he eventually sold out and started the Chuck E. Cheese’s pizza parlor chain. The game brand he created is more visible today on hipster T shirts than on TV screens. But the industry he started, now dominated by Sony and Microsoft, generates more money in the U.S. than the movie business gets at the box office.

1973 Discount Brokerage
It’s unlikely taxi drivers would have turned into day traders had it not been for Charles Schwab (b.1937). He positioned his company as the anti-Wall Street firm, dumping all the trappings of a typical brokerage house–the commissions, front-end loads, markups and fees–in exchange for simple, low-priced, per-trade fees. Today his San Francisco-based outfit serves 8 million investors who control $800 billion in assets.

1974 Catalytic Converter
1974 Index Fund, a basket of stocks made up of the 500 largest companies.

1976 Personal Computer Chic
Apple cofounders Steven P. Jobs (b. 1955) and Stephen Wozniak (b. 1950) helped usher in the era of the PC by making their machines accessible and cool–as desirable, in their way, as sports cars. But because Apple never made a serious stab at the business market, it has always been a shrimp compared with larger outfits. Those same competitors, though, were always ready to adopt Apple’s innovations in user-friendly design and clever marketing. Wozniak retired in 1985; Jobs was forced out of the company in 1985, but returned in 1997 to lead Apple’s latest incarnations.

1976 Recombinant DNA
Robert Swanson, then a 29-year-old venture capitalist, teamed up with University of California, SanFrancisco professor Herbert Boyer to commercialize Boyer’s breakthroughs in “recombinant DNA” technology–splicing together strands of DNA to whip up marvels like human insulin for diabetics, growth hormones for children and antibodies for cancer patients. The two founded Genentech, the first in a wave of biotech companies. It went public in 1980, raising $35 million. Swanson died in 1999. Today his $17 billion (market cap) company does $2.2 billion in sales.

1977 Cash Management Accounts
After a meeting with members of the Stanford Research Institute, Merrill Lynch chief financial officer Thomas Chrystie came up with the idea of an all-in-one account that included check-writing, money-market benefits, a Visa card and brokerage services. The idea was slow to take off, and Merrill nearly abandoned it. But it eventually became copied to the point of ubiquity, giving inspiration to those who harbored dreams of creating megabanks.

1977 Original-Issue Junk Bonds. Michael Milken opened up the capital markets to fledgling firms by putting together a $30 million bond issue for a small oil company called Texas International. The bait for investors: a high yield of 11.5%.
1979 Spreadsheet
1984 Liquid Crystal Displays

1984 Customized Mass Retail
Michael Dell got into the disintermediation business–bypassing distributors–during his freshman year at the University of Texas at Austin. He bought overstocked IBM PCs at cost from local dealers, then sold them to consumers at 10% below list. He dropped out of school that year, and started selling his own homemade versions of the computers for $795–built to customer specs. Now Dell dominates the PC market, posting $31 billion in annual sales. More impressive, his customized retail strategy, once an anomaly in the computer business, is now standard practice. That’s good news for customers and for the mass distributors who parcel out the machines, but worrisome for conventional retail outlets.

1987 Mevacor
It took more than 35 years for scientists at Merck to conjure up Mevacor, the first widely used drug that reduced cholesterol. The pill worked by blocking an enzyme from creating mevalonic acid, thwarting the liver’s production of cholesterol. Under Chief Executive P. Roy Vagelos, Merck researchers developed Zocor, a second generation of the drug, and proved that it, as well as other cholesterol-lowering drugs, reduced the risk of heart attack. Zocor sales jumped in 1995 when the FDA approved it as a product to prevent heart disease in patients who already suffered a heart attack.

1987 Prozac
Ray Fuller, a researcher at Eli Lilly, developed a drug that blocks serotonin, a neurotransmitter thought to cause depression. Today Prozac is the world’s most widely prescribed antidepressant, with over 40 million users in 90 countries. The pill also challenged traditional concepts of psychology and identity, igniting a debate between enthusiastic advocates and those who believe that mental states are too complex to be treated like a common virus.

1991 World Wide Web
Software consultant Tim Berners-Lee developed Enquire, a program that linked documents from various computers around the world, effectively granting a visa to the masses to travel through cyberspace. Marc Andreessen brought further order in 1993 by creating Mosaic, a program that allowed people to view pictures as well as well as words. Two years later, Netscape: a point-and-click browser that made surfing an indoor sport, and ushered in the era of high-flying Internet public stock offerings. Yeah, and you think it hasn’t changed the world forever?

1995 Protease Inhibitors
In December pharmaceutical company Hoffmann-La Roche received approval for Invirase, the first protease inhibitor for patients suffering from HIV. The new class of drug disabled the protease enzyme from duplicating the HIV virus in cells, offering the first glimmer of hope for an AIDS cure after nearly two decades of searching. Years later doctors used the drug as part of a triple cocktail that includes AZT. When taken, the cocktail virtually wipes out signs of the HIV virus in most patients.

1995 Internet Business
Lured by the promise of a new business paradigm, Jeffrey Bezos started selling books online at Amazon.com, and Pierre Omidyar launched Ebay, an online marketplace. Hundreds of other entrepreneurs followed suit, selling everything from bicycles to bubble gum. Most flamed out, often in spectacular style, but Amazon and Ebay endured.

1998 Viagra
Working in Pfizer’s Sandwich, England office, researchers Peter Ellis and Nick Terrett noticed an uplifting, if unintended, side effect in test patients taking sildenafil citrate, a drug being developed to treat angina. They patented Viagra, making erectile dysfunction part of the national conversation and Bob Dole an unlikely celebrity spokesman. Approved by the FDA in March 1998, 3 million prescriptions were filled in the first three months. Since then some 16 million men have taken the drug and an average of nine tablets are dispensed every second. Sales to date: $5.8 billion. Viagra imitators and drugs for female sexual dysfunction are in the works.

2000 Automated Sequencing Machine
Using 300 high-speed DNA-sequencing machines, gene guru J. Craig Venter stunned the scientific world when his company, Celera Genomics, deciphered the entire human genetic code in just over two years and with a research budget of $270 million (it took Uncle Sam 13 years and $2.5 billion). By studying the genetic variations among humans, scientists will be better able to diagnose and ultimately cure diseases like diabetes and schizophrenia.

Source: Forbes
–
What will the next 85 years bring?
The last century has seen only a few major display innovations, among them the move from black-and-white monitors to color and the introduction of flat, liquid crystal displays to replace cathode ray tubes. If Richard Friend’s discovery lives up to its promise, the LCD will someday be tossed aside in favor of the OLED–organic light-emitting display.

OLED could open new areas of art or, more prosaically, lead to a new kind of camouflage bodysuits, even constantly updated newspapers that look and feel like the original thing. “One always falls into the trap of going into the straight-replacement mode,” he says. “But with a revolutionary technology you should not simply map it on to existing products. Not if you are an optimist.”

“It is my desire to inspire people of all ages and social demographics to think about leadership on a broad level, contemplate what it means to them and what individual impact they can have when it comes to leading,” said Nitin Nohria and Amanda Pepper of Harvard Business School.

“Although your time and attention are finite, the demands on your time and attention are infinite.”
Merlin Mann, founder of 43 folders, discussing Inbox Zero

“Think big and don’t listen to people who tell you it can’t be done. Life’s too short to think small.”
Tim Ferriss

“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field”
Niels Bohr

“Eighty-five percent of the reasons for failure are deficiencies in the systems and process rather than the employee. The role of management is to change the process rather than badgering individuals to do better.”
W. Edwards Deming

“It’s much easier to double your business by doubling your conversion rate than by doubling your traffic.”
Jeff Eisenberg

“If the web is indeed a place, it is starting to look less like a library, and more like a river.”
Peter Da Vanzo

“Never let your ads write checks that your website can’t cash.”
Avinash Kaushik

“If you are a marketing professional who wants to reach your buyers directly, you will likely encounter resistance from corporate communications people. They’ll say the old rules are still in play. They’ll say you have to focus on “the four P’s”. They’ll say you need to talk only about your products. They’ll say that the media is the only way to tell your story and that you can use press releases only to reach journalists, not your buyers directly. They’ll say that bloggers are geeks in pajamas who don’t matter. They are wrong.” David Meerman Scott, The New Rules of Marketing and PR

“SEO isn’t an entitlement program. It’s an ongoing investment that must be resourced properly. It’s not a one-hit, one-phrase paradigm. It’s not built on quick wins for trophy phrases. There are hard costs and soft costs associated with building a successful SEO strategy that deserve proper budget allocations.” P.J. Fusco

PPC: 88% of all SEM spend VS. SEO: 11% of all SEM spend
PPC: 10% of all search clicks VS. SEO: 90% of all search clicks
Markets don’t stay this inefficient for long
Rand Fishkin

“Customer experience Is the new advertising department.”
Max Kalehoff

“The key with blogging is to lay it all out there because sooner or later people are going to know what you know, so might as well be the first one to share the information and get credit for it.”
Neil Patel

“Today’s marketing success comes from self-publishing Web content that people want to share. It’s not about gimmicks. It’s not about paying an agency to interrupt others.”
David Meerman Scott

“Trying to increase sales simply by driving more traffic to a website with a poor customer conversion rate is like trying to keep a leaky bucket full by adding more water instead of plugging the holes.”
Bryan Eisenberg, Call to Action

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Why continuos learning?
1) The average person will increase their salary by only 2-3% annually.
2) Each year inflation increases by approximately 2-3% annually.
3) That means that, without lifelong learning, it’s virtually impossible for the average person to get ahead.

However…
1) Top Achievers, people who are continually learning and growing, DOUBLE their income every 3-5 years.
2) This is why the top 10-20% earns more than the bottom 80%! To separate yourself from the pack, you often need to know just one additional skill…and that will make all the difference in your pay scale.

“The greatest success principle in history is ‘Learn from the experts’, you’ll never live long enough to learn it all yourself” by Brian Tracy

What is your Entertainment VS Education Ratio?
Do you know what your EVE ratio is? this is your entertainment vs education ratio. How much do you spend every month on cable tv, movies, sports, hobbies, vacations, dining, drinking, internet, video games, social clubs, etc? What do you spend every month in continuing education or personal improvement? The average person has a ratio of 50 or 100 to 1! Do you think this could partially explain the cause of the current economic turmoil?

Grab a piece of paper and find out what YOUR EVE ratio is! Create columns similar to the graph below and do your very best to think of all your expenses in these areas and be as accurate as possible. List all of the items and the time and expenses associated with each. When you have completed the list, add up the totals, and you have your EVE Ratio!

iLearningGlobal.TV officially began its journey in March of 2008 when months of ideas, concepts, and dreams turned into reality. After a meeting with success legend Brian Tracy and his business partner, it was clear that the perfect storm of ground breaking technology and the teachings of the worlds leading personal development experts combined would change the way people learn forever. Brian Tracy joined the founders and original executive team of 4 as the iLearningGlobal Chief Learning Officer and dozens of the world’s top speakers, authors, and trainers followed suit to create the most respected online faculty ever with over 50 topics.

Source: iLearning Global

Thoreau believed that as we get older we fall into a routine, gradually and mindlessly beating a track for ourselves. Bogged down with daily trifles, we lose our gusto for living.

The great mass of men, he wrote, live lives of quiet desperation.

More than 150 years ago, Thoreau blamed this on the rat race and materialism:

* Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now.

* Men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasure which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool’s life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before.

Thoreau wanted to avoid this trap. So he escaped to Walden Pond for two years “to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.”

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately,” he writes, “to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, to discover that I had not lived.”

Of course, vanishing into the woods isn’t a realistic option for most of us. Some might even say it smacks of running from your problems rather than confronting them.

But Thoreau believed that personal peace and serenity are only found in communion with nature. It is where the great truths and existential secrets are discovered.

For Transcendentalists, nature is the key to spiritual attainment. It offers the solitude to think about how we spend our time. It provides the silence where Thoreau’s “different drummer” can be heard.

Do not live foolishly like other men, he warned, but according to universal laws. That meant studying the ancients, revering wisdom, and living according to its dictates.

A successful life, Thoreau argues, is built on simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and meaningful work.

Reading him today awakens something inside us that modern society suppresses. Thoreau asks us to make a new estimate of ourselves, to think bravely about our lives, and boldly ask, “How shall I live?”

My friend John – and others suffering from the same ennui – might benefit from answering his call for personal renewal.

Thoreau reminds us that human life is a great privilege. We have the whole world to devour and explore, if we will only awaken to it.

Some may call the Transcendentalists dreamers. And there is certainly an element of idealism here.

But they were also chroniclers of the human spirit. And their advice to scorn appearances, conduct your life with wisdom and integrity, and transcend the often-deadening effects of modern culture is timeless.

We’re only here once, they remind us. Life should be an ecstasy.

Or as Thoreau famously said, “To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.”

Source: Alex Green

Optimize
I must get better.
Take a deep breath and remind myself we live in an abundant world
Focus on revenue producing activities
This is not a time to slow down. This is a time to speed up.
Take massive action now!
Where are my best opportunities right now?
What would God want me to do?
Embrace change
Be resilient
Buyers are still buying
Find a man with a problem

1. The age of instant communications.
2. A world without economic borders.
3. Four steps to a one-world economy.
4. Internet commerce and learning.
5. The new service society.
6. The marriage of big and small.
7. The new age of leisure.
8. The changing shape of work.
9. Women in leadership.
10. Your amazing brain rediscovered.
11. Cultural nationalism.
12. The growing underclass.
13. The active aging of the population.
14. The new do-it-yourself boom.
15. Cooperative enterprise.
16. The triumph of the individual.
All 16 trends are fully developed in chapter one of  “The Learning Revolution” by Gordon Dryden and Dr. Jeannette Vos.

What about Web Trends

We’re well into the current era of the Web, commonly referred to as Web 2.0. Features of this phase of the Web include search, social networks, online media (music, video, etc), content aggregation and syndication (RSS), mashups (APIs), and much more. Currently the Web is still mostly accessed via a PC, but we’re starting to see more Web excitement from mobile devices (e.g. iPhone) and television sets (e.g. XBox Live 360).

What then can we expect from the next 10 or so years on the Web?
Here we have 10 Web trends to look out for the next decade.

1. Semantic Web
2. Artificial Intelligence
3. Virtual Worlds
4. Mobile
5. Attention Economy
6. Web Sites as Web Services
7. Online Video / Internet TV
8. Rich Internet Apps
9. International Web
10. Personalization

Our society is about to go through major transformation. It’s not just about new trends in technology, relationships, economy and lifestyle. We will think differently and perceive things very differently in a short while. Those who understand upcoming changes have a better chance to succeed in the future.

What do you thik is going to change in your environment, in your industry, in your life?

Dick and Rick Hoyt are a father-and-son team from Massachusetts who together compete just about continuously in marathon races. And if they’re not in a marathon they are in a triathlon — that daunting, almost superhuman, combination of 26.2 miles of running, 112 miles of bicycling, and 2.4 miles of swimming. Together they have climbed mountains, and once trekked 3,735 miles across America.

Thanks to his parents, who ignored the advice of doctors that he would live life in a persistent vegetative state, and Tufts University engineers, who recognized that his sense of humor indicated intelligence, at the age of 12, Rick was able to learn how to use a special computer to communicate, using movements from his head. The first words he typed were, “Go Bruins!”, and the family learned he was a sports fan. They entered their first race in 1977, a 5 mile benefit run for an injured lacrosse player who was a schoolmate of Rick’s.

Dick is a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the Air National Guard. Rick earned a college degree from Boston University in special education, and now works at Boston College. They continue to compete in races, and are also motivational speakers.

Sources:

http://www.cjcphoto.com/can/

http://www.squidoo.com/dick-rick-hoyt

http://www.teamhoyt.com/

Just couldn’t pull it off, because of random acts of viciousness and distraction ladled upon my poor vulnerable head by the universe.
Visited last year. Might go next year, too.
I’ll see this Burn, though, through the sky-cam there in the smoldering Black Rock desert, if I see it at all.
However, just thinking about that amazingly unique event generated a familiar thought about survival.

I call it “The Hard Knocks Lesson Of Three’s“.
It applies to stuff like attending an event like Burning Man… which is a week-long freak show in the middle of the playa, way the hell in the middle of the northern Nevada desert.

Nothing you’ve ever done in your life, to this point, can totally prepare you for the experience.
One day before the event, the desert is a wasteland, free of humans. One day into the event, it’s suddenly a Mad Max-styled city of 40,000 partiers who stay up all night torching stuff and dancing themselves into madness to blaring trance music (which goes 24 hours a day out there).

Lots of art, and street theater, and comraderie, and general naughtiness ensue, at levels you simply are not prepared for.
Man, it’s fun. But daunting fun, at first.
You gotta bring every drop of your own water and food (or barter for it from others — no money is allowed inside Black Rock City)…
… and you’re on your own dealing with the sand storms, the brain-melting heat, the absolute lack of basic resources, and all the other details of maintaining good-animal health in the middle of Hell.

Trust me, it’s a blast. People arrive from every corner of the globe, eager to get the party started again.
Burners take the self-reliance code to heart. They truck in everything they need, and truck it back out again when the show’s over. No trace is left of the massive city, or the party.
This once-a-year bacchanalia has been going on since the 1980s, with little or no mayhem or tragedy.

Self-reliant partiers. It’s a concept.

The lesson, however, applies to all sorts of new experiences. Like starting a new job. Or putting together a market launch of a new product. Or engaging in a new course or mentoring program.

Here’s what I’ve found:

1. The first time you do anything new, your senses are kind of overwhelmed. You may not even realize if you’re having a good time, or a worthwhile experience, until after you’re done and you can look back on it.
This first time is essential to the process.
Just get it done. Do the best you can, and expect nothing and everything, while allowing the experience to wind out as it will.

2. You will either have a good experience, or a bad one.
It doesn’t matter which (unless you’re a pussy and the bad experience sours you on going further into the process forever).
If it’s good, you have a benchmark for what a “good” experience is about. And you may want to attemtp to repeat it the next time out. Or top it.
If it’s a bummer, you have a benchmark for what a “bad” experience is about. And you will want to take steps to avoid it next time.

3. After you’ve had two rounds, you have accumulated a little storehouse of insight, knowledge and hands-on experience. It could be all good, all bad, or a mix.
But it’s the third time out where you can now call yourself “experienced”.
You have context, now, to judge and adjust and feel at home with the process.
I’ve lived in many different cities in my time. Had many different jobs, started many different relationships, gone on many different adventures.
And all these different experiences started out overwhelming… and got dramatically easier to maneuver through on the third time around.

I even used it as a way to build up familiarity in strange towns. The third day in a row you go to the same cafe for lunch, sit in the same place, and order the same thing… you’ll get noticed. You’re no longer an invisible face in the crowd.

You are now seen in context.

(When I first moved to Virginia City, I stopped by the Bucket O’ Blood saloon once a day on my daily walks around town for a beer. On the third visit, the bartender leans over and whispers “Are you a local? Damn, I’ve been charging you ‘tourist’ prices for that beer. This one’s on me.”)

In even the scariest new job, the third day gives you solid hints to what your daily routine will become. Getting there on time, knowing the rules, figuring out who the assholes are and who the cool kids are.

It’s a process of collecting and consciously analyzing incoming data.

At Burning Man, the dramatic self-reliance required can be shocking the first time out.

By the third year’s journey, you can probably call yourself a veteran Burner. Sure, there will always be unexpected stuff. But while alarming, the new tweaks to the experience will fit into the greater perspective you have from having been there before.

Just knowing this rule can take a lot of heat off your stress levels.
As a rookie, you’re a liability to the people around you. You’re encountering everything for the first time, and you have no context for how you’re going to react.
The next time, you’ll do better.
And by the third go-round, your comfort level with the very stuff that may have alarmed you before will be astounding.

It may occasionally take more than three attempts to “get” any given situation or experience down pat.
You certainly will not be an “expert” at it yet.
But you will have some history, good or bad, and that allows you a little internal reference library of experience to draw on.

During those stretches in my life where I was constantly experiencing upheaval, radical change and emotional turmoil, keeping this simple rule of 3’s in mind helped a lot.
I never put pressure on myself to excel right out of the blocks. I took it slow, kept copious notes, and built upon every minor success while correcting the mistakes.

People fear change and new things. It’s in our DNA.
The key to beating fear is to acknowledge it, and engage in the experience anyway. Know that you’re probably not going to ace it this first time out… but what you learn will give you a foundation to becoming more confident and comfortable each successive time.
I’ve been a rookie, a lot. I welcome most opportunities to try new things.

And I’m a grizzled veteran of nearly everything I’ve experienced and liked (or needed to like, to further my goals).
I’m also a pro at dealing with a lot of the bad shit that can come crashing down on you. Been there, done that.
It’s a process.
Just a little advice to help you navigate the dusty road.
Stay frosty.

Source: John Carlton

According to Deepak Chopra, tapping into and then acting on this inner intelligence creates far less stress than using acquired knowledge only. It also expands your imagination, putting you in a transcendent state that creates miracles.

There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired,
as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts
from books and from what the teacher says,
collecting information from the traditional
sciences as well as from the new sciences.

This second knowing is a fountainhead
from within you, moving out.

Source: Poems by Rumi

We search for answers. Yet all along, the world’s greatest leaders already have the answers. They are ready to share them with you. And all you need to do is listen.

We invite you to turn up the volume on your PC, and then watch this 3 minutes inspirational movie:

1. Set goals and record them. By setting goals you are already ahead of the game. Most people don’t know where they’re heading and so they can’t get there. Writing goals is a powerful signal to yourself that you intend to achieve them. The feelings invoked by this process call into motion the law of attraction, which starts to operate to get things done with and for you.

2. Do what you love. Why do you love certain things and not others? Do we, in fact, have a `life mission,’ as many writers suggest, or do we actually choose our experience from a smorgasbord of possibilities? Aaron assumes the former (I don’t entirely agree, but this is a topic for another time) and suggests that you should focus your energies doing only what you love since this is where your passion is and when you pour your passion out, the law of attraction starts to work with you and things start happening.

3. Delegate what you don’t love. The reason people procrastinate is because they don’t want to do the things they’re putting off. Although we’ve been taught that procrastination is a bad thing, in fact it is a signal that our energies are being focused in the wrong place. To get around this problem, Aaron suggests that we need to delegate tasks we don’t like to others (who may well like them). Like a lot of good ideas, our modern puritanical work ethic gets in the way and we start worrying about laziness and `passing the buck.’ These are not, in fact, terrible sins, but delegation doesn’t imply laziness anyway, it implies using our energies more effectively. Why do something you hate when you can get someone else (who doesn’t hate it and may even love it – yes, it takes all sorts to make a world) to do it for you? For me, this was the most important lesson to be gleaned from the book.

4. Develop in a holistic way. Aaron divides his areas for goal setting into six `pathways,’ which he abbreviates by using the acronym MAINLY. They are:

(a) Cleaning up a Mess
(b) Acknowledging something (showing gratitude)
(c) Increasing wealth
(d) Trying something New
(e) Learning something
(f) Doing something for Yourself

Aaron suggests that you cover these areas every month. These are good suggestions in that they are specific areas for setting goals and taking action, though other ways of dividing things up might work as well. I use a four-fold way of thinking about things – money, success, relationships and happiness.

5. Celebrate success. One of Aaron’s points seems to be that if you `lower the bar,’ you can enjoy success much more easily, and this makes you feel good, spurring you on to greater things. He suggests using an `MTO’ approach – set a minimum target (which you are almost certain you will achieve, something you’ll probably do anyway), a medium target (more of a stretch) and an outrageous target. Achieving lots of little goals over a long period will all add up to make a big difference and will also probably lead to the bigger being achieved, at least now and again.

Aaron also suggests writing goals as if they have already been achieved. He invites his reader to imagine themselves at the end of the year, writing a letter of congratulations to their past self for having achieved the goals that were set. This `annual backwards goals’ process has the benefit of making you feel as if you have already achieved the goals and hence invoking the law of attraction in a more powerful way.

6. Record goals in the right way. We’ve heard of SMART targets – Aaron takes this idea and slightly changes it as a result of his `groundbreaking research’ (something of an exaggeration – what he describes is neither groundbreaking nor research in any real sense), suggesting that goals should have specific characteristics. Goals should

(a) have a deadline
(b) be measurable (e.g. go to the gym ten times this month)
(c) be brief
(d) state the intended result and not the means of getting there
(e) be stated in a positive way, not as something you are going to negate
(f) state the total number of times, not stated as (e.g.) x times per month

That goals should be well written is a point well taken, but it is down to the reader to decide whether or not to adopt this system.

Aaron goes into great detail about setting and recording goals and seems to over complicate things with a stack of forms which have to be completed in just the right way and a scoring system for assigning numbers to the completion of various goals. For people who love making lists, this might be a very motivating thing, but it will not appeal to others, whom I suspect may just find the whole process a chore. When goal setting becomes a chore, of course, that’s when you’re not going to get anywhere.

The book is worth a read and I certainly got something out of it.

Source: Double Your Income Doing What You Love: Raymond Aaron’s Guide to Power Mentoring

MTO method to achieve goals (scales: minimum, target, outrageous)
How to stop procrastination? delegating to others what you don’t like.
How to increase your incomes? each mess is a lock to be rich and increase your finances goals.
what is more effective to learn from: yourself, friends or mentors?

10. Troubleshooting stem cell therapy
9. Turning water into fuel
8. Marking greenhouse gas levels — 800,000-year high
7. Building loudspeakers from carbon nanotubes
6. Sequencing entire genome of a cancer patient, including tumor
5. Breaking the petaflop barrier
4. Curing HIV in Germany
3. Finding another building block of life in our galaxy
2. Growing a new organ from a patient’s own stem cells
1. Finding ice on Mars

Source: wired.com

0. Flexible Displays
Researchers have worked on thin, paperlike displays that can be folded, rolled or sewn into the sleeve of your hoodie. Flexible displays could change the way we interact with the info-universe, creating new kinds of cellphones, portable computers, e-newspapers and electronic books.
Meanwhile, Hewlett Packard announced a manufacturing breakthrough that allows the thin-film transistor arrays to be fabricated on flexible plastic materials, enabling manufacturers to “print” displays on big, newsprintlike rolls. Samsung showed off a mobile phone prototype with a flexible display that folds like a book.

The data is then sent to an online repository or a cellphone for the physician and the patient to track. Proteus says its chips can keep score of how patients are responding to the medication. That may be just the beginning, as the chips could improve drug delivery and even insert other kinds of health monitors inside the body. Now doctors may have a better answer to a common patient complaint — they will know exactly how it feels.

If proven in clinical trials, edible chips could let physicians look into a patient’s system in a way that could change how medicine is prescribed and how we take the drugs.

. Speedo LZR
Michael Phelps. 2008 Olympics. Enough said. Phelps and others were able to log faster times because of Speedo’s LZR swimsuit. It blends new materials and a dose of NASA rocket science to boost the speeds of elite swimmers — legally.

. Flash Memory
When Apple blessed the iPod with flash memory, it gave new life to a technology that had long played second fiddle to hard disk drives. Now flash memory is a mainstay of most consumer electronics products, from ultralight notebooks to digital cameras and media players.

Next, the who’s who of the tech industry — EMC, Sun Microsystems, Intel and Hitachi — are championing flash drives for larger business users.

The advantage? Solid-state flash drives offer faster response times than hard disk drives and they require much less power. The hitch is that they are almost eight times more expensive than hard disk drives. But with the star power behind flash storage, the prices have nowhere to go but down.

More data centers are likely to move to flash storage in 2009, which is likely to drive prices down further. If this trend takes off, say goodbye to the hard disk drives in your house. It will be time to flash your drive.

. GPS
The Global Positioning System is old, old, older than you think. The system has been operational since 1978 and available for commercial use since 1993, but for years its use was relegated to expensive personal navigation devices and the dashboards of high-end cars.

This year, suddenly GPS popped up everywhere else, from the iPhone 3G and the T-Mobile G1 to notebooks such as Fujitsu’s LifeBook series.

And devices that couldn’t or didn’t include true GPS made do with cell-tower triangulation or geolocation based on Wi-Fi hotspots. Now getting lost is no longer an option.

With widespread GPS capabilities throughout the gadget world, services that make use of geographic data, like Loopt and Yahoo’s Firebird, will be able to build critical mass.

. The Memristor
It’s not often that a fundamental tech breakthrough has the potential to change how we compute. Nearly 37 years after it was first described in a series of mathematical equations, researchers at HP Labs proved that the fourth fundamental element of electronic circuitry is for real. The “memristor,” or memory transistor, now joins the three other widely known elements: the capacitor, the resistor and the inductor.

The discovery will make it possible to develop computer systems that remember what’s stored in memory when they are turned off. That means computers that don’t need to be booted up and systems that are far more energy efficient than the current crop.

. USB 3.0
Fasten your seatbelts. The data-transfer freeway is set to turn into an autobahn. The Universal Serial Bus, or USB, a popular standard for transferring files to your PC or charging your iPhone, got its first major update in eight years. USB 3.0 will be 10 times faster than the current USB 2.0 standard, and will increase the amount of electrical current that can be delivered through a USB cable.

Users need the increased speed — 4.8 gigabits per second, to be precise. Digital cameras and pocket-size HD video recorders generate a torrent of bits, all of which need to be transferred quickly to computers, so they can be uploaded to YouTube, adding to the internet video that only a handful of people will ever watch.

And as consumers carry around more devices, charging them off a PC using a USB cable will be much easier than carrying multiple chargers. With the USB 3.0 specifications nailed down this year, the standard will bump up the power output to 900 milliamps from 100 milliamps, allowing more devices to be charged faster.

At least half a dozen manufacturers are likely to release Android phones in 2009, increasing the pressure on other smartphone operating systems. The iPhone is likely to remain the top-selling smartphone through the end of the year, however.

. Apple’s App Store
Until this year, mobile app developers lacked an easy way to get their software into the hands of consumers, forcing them to make deals with finicky and power-hungry carriers if they wanted to get any distribution at all. Apple’s App Store changed all that. It made creating and distributing mobile applications for cellphone users easy — jumpstarting the mobile-app development market and creating clones such as the Android Market. It even forced Research in Motion to offer a BlackBerry Application Storefront. For thousands of programmers, the cellphone is the new PC.

Outlook: App stores have changed forever the way we use our phones, turning them into personalized devices filled with utilities, handy tools and copies of Tap Tap Revenge.

Source: wired.com

“Working in a collaborative environment with a collaborative spirit where the behavior of each individual is: no task is too hard, no challenge is too difficult, no time seems too much, whoever has the right skills; just to jump in and take responsibility for the task until it’s done.”

“I will expose you to proven ways of thinking that can open up opportunities that today are beyond your view. Then, I will guide you and you will have unfettered access to: All my know-how, All my contacts, All my experience, All my wisdom, All my insights, All my creativity, All yours for the asking. This is the real thing. The opportunities are real. The businesses are real. The risks and rewards are real. The only judge of your performance is you and your ultimate success. Join me now for this life-altering opportunity!”

“More than any other segment of human society, entrepreneurs typically learn best through observation and experience rather then formalized education.”

“An individual company cannot compete with a strategically aggregated company.
An aggregated company cannot compete with 10 strategically aggregated companies.”

In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee invents the World Wide Web.

In 1994, Amazon.com is launched. It is a store that sells everything, personalized for its users, that can even offer suggestions.

In 1998, Google is unleashed by two Stanford University students, promising a faster, more effective way to search.

In 1999, Blogger is founded. Google comes out with Google News, a service unique in that it requires no human intervention.

In 2002, Friendster is released.

In 2003, Google buys Blogger.

In 2004, the rise of Gmail gives competition to Microsoft’s Hotmail. Microsoft’s Newsbotster comes as a response to Google News. Picasa and A9 are also released this year. In August, Google goes public, acquires Keyhole (now Google Earth), a company that maps the world, and begins digitizing and indexing world libraries. Reason Magazine sends its subscribers satellite photos of their homes, with information tailored to them inside.

From this point EPIC passes into the realm of fiction.

In 2005, Microsoft buys Friendster in response to Google’s action. Apple Computer comes out with WifiPod, which allows users to “send and receive messages on the go”. Then, Google unveils the Google Grid, a universal platform offering an unlimited amount of space and bandwidth that can be used to store anything. It allows users to manage their information two ways: store it privately or publish it to the entire grid.

In 2007, Microsoft Newsbotster, a social news network, ranks and sorts news. It allows everyone to comment on what they see.
Screenshot from EPIC 2014, depicting the logo of the fictional Googlezon corporation.

In 2008, Google and Amazon merge to form Googlezon. Google supplies Google Grid, Amazon supplies their personalized recommendations. Googlezon is a system that automatically searches all content sources and splices together stories to cater to the interests of each individual user.

When explaining how Googlezon profiles its users, the identification card of a man named Winston Smith appears on screen. Smith is the main character in George Orwell’s classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which a dystopian society is ruled by a media-distorting government.[2] The photograph on the identification card depicts Robin Sloan.

In 2010, the news wars rage between Microsoft and Googlezon. These “News Wars of 2010″ are notable in that they involve no actual news organizations.

In 2011, the slumbering Fourth Estate awakens to make its first and final stand. The New York Times sues Googlezon, “claiming the fact-stripping robots are a violation of copyright law”, but the Supreme Court rules in favor of Googlezon.

In 2014, Googlezon unleashes EPIC, the Evolving Personalized Information Construct, which pays users to contribute any information they know into a central grid, allowing the system to automatically create news tailored to individuals, entirely without journalists. The word “EPIC” is an amalgam of three fundamental physical and mathematical constants; e (Euler’s number), pi (?) and c (the speed of light in a vacuum). These are depicted in the shadow of the EPIC logo.

EPIC stores and categorizes not only news, but the demographics, political beliefs, and consumption habits of every user. At its best, EPIC is “a summary of the world — deeper, broader and more nuanced than anything ever available before … but at its worst, and for too many, EPIC is merely a collection of trivia, much of it untrue.” EPIC is so popular that it triggers the downfall of the New York Times, which goes offline and becomes “a print newsletter for the elite and the elderly.”

The narration ends with the statement: “Perhaps there was another way.”

Source:
Google Controversy
Googlezon Effect

Harvard Graduate School of Education professor Helen Haste has identified five that we should begin teaching our students. We  business managers should also consider how to bring these skills to our companies and careers.

• Managing Ambiguity. “Managing ambiguity is that tension between rushing to the clear, the concrete, and managing this ambiguous fuzzy area in the middle. And managing ambiguity is something we have to teach. Because we have to counter the story of a single linear solution.”
• Agency and Responsibility. “We have to be able to take responsibility and know what that means. Being an effective agent means being able to approach one’s environment, social or physical, with a confidence that one actually will be able to deal with it.”
• Finding and Sustaining Community. “Managing community is partly about that multitasking of connecting and interacting. It’s also, of course, about maintaining community, about maintaining links with people, making sure you do remember your best friend’s birthday, that you don’t forget that your grandmother is by herself this weekend, and of course recognizing also that one is part of a larger community, not just one’s own private little world.”
• Managing Emotion. “Really it’s about getting away from the idea that emotion and reason are separate… Teaching young people to manage reason and emotion and not to flip to one or the other is an important part of our education process.”
• Managing Technological Change. “When we have a new tool, we first use it for what we are already doing, just doing it a bit better. But gradually, the new tool changes the way we do things. It changes our social practices.”