A Brief Guide to World Domination. Qualifications. Sometimes people ask about my qualifications. It’s a fair question with a simple answer: I have none. There’s absolutely no reason I should be doing pretty much anything I’m doing these days. I was a high school dropout and a juvenile delinquent. I learned to drive by stealing cars, but since I was a slow learner, I kept crashing them into mailboxes. I wasn’t especially dedicated to my first part-time job as a 14-year-old dishwasher. I abandoned a series of other part-time jobs by not showing up to work.
I did make it to college, where I performed fairly well—once I learned to work the system. I never learned higher math—not any kind, and not at all. My first quarter in grad school I had to prove competency in statistics by passing a course. On the day of the final exam I looked at the paper and understood virtually none of the questions.
I somehow received a B- and placed a thank-you gift of coffee beans outside the professor’s door. All That to Say But for some reason, I’m not. Image: OW. Is Groupon Bad For Small Businesses? Editor’s note: The following post is a response to our guest series taking a critical look at the daily deals industry. It is written by Vinicius Vacanti, CEO of Yipit, a daily deal aggregator that collects deals from more than 300 daily deal sites. If you watch the nightly news, you would assume there’s a murder on every block, and if you’ve been reading TechCrunch recently, you would assume Groupon is murdering a small business in every city. Given the hundreds of thousands of merchants who have run daily deals in the past year, it is inevitable that a few will have had bad experiences.
However, to assume that a handful of these anecdotes fully represent merchants’ experiences with daily deals is insufficient and irresponsible. A series of guest blog posts by Rocky Agrawal criticize daily deals, advising small businesses to stay away based on examples of where the deals fail to turn a profit for the businesses. It’s a Numbers Game Strategically Price the Offer. Not right for everyone.
A sociedade em rede e a economia criativa. Future News for Year 2020 and Beyond - News of Future. 500752.pdf (objeto application/pdf) » Haiku Productivity: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential. By Leo Babauta I’ve been wanting to write this post for a little while now, about an experiment I’ve been doing. For a few months, I’ve been purposely binding myself. Not as a way to hamstring myself, but as a way to make me focus on fewer, but more important things. As a way to allow myself to do more in less time. I’m sure you’ve heard of the Pareto principle, known also as the 80/20 rule. But while that’s nice in principle, in practice it’s hardly ever done. There’s no systematic way to focus on the essential stuff, and eliminate the rest. Until now. Haiku: Limited but powerful To understand this simple concept, think about the form of the haiku (the common version, at least): it’s poetry in 17 syllables, with 3 lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables (I know there are variations and this is only a rough definition, but that’s not important to this article).
What this does is forces the poet to focus on only those words that mean the most to the poem. That’s it. What limits should you set? Walter Schindler Keynote Speech - Examples of Sustainabilty - Sustainability Forum. How to Grind a Stump - Tree Stump Grinders. Landscapers charge according to the size of the stump. Expect to pay between $90 and $150 to have a 24-in. -dia. stump removed. You can rent a gas-powered stump grinder for about $100 to $190 per day, depending on the size of the machine. Therefore, if you only have to remove a stump or two, you'd be better off hiring a pro. However, if you have more than two stumps or plan to share the rental expense with a neighbor, renting is definitely the more economical way to go. Make certain the rental dealer explains the controls and shows you how to safely operate the machine. Note that you'll need a vehicle with a trailer hitch to tow the machine, which weighs about 1000 pounds.
To remove the 30-in. Start by using a shovel or garden mattock to remove any rocks from around the base of the stump. Next, use a chain saw to carefully trim the stump close to the ground. Use the hydraulic lever to raise the grinder wheel a few inches above the stump. Tamp down and lightly rake the soil. How to Build a Flagstone Patio - Designs for Flagstone Patio. Backyards in Brooklyn are almost always blessed with these glorious bluestone patios. Massive slabs the size of truck beds hold entire Adirondack chairs, and in the rain, water runs along the rivulets it has slowly carved in the stones' shimmering navy surface.
Ask the owners where the stone was acquired, and the answer invariably comes back: "We just started digging, and there it was. " I wanted a stone patio too, and I envied my friends' archeological good fortune. But a few exploratory digs and some random stabs with the Awesome Auger hadn't yet struck buried treasure, so I set off for the stone yard to start from scratch. Hauling heavy materials in Brooklyn is not without its own eccentricities: I could hire one truck-driving Mr. Project Overview I chose 1-inch-thick Champlain Stone granite flagstones because their small size and weight kept each piece manageable. Step-by-Step 1. The first, most labor-intensive step (after the schlepping) is digging the footing for the patio. 2. 3. 4. The New Sharing Economy. Technology is connecting individuals to information, other people, and physical things in ever-more efficient and intelligent ways. It’s changing how we consume, socialize, mobilize— ultimately, how we live and function together as a society.
In a global economy where the means of production are becoming increasingly decentralized, where access is more practical than ownership, what do the successful businesses of the future need to know? What’s changed about our psychology of sharing? Is money the only, or even the most valuable, currency anymore? 75% of respondents predicted their sharing of physical objects and spaces will increase in the next 5 years. Online sharing is a good predictor of offline sharing. More than 3 in 5 participants made the connection between sharing and sustainability, citing “better for the environment” as one benefit of sharing Not surprisingly, 3 out of 4 participants currently share personal or informational content through social networking platforms.
Mesh - the living network of sharing. Collaborative Consumption: It's Not About the Money. Hacker News | Tell HN: Our experience with Groupon. For three years I managed a skydiving facility. In March of 2010 we chose to run a Groupon promotion. At the time I hadn't heard of Groupon, and frankly, not many others had. They were new and at the beginning of the discussion with our Groupon rep, we had no idea what to expect. Another skydiving facility in the area ran a promotion and sold something like 250 Groupons. IIRC it was a 15k jump for $129. We had three products to choose from: 10k: Weekdays only, $159. 15k: 7 days a week, $199. 18k: 7 days a week, $259. All of these skydives cost pretty much the same thing to produce, about $80. We chose to run a 10k for $99. Our first promotion sold 700 in March 2010. We saw an immediate uptick in business. We felt the Groupon crunch. How we made it work for us: -Apparel: We sell at lot of cool shirts and hoodies at a great margin.
-Cross sales: We sell Video packages a pretty good margin to about 60% of customers. -Breakage: It hovers around 30%. Why it is kind of painful: Who Needs a Grill? Build a Hot-Box Solar Oven. August 12, 2011 6:30 AM 1.) Find Parts This March in Minnesota, our solar oven got hot enough to bake a killer batch of scones—and in the summer, it can whip up brownies in a brownout. The project makes use of scraps (or full 4 x 8 sheets) of ¾-inch and ½-inch plywood. It also requires 4d trim nails, a 6-foot length of 1½-inch-wide flat wood trim, 36 inches of ¼-inch-square molding, a half-sheet of ½-inch rigid foam insulation, a half-sheet of ½-inch drywall, two white ceramic knobs, eight 3-inch mending plates, construction adhesive, high-temperature flat black spray paint, heavy-duty aluminum foil, No. 8 bolts, washers and nuts and a piece of ¼-inch plate glass cut to 13 x 14½ inches, with the edges sanded smooth. 2.)
Construct an open-top box using ¾-inch plywood for a 14 x 15½–inch bottom. 3.) Nail wood trim over the edges of the foam and drywall. 4.) Cut rigid foam to four 12 x 24–inch panels. 5.) Prep food in a black enamel pot with a lid; set the pot in the box. Wood Pellets Stoves - Wood Heating. Lee Richards lives with his wife in a 1957 brick rancher in a neighborhood of cookie-cutter homes in Charlottesville, Va., where he works as the city's commissioner of revenue. In the past decade, he decided to become a more self-sufficient consumer of energy. He commutes to work on foot and by bus. He powers his home with 18 solar panels bolted to his roof and sells the excess electricity back to the grid. He heats his water with a solar-thermal system. And he heats his home in winter with biomass—in this case, firewood—using three small but highly efficient Jøtul wood stoves in the living room, sunroom and basement. He spends $1200 a year on wood—five truckloads, split and delivered—and gets up at four o'clock each winter morning to stoke dying embers so his wife will be warm when she wakes.
A century ago, and for about 400,000 years before that, most people burned wood to stay warm. Consumer incentives are also helping drive the shift to biomass heat. How to Heat a House. Smart Strategies & New Tech for Boosting Home Energy Efficiency. 27,022 kilowatt-hours. That's how much energy the average U.S. home uses in a year. Here's where it all goes. This diagram, based on data from the Department of Energy, can help homeowners spot the best ways to boost efficiency.
The numbers may surprise you. Refrigerators and air conditioners tend to be the villains in an electric bill, but they don't dominate total energy usage. Why? The big picture includes not just electricity, but also fuel for heating, which is the typical home's true energy hog. On the other hand, the spread of widescreen TVs, iPod chargers and other electronics is boosting electricity usage. Note: A fuel's energy content typically is shown in British thermal units (BTU).
After buying an 80-year-old farmhouse in Berlin, Vt., in August 2005, first-time homeowners Mark Keffer and Sharon Plumb wanted to keep their heating costs down. Armed with data from their audit, Keffer and Plumb sealed their basement walls against air infiltration. Where You Stand What You Can Do. Sharing.pdf (objeto application/pdf) The Responsible Business: Reimagining Sustainability and Success eBook: Carol Sanford, Rebecca Henderson, Chad Holliday.
Rachel Botsman: The case for collaborative consumption. What’s Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption. The U.K. Riots And The Coming Global Class War. TEDxCovilhã - Luís Quental Pereira - A criatividade está entre o vívido e o vivido. Hélio Leites. Tendências sociais: novos modelos de negócios e novas formas de se comunicar através das redes sociais. O site Trendwatching divulgou uma lista com tendências de consumo para 2011, envolvendo mudanças que influenciaram as atitudes dos consumidores e, consequentemente, das empresas, como as novas tecnologias, a preocupação com a sustentabilidade, a valorização da saúde, a ascensão dos países emergentes, entre outros contextos. Separamos algumas destas tendências e cases que geram oportunidades para as marcas atuarem nas redes sociais e na comunicação digital: 1.
Marcas humanizadas Os consumidores estão cada vez mais valorizando o natural, o humano e a realidade. Para as marcas, isso significa não mais ser inflexível e fechada, e sim mostrar paixão e carisma. Uma das melhores maneiras de uma marca gerar engajamento será mostrando que ela se importa. Case: Interflora lançou uma campanha no Reino Unido para animar o dia dos usuários do Twitter mandando flores a eles. 2. As pessoas sempre buscaram ofertas especiais e descontos.
Cases: 3. Cases: 4. Storify demo from Burt Herman on Vimeo. O que é uma Nova Economia Sustentável? artigo de Mauro Schorr. Publicado em julho 28, 2010 por HC Tags: desenvolvimento sustentável , economia , modelo de desenvolvimento [ EcoDebate ] Uma nova economia mundial ética e sustentável, que coisa estranha não, realmente uma utopia, um sonho, no mundo moderno, mas utopia é o que a gente chama de uma boa maré de calmaria, onde os bons ventos nos levam, para uma saudável e criativa evolução, então a utopia continua valendo, e muito, para que tenhamos um mundo mais justo e saudável Para podermos alcançar uma economia sólida, duradoura e sustentável, temos alguns passos fundamentais, que infelizmente os nossos novos heróis da mídia, os candidatos a presidência, estão ainda longe de comentar qualquer assunto a respeito: I – Economia sustentável tem algumas características: - Não investe em futilidades, não alimenta um consumo perdulário, valoriza profundamente o conforto essencial - Busca o consumo ou o investimento ético, de melhor custo benefício - Investe em produtos e atividades que tenham maior durabilidade.
Um dia e tanto! Uma woodstock de idéias no TEDXPortoAlegre. O TEDXPortoAlegre lembrou-me o famoso quadro de Picasso – Guernica. “Enquanto depredavam seu ateliê. Picasso deu a um oficial alemão um postal reproduzindo a Guernica:“ Tome. Leve de lembrança!”. Um oficial alemão respondeu “Foi você que fez isto?” Picasso: “Eu, não. Foram vocês que fizeram! Enquanto seu quadro existisse, o mundo lembraria o bombardeio de Gernika como uma atrocidade inominável. Naquele dia no Theatro São Pedro, pintamos a Guernica às avessas, a Guernica do Bem! Uau! Não é apenas uma palestra, é o sentimento de compatilhar com centenas que acreditam que podemos mudar o mundo, e agora!
O Tema do TEDXPortoAlegre era “Paixão que inspira”. O Universo conspirou, recebi pelo Twitter Nietsche: “Aqueles que foram visto dançando, foram considerados insanos, por aqueles que não podiam escutar a música.” Deus agiu, recebi uma série de exemplos do software da sabedoria das multidões. A ficha caiu, há uma nova música na humanidade. Os organizadores – aplaudidos de pé @rupabr: Não fale, faça! Vamos trabalhar juntos? Um pouco mais sobre o “Software da inteligência coletiva”, quando apenas dois, três, dezenas, centenas, milhares para simplesmente compartilhar!
Olhe envolta, quantos geniais projetos coletivos! Se você participa ou conhece um bom trabalho coletivo! Envie Lixo extraordinário de Vik Muniz Alguns anos atrás, lá estava eu no “Núcleo Contemporâneo do MAM”, chega apressado Vik Muniz para um bate papo descontraído. Contou como chegou a NY disposto a vencer e sem quase nenhum tostão no bolso.
Explicou sobre seu trabalho, que utiliza coisas, sabores, percepções de um vida que contém várias. As estórias ao que me lembro são mais ou menos assim! Catadores de Lixo + Um artista plástico = Um obra estupenda que retrata nossos tempos Projeto constelação urbana Um dia recebi um email de uma artista plástica! Olha a definição do projeto! O Projeto Constelação Urbana, é uma experiência aberta a todos, e em constante transformação, O suporte é o fundo escuro do céu da cidade a noite. 1. 2. 3. Sou empresário. O objetivo de uma economia não é o ganho, mas sim o bem-estar de toda a população. Eric Hobsbawm: uma nova igualdade depois da crise! O texto foi publicado no jornal La Repubblica, em 09-10-2009.
A tradução é de Moisés Sbardelotto. Retirei este texto do site Carta Maior Artigo O “século breve”, o XX, foi um período marcado por um conflito religioso entre ideologias laicas. Essa contraposição aparentemente fundamental entre um sistema que ambiciona tirar do meio do caminho as empresas privadas interessadas nos lucros (o mercado, por exemplo) e um que pretendia libertar o mercado de toda restrição oficial ou de outro tipo nunca foi realista. Como tudo isso influi sobre países que no passado eram devotados ao modelo “socialista”? As consequências diretas na Europa foram catastróficas. Nessas circunstâncias, os ex-Estados soviéticos (incluindo aqueles ainda governados por partidos comunistas) estão tendo que enfrentar problemas e perspectivas muito diferentes. Em todo caso, delinear a economia do amanhã é talvez a parte menos relevante das nossas preocupações futuras.
Sonho Brasileiro. Tim Ferriss on "The 4-Hour Body" at NEXT Conference. How To: Make Incredible Chocolate Mousse in Five Minutes, with Only Two Ingredients » Man Made DIY | Crafts for Men « Keywords: baking, recipe, chocolate, kitchen. Pensar 21. Sugata Mitra's new experiments in self-teaching. Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation. TEDxUSP - Luis Carlos Menezes - Aprender com o Imponderável. VALÉRIA BRANDINI - ANTROPOLAB. Olavo de Carvalho - Sapientiam Autem Non Vincit Malitia. A Sociedade em Rede e a Economia Criativa. 10 coisas que aprendi com os meus 28 anos de idade | mude.nu. GTD: Começar pela tarefa mais difícil ou pela mais rápida? The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss — Entrepreneurship. Registrar. “Must Have” Tools. HabitForge | Simple Accountability. Positive Change.