Natural Building Workshops. Articles to promote. The year’s worst tech trend: complexity. Illustration by Robert Neubecker. If you read tech criticism often, there’s a good chance that you’ve come upon a staple of the form that I like to call the “mommy dearest” review. Your middle-aged tech journalist—the sort of fellow who could spend hours telling you about the newest developments in wireless routers—is assessing a gadget like the Kindle or the iPad, a device meant to appeal to non-techies. He begins by praising the gadget’s intuitive interface and its easy setup process, but eventually he finds that mere description doesn’t adequately convey the product’s momentous simplicity. That’s when he drops the mom bomb: This thing is so easy that even my mom could use it. I’m pretty sure I’ve never written a mommy dearest review, but I’ve come close (sorry, Dad!)
Apple: time to make a conflict-free iPhone. My name is Delly Mawazo Sesete.
I am originally from the North Kivu povince in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where a deadly conflict has been raging for over 15 years. While that conflict began as a war over ethnic tension, land rights and politics, it has increasingly turned to being a war of profit, with various armed groups fighting one another for control of strategic mineral reserves. Near the area where I grew up, there are mines with vast amounts of tungsten, tantalum, tin, and gold – minerals that make most consumer electronics in the world function. These minerals are part of your daily life. They keep your computer running so you can surf the internet. Uld the desert sun power the world? During the summer of 1913, in a field just south of Cairo on the eastern bank of the Nile, an American engineer called Frank Shuman stood before a gathering of Egypt's colonial elite, including the British consul-general Lord Kitchener, and switched on his new invention.
Gallons of water soon spilled from a pump, saturating the soil by his feet. Behind him stood row upon row of curved mirrors held aloft on metal cradles, each directed towards the fierce sun overhead. As the sun's rays hit the mirrors, they were reflected towards a thin glass pipe containing water. How Souplantation Became a Certified Green Restaurant Chain. Becoming more environmentally friendly made sense to Joan Scharff a few years ago when she was creating a "brand book" describing the critical elements comprising the identity of her company's Souplantation and Sweet Tomatoes restaurants.
"It occurred to me as I was doing that that going green would be a natural fit for us as a brand because we are really about fresh wholesome abundance," said Scharff, vice president of brand and menu strategy with parent company Garden Fresh Restaurant Corp. Their customers probably assumed the company already used greener business practices, she reasoned, so Scharff convinced CEO Michael Mack to cultivate its green credentials. A multi-year effort followed, leading Garden Fresh to become the largest chain restaurant in the U.S. to get certified through the Boston-based Green Restaurant Association (GRA). In the process, the company's 121 locations will significantly trim their environmental footprint and add thousands of dollars to their bottom lines.
Bundled, Buried & Behind Closed Doors. YouTube. Gastrokid.
OPINIONS. HOWTOIDEAS. DESIGNIDEAS. 7 Ways to Have More by Owning Less. By Maria Popova Inconspicuous consumption, or what lunching ladies have to do with social web karma.
Stuff. We all accumulate it and eventually form all kinds of emotional attachments to it. (Arguably, because the marketing machine of the 20th century has conditioned us to do so.) But digital platforms and cloud-based tools are making it increasingly easy to have all the things we want without actually owning them. The age of keeping up with the Jonses is over. Transparent user ratings, transaction histories and privacy controls make the sharing process simple and safe, while automated calendars and reminders ensure the safe return of loaned items. Give NeighborGoods a shot by creating a sharing group for your apartment building, campus, office, or reading group — both your wallet and your social life will thank you.
Similarly to Neighborgoods, SnapGoods allows you to rent, borrow and lend within your community. The GIM Initiative Releases 60 New Case Studies of Inclusive Business Models. The “Growing Inclusive Markets” (GIM) Initiative, a UNDP-led global multi-stakeholder research and advocacy initiative on inclusive business models (i.e. financially sustainable models that include the poor on the demand side as clients and customers, and on the supply side as employees, producers and business owners along the value chain), has recently released 60 new case studies of such models across sectors, regions and types of companies.
They complement and enrich the first set of 50 cases commissioned back in 2008. The case studies have been developed by a highly qualified group of 30 Research Fellows covering 20 countries and representing well established institutions in the developing world, such as the Lagos Business School in Nigeria, the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore, and the American University in Cairo, to name but a few.