As you can see from the picture, this turtle caused a lot of surprise, and attracted a bunch of tourists that were on the beach, and my dad asked me if I wanted to get a picture with me on the back of the turtle, which I gladly accepted of course.

I found the picture at my parent’s house in Ocotlan. The picture was taken in November of 1979 during a vacation trip there with my family.

About Leatherback Turtles

The “Leatherback Turtle” (Dermochelys coriacea), is the largest of all living sea turtles. They can reach a size of up to 6 feet (2 meters), and can weight around 2,000 pounds (900 kgs). The average lifespan of these turtles in the wild, is of 45 years approximately.

The “Leatherback Turtle” is different from other species of sea turtles, because other turtles have hard, bony shells, but the carapace of this turtle is somewhat flexible, but hard, similar to the leather.

The “Leatherback Turtle” is currently in the endangered species list, so it is illegal to harm or kill these animals. According to the video from National Geographic, there are currently less than 5,000 female leatherbacks in the Pacific Ocean and the population of these turtles, suffered a drop of 95% since 1980, so I feel very lucky to have seen one in my lifetime, probably these turtles have completely disappeared from the cost of Jalisco, where I saw them.

Here is a video about “Leatherback Turtles” from National Geographic

I don’t know about you but Procrastination is one of the demons I fight everyday with. It’s an everyday battle, that is reset every morning and won or lost at the end of the day. This is a war that lasts our entire lifetime, and that’s why we must never surrender. We must keep  fighting against this enemy, one day at a time.

Procrastination is our enemy, as it prevents us from doing the best we can do, it hides our genius. Don’t let this demon steal the gifts God gave everyone of us. Don’t surrender, keep fighting and win this war.

It looks like my dream of one day traveling to space might not be as far away as I had thought, as it is now possible to book a flight with Virgin Galactic. The cost is currently at $200k, with a deposit of $20k. It is still out of my reach right now but it is expected to drop at 1/3 of it’s current cost in 10 years.

Wow, would you spend $200,000 for 2.5 hours in space? Leave it to Sir Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic to start selling tickets for space travel. Right now, the tickets, which you can preorder directly from Virgin Galactic, are $200,000. However, according to Richard, in about ten years, an ordinary person like you or me will be able to afford to take a little vacation into space.

Wow, it’s truly happening! This is such a monumental event, and I can’t wait to be able to experience it at some point in my lifetime. Even on the booking form, it gives you the option to contact a trained space agent (instead of a travel agent). I’m surprised that this trip only entails flying 62 miles up. It seems like it would be further up than that to me. Currently, this space travel will take place aboard the SpaceShipTwo and it includes five minutes of weightlessness. What about barf bags? They will have those available, although apparently it’s a surprisingly smooth ride.

The Cost For A 2.5 Hour Vacation In Space:… | Bit Rebels
http://www.bitrebels.com/geek/the-cost-for-a-2-5-hour-vacation-in-space-200000/

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And, this temptation is not only for dictators but for “democratic” countries as well, that claim to protect freedom of speech, like the United States, UK and other Governments, that in lieu of protecting its “National Security” interests, wouldn’t mind to infringe people’s liberties to spy what people do online or shut a website down, as we saw it with the arrest of WikiLeak’s CEO Julian Assange.

Just Today, AllFacebook.com, revealed a letter from U.S. Senator Richard Durbin, making pressure on Mark Zuckerberg to give users the possibility to use Facebook anonymously, given Governments of Tunisia and Egypt supposedly used Facebook to collect data from some protesters and also Senator is “inviting” Facebook to become part of the “Global Network Initiative” (GNI).

Although much of the revolutions in some Arab countries, were possible due the communication channels that were open via Facebook and Twitter, I don’t think either Facebook or Twitter, took party on either side, they just provided the mean of communication, but they were not responsible for the message, in a similar way as a telephone company would do… they just provide the “wire” but don’t control what messages go through the lines. The problem these fallen Governments had, is that they didn’t have any control on “this wire”, and that is precisely the fear of other Governments, they are just afraid of this lack of control, and thus it’s very tempting for them, to exercise their power and take control of it.

I don’t know for how long, Facebook will remain untouched from politics and Governments, as it has happened with traditional media like TV and Radio, I hope they leave Facebook, Google and the Internet in general alone. In many countries, it’s the only place people have, to freely express themselves.

So, I agree with Ed Dale’s twit, that “The day Facebook goes anonymous – is the day it collapses”. It’s this feature, that makes everyone a real person what has revolutionized the web and what has made Facebook grow to its current size and made possible these revolutions and maybe some more.

I don’t know about you, but most of my life, I’ve feared about failing at something, so much that many times I’ve thought about not speaking up or not doing anything, all because of  the fear of failing, of being wrong, of saying something stupid. I think problem doesn’t reside in ourselves, but in the education system that rewards students that get the least amount of errors in an exam, and punishes the guys that do a lot of errors. Many years of school teach us that the guy with the top scores, therefore the guy with the least amount of errors is the one that deserves success. Such system, teaches the kids a false sense of security, for not seeking new experiences because of the fear of being wrong, it teaches them to follow instructions from a book, a manual, a teacher, someone that tells them what to do, what’s good what’s wrong. I learned the system well at an early age in my life, and I learned to adapt and survive to it, and as a result I always got good grades at school, thinking I was doing great in life.

But it turns out that life is not like school. Life has taught me that you can’t hide from making mistakes and having failures. Mistakes and failures are actually part of life, just like breathing is part of what  means being alive, you just can’t avoid them.

Here is what J.K. Rowling says about here experience with failure:

“Some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live withoug failing at something. Unless you’ve lived so cautiously, that you might as well must have not lived at all, in which case you failed by default”

These are words from a woman who at some poing in her life knew what being broke and poor means, a woman who lost her marriage, but like a phoenix, years later she was reborn from her own ashes to become one of the world’s to selling authors.

A life without errors, without mistakes and without failures is not life at all. So first thing we have to do, is to learn that making failures is not bad, it is actually good as we learn more from our failures than from our successes. Failures teach us to keep our feet on the ground and teach us to be prudent.

A while ago, I read an article, about the differences in the entrepreneurship spirit of Japan compared to Silicon Valley. The difference is that people in Japan don’t start new companies because of the social stigma attached at failing at something. Entreprenerus in Silicon Valley are the opposite, they embrace their failures and move on to the next startup until they make a hit. Thank God babies can’t read and go to school, as otherwise babies would have never tried standing on their feet to learn to walk.

I’ve regreted many times my own failures and as a result, I’ve developed fear of trying new things, but such fear is the voice of our “lizzard brain” as Seth Godin calls it, trying to protect us. Instead of running away from them, now I’ll try to embrace my own fears, and thank them for the wisdom of the give me.

Here is J.K. Rowling’s speech, enjoy it!

Click here to view the embedded video.

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.

I had already hired Filipino workers in late 2008 and first half of 2009, following the advice of John Jonas, but I got so excited with the idea that I ended up hiring 3 Full Time Filipino workers at once!!!!

This time, I just went to ODesk.com and hired two writers to write 10 articles each, one programmer that helped me fix a small issue I had with my blog, one content researcher, and I also did a small test with Amazon Turk.

My Results

ODesk is a great platform to find people literally in minutes. As soon I posted the jobs, I started to get a lot applicants that were interested with the job, so I highly recommend ODesk.

1.- Programming Job: I selected an applicant from Ukraine, as I had heard that Eastern European people are good programmers. The job costed me US$25 and she did a good job and I had very good communication with her.

2.- Content Research Job: Here I hired a guy from Bangladesh, and he did a below average job. I had asked at least 500 pages of material, and I just received around 150 pages with a lot of pictures from a single online store, and this guy seemed to be just in a hurry to finish and collect his money. I can still use the work he did, but I was expecting something with higher quality and a better attitude.

3.- Writing Job: Here I picked up a girl from the Phillippines and a man from India. The girl had very little experience writing articles but she knew very well the niche I’m working on, while the man from India had a lot of experience and a good reputation. I offered to pay US$5 dollars per article

The girl wrote very bad articles, so I explained this to her, and she agreed not to accept payment for them, but since she had experience on the subject, I asked her to do the research work instead for the same price of the articles, and as expected she did a very good job.

The guy from India wrote much better articles, but problem was that he knew very little about the niche, so he spent a lot of time trying to research the topic by himself. Quality of articles is better, but the lack of deep knowledge in the niche, is visible in the articles.

4.- Mechanical Turk: Here I just did a test, that consisted in the transcription of a 15 minute YouTube video into a summary of 300 words. The cost was just 80 cents and I received the work overnight with a good quality.

Analysis

The purpose of hiring people is to get leverage either for time or knowledge in exchange for money, so I think that in this little test I did, hiring article writers, wasn’t a good use of my money, as either the writers didn’t have experience as writers or didn’t know anything about the subject, besides the articles I got didn’t have any editorial review, and writers spent a lot of time to send me their articles.

I know several websites that have a lot of experienced writers working for them, that can produce much better articles with editorial reviews for the same price I paid and with better quality, such as Needanarticle.com and others.

On the other hand, hiring people in ODesk for very specific tasks, like fixing an issue with my blog or doing content research turned out to be a good idea, I just need to make sure I only hire qualified and experienced people.

Mechanical Turk, was the best experience I had, as it produced great, accurate results in very little time, the thing is that it seems to work for very short and specific jobs, but definitely something worth spending some time on it.

One thing that I failed when I posted the jobs in ODesk, is that I didn’t filter the applicants, so that I just received offers from highly qualified people. So always, accept offers from highly rated and experienced people.

Conclusion

Building a team of outsourced workers takes time and money, so there is a lot of trial and error in the process, so be prepared for that, but definitely we have no choice, we need help from others, the times of one guy doing everything are gone.

Here are some tips I can offer you based in my experience:

1.- Writing articles is the most important task to outsource, but in the beginning, I recommend hiring writers from companies that have full time professional writers working for them, as you get quality articles in very little time. Once you have money coming in, you can then work on the trial and error hiring process, until you find someone that can write good articles only for you and other tasks as well.

2.- Don’t hire full time employees in the beginning, start small and just go to ODesk to hire people for 5 articles or very little tasks. If people don’t work for some reason, you would have limited your losses. If people worked, little by little, give them more work until you end up hiring them full time.

3.- Learn to use Mechanical Turk, I had very good results in the test I did, but I just barely scratched the surface. I know I can get a lot more done with Mechanical Turk.

Remember, outsourcing is a leverage, and as such, it can expedite results both positive and negative, so start small and learn to use it wisely.

On the video Steve Jobs shares three stories from his life. It was a personal message, a message aimed to the hearts of these young students. More than just a CEO giving a speech to an audience, it was a friend talking to another friend.

One of the stories, talks about “connecting the dots”, in the sense that sometimes, experiences we get through our life, either good or bad, down the road turn out to be invaluable and somehow complete the puzzle. That is what happened to Steve when he dropped out from college and when he was fired from the company he had cofounded. Hadn’t it been for these “bad” experiences, Apple wouldn’t be what it is today.

The thing is, that when we look forward into the future, it is hard to see whether what we are doing now, will pay off in the future or not, we can only see how the dots connect if we look into the past.

So, since there is no certainity in life, the only thing we can do, is to love what we do and follow our hearts. It doesn’t matter if what we want to do doesn’t make sense to other people, as long as it is something that resonates with our heart.

All I can do is keep working hard and learn as much as I can, as somehow all the dots will connect in the future.

Love what you do and somehow, all the dots will connect in the future

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc

I had to pay $100 pesos (aprox US$10 dollars), in order to have the modules that translate from Spanish to English and vice versa, but I think it’s worth the purchase. If you’ve just got an O2 Iphone 4 or you’re equipped with an iTouch or iPad and you’re headed to, say, Spain, it’s invaluable. The video shows just how big the potential of an app like this is. Next up – voice!

This is another proof that it’s not the hardware that makes a difference, it’s the software, what you do with hardware what makes the difference, and that is what makes smartphones like the Iphone and Android phones very useful devices, compared to others like BlackBerry.

Here is the video that shows you how the “Word Lens” app works

Some ideas get materialized months or years later, and even if we throw an idea away, our subconscious mind keeps working on them, or sometimes when we are on a certain situation, it might seem like if the missing piece of the puzzle showed up.

At end, what the video tries to teach us, is that ideas are formed little by little, and sometimes ideas need to be exposed to other people’s ideas or certain environments and experiences for ideas to mature.

And precisely, in an ever changing and connected world, where it’s easy to get in touch with others, it causes ideas to be created more easily, so that explains that everyday, we see new business models, new industries and inventions, so that is something good from this age we are living in.

So I encourage you to always keep your eyes open to new opportunities snd ideas that can help us complete or improve a project that we might have not been able to finish due to that “missing piece”, that might appear out of nowhere all of a sudden.

If you can’t see video below, click here to watch it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NugRZGDbPFU

According to Wikipedia, an entrepreneur is “the type of personality who is willing to take upon himself a new venture or enterprise and accepts full responsibility for the outcome”. Starting a business online is still starting a business. Unlike a job, a franchise or an MLM – a business doesn’t come with a handbook

From ClickNewz

The key here is that an entrepreneur accepts FULL RESPONSIBILITY of whatever happens to the business, just like a captain is responsible for driving the ship to harbor regardless of any unexpected storms or problems he might face along the way.