10. I-Tampon (ignored due to possible trademark issues)

9. I-vannatablet

8. I-amandrethegiantsiphone

7. I-condom

6. I-Pod Macro (Greek for large, opposite of Nano)

5. I-canhascheezeburger (already taken)

4. I-buymaccauseidontknowbetter

3. I-tookamentalbreakandthisisallwecouldcomeupwith (My 2nd favorite)

2. I-dontgiveashitaboutthenamejustmakememillions (My favorite)

1. I-tab (oh wait, this might’ve actually been an ok name, why they chose pad over tab I’ll never know!)

Ya know the minute the announcement was made about the I-pad, I knew it was going to go down bad, I mean my first thought was – I bet people are going to make fun of the ‘pad’ as a feminine hygiene product. Next day there were so many blog posts, and twitters about that very fact. My only questions to Steve Jobs is:

What were you thinking!

Steve’s Answer:

DOH!

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© patrickcurl for There's a Blog in my Soup!, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: apple, Feminine hygiene, ipad, iphone, IPod, steve jobs, Twitter

I have been a very active twitterer, I have worked some w/ the api, and I have wrote many blog posts regarding twitter. In July I decided to take some time off from social media, and blogging, and twittering. We just bought a house and with a new house comes a lot of responsibility, and it’s not like August is a huge blogging month anyways.

During August and September my wife also had to undergo a bunch of medical tests, even into October. She’s almost got cancer, is what they tell her, she has cells that are almost to cancer stage, and other issues in life have kept me busy as well, so I just haven’t logged in – at all hardly.

Then one day I login to my facebook and saw some weird links posted that I would never post, and they showed up on friendfeed too, apparently one of the plethora of twitter apps i’ve tried out, had either been hacked, or sold, or used maliciously to send spam-like messages.

It even says on the messages that they were sent from the API. Now sure, I made a mistake of not changing my password more frequently, but does that warrant a full suspension? For 3 twitter posts, that I myself did not post?

I have a lot of other worries in my life, and this is hardly the hugest, my wife’s health is my biggest concern, but when I submit tickets, and email twitter, I get basically a letter saying we’re looking into it, or something along those lines, then 2 weeks later it says your issue has been solved, or closed – but no followup emails have ever been sent to me, my account has not been reinstated, and I have yet to get a response from a live person.

Here shows the only messages I’ve sent since July:

Now the three top posts, are obviously not mine, and if you know me at all you would know that I wouldn’t post that. The most recent post I posted was about healthcare, then the post before that was back in July.

Other than this I cannot think of a reason my account has been suspended.

I would appreciate your help with this matter by tweeting the following message:

RT @Biz please help @patrickcurl get his account back he is #notaspammer http://bit.ly/2fvukJ

If you’re logged in – just clicking the link should take take you right to twitter, and fill in the status for ya, ain’t that neat?!

I really can’t thank you enough if this works, and gets my account brought back. I’m sure if you were in the same situation, you would be as greatful as I am to the kindness of friends and strangers who help you get out of the predicament.

© patrickcurl for There's a Blog in my Soup!, 2009. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Application programming interface, facebook, friendfeed, Online Communities, Social Media, Social network, Twitter

So on my vacation / hiatus since my last substantive blog post. I have come across a game called Evony.

Evony: Age I is totally free to play, it’s fun, and very addictive. It’s similar to Age of Empires and the Civilization game series.

The premise of the game is about building cities, gathering resources, building troops, forming alliances and conquoring the world.

Joining alliances with other players is a great way to network with other people, and help each other to become the strongest players on evony.

Evony: Age I, is a game of pure strategy, and very unlike most other online browser mmorpgs.

Where other games have pause buttons, and let your character out of the game. Evony: Age I is a 24/7 world that never shuts down, and never sleeps(you may find yourself never sleeping either lol)

In Evony: Age I you may sign out, you may leave for awhile, but you can be attacked at any time. Your soldiers can attack while you’re away, you can be building more soldiers while you sleep, and your farms continue to bring in resources, and you can set up your academy to research new technologies. Unlike other games where your character disappears from game-play while you’re offline.

Evony is a game about managing your own city, becoming part of a team via an alliance, and learning the most strategic, productive way to conquor other players, and NPCs.

Word of Caution:  Evony is probably one of the most addictive games you will ever play. Therefore be forewarned, you may find yourself dreaming about Evony, planning your future attacks during dinner, or while at work.

It takes a lot of will power to leave the game, and a lot of mind power to be good at it.

Evony: Age I, is browser-based so there’s no need to download anything. It’s also free to join and play, there are items you can buy but they are optional and I’ve had fun without putting out any money. If you’ve ever played Civilzation, it is very similar in structure and gameplay. If you have some free time to kill, and are looking to meet some fun people, and like mmorpgs then Evony may be for you.

It’s free so you have nothing to lose! Try Evony: Age I – Free for Life.

P.S. If you do give Evony a try – Look me up on Server 34. Username: Jerwyn Denimore. Alliance: Legendz.

© patrickcurl for There's a Blog in my Soup!, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Age of Empires, Browser Based, Free-to-play, Games, Strategy, video game

First off I took a little break / hiatus from web life to spend time with my wife. Not really a vacation but a homecation.

Secondly we are moving into our first house soon and have been working on sealing the deal there, and packing and such – very fun stuff..well not really lol.

Don’t worry though, on Monday I’ll be backup – my internet will be on at the new house and I will be firing away blog posts on social media left and right.

Till then – god bless and have a great weekend.

© patrickcurl for There's a Blog in my Soup!, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags:

I know it seems like yesterday since 2.8 was released and according to Blog Herald they are already releasing their first upgrade. Go ahead and upgrade now while the getting is good. I’m sure the wordpress 2.8.1 update is just some security fixes here and there, but better to be safe than sorry.

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© patrickcurl for There's a Blog in my Soup!, 2009. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Blog, opensource, Weblogs, wordpress

City in Australia recently Banned the sale of Bottle Water.

I’m suggesting we all Ban the Purchase of Bottled water in our own homes. Commit today!

Bottled water is one of the biggest polluters ever created. Each bottle of water not only adds to landfills across the nation but each bottle takes energy to manufacture. Each bottle adds to the carbon imprint of planet earth, each bottle needs to be transported to the end user which also takes gas and results in emissions from the truck it’s delivered on.

Fact: Bottled water is not required to be anything better or more special than regular tap water. Many bottled water companies simply run their water through a simple water purifier before bottling.

Water Purifiers cost $50 and give you hundreds and thousands of bottles of water over it’s lifetime.

If you only bought 1 bottle  of bottled water per day that’s $365 in a year, 3,650 in 10 years, 14,600 over 40 years, and 29,200 over 80 years(A whole lifetime).

If you drink more than 1 bottle – you could double or triple that much money lost, and each dollar also represents 1 bottle that will still be there in 100+ years.

$29,000 down, and 29,000 bottles in a landfill with your name on them. Is that what you want your legacy to be?

It’s easy to dump bottled water – afterall before the 1980’s bottled water didn’t even exist!

Just buy a couple reusable plastic bottles – preferrably BPA free for your health safety, and a Brita Water Filter. You can get one that attaches to your faucet, or a pitcher  – either one works well. I use both when I’m wanting it cold I just put tap water in the pitcher and put it in the fridge, when I need water now I use the faucet filter.

If you’re going to do this – Leave your Name / Twitter Username or something identifiable in the Comments section. When you tell someone of your goal it makes you accountable for it. Commit today to making the world greener by just doing one thing different.

If we all create 1 new greener habit every 6 months then in 10-15 years we will see a whole new world, that we wouldn’t even recognize today. We need to take action now!

Leave your name and State your Commitment below!

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© patrickcurl for There's a Blog in my Soup!, 2009. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Australia, ban bottled water, Bottle, bottled water, go green, going green, green, green technology, inhabitat, recycling

A blog can be an island, or it can be a massive cruise ship carrying elite guests all over the world.

The best way for me to tell you how to Social-fy your blog is to tell you what I have done to make my blog more social.

1. Join as many social networks as possible especially: Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Youtube, Flickr, Myspace, Friendfeed (In this order).

This is the order of importance in my opinion, but for each case it will be a little different – for instance music bloggers will do much better targeting youtube and myspace primarily.

2. Ping it and they will Come. Link your accounts to a ping.fm account, and get the pingpress.fm plugin. This will basically send your blog post title to each social network with a link back to your blog to read the whole post(80%) of my traffic comes from this.

3. Groups and Fanpages. Create a facebook fanpage and group devoted to your topics, with links back to your blog. Try to be active in posting to your group / fanpages.

4. Be friendly to your Followers. Be sure to reply / respond to all comments and @mentions on Twitter, facebook, friendfeed, your blog, etc..

5. Disqus / IntenseDebate – I’ve also started using Disqus for my blog comments. Users can login to post using their twitter, or facebook account which cuts down on spam, and they can immediately tweet their comment – giving a link back to your blog, Intense Debate is also an option for some similar features – my choice is Disqus but don’t discount Intense Debate, I might go back to Intense Debate someday if they up their feature-set.

6. BacktypeConnect – This is a comment plugin that will pull all  diggs, tweets, etc about a blog post and put them after your comments on the post. It also has a community at the Backtype website where you can view your actions across the web.

7. Backtype TweetCount – This is a plugin by Backtype again that will put a button similar to Tweetmeme and lets users easily retweet your blog post. It also shows a count of all the mentions of that blog posts’ url. Very Cool. TweetMeme is a cool alternative with less features – the biggest difference to me is that Tweetmeme only counts when someone tweets your link from the TweetMeme button. Backtype actually searches twitter for your blog post and lists how many retweets they find via search.

8. Encourage Subscribers – Make sure your blog fans know where and how to follow you on twitter, facebook, etc. Make sure to ask them to do this, and let them know if you follow back (which I do – so if you’d like to follow me – just do it! @patrickcurl

In the end though, it still comes down to quality and quantity the more posts you have the more traffic you will get – but you cannot afford to sacrifice quality for quantity. I’ll leave you with one advanced method for getting social traffic:

Build something useful. Whether you build a mashup of somesort, a new twitter app, a firefox extension that makes social networks more interesting, etc– people will follow you on twitter and your blog will take off.

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© patrickcurl for There's a Blog in my Soup!, 2009. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: BacktypeConnect, DISQUS, facebook, flickr, friendfeed, IntenseDebate, ping.fm, Twitter

While it’s not very conceivable that any of us will ever be Trillionaires – Owning a Petabyte is another story. A PetaByte is the equivalent of 1000 Terabytes(Don’t crap in your pants…yet). Now you might not even know what a Terabyte is so I’m going to tell you what a Terabyte is: A terabyte is 1000 Gigabytes.

Which means that a Petabyte is 1,048,576 gigabytes. Now what is that in terms of Data? How about 13 years of HD TV nonstop! That’s 209,715,200 songs (if you even know that many songs I truly admire you). Maybe you can wrap your mind around 10 Billion Images on Facebook that’s a Petabyte.

(Now you can commence crapping in your pants, hopefully you’re wearing ‘Oops I Crapped my Pants’ an SNL product)

Now what if you could own a Petabyte harddrive for only $700? (It will be a reality before long) Heck I’d settle for a 200 terabyte hard drive lol  – I’m not greedy.

Here’s a nice visual that I found on Gizmodo which they found via Mozy.

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© patrickcurl for There's a Blog in my Soup!, 2009. | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: facebook, Hard disk drive, Hardware, High-definition television, Mozy, Petabyte, Storage, Terabyte

Alright I thought I’d jump in on this hot topic: Google Chrome becomes Google Chrome OS.

If Microsoft weren’t afraid of Google before, I’m sure they are beginning to take notice now.

The biggest difference between Windows and the Chrome OS that I get being an ‘intermediate’ geek is that Windows runs internally on the hardware of the computer. The processes are more intensive requiring lots of of ram, etc.

Google’s vision of the operating system is to just boot up the computer, launch the browser, and do all computing over the web.

This is extremely intriguing and they are just on key for where we are as a nation and world technologically speaking.

Moving to a internet based OS will not only be an interesting concept – but may help speed up the spread of highspeed networks in America and other nations.

Having your applications all web-based makes it easy for programmers who can stick to languages they already know, and won’t need to reformat their products for different platforms.

Will Google Chrome OS Kill Microsoft? I seriously doubt it – even if Bill Gates has to come out of retirement to rescue the company from Steve (no)Ballmer.

While Chrome OS might not kill Microsoft it might help bring down the costs of Microsoft products, and it may hit Microsoft in the pocketbook somewhat.

The verdict is out though – anything is possible. We could look back in ten years and ask ourselves WTH happened to _____insert company___.

Nobody can know for sure if Google or Microsoft will still be around in 10 years or who will lead in the search or operating system fields.

Heck for all we know – in 2011 Bing will overtake Google for Search while Google Chrome overtakes Windows for Operating Systems.

That would actually be quite funny lol.

What do you say? Are you excited to see the Chrome OS?

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© patrickcurl for There's a Blog in my Soup!, 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: bill gates, chrome os, Google, Google Chrome, google chrome os, microsoft, Operating system, Searching, Web browser, Windows

A Blog without Comments is Social Media without the Social

I’ve been a long time subscriber of GarryConn.com who blogs about making money online, blogging, and affiliate marketing and other similar topics. Today he announced that he is going to stop accepting comments on his blog.

Sure it’s his blog, he can do whatever he please with it – but a blog that doesn’t accept comments is a blog that doesn’t believe in ‘social media‘. It ceases to become a blog and starts to just become a one man rant.

I personally find this to be a disconnect from what the whole purpose behind blogging is. Blogging is about building a community and sharing insights with one another.

I bet if you asked any of the other A-List bloggers out there how important they think their commenters are they will all agree that they are extremely important to their success.

The web is becoming more and more social everyday. I myself am trying to bring more and more social interaction into my blog by using Disqus and Backtype plugins, as well as integrating twitter as often as possible.

A blogger who doesn’t understand or get the ’social’ aspect of blogging, isn’t a professional blogger at all.

Garry Conn’s current alexa rank is 32,000 and he has a google PR of 4, I currently hover around 200,000 for alexa, and 3 for PR. Sure he has more clout where it comes to his blog’s rankings. I’d like to see what happens in the next 3-5 months. I’ll be sure to check back and do an update. I would even suggest that removing comments from his blog could kill his blog altogether.

If you remember Kumiko’s Cashquests – she removed commenting, and then gave up blogging and sold her blog a couple months later. (i’m happy to say I now have a much higher Alexa rank than Cashquests which used to be in the top 100,000 – not that I’m gloating -lol).

One thing I can be sure of  -as long There’s a blog in MY Soup this blog will Always have open comments.

What do you think? Will removing Comments kill his blog?

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© patrickcurl for There's a Blog in my Soup!, 2009. | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Backtype, Blog, DISQUS, Garry Conn, On the Web, Social Media, Tools, Weblogs

This is an awesome interview with Heroes cast member Greg Grunberg who plays Matt Parkman @greggrunberg. He’s also the co-creator of Yowza an iphone app to get coupons and deals from the stores that are near where you’re at – it’s pretty cool.

I’m not gonna blab about how much I love heroes and how much I envy mashable for getting to interview Matt Parkman. I’m just gonna let you watch the video.

From Mashable: How Heroes Star Greg Grunberg Dominates Social Media

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Post tags: Coupon, Greg Grunberg, Heroes, iphone, Matt Parkman, Smartphones

Is icecream fattening? Is the iphone a hot ticket item? Does the sun set in the west?

If you answer no to any of these questions then, you’re obviously from another world, and social media does not even apply to you.

On the other hand if you’re from Earth, and call yourself human then social media or new media is earth shattering.

Social Media is just about growing your business, it’s not just about breaking down the walls barring communication between people all across the world. It’s not just about social change, or grass roots action.

Social media is 200 years in the making. It’s fitting that I’m writing this article on the 4th of July.

Our forefathers (at least here in the USA) forsaw a future where people were free to govern themselves so long as they did not hurt another. In other words we the people, for the people.

For the longest time we’ve been controlled by the media – not always for bad, but not always for good either. What we believe is in large part do to what we digest from news sources.

In the founding of America – it wasn’t a possibility that information could travel as fast as it does now, so it was more difficult creating a true democracy. In our day with the way information travels democracy is becoming the only option.

For instance over in Iran – the people want to live free lives, the government is going to fight it teeth and nail, but some day they will win their battle, and they will join the rest of the civilized world.

As people learn to communicate and overcome their differences more and more wonderful things are starting to happen. Racism is on a decline across all races and creeds. Old media’s hold over communist nations is subceding because thanks to sites like facebook and twitter they can’t block all information from getting out.

Today the media is in the hands of the people, as is the government. With media that’s free-er and created by the people we see more truth, and we begin to see stories from all angles – we don’t just get the opinion of a few people in power but op-eds from hundreds and thousands of independent bloggers.

Social media is truly an amazing thing. It’s beautiful. It’s democracy in action. It has the power to topple repressive regimes, and may be the only thing to even stand a chance at quelling the wars that plague our world – heck it might even bring about world peace someday.

New media is also about getting information faster. Twitter is 140 characters of bliss. It’s pretty just a headline and a few small comments if that. It’s simple, it’s fast, and it’s beautiful.

I think we can all agree that in the information age, there is definitely an over abundance of information. Do a search on just one keyword phrase on google and you’ll bring up hundreds of thousands if not millions of webpages on the subject.

With so much information it becomes extremely difficult to sort and sift through it all. Part of new media is also finding new ways to display information so that we can digest it quicker.

Example: RSS feeds. Instead of visiting a hundred of our favorite blogs, now we can subscribe to them and get updates just like we receive email.

Still not sold on Social Media?
One successful twitter campaign like the #moonfruit campaign, can increase your traffic, and company exposure by as much as 7x or more!

Here’s a list of 5 reasons why you should give social media a chance:

1. It’s free(for the most part, and if not free it’s cheaper than most other methods of marketing)! – Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, youtube, and other networks generally require $0 out of pocket to get started, compared with the amount of money it costs to get an ad on tv.

Example: An ad on tv costs hundreds of thousands and even in the millions to produce and direct it, and then more to buy air time.

An ad on youtube – is generally very cheap, can be lots longer than a commercial, they are usually more engaging, they are two way in that viewers can leave comments on them, and they are viral. A good youtube video even professionally made could set you back $1000-2000 total to film it, and you can post it for free.

If it go’s viral then you can get a million views for next to nothing, if it doesn’t go viral you can still get a couple thousand views for free.

2. It’s trendy. Whether you embrace social media or not you will have to recognize that many of your competitors will. Also generally speaking if your target market is younger than 40, then your target market probably has a facebook page, and probably spends more time on twitter and facebook than watching tv.

3. It’s viral. I mentioned this earlier but I feel I need to give it more attention. On youtube people can share and embed videos on their own blogs, on twitter they ‘retweet’ it, and on facebook they can share and embed video content as well.

The word ’social’ revolves around the word ’share’. When we ’socialize’ we share our experiences with each other. Social media is all about fast & free sharing of media (which includes: videos, pictures, blog posts, podcasts, and more…)

4. Real Time. Not much can happen in the world without Twitter hearing about it first. Given this is not always a good thing, as it can also be the beginning for hoaxes, scams, and rumors.

Socia media should be taken with a grain of salt, when using it as a news medium – all news should be verified, and should be considered rumor until verified by a viable source.

Example #1: Within minutes of Michael Jackson dieing it was all over twitter. People couldn’t believe it. That was a true event.

Example #2: According to some sources Jeff Goldblum and another actor died last week – both of which were false.

5. Portability. Currently the iphone is the number 1 cellphone in many countries. On the iphone users have easy access to all social networks. This means users can pretty much tweet and share stuff on facebook wherever they may happen to be.

Some things to Consider:

Before you jump head first into social media as a business I would highly recommend that you create a strategy. It’s important to decide your target audience, and which methods are best to network with them. It’s also important that you diversify your efforts across many streams of media (blogs, pics, audio, video, even games and applications).

You should also have a clear idea of what Success means for you. Without a clear focus on your goals in social media you will never reach your full potential. There are social media apps and websites being launched almost every minute. It can get very overwhelming, so much so that you may find it an impossible taskm and you may find yourself giving up before you ever have a chance at success.

Social media is something I’m passionate about, if you fear that you don’t know enough about the industry, or where to start there are many great consultants out there. Don’t be afraid to contact them to get the ball rolling.

One final thought:

Don’t be afraid to help new consultants get their foot in the industry. Many times they will be much cheaper than tried and tested consultants, but they will be able to benefit immensely from the on the job training, and your company will reap the benefits of having a consultant that is passionate about being a successful social media consultant, and one who will beat probably any price that you get from their competitors.

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© patrickcurl for There's a Blog in my Soup!, 2009. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Blog, facebook, Jeff Goldblum, LinkedIn, michael jackson, Social Media, Twitter, youtube

Residents of a small community in Upstate South Carolina spent the weekend locked up inside, armed and ready to protect themselves from a serial killer who has shot five and killed four people in six days.

The victims who all lived near Gaffney, South Carolina appear to be random and range in age from a 15 year old girl to an 83 year old woman.

Cherokee County Sheriff Bill Blanton affirmed at a new conference saying “Yes, we have a serial killer”

Blanton went on to say that there is evidence from the crime scenes linking the deaths to one suspect.

Investigators have released a sketch, and description of the suspects vehicle, which they received from sources unknown.

The Victims:

June 27: Cline Cash, 63, a peach farmer was shot inside his home on Battleground Road.

July 2: Hazel Linder, 83, and daughter, Gena Parker, 50 were found bound and shot in their home on Buck Shoals Road.

July 3: Stephen Tyler, 45, and his unnamed 15 year old daughter were shot n their small furniture and appliance store near downtown Gaffney. Luckily the teenager survived, sadly the father did not.

All Locked Up…

The shootings took place 10 miles apart from each other. Most of them happening in rural Cherokee County, population 54,000 – roughly 50 miles from Charlotte, North Carolina.

State Senator Harvey Peeler was quoted saying: “There is no greater fear than the fear of the unknown and nobody knows. You can cut the tension with a knife. People are locking their doors, even in broad daylight. They have their guard up, and their gun handy.”

Sheriff Blanton descibed the suspect as having salt and pepper hair, standing about 6 feet 2 inches tall, and driving a early 90’s Silver Ford Explorer.

See Also:
Serial Killer Has South Carolina Community on Alert
Serial Killer has South Carolina Residents on Edge
Police Refine Sketch Of Serial Killer

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Post tags: Cherokee County Georgia, Ford Explorer, Gaffney South Carolina, Serial killer, Sheriff, South Carolina

DENVER, CO – Ecoffins USA is an upandcoming new eco-firm – Sister company of The SAWD Partnership which is helping fuel the ‘green’ funeral movement in the UK.

Ecoffins unique product? Banana Coffins – no these aren’t for eating!

Banana coffins are quickly biodegradable taking six months to two years to biodegrade.

Joanna Passarelli the company’s Marketing Director says the company has sold $40,000 worth of eco-friendly coffins to funeral homes last year alone, and that number is sure to rise.

There are currently at least 14 funeral parlors that offer Ecoffins USAs products.

Passarelli said that “We either get an ‘Oh, my’ or ‘That’s very interesting’” one funeral director even commented saying “Wow, I guess you can go to hell in a handbasket now.”

Passarelli contends that bamboo and banana coffins, are better for the environment than cremation, but only science will tell us if that’s true.

Till then this is definitely an interesting product, and as a benefit if for some reason you’re buried alive like in some soap opera, where you’re only in a deep sleep – now you can eat the banana sheaves to stay alive.

{Via: Huffington Post}

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Post tags: bamboo coffins, banana coffins, biodegradable coffins, green, green coffins, green tech

If you’re crazy about Warcraft and can’t get enough of Twitter. Well now you can do both simultaneous.

As if each activity by itself wasn’t a time waster now you’ll never get anything done – except planning that next raid.

I think this is cool and am actually quite amazed that this is the first app like this with all the other apps out there for twitter, as well as the huge world of warcraft addon development craze.

Checkout a Video on the World of Warcraft Twitter Addon:

{via Mashable}

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Post tags: Twitter, World of Warcraft

It’s the same story that plays out in hundreds of unhappy homes. Husband looks at some naughty pics featuring people doing weird things with animals which are probably illegal.

Wife borrows laptop, see’s video of a farmer desecrating a baby sheep (or something like that – who knows).

Disgusted she vomits all over her hubby – and Superman, er.. Dean Cain as he explains the benefits of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer’s InPrivate feature.

This is one of a Series of PSA-style Vids to promote Internet Explorer 8, amid fears of losing market share to Firefox, Safari, and Google.

After the tongue-in-cheek video on IE8’s InPrivate Browsing feature becomes a mega viral success – what does Microsoft do? Pulled the plug – as apparently a few people found the ad disturbing.

I got ask this question though – Why pull the plug on an online video that you have the power to edit and that is going global and actually working to increase your brand, I’ll give you that the video is edgy – but have you seen Microsoft’s other commercials?

I’m beginning to think that their whole advertising arm is made of stiff 70+ year old men who have no idea what sells to the new generation.

Everyone knows the Mac commercials with the Mac and PC characters – they’re practically cultural icons.

Check out the video for yourself:

If Microsoft truly wants to become the powerhouse that it once was – and apply that to other areas such as IE, and Search it is going to have to embrace creative content.

That’s the heart of social media. Before social media you made a commercial and spent a $million dollars on it. Then you buy advertising from TV Networks for a couple million dollars more.

Today you create a video or a bunch of promotional videos and launch them on youtube. Or even have a contest to get user submitted media(which is sometimes better than professional done videos) – then youtubes’ users decide which videos will become viral sensations – and when they do it’s FREE commercial advertising enmasse.

According to Jolie O’Dell @ Read/Write/Web this video is just too cool for Microsoft. They finally do something right, and decide it’s too edgy.

Come on Microsoft – Grow a Backbone why don’t you. Steve Ballmer for cryin’ out loud you have ‘Ball’ in your last name – why don’t you grow a pair!

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Post tags: advertising, Dean Cain, Google, Internet Explorer, Internet Explorer 8, microsoft, Steve Ballmer

I’m certain that I’m not the first person to complain that there’s just not enough time in the day to get things done. In fact I know of at least one other blogger who tipped me off on the polyphasic sleep cycle which he got from another blog on How to Hack Your Brain. This advanced sleep re-patterning is called: the “EveryMan“.

Everyman is a modified Sleep-Wake cycle that includes one 2-4 hour nap, and two-four mini naps. The Everyman boasts that a person can get away with 2.8 – 5 hours max sleep per day.

I’m suggesting a Group Experiment. Join if you want. Just Blog about your Experiences and Share you experiences on Twitter using the hashtag: #SLEEP09 .

Considerations:

1. Timing is Critical – you absolutely must take your core nap, and mini-naps at the same time EVERY day.

2. Beware that this will take a week or so to get used to.

3. There are social issues with this sleep cycle, will it interrupt your family, or work life?

Pick Your Poison:

1. The Everyman 4 Nap – 2.8 Total Hours of Sleep.
   1. Requires 1.5 hours of Core Sleep; and 4x-5x 20 minute Naps.
2. The Everyman 3 Nap – 4 Total Hours of Sleep.
   1. Requires 3 hours of Core Sleep; and 3x 20 minute Naps.
3. The Everyman 2 Nap – 5.2 Hours of Sleep.
   1. Requires 4.5 hours of Core Sleep; and 2x 20 minute Naps.
4. The Siesta – 6.3 Hours of Sleep.
   1. Requires 6 hours of Core Sleep; and 1x 20 minute Naps.
5. Or my 3.5 Hour Mashup.
   1. Requires 2 Hours of Core Sleep; and 3x 30 minute naps.

Please note my version has not been tested. I am testing it personally, and would appreciate anyone else’s feedback on it as well.

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Post tags: #sleep09, Blog, everyman, Health, lifehack, lifehacking, Nap, Polyphasic sleep, Siesta, Sleep Disorders, Twitter, uberman

RIP Michael … Just don’t come back as a Zombie!

Of course the death of Michael Jackson is on everyone’s lips today. Michael Jackson was an odd fellow in his later years. A part of me was always pulling for him that he might have one day gone back to his roots.

Oddly enough I made a tribute to Michael Jackson’s Thriller last Halloween. A post with 13 different versions of Thriller. Lacking time to put together anything bigger, I’d like to point you to that link…

The Many Versions of Michael Jackson’s Thriller…

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Post tags: Halloween, Los Angeles, michael jackson, Music, thriller, Thriller 25

Carbon Offsets a new Business idea worth checking out!

Carbon Offsets work like this. We have a company that puts out 100 tons of carbon per month. They then purchase carbon offsets to balance out their negative impact on the environment. Carbon offsets go for anywhere between $5-$15 per 1 ton of co2.

There are a number of companies that you can buy carbon offsets from. Some of them are simply brokers that manage carbon offset sales for solar and wind farms. These carbon credits are used to buy more windmills, more solar panels, plant trees, and other eco-friendly projects.

Some airlines are now giving customers options of buying carbon offsets for their trips, they pay an extra cost on their tickets and that money goes towards purchase of a carbon offset.

Companies which produce large amounts of pollution can through purchasing carbon offsets become a ‘carbon neutral’ company.

What is Carbon Offset Brokering?

In its simplest form, carbon offset credits are bought and sold in a sort of marketplace. Buyers which include businesses and consumers buy carbon credits from carbon offset middlemen or brokers. These brokers buy the carbon credits from solar farms, wind farms, reforestation projects, and many other environmentally friendly companies and charities across the planet.

How can I make money with Carbon Offsets?

Anyone can become a broker for carbon credits, it’s as simple as starting a new website or blog.  Since President Obama was elected there has been a huge increase in green initiatives across the country.The green industry is thriving unlike any other industry right now.  It’s quite possible that Carbon Offsets and other similar businesses will be the next big boom, like the internet was in the 90’s.

It’s safe to say that Green Enterprises are recession proof right now.  The best part is you don’t need to re-invent the wheel to get started with carbon offset brokering.

There’s a really good program that will teach you how to start a carbon offset business. Now I’ll never make my own income projections, but according to the site there are many students of the program earning in excess of $12,400 a month, I don’t imagine everyone can make that much, especially starting out – but there is great growth potential, and very little in startup costs, and anything is possible!

Learn more about how to sell carbon offset credits for profit!
Interesting Facts on Carbon Offsets:

• A full size car expends on average 12,000 lbs of CO2 or $54.42 worth in carbon credits per year.
• Flying 6000 miles (roundtrip from Boston to LA – give or take a thousand) is equal to 2,500 lbs of CO2 or $11.33 worth in carbon credits per year.
• Home: The average small to medium house uses 16,500 lbs – 27,500 lbs of CO2 or 74.82-$124.71 worth in carbon credits per year.

That $124 is enough money to offset a home’s carbon footprint for a whole year, that means it replaces the carbon by other eco-friendly businesses like solar, wind, water, tree planting, etc..

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Post tags: barack obama, Business, Carbon Cycle, CarbonCredit, CarbonFootprint, CarbonOffset, environment, Environmentally friendly

If you love your Beer, and you love crazy funky T Shirts then WearYourBeer.com may be just the site for you. They feature a whole plethora of shirts, and souvenirs featuring your favorite beers, comic book heroes, sitcoms, political sayings, etc..

If you’re a comic book fan they have all kinds of superhero t shirts, my fave are the  Superman T shirts, and Batman T shirts.

I also love their family guy t-shirts. I like the I’m So Hot t-shirt with Stewie, and the one with Peter on the crapper. Two of my favorites state “Sarcasm is just another Free Service I offer”  and “Bite Me I’m 100% Organic!” both of which feature Brian the dog.

There’s also a really cool Stewie gray hoodie. Showing how you can be both bad-ass and funny at the same time..right?

Also for those like me who fanatacize about Saved by the bell they even have some great Saved by the Bell t-shirts! So if you’ve ever dreamed of wearing Zack Morris on a t-shirt now you finally can. I know all my dreams are now true (*cough*throwup*cough* – Please notice the sarcasm!) All jokes aside, I must admit I really did watch the show back in Junior high lol.

I must warn you that some of these t-shirts are downright rude and obnoxious but that’s what makes them funny!

Other Great T-Shirt Options:

• Seinfeld T-shirts
• Simpsons T-Shirts
• Super Mario T-Shirts
• Spiderman T-Shirts
• Political T-Shirts
• Video Game T-Shirts
• and much more…

T shirts, not your bag of potatoes?

They’ve got alot of other great products including: Hats, Drinking Games, Pint Glasses, Humorous Shotglasses, Keychains, Flip Flops, hoodies, tote bags, Wallets, etc..

Full list of Categories are:

• Beers
• Liquors
• Cartoons
• Movies
• Music
• Television
• Political
• Video Games
• Classics
• Sports
• Super Heroes
• Humor
• Holidays

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Post tags: Batman, Comic book, Saved by the Bell, Shopping, Simpsons, Stewie Griffin, T-shirt, Zack Morris