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1. Free Baby Samples. Baby products like powder, lotions, cream, milk, milk powder, diapers and many more are sometimes costlier in price if you want the good brand of the baby products. When you use low quality products i... (03/11/10 09:01 AM)

2. It's Banks vs. Families, Who Will Come Out on Top? Q&A With Elizabeth Warren.

   

   Elizabeth Warren is Main Street's woman in Washington. A professor at Harvard Law School, she's researched the travails of the consumer credit market and the hidden bankruptcy epidemic for over 25 years. Not satisfied with merely publishing academic research, she leaped at an invitation from Senator Harry Reid to take a more public role in reforming the financial system after the credit crisis: She's now the chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel, the group charged with overseeing the bank bailouts.

   I caught up with Elizabeth Warren at a table outside the Senate Office Building cafeteria, a few hours after she finished grilling Citibank CEO Vikram Pandit at a typically contentious hearing. With new financial reform legislation imminent--"You're talking to me in the 4th quarter of the basketball game," she said--Warren spoke frankly to Fast Company about her hopes, fears, and frustrations.

   FC: You said it's the 4th quarter of the basketball game--what's the score?

   EW: The economy has been pulled back from the abyss, and Secretary Paulson, Secretary Geithner, both presidential administrations and Congress deserve credit for that. They saved the life of the patient.

   That said, the Treasury demonstrated that it was much better at shoveling hundreds of billions of direct grants and guarantees at the largest financial institutions than it was at protecting the real economy. The largest institutions were "too big to fail," but the foreclosure crisis and small business credit slowdown have been "too hard to solve."

   FC: I was really struck by your interview last fall with Adam Davidson on NPR's Planet Money. (The shouting match drew hundreds of blog comments.) He seemed to suggest that protecting the real economy, as opposed to bailing out Wall Street, was some kind of marginal issue or a personal issue of yours. What do you think about that?

   EW: I think the worldview that America begins and ends with its largest financial institutions is not only wrong-- it is dangerously wrong. Businesses are not America, and America does not exist to serve big institutions. America is about families. People who get up every day and earn their salary to pay their bills and try to make it one day to the next.

   I am a bit stunned that, in the depth of the financial crisis, anyone is saying that the focus should be on the Wall Street banks.

   FC: And yet it does seem sometimes that the business and economics news focuses on the fact that big banks are turning a profit again, or the stock market is back above 10,000, to the exclusion of foreclosures and unemployment and bankruptcies affecting Main Street.

   EW: There's a larger point here about diversity of views. Are you familiar with The Wisdom of Crowds? The underlying insight is that a crowd must be drawn from different points of view to make good decisions. That's how it is that 1,000 people can guess with such accuracy the number of jellybeans in the glass jar. We were actually talking about this at lunch today: If all the people who are providing the input have the same worldview, then errors are built into the system. And those errors are not small. They are seismic errors.

   You want the person who has a unique interest in defending the collapsing system as the person to oversee the bailout? That's astonishing!

   FC: So let's leap into your role as an advocate for financial reform. The Senate's version of the financial reform bill already passed in the House and is due in the Senate any day now. Senator Dodd has been signaling potential compromises, like housing the Consumer Financial Protection Agency within the Federal Reserve instead of as an independent agency. Paul Krugman said in his column recently that unlike with health care reform, where progressives ought to grit their teeth and pass it, the time has come to actually stand up and say, this so-called financial reform isn't worth supporting. Understanding that final details aren't out yet, can you imagine a situation in which you'd say the same?

   EW: Of course. There are already seven agencies in Washington that own a piece of the consumer financial protection apparatus. This is the worst of all possible worlds: a bloated, ineffective, unaccountable bureaucracy.

   We need to merge those bureaucracies into a single, streamlined, accountable regulator with autonomy and teeth. If we fall short of that, we will just be recreating one more bureaucracy so that we can all congratulate ourselves that we did something for the American people when the reality is otherwise. That would be a terrible thing.

   FC: What kind of assurances have you gotten from the Obama administration about their commitment to real reform?

   EW: President Obama has been clear from the beginning that he supports a strong, independent consumer agency. He has put a lot of energy behind it. He has had events at the White House, has spoken about it in public town meetings, and even made the ultimate commitment--talked about it on Leno.

   FC: I understand that at one point you pursued an entrepreneurial path to reform the consumer financial products market.

   EW: The short version is that I studied the economics of the middle class and I began to see that credit products were becoming increasingly dangerous. Families didn't know how much they were spending on credit and comparison among the products was practically impossible because of all the incomprehensible fine print. It wasn't the products that were priced the best that survived. Instead, the ones that were most loaded with tricks and traps provided the most revenue.

   So I thought at first that my academic research will be enough. I will publish a law review article and surely the world will change--that didn't happen. So I wrote a couple of popular books about it--The Two Income Trap and All Your Worth. But it still didn't change the world.

   The PEW Charitable Trust then got in touch with me and asked what ideas I was working on. And I told them: I'd like to build a private, market-based solution. I want to build an Underwriter's Laboratory to certify credit cards.

   The whole idea behind the current model is, "I will hold something shiny in front of your eye, 3.9% financing, and the way I'm going to make money is on tricks and traps that I've buried in the fine print: $29 there, $49 there, triple interest rate, double cycle billing, over and over and over ... ."

   So the idea was to take an independent group that will say here's a clean, clear industry credit card. It was called the Clean Card. So Pew said, we love this. They took me out to San Francisco to meet with the head of a very fancy bank consulting group. We put together a proposal and many of the executives we met with just loved it.

   They loved it at the first meeting and at the second meeting. It was almost as if you could see the CEOs thinking, "I'll have my picture on the cover of Business Week for transforming this market." They were saying, "We want to be part of this! We want to be the first movers, we want to be America's Credit Card." Then we come back for the 3rd meeting after the numbers guys have taken a closer look, and they say, "We can't do this." As one VP put it, if people really understood how much a credit card cost, they wouldn't use it and the bank would lose too much market share.

   And one of the issuers took me aside and said, "We get that our business model is unsustainable over the long haul, but no one of us can jump first. We all have to move together. If we all move together, we'll be fine competitively, but if one of us moves and we lose market share, then the ones who issue the dirty cards will control this market." So it was literally on the plane on the way home from the meeting with the issuer that I realized how broken the market is and started thinking about a new agency in Washington.

   FC: Ok, so you've concluded that the market is broken. Now you've come to DC and are working in the midst of biggest credit crisis the country's ever seen. What are you going to do if we finish out this crisis and still the market's not fixed?

   EW: If America can't come out of the crisis and repair the broken consumer credit market, then this government really is broken. The lobbying over this bill is enormous, and it's all on one side. It's one thing when insurance companies are on one side and doctors on the other. This one is exclusively big Wall Street banks who have a tremendous amount of money to spend on this to protect their revenue stream.

   FC: So even though you can call Vikram Pandit on the carpet and get him to answer a few questions, his lobbying staff is hard at work behind the scenes to make sure nothing changes.

   EW: The money is all on one side and the votes are all on the other. So, that's what we'll find out. It's banks vs. families. And we'll see who comes out on top.

   The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10cElizabeth Warrenwww.thedailyshow.com

   
   

   
   (03/11/10 09:00 AM)

3. A Cheat Sheet to Help You Conquer Social Media.

   

   Marketers who are still a little unsure about charting their path through the choppy waters of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn could do worse than check out this handy little guide to making social media work for them. The CMO's guide to the social landscape, created for CMO.com by client 97th Floor, takes all the major social media sites in the U.S. and analyzes their capabilities in four sectors: customer communication, brand exposure, driving traffic to your site, and SEOs. (For the full-sized version, click here.)

   

   Overall, it's YouTube and Digg that post the best results, although the former falls down on the traffic question, while the latter fails on customer communication. One thing that the cheat sheet neglects to mention, however, is how deeply you need to go into each Web site when launching a new campaign. It's pretty obvious that a softly-softly approach can get your message across on the social media. But if you over-market your product, it's un-friending all the way.

   [CMO.com Via The Common Hoster]

   
   

   
   (03/11/10 09:00 AM)

4. Sony Announces PlayStation Move, Its Wii-Baiting Motion Controller.

   

   Sony gave a brief tech demo of its motion controller at the E3 show last year (and discussed it with us just a few weeks ago), but a lot of the particulars were left unknown. Today, they demonstrated the newly-dubbed PlayStation Move, and released details about accessories, price, and release date. Sony's hoping the Move will attract buyers tempted by the Wii's motion-sensing gaming--but they've got a lot of ground to make up.

   The basics are much like the Nintendo's motion controller, except instead of Wii's motion-sensing bar that sits on top of your TV, the PlayStation Move will use Sony's PlayStation Eye camera. Other than that, the Move is also a remote-control-like controller that can be attached to a side-controller for two-handed play. But whereas Nintendo's Wiimote had to be attached to its Nunchuck sub-controller, the Move connects wirelessly via a little lightbulb-shaped adapter (which, thankfully, looks more like a microphone than, well, something less savory). For some games, like a swordfighting game, you'll actually need two separate controllers--and everything, including the sub-controller, will almost certainly be sold individually.

   

   The use of the PS Eye is interesting; it's definitely an advantage over the Wii's sensor bar, since it can use augmented reality to add graphics to whatever you're doing, onscreen. Instead of just pretending you're holding a tennis racquet, you can see yourself onscreen holding one, which is pretty cool.

   

   But beyond augmented reality, it's not clear that Sony's doing much to dispel the notion that they're just releasing a Wiimote-like accessory. Compared to Microsoft's Project Natal for Xbox 360, which forgoes the controller entirely for a system that maps your body and can respond to individual limbs or even other objects, Sony's doing very little innovating here. Gizmodo tried out the Move and found that it's slightly more responsive than Nintendo's Wii MotionPlus, and of course the PS3 is a far more powerful console than the Wii, but that it was mostly underwhelming. We've seen this before--and a "me too" product may not be enough to drag Sony out of third place in the current-gen console wars.

   The Move will be sold in a few configurations, including a standalone controller; a package with a PS Eye, Move controller, and a game; and a package with an Eye, Move, game, and a PS3 console. The only price we have for now is that the Eye, Move, and game combination will fall under $100. Sony is aiming for a fall 2010 launch window.

   [youtube H9o9fRsK59c]

   [Sony]

   
   

   
   (03/11/10 09:00 AM)

5. China Inflation, Industrial Production Accelerate (Update2). China’s inflation reached a 16- month high in February, industrial output climbed and new loans exceeded forecasts, adding to the case for the government to pare back stimulus measures. (03/10/10 09:00 PM)

6. New York Times Unbundles for Digital Editions. As newspaper publishers attempt to understand how their products fit into the new digital world, they are experimenting with different ways of offering content via handheld devices like mobile phones... (03/10/10 09:00 PM)

7. Battlestar Galactica Coming Soon to Fight With Star Wars and Star Trek MMOs.

   Bigpoint and Unity Technologies announced on Tuesday that Battlestar Galactica Online will be released this Fall. The MMO (massively multiplayer online game) will debut on Syfy Channel's site first, as a 30-day exclusive, and will use browser-based 3-D software Unity. "We've always felt that Battlestar was the perfect IP for gaming. It's got all the elements that you would want: The various classes of characters, and weaponry, and ships, and dramatic storyline, and big worlds to play in," said Bill Kisper, the GM of the digital platforms group at Universal Partnerships and Licensing.

   

   Players will be able to play as either humans or Cylons, in both ship combat sequences and away missions on planets. The developers are working closely with the production company at Universal that is behind the show, sharing sound and computer assets, and possibly more, "There will really be a link between the show and the game itself, with the characters and storyline. It's not just some starships flying around in orbit and we call it a Battlestar game," said Heiko Hubertz, CEO of Bigpoint. Details about what characters and stories from the show will be featured in the game will be forthcoming.

   But can the game succeed in a market that feature both the recently launched Star Trek MMO and the coming Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO? Kisper said, "It's a crowded and competitive space. We're a little bit different because, while those are more of a traditional MMO with a box product and an on-going subscription, we are coming into the browser-based space. We thought that made sense for Battlestar Galactica because the fanbase for the show is quite broad and spans a number of different demographics. We wanted to make it more accessible."

   
   

   
   (03/10/10 09:00 PM)

8. Crib Sheet: Padmasree Warrior, CTO of Cisco Systems.

   Cisco's big announcement recently about how its new product was going to change the Internet for the better got the tech community very excited--not to mention the financial world, as the company's share price rose to a 52-week high. And then, yesterday, they launched the thing--a datacenter-level router that should give mobile Internet a bit more "poke." But for some time, Fast Company has known that, for Cisco's shares to go through the proverbial roof, would be somehow to clone its CTO, the absolutely brilliant Padmasree Warrior, and make her available in every home.

   Ms. Warrior (who recently said on Twitter that if she'd had a choice in her own name, it would have been "The") truly is the future of the tech industry. Basically, she's the human face of all those big, swinging tech players who we all revere but somehow wonder just how normal they are. A working mother, she was born in India and moved to the U.S. after gaining a BS at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi. Just 16 at the time, she describes it as the major transition of her life, "more than being CTO of Cisco or coming to the U.S., because I was very young."

   "I visualize work and family as incongruent and in conflict with each other. It's tough, but I try to maintain this seamless integration (of family, community, self and work.)" She's on the board of Chicago's Joffrey Ballet and the Museum of Science and Industry, and holds a bunch of directorships. She spends her free time (just how much has she got these days?) with her family and friends, and, given that's she's gone on record as saying she likes going to concerts, we thought we'd spice up her Crib Sheet with a bunch of lyrics. Extra points to commenters who can identify the artists.

   This is Major Tom to ground control, I'm stepping through the door, And I'm floating in in the most peculiar way: "I am still commuting back and forth, my family lives in Chicago. Hopefully I will get more proficient in going back and forth between the two cities." One thing that Cisco's teleconferencing tech can't solve, it seems.

   Flew in from Miami Beach BOAC, Didn't get to bed last night: Last month, Warrior was part of a U.S. delegation to Russia, alongside Ashton Kutcher and Jack Dorsey of Twitter, Rumors of Cisco Systems' acquisition of ChatRoulette have yet to be substantiated--although we could start the ball rolling right here.

   War, Hurghhh! What is it good for? Absolutely nothin' (say it again): "Biological warfare debases my concept of humanism."

   Three (Is the magic number): The most influential people in her life are her parents and her husband. "My Mom taught me the power of love. I learned to focus on the long-term big picture from my father. His sense of humor and light-hearted approach always make me smile. My husband is a pivotal anchor in my life. His influence encourages me to be independent and take risks."

   Years go by, I'm lookin' through a girly magazine, and there's my homeroom angel on the pages in between: "If I had to pick three of my favorite magazines they would be Fast Company, Silicon India, and Smithsonian.

   Got no butler, Got no maid, Still I think I've been overpaid: "I would have dinner with P.G. Wodehouse. I have read all of his books at least ten times over. I am a great fan of his character Jeeves, the English Gentleman's perfect valet. His intellectual brilliance and audacious sense of humor fascinate me. Dinner with P.G.W. sounds simply scrumptious."

   Buy it, use it, break it, fix it, Trash it, change it, mail - upgrade it: "Tech is all about building human connections."

   Let me sleep all night in your soul kitchen, warm my mind near your gentle stove: "It seems in my home all important decisions are made in the kitchen:) Is the kitchen the center of gravity in your home?"

   On your video phone, make a cameo, tape me on your video phone, I can handle you: "I'm most excited by the evolution of entertainment and content over the next five years. In the past five years we saw it go from passive consumption to on demand, and going forward it's always on demand and that's where the mobile comes in. The screen is going to be with you, no matter where you are."

   Face to face my lovely foe, mouth to mouth, raining heaven's blows: "If we had our way, [a virtual World Economic Forum] would be a year or so [away.] But in some cases, you really do need to meet and talk."

   [Via ZDNet.com, Beet.tv, WITI, livemint.com. Photo via Twitpic]

   
   

   
   (03/10/10 09:00 PM)

9. Canadian Chefs Predict Food Trends of the Future .

   

   Macrobiotic food, raw food, local food...the list of food trends that have popped up in restaurants in recent years is virtually endless. The Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association (CRFA) recently surveyed 400 chefs to find out what they think about the future of food, with some surprising (and not-so-surprising) results.

   One big trend that chefs predict we'll see in the coming years: gluten-free food and beer. As awareness about gluten intolerance increases, gluten-free food has increasingly shown up on forward-thinking restaurant menus. Gluten-free beer is a little less common, but chefs predict beers made with sorghum, buckwheat, rice, maize, amaranth, flax, millet, and other barley substitutes are poised to hit the bigtime.

   As you might expect, sustainable food will be at the forefront of chefs' minds over the next decade. That means non-traditional (read: sustainably-farmed) fish like red sea urchin, herring roe, mackerel, octopus, and sardines will become more popular. Vegan entrees will also gain traction, as will artisan meats that skip the factory farm production line. And yes, organic alcohol will probably start showing up on more store shelves.

   Want to check out the rest of the Canadian chefs' predictions? Check out the full list here.

   [Via Vancouver Sun]

   
   

   
   (03/10/10 09:00 PM)

10. How to Write a Mission Statement That Doesn't Suck [video].

    

    I want to show you why most mission statements are so terrible.

    Let's say you founded a pizza parlor. And your first idea for a mission statement is something like this: "Our mission is to serve the tastiest damn pizza in Wake County." That's pretty good. If I worked for you, I could get excited about that. Now here's how it will go off the rails.

    [twistage 0fd64afa78711]

    So you'll call your colleagues around the conference room table to unveil the mission, and all of the sudden, these people that you like and respect are going to transform into 10th-grade English teachers, nitpicking every word. Everybody starts chiming in with opinions: "Hey, I really like the word 'present' better than 'serve,' it has a nice resonance." And someone else will say, "Well, we obviously can't say 'damn,' that's just offensive." And so it begins. And as you go around the table, your mission statement will be pecked to death.

    We can't limit ourselves to Wake County--and also, it's not just tasty pizza right, it's about freshness--we should say "high quality" not tasty.Isn't it weird that we mention pizza but not our great salads and calzones? What if we changed it to "highest-quality Italian food"?That's good but even "Italian" seems limiting--what if we decide to move into gyros?Hold the phone, people, we haven't even mentioned the great family atmosphere--the coloring books and big comfy booths and all that.Great point--you know what we're really doing here, at the end of the day? We're providing a family "entertainment solution!"Yeah, solution!NAILED IT.[Dan] Everyone's excited now. You're almost there. And then Steve at the end of the table pipes up ... [Steve] Listen, guys, we haven't mentioned anything about integrity. That's what it's all about, at the end of the day. Integrity.

    And is anyone at the table gonna go to the mat against including "integrity?" Nope. So it's in. And presto--there's your new mission statement:

    "Our mission is to present with integrity the highest-quality entertainment solutions to families."

    That's what 99% of the world's mission statements sound like, and I think you see the trap here--getting so vague and fancy with the language that it just becomes meaningless. Here are 2 ways to avoid it:

    Use concrete language. Check out this mission statement from SonicBids, a fast-growing small business: "We want to help musicians get gigs, and promoters book the right bands. ... We're a bunch of people who think that music can truly change the world and make it smaller and better. ... We believe that independent music belongs everywhere: on festival stages; in video game consoles; on film screens; in college theaters; on the radio; in advertisements; on club stages and at sporting events." Wow. It gives you a picture of what they do and tells you why it's worth doing.

    Talk about the why. Most mission statements are all statement and no mission. The whole point is to say why you're doing what you're doing. What makes you care? Look at the start of Johnson & Johson's famous credo: "Our first responsibility is to the doctors, nurses, and patients, mothers and fathers and all others who use our products and services." Well, okay, that's worth getting out of bed for. Compare that with ExxonMobil's. Did you feel that? A little part of your soul just died, reading that.

    So you've seen why bad mission statements happen and two tips for making yours different. At our home Web site, I've put together some other resources for you to check out, if you're interested. And in the meantime, let me challenge you to do the impossible: Write a mission statement that means something. And I'll give you a hint: If it contains the word "solution," you're not there yet. Thanks for watching.

    For More on this topic: Download this document Chip and I developed: "5 Tips for a Sticky Strategic Vision." Here's a funny and illuminating review of a book on Mission Statements. My opinion is that most organizations would benefit more from setting a clear, ambitious goal than from crafting the perfect mission statement. On that front, check out Collins and Porras's work on setting a BHAG (Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal)--here's the original piece (for free) and a helpful overview with lots of examples. (Bonus: here are some audio resources from the guru Jim Collins himself.) And, for inspiration: The J&J Credo. (Many observers credit the Credo with helping to shape J&J's admirable response to the Tylenol-poisoning crisis in the 1980s.)

    
    

    
    (03/10/10 09:00 PM)

11. Hard Work and Consistency in a Network Marketing Internet Business. Network marketing is a marketing strategy used by many companies in promoting their products and services through a sales force that not only generates income from the sale of these products and servi... (03/10/10 09:00 AM)

12. Do Improv Comedians Make the Best Design Thinkers? .

    A teacher of design thinking at Dartmouth uses improv set-ups to boost his students' creativity.

    

    Big design firms such as IDEO and Smart Design have made millions on their "design thinking" and "human-centered design process." Which is good for them, but doesn't necessarily teach you how to crib their mojo for your own endeavors. Peter Robie, an Engineering professor at Dartmouth, has an answer that would make Dunder Mifflin's Michael Scott: Copy improv comedy classes.

    Apparently, in his Design Thinking course, Robie has students act out how people use the objects around them. It's a technique learned from experience. According to The Dartmouth Engineer:

    "This class on improv is a tool for brainstorming," he explains. "I've always thought that the quickest and smartest folks at the brainstorming phase of design have been those who do standup and improv. They never say no. They never miss a beat. Improv requires players to accept what they are given, build on the ideas of others, and encourage wild ideas..." ..."Everyone thinks that they know how to brainstorm, but in fact, brainstorming is usually plagued by problems like self-censoring, competitiveness, and ridicule," says Robbie. "Improv is a great way for students to learn to defer judgment."

    Robie goes on to offer some pretty sharp nuggets about what human-centered design actually boils down to, and why it actually matters:

    "In the period of scarcity after World War II in America, companies could essentially sell anything they could make because people were happy to have whatever they made," he says. "But since the explosion of competition globally, design has become the best way--or only way--that companies differentiate their products. It has developed into a key aspect of innovation and a requirement for success.... "...because "good designers are astute observers of human behavior," he sends students out in the field as anthropologists to notice, question, and analyze what they might otherwise ignore.

    If you're at all interested in design thinking, read the entire article. It's excellent.

    [Via Core 77]

    
    

    
    (03/10/10 09:00 AM)

13. Govt taking adequate steps to promote handicraft sector. SMEs in the Indian handicrafts sector can now promote their product basket effectively across the world thanks to the various initiatives undertaken by the government to promote the sector.
    Highl... (03/10/10 09:00 AM)

14. Easysaver Parents Who Own The EZsaver Diaper Pail Receive Unexpected Rewards With No Complaints. Diapers stink, bottom line. Good thing there are products for parents such as the Safety 1st Easy Saver Diaper Pail. With its low price and use of everyday garbage bags, it has become a popular item i... (03/10/10 09:00 AM)

15. . ( )

16. CitySearch, OrangeSoda JV to Offer Local SEO. Local online media site Citysearch and SEO provider OrangeSoda are partnering to provide a marketing tool that marries their respective strengths. The new product, CityGrid Complete, is an extension... (03/09/10 09:00 PM)

17. Two Are Better Than One. Like peanut butter and chocolate, many different services from very different business go well together. Could you team up with another entrepreneur, like the two women in this story and combine your products into something completely new? Daily Commercial: Mud pies and pizza pies — two things kids love to get their hands on. Throw in a [...] (03/09/10 09:00 PM)

18. Information Marketing: The Mistakes I Made Creating My First Info-Product. My first information product was an ebook called "Got Ideas? Unleash Your Creativity and Make More Money." Bet you didn't know that, did you? That's because it was a complete flop. Y... (03/09/10 09:01 AM)

19. Design Award Upset: Small Chilean Studio Beats the Starchitects with Affordable Housing Project.

    2010's Brit Insurance Design Award for Architecture went to Elemental's affordable, and adaptable, housing project in Mexico, skipping over big shots like Zaha Hadid and James Corner.

    

    Architecture had its own Oscars on Monday, and just as cinephiles everywhere sighed with relief when The Hurt Locker beat out FernGully: Part 2, those following the Brit Insurance Design Awards cheered the triumph of the little guy. In a major upset, little-known Chilean studio Elemental beat big-budget showpieces like Zaha Hadid's MAXXI museum, Herzog and de Meuron's Tenerife Arts Space, and even the New York High Line, winning the architecture category with their Monterrey Housing Complex.

    Built in Santa Catarina, Mexico, it was the studio's first project outside of Chile. The 70 connected homes were based on a similar housing complex they built in Iquique, Chile in 2004. This time, they had almost double the budget, but it was still next to nothing: about $20,000 per unit. So Elemental took a similar approach, building out half of each house, including the difficult parts like the bathroom and kitchen, and leaving the second half empty, to be constructed by the resident. It's cheap, clever, and instills an ownership in residents that fully-built -- but poorly-built -- housing projects lack. Plus, it's another sign that architecture is moving away from show and towards substance. It's a welcome, if overdue change.

    

    

    See the rest of the winners in fashion, product design, furniture, graphics, transport, and interactive design here.

    [via Architecture Lab]

    
    

    
    (03/09/10 09:01 AM)

20. Cleveland's Galleria Mall Turns Lost Retail Space Into Greenhouse Farm Stand.

    

    Shopping malls, those bastions of American consumerism, have not been immune to the recent economic downturn. In a recent piece by our own Greg Lindsay, we looked at the impending decline of the mall, which is part of the "single-use environment" category of real estate development that will slowly disappear over the next thirty years, according to one developer. But what will replace these environments, and more importantly, what will happen to the massive malls of today?

    One possible solution can be seen in Cleveland's Galleria mall. The mall lost many of its retail shops over the past few years, leaving gaping holes in the greenhouse-like space. So employees of the Galleria came up with the idea for the Gardens Under Glass project, a so-called urban ecovillage inside the mall that features carts of fruits and vegetables grown on-site. The project was recently given a $30,000 start-up grant from Cleveland's Civic Innovation Lab.

    The Cleveland Plain Dealer explains:

    Poole and Hamilton put in the first green stuff this week -- a 12-foot cart of lettuce and other greens near the Galleria's first-floor escalators. Their aim is to start an education center and store in a former candy shop, invite sustainable-product makers to display and sell their items, and sell produce to restaurants and individuals. They dream of hosting school groups and teams of volunteer urban gardeners eager to work beds of herbs and greens and vine systems raised hydroponically, aquaponically and in organic soils.

    We can see it now: the malls of today turned into the suburban (and urban) farming powerhouses of tomorrow. And while we're at it, why not turn entire economically depressed cities into agricultural centers as well? It's already happening in Detroit, where entrepreneurs are turning vacant lots into factory-side farms. And if Cleveland's mall farm works out, maybe New Jersey can become the next big agricultural innovator--the state has the most malls per square mile in the country.

    [Via Cleveland Plain Dealer]

    
    

    
    (03/09/10 09:01 AM)

21. Goldman Sachs Slashes Nexus One Sales Forecast to Around 1 Million.

    

    An analyst at Goldman Sachs has thrown a wrench into the works of Google's smartphone by downgrading the sales forecast of the Nexus One. Initial expectations were high: analysts had said as many as 3.5 million units would be sold in the first year. But with just 80,000 sold in the first month, according to mobile analytic group Flurry, figures have now been revised down to around a million.

    Compare and contrast this with other handsets. The first iPhone took 74 days to hit a million in sales; version 2, in 2008, took just three days (by this time, however, it was available pretty much worldwide). The iPhone 3GS version hit 1.6 million within a week.

    Moving away from Apple, which--let's face it--currently has the smartphone market all sewn up, how are other Android phones faring? Well the Droid, Motorola's last-ditch attempt to keep its head above water, flogged 525,000 through Verizon in the same month that the Nexus One was released. 

    And maybe this is what the first bona-fide Google phone needs: a network. It's interesting to note that, on the Nexus One website, the T-Mobile version ($179) is sold out, while the contract-free version ($529) is yours for the taking. There's no doubt that Google fluffed the launch back in January. There was a little bit of fluttery hype, but no announcements, no big fanfare, it was just unveiled, like any other product, around the time of CES, the tail-end of a bunch of Android OS upgrades. And then there was the customer service--or lack of it.

    Goldman Sachs indulged in a bit of stern finger-wagging in its forecast note. "We assume that Google rolls out a second Nexus handset, markets it more agressively, and makes it available offline, and therefore forecast that Google sells two million handsets per year in 2011 and future years." If that's not a Must Try Harder report card, I don't know what is.

    One gets the feeling that even Larry and Sergei are over the gPhone. Last week John Herlihy, Google's top guy in Europe, said that data mining was where the sexy jobs were at in Mountain View, although he took the view that smartphones were an essential tool for Google. Just not their own-brand ones, it seems.

    [Via Electronista]

    
    

    
    (03/09/10 09:01 AM)

22. Waterpebble Stops You From Taking Ultra-Long Showers.

    

    Even the most devoted environmentalist will likely confess to taking long, hot showers on occasion. One possible reason (besides the comfort factor) is that, unlike with electrical outlets, there are few products to help users gauge the amount of water being poured out of a showerhead. That's where the Waterpebble comes in.

    The device is placed at the bottom of the shower, where it keeps track of all the water being poured down the drain. If users take ultra-long showers, the Waterpebble's LED light glows red. If water is being saved, the device glows green, and if just enough water is being used, the Waterpebble glows orange. Instead of holding all users to the same standard, the device keeps track of how much water is used during the first shower after it is activated. Every shower after that is judged based on how much water it uses compared to that first shower.

    Best of all, the Waterpebble isn't just another well-designed concept device. It's on sale here for $5 plus shipping.

    [Via Treehugger]

    
    

    
    (03/08/10 09:00 PM)

23. Google Really Wants to Monitor Where You Are: May Link Buzz and Latitude.

    

    Google's Buzz has hit the tech headlines in good and bad ways, but it's totally swamped other Google offerings like Latitude. Google's not forgotten it of course, and has revealed it may well intertwine Buzz with Latitude. LBS social networking FTW?

    Google's mobile Buzz implementation has a location-based system built right in, which grabs your geocoordinates from the smartphone's AGPS system, whizzes it off to Google's cloud, and then drives location-sensitive data back to the app in the form of location aware Buzzes in the "nearby" view. As I noted before, this tech has the capacity to turn into something rather incredible (and slightly creepily unnerving) should Google take the concept to its natural extremes.

    But Google has another location-aware social network already, and has had since February 2009--Latitude. Google's not deprecating Latitude, since it's based around slightly different systems, and is more of a location-based friend discovery system as opposed to a chat-based social networking system. Still, many of Latitude's features are emulated, or improved upon (or can be in the near future) inside Buzz. And that's why Google is noting, in an interview with eWeek, that while it's going to continue investing in Latitude since it's "extremely important," it's conscious of the public buzz about Buzz, and will be investigating "points of integration between Buzz and Latitude." In particular, there may be apps Google can "build that have certain compelling use cases" which may be enhanced by location-awareness.

    This is fluffy, question-deflecting business talk, and it reminds us that Google truly is a giant organization pushing out innovative solutions in a thousand different directions all at once--sometimes without really thinking about the cross-product potential. But a liaison between Buzz and Latitude really does seem a smart idea, since the potential to enhance a friend-locator app with a sophisticated chat/info-sharing system has obvious benefits for the end users too.

    And, don't forget the real motivator behind this idea: Money. Google's skills at profiling you as a user are legendary, and sometimes worrisome, and there would clearly be a huge new array of attributes it could calculate about your habits if it integrated the always-on location sensitivity of Latitude with the info-rich chat streams inside Buzz. And then it can use that data to sell ad space to interested parties who'd like to advertise stuff to you based on your location, or when visiting certain places or talking about them with your pals.

    [Via eWeek]

    
    

    
    (03/08/10 09:00 PM)

24. Vitra Unveils Its Stunning New Museum [UPDATED WITH 3-D TOUR].

    The German furniture-maker maker adds another jewel to its starchitect-studded corporate campus.

    

    The Vitra campus in Weil am Rhein, Germany, is already a mecca for contemporary architecture, featuring a design museum by Frank Gehry, a conference center by Tadao Ando, and another building on the way by SANAA. And they've just finished what might be the greatest of them of them all: a new building, designed by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, to showcase the company's home-furniture collection.

    UPDATE: Vitra has now thrown up an amazing series of 3-D images of the museum, offering you the next-best thing to actually visiting the building. A couple screen-caps:

    

    

    Herzog & de Meuron--who made a global splash in 2008 with their "Bird's Nest" stadium for the Beijing Olympics--conceived of the building as an "ur-house." The individual volumes take the form of generic, A-frame houses, which are then stacked on top of each--creating an architectural symbol of Vitra's actual business, selling high-design through mass production.

    There are 12 houses in all, and the stacking of them

    

    

    [For more stunning images by Iwan Baan, check out Arch Daily]

    
    

    
    (03/08/10 09:00 PM)

25. The Home Office, Kids Edition.

    

    Kids and offices don't mix, right? Tempting though it would be to take a leaf out of Apple's book and employ my young charges--open up a blogging sweatshop, if you like--I think I'd be on the fast track to nowhere--I'd get sacked after the seventeenth pitch of Why Haribo Gummi Bears are So Grate.

    One of the most startling thing about having children around--and if you're working from home, they will be around at some point--is how much of an influence you are on them. I don't have children of my own, but my boyfriend has two--a 10-year-old boy and a 7-year-old girl, but more on them in a bit. And, in the year or so I've been around them, I've realized just how much they try and emulate what you do. So, they see you putting your make-up on to go out and before you know it, that gorgeous blond cherub who just sat down with a plate of fish fingers has made herself up to look like David Bowie in his Aladdin Sane period. They see you tapping away at a computer, they'll want to do it too. Which is a good thing--a great thing, actually, as there will come a time when they're able to sort out your IT woes and download all the latest Lawnmower Metal bands for you to listen to. The downside, however, is that they want, in the immortal words of Rob Reiner's mother in When Harry Met Sally, what you're having. And if that's a slice of your computer, then that's what they'll get.

    Anyway, back to my sorta stepkids. The eldest, Charlie, is an absolute whizz on the computer, so much so that every time he comes to stay he eyes up my iMac in a way comparable to how I imagine Hugh Hefner would behave on a visit to a sorority house at Gothenburg University. This has had two effects on our relationship. First of all, he has bonded with me in the only way that a 10-year-old geek (two in binary years) might. My shiny little computer is the holy grail of the household and, in the initial period of our relationship, became the center of a tug-of-love. He saw it as something to watch Doctor Who on, before he discovered the joys of e-commerce. "Can I have your credit card number?" was, I believe, the first sentence he directed at me.

    I, however, see my computer somewhat differently. For starters, it's the one thing in my house that enables me to earn a crust, so to say I am territorial about it is something of an understatement. Friends' toddlers have either vandalized or permanently knocked out of action the various decorative objects I've collected on my travels. A much-loved Seventies globe light I picked up in a junk shop in Berlin was smashed to smithereens at Christmas by a one-year-old, and you just have to shrug your shoulders, usher the kids out of the way of the shards of glass and get the Hoover out. But to knock my computer out of action would render me pretty useless.

    So, here are my seven golden survival tips.

    1. Earmark another computer for the kids to use. Given that the shelf life of a computer is, say three to five years (let's not forget those awfully persuasive marketing campaigns exhorting us to upgrade to a newer model), there's probably a good chance that there's an unused laptop kicking around the house. Failing that, ask your friends if you can take an unwanted laptop off their hands. Wipe everything off but the bare minimum, and hand it over to the kids. That's their computer for them to do whatever they want on it--well, within reason. Understand about firewalls. Don't, however, make the mistake of putting an old desktop in their bedrooms. Call me old-fashioned, call me a killjoy, I don't care. Just don't do it, unless, of course, you want your kid to act like he's got ADHD, as that's what sleep deprivation does to them.

    2. Close the door. If your home office has a door on it, then you're laughing. If it's got a doorframe, then you're halfway there. Introduce rules. Door open? Come on in. Door closed. Back off unless it's really important. You may want to consider getting a lock on the door--which works both ways, keeping you in and them out.

    3. Introduce strict times about when they can and can't use your computer. If you green light your computer for your kids' use, then there are a few things you should do. Give them a separate log-in and make it clear that they can't use your settings. That way they can't go in and wreak havoc with your desktop. No food or drink to be consumed around your computer. It may anger the wildlife. (That's you.) Make it clear that you have first dibs on the computer. If you need to use it, then they're off. Make sure your Google settings are on Safe.

    4. Keep them away from your most pristine (but hopefully not your only) laptop. My colleague Kit's MacBook Air suffered a severe malfunction when his son mistook it for a trampoline.

    5. Manage time. Having kids around forces you to be much more diligent about working to a timetable. Most of my work is done in office hours, but there are occasions when I have to work late. And that's hard if you've got kids. Either you down tools until they're in bed (which means you're stuck at your desk until your brain resembles mashed pumpkin) or you ask them if you can have an hour between when they get back from school and supper to work. If they've got homework, then that's the time for them to do it. Tidy away your paperwork before they get home. Important phone calls are done either when they're napping or out of the house.

    6. Back up everything. I've said this before, and I'll say it again. Back it up. With kids, accidents do happen, so, should the unthinkable happen and your work be sucked into a vortex of nothingness, then at least you've got a copy. It wasn't their fault, they were just trying to be like you. And if they go the trampoline route, then a decent home insurance policy can help. If you're a Machead like me, then it's worth paying a little bit extra for Applecare, which gives you three years' cover on your Apple products. I've had free batteries, new keyboards--and, in one case, a new casing around my laptop trackpad. It's saved me thousands.

    7. Give them an even bigger screen. Get a pile of DVDs and sit 'em in front of the telly. And buy yourself a pair of noise-reducing headphones. And if that fails, bribe them with Gummi Bears.

    [Images: deryckh (top image); Kit Eaton (baby)]

    
    

    
    (03/08/10 09:00 PM)

26. ChatRoulette Sparks "Next" Proxy War Between the U.S. and Russia.

    Andrey Ternovskiy, the 17-year-old creator of Chat Roulette, is now embroiled in a bidding war that pits the U.S. and Russia against each other over where the company will end up. Could it blow up like Facebook? Or fizzle like MySpace?

    

    Andrey Ternovskiy, creator of Chat Roulette, just might be sitting on the hottest Internet property since Facebook was founded five years ago. But he's not American. He's Russian. And that's putting him smack in the middle of some powerful forces. On the one hand, Russia investors backed by the Prime Minister himself are egging him to stay. But the freedom and riches of America might just draw him away.

    That tension is outlined in the first profile of Ternovskiy to appear, published by German daily Der Spiegel. Just check out this amazing scene, in which Yuri Milner--a Russian investor with a net worth is around $680 million and who's Facebook's largest overseas backer--tries to entice Ternovskiy:

    Milner and Ternovskiy talk for an hour and a half. The multimillionaire would like to go into business with the teenager, who hasn't been to school in weeks and is on the verge of being expelled because of his truancy. After all, Ternovskiy is a businessman now. Milner wants to buy 10 percent of Chatroulette. He wants Ternovskiy to name his price but the teenager simply strings the entrepreneur along.

    And the stakes, of course, are international in scope:

    ...The combined value of Google, Microsoft and Facebook amounts to roughly $500 billion, or about a third of the Russian economy's annual output. So if Russia--which has more than 50 million Internet users and boasts one of the fastest-growing markets--hopes to catch up, then it will need to keep talents like Ternovskiy at home. But Ternovskiy doesn't sign with Milner straight away. He wants to think about Milner's offer first. How much is his idea really worth? Some estimates put it at worth somewhere between €10 million and €30 million. And should he join forces with a Russian business partner or with an American company?

    The profile has a few fascinating tidbits--Ternovskiy is busy trying to keep "freaks and fuckers" off the site. And the pictures are priceless--the fresh-faced tyke as he grins in a bedroom filled with empty bookshelves, or out in front of his grim Soviet-era housing complex.

    But more troubling for Milner and Russia, he's planning on at least visiting America to hear out investors. "The Internet is my world. It connects Moscow with the West," he says. And he's always dreamed about owning a Silicon Valley start-up.

    There's been lots of talk that American is on the decline, because we no longer draw the smartest young immigrants. But it's telling that Ternovskiy's dreams seem to be drawing him here.

    While ChatRoulette may seem like a goofy gimmick for one-handed-Web-surfing pervs, there's no reason it can't become something mainstream. French Connection already uses it for marketing. (Why couldn't product designers and marketers sit down for random interviews? And why shouldn't ever fifth "next" be an ad?) Moreover, as our intrepid Dan Macsai suggests, ChatRoulette opens up a whole new world of Internet socializing. Which actually sounds a lot like Facebook, right? You could imagine all sorts of silos, from dating to random conversations, filtered by topics or interests. But Ternovskiy will need the right business partners to make sure it doesn't suffer the fate of MySpace instead.

    [Der Spiegel via ReadWriteWeb]

    
    

    
    (03/08/10 09:00 PM)

27. The Basics of Email Marketing. Email marketing is an effective way of distributing information about a product or service. This direct marketing method makes use of a fast and effective tool: electronic mail. The main issue tha... (03/08/10 09:01 AM)

28. Four Steps to Affiliate Business Start Up. Choose Your Affiliate Program
    Affiliate programs run the gamut of consumer products; from e-books on every subject, to help with your love life. So, take some time, do ... (03/08/10 09:01 AM)

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30. Apple Debuts First iPad Ad During Oscars, Demonstrates a Dozen Ways to Hold the Thing.

    

    Apple debuted its very first iPad ad during the Oscars tonight, showing off the tablet's various functions (with an emphasis on reading) in signature style. Oh, and if you were wondering how to hold a giant slab of screen with no kickstand, the ad makes sure to demonstrate about a dozen options.

    It's a pretty typical modern Apple ad: soundtracked to inoffensive, perky indie rock, it shows the gadget's functions front and center, in this case committing to essentially a dead sprint through the iPad's uses. Newspapers, movies, calendar, maps, photos, email, iWork, and, of course, books are all given just enough time to register before the ad flashes on to the next one.

    The ad, then, is a continuation of the iPhone campaign, rather than the MacBook ads, which typically feature a narrator explaining whatever change Apple's made to the line to warrant a new product. It makes sense, since the iPad shares the OS, software, interface, and (some) accessories of the iPhone, and has almost nothing in common with Apple's computer line--but it just reinforces the idea that this product is little more than an oversized iPhone. Apple doesn't even need to explain what it is--you can watch 30 seconds of a demo and realize that if you can use an iPhone, you can use this. That, of course, is to both its strength and detriment, but time will tell if people embrace the jumbo-sized mobile or not. The iPad will be released on April 3rd.

    [YouTube via MacRumors]

    
    

    
    (03/08/10 09:00 AM)

31. Oscar or Not, "Coraline" Is a $65-Million Gamble That Paid Off for Phil and Travis Knight.

    

    On the morning that Oscar nominees were announced last month, Nike founder Phil Knight called his son, Travis, at 6 a.m. They both had just gotten word: Coraline, the debut film by their studio Laika, was up for best-animated film. "Phil is a man of few words, but it was a nice conversation," Travis told me recently. "A great father-son bonding moment."

    On Sunday, they're hoping for another such moment at the Academy Awards. Whether or not they walk away with a gold statuette, it's been a remarkable and improbable journey for the new filmmakers. Even Nike didn't reach the Olympic medal stand with its first shwoosh-emblazoned shoe.

    As we chronicled in our story "The Knights' Tale," when Coraline was just starting production in 2007, Laika is a family affair. After rescuing the struggling animator Vinton Studios from financial ruin, Phil took control of the company and set his sights on building a movie studio, a Pixar rival. Despite no previous interest in management, Travis, then a talented, 29-year-old animator, came to embrace the leadership opportunity created by his father. Travis, who has since become Laika's CEO, was instrumental in bringing in Henry Selik, of The Nightmare Before Christmas fame, to direct Coraline, based on the best-selling young novel by Neil Gaiman.

    They were determined to make a distinctive, darker-than-Disney movie that married old-fashioned filmmaking, stop-motion animation, and the latest technology, 3-D. The two had never been combined before. "People didn't gravitate toward us when we were trying to find partners," said Travis. "The film was weird, stop-motion was this odd thing, and we were an unknown quantity, a bunch of clod-hopping rubes up in Oregon. It's difficult to convince people that something new and innovative can bear fruit."

    Coraline was a $65-million gamble for the Knights and Laika. "We knew it was very, very possible the film would tank completely," Travis said. Focus Features, however, was able to build early word-of-mouth by targeting niche audiences. The film went on to make $123 million worldwide at the box office ($75 million of that in the U.S.).

    That revenue, and the Oscar nomination--not to mention 10 nominations for the industry's top animation awards, more than any other film, including Pixar's Up--have given Laika instant credibility and much-needed breathing room. "It definitely makes it easier to have conversations with [Hollywood] people," said Travis.

    For now, Laika's second next project, scheduled to start production this spring, remains under wraps. What we do know is that it'll be introduced, "From the studio that brought you the Oscar-nominated -- or Oscar-winning -- Coraline ... "

    Either way, that's an awfully nice head start.

    
    

    
    (03/08/10 09:00 AM)

32. No iPad Tethering, but Games for Days: Steve Jobs .

    

    It's just 25 days 'til iPad arrives on sale in some global locations, and the fever's mounting. To spur it on, Apple pushed its first ad during the Oscars, which Steve Jobs was at. He's also been emailing fans to confirm some details too.

    The Oscars

    The Oscars, like 'em or loathe 'em, count as one of the most viewed TV events around the World...making them an absolutely perfect platform for Apple to tease its upcoming tablet PC. The glamor, the glitz, the very media-centric nature of the show all tie in sweetly with the iPad phenomenon. And it all acts to accelerate the typical pre-launch hype Apple uses to get everyone excited in the several months between it launches a new product and it arriving on sale.

    iPad-to-iPhone Tethering

    When he launched the iPad back in January, Steve did a neat job of showing the World how cool the device is (without having to resort to his trademark "Boom!" either) but he also kept a lot of information back, leaving plenty of room for rumors. And for Apple to maybe add in some surprising "extra" features before it actually launches--just as it did for the iPhone.

    One of the key features that Jobs (and Apple, on the iPad Web page) omitted was details on iPad 3G tethering to supply mobile Net to a PC. We know the iPhone can do it (mine's happily connected up right now to write this piece in fact--but then I am not in the U.S. with your ever-so-friendly AT&T) and the assumption as soon as we learned the iPad ran iPhone OS was that it would be able to too. Sure enough, code fragments inside the SDK have revealed it to be true--and frankly, it's not surprising.

    But what we didn't know is if the iPad Wi-fi version could tether to a 3G iPhone. This concept also makes sense on a practical level, as who'd want to pay for two 3G connections if you're carrying both devices frequently. Well, we now know that lots of people will have to do this--Steve just did one of his famous short emails to a answer a question that a member of the public in Sweden put to him on this very matter. And all Steve said in response was "No," the iPad won't tether to an iPhone.

    It's a shame, but it's probably a feature of business negotiations with 3G carriers who are concerned about potential lost revenue and network over-loading. Will this news play into user's decisions on which iPad version to buy? It's definitely influenced mine.

    Battery Life

    Another little gem Steve revealed by email (from his iPad--neat!) answered a question concerning the claimed 10 hour life of the iPad. The figure seems phenomenal--and it's been used as part of the long running Flash fiasco--and it's a key statistic in the iPad's battle to steal some of the Amazon Kindle's market, with its huge battery life.

    So, when a skeptic quizzed Steve about the matter, he felt the need to step in: "... yes we are getting 10 hours in 1.5 pounds" of iPad weight. Of course, no one apart from Apple employees have really put the figure to the test yet, since nobody has gotten their hands on one for long enough. Only then will we see if the figures ring true. And for Apple's sake they better had, since all this hype will result in one or two (almost inevitable) class action law suits.

    Games

    As soon as the iPad's screen size was confirmed, it was clear that it'd be even more perfect as a gaming platform than the iPhone or iPod Touch--all that extra real-estate and resolution is just asking to be exploited. And now Secret Exit has revealed screenshots of its iPad version of the runaway iPhone success story Zen Bound, and they look utterly gorgeous. They're also the first big screenshots of an iPad-only game.

    

    Zen Bound 2 does lend itself perfectly to the touchscreen and accelerometers in the device, of course. And though it's beautiful, it's hardly graphically intense. So we've yet to see how the iPad's A4 processor copes with serious 3-D graphics. It won't be long though.

    To learn more about iPad as its launch date approaches, follow me, >Kit Eaton, on Twitter.

    
    

    
    (03/08/10 09:00 AM)

33. Toxie Awards Go To BPA, Lead, Pthalates and More.

    

    Just in time for the Oscars, Californians for a Healthy and Green Economy have announced the winners of the Toxies, an actual red carpet event that honored so-called "Bad Actor Chemicals" or toxic compounds found in many everyday products.

    Some of the winners:

    Worst Breakthrough Performance and Viewer's Choice Award for Worst Chemical of 2009: Bisphenol A (BPA), an estrogen impersonator found in polycarbonate plastics used in baby bottles, reusable food and water containers and canned food liners. Linked to breast cancer, prostate cancer and infertility. Lifetime Achievement in Harm: Lead, used in everything from paint and lunchboxes to candy and children's toys, can interfere with children's intellectual and behavioral development. Worst Viral Media Performance: Triclosan, a pesticide used in hand sanitizer, antiperspirants, household cleaners, and toothpaste that can produce other toxic compounds. Worst Costume: Perchlorethylene, commonly used in dry cleaning but can cause dizziness, nausea and organ damage. Worst Stripper Performance: N-methyl pyrrolidone (NMP), an industrial solvent used in chemical processing, paint stripper and graffiti remover. Worst Special Effects: Perchlorate, an oxidizer used in fireworks, airbags, explosives and rocket fuel that can contaminate drinking water.

    The Toxies even rounded up actors to play each chemical.

    

    Sadly, the Toxie event for this year is over--it was held on March 3 at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. But the organizers plan to make it an annual event, and there's still more toxic chemical goodness to come next week when the California’s Department of Toxic Substances unveils its Green Chemistry Initiative.

    [Via Greenbiz]

    
    

    
    (03/08/10 09:00 AM)

34. How Much Green Innovation Does $100 Million Buy?.

    

    Earlier this week The Upswing brought you news--and a real purdy picture!-- detailing the five hottest cities in the country in terms of generating green jobs. Today, we'd like to offer yet more good news in this area.

    Seems the Department of Energy just dropped a $100 million check on Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (or ARPA-E) to go toward three main areas of green technology production. The areas are:

    Developing cost-effective, non-toxic means for energy storage. Building power converters that can reduce energy consumption by 30%. Exploring additional high-efficiency technology for heating and cooling systems.

    Historically three has been the magic number. And it certainly is for ARPA-E, which announced the new funding on Tuesday at its first annual conference. In a statement, DOE Secretary Steven Chu said: "This is about unleashing the American innovation machine to solve the energy and climate challenge, while creating new jobs, new industries and new exports for America's workers."

    Here, here. Now we'll just have to wait and see how ARPA-E spends the cash and what it means for next year's rankings of the top five places for green work.

    For more on the green economy:The 10 Best Green Jobs for the Next Decade

    [Image: CleanTechnica]

    
    

    
    (03/08/10 09:00 AM)

35. American Spender.

    

    Last December we had, as a nation, quite a bit of cash lying around. The following month we found a way to spend it. In fact, we spent some $12 billion more in January than we had saved up. That's a lot of flat-screens--or an all-inclusive vacation that would put Sandals Jamaica to shame. It's also more than the gross domestic product of several entire nations, according to the CIA's World Factbook. So are we up to our old ways, living beyond our means and spending money we don't really have? Or are we once again happily striding forth into the marketplace, confident that this nascent recovery will only grow stronger? With any luck, the latter. Let's just hope the answer to both of those questions doesn't reflect our complicated relationship to spending, yielding a single reply: yes.

    Infographic: Rob Vargas

    
    

    
    (03/08/10 09:00 AM)

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37. Conservation of Fossil Fuels: Solar Energy Products. Once upon a time sun, the king of this universe was center of a man's life which governed laws of mankind. The rising of the sun for a villager meant the beginning of his day with its monotonous activ... (03/07/10 09:01 AM)

38. CoSHH Guidance - The Safe Use of Cleaning Products. Cleaning products play a crucial part in our daily lives and when you work with them on a regular basis, it is easy to forget how hazardous these products can be. It is crucial that when we use chemic... (03/06/10 09:01 AM)

39. Advantage of Distributing Promotional License Plate Holders. There are many mediums of advertising your business available at your disposal. The use of promotional products in advertising a product has been gaining ground in terms of popularity as of late. Whil... (03/06/10 09:01 AM)

40. Niche Invention: Bheestie Bag. Karen Wildman and Lisa Holmes were constantly battling malfunctioning electronics due to moisture and water damage. The sisters set out to invent a solution. and they did! Their new product, Bheestie Bag, is designed to ‘dry out’ electronic devices: cell phones, iPods, etc. We previously mentioned them here. Here’s how it works. You simply take [...] (03/05/10 09:00 PM)

41. Niche: Rainbow Roses. Are you a florist? Do you need a product to differentiate you from all of the other flower shops in your community? Have you heard about rainbow roses? Rainbow roses, the brainchild of Dutch flower shop owner Peter Van de Werken, are colorful roses that are made by injecting die into the stem of [...] (03/05/10 09:00 PM)

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43. How to promote your business with your product label?. There are countless ways to promote the business in the modern world. Entrepreneurs promote business or their corporations in all sorts of ways. The marketing and brand promotion of business or the pr... (03/05/10 09:01 AM)

44. Advantage of Distributing Promotional Pen And Pencil Sets. The ideal marketing tool is something that can fully represent a business, does not need a hefty amount of money for its production, and that it is totally effective. There are some items that suit th... (03/05/10 09:01 AM)

45. Save Store Space and Sell More Merchandise With Slatwall Display Fixtures. The retail economy has become obviously competitive. The times have gone when shop owners can easily stack their products the way they see. As shoppers effortlessly become knowledgeable when we talk a... (03/05/10 09:01 AM)

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51. FDA Threatens to Yank Food Products off Shelves.

    The US Food and Drug Administration has told 17 food manufacturers to remove misleading labels from their products--or risk having those products pulled from shelves. ABC has more: The FDA said Wednesday that its commissioner, Dr. Margaret... Read more

    (03/04/10 09:01 AM)

52. How to Made a Better Online Marketing. In this article we shall learn How to Promote Your Shop On line . This article is particularly useful for those who want to have an edge over others in selling their product. In this competitive world... (03/04/10 09:01 AM)

53. Ways To Advertise Your Online Business. Internet is completely a new world that has both sellers and buyers. There are a lot of techniques to advertise your product directly to the people whom to want to target as well. People are always in... (03/04/10 09:01 AM)

54. Things That Make Corporate Identity The Secret Business Factor To Becoming Successful. More often than not, the reason why many businesses fail is the lack of promotion while the products are set out in the market. Certainly, there are things that are beyond our skills, expertise and r... (03/04/10 09:01 AM)

55. B2B SAAS puts pricing on website, salespeople gasp. Us industrial marketers have lots of logistical excuses reasons that we don’t post prices on our websites. I’ve made a valiant effort to discuss it here at B2Blog in the past. Software is a borderless, virtual product, so the bar is a bit lower. And if you are in a very new marketplace, there’s no [...] (03/04/10 09:00 AM)

56. Making Money Selling Almost Nothing. Can you sell a small piece of fabric for big bucks? You can if you position it correctly and market the heck out of it. The makers of the Cami Secret do just that. They’ve created such a marketable product out of almost nothing that it made sense for them to produce [...] (03/03/10 09:00 PM)

57. JetPacks Coming Soon. The Week: New Zealand’s a announced they are beginning production of the as-yet unnamed device — which stands five feet tall, weighs 254 pounds and will cost a cool $77,000 — at an initial rate of 500 units per year. Powered by dual propellers, it will be capable of whisking a pilot along at 63 mph [...] (03/03/10 09:00 PM)

58. Making Your Google Alerts Smarter.

    Making Your Google Alerts Smarter
    
    This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

    ShareMaking Your Google Alerts SmarterThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing If you follow my writing you know that I’m a big fan of setting up routines that let you listen in on what’s being said about your brands, products, people, industry and competitors using free tools like Google Alerts. Google Alerts let you set-up custom searches [...] (03/03/10 09:00 AM)

59. The Top 25 Greenwashed Products in America.

    Despite the recession, many consumers continue to spend a little extra on environmentally-friendly products. Purchases like organic food and nontoxic household cleaners help consumers feel empowered, healthy, and guilt free. This relatively new... Read more

    (03/02/10 09:00 PM)

60. Rounding Up Staff Ideas. Business owners are always on the hunt for new ideas — ways to cut costs, increase revenue, and improve products and services. Inc.com reports that often the most cost-effective source of ideas is right in front of you. “More companies are turning first to their employees to tap into those free ideas lying around in [...] (03/02/10 09:00 PM)

61. Fourth-Grader Has Nose For Biz. Not every fourth-grader hands out business cards. But Anna Ayres of Brookings does. Frequently during the school year and pretty much full time through the summer, Anna hands out her card as a hostess and distributor for Scentsy, a franchise that sells wickless candles, ceramic warmers and home-fragrance products, reports The Brookings Register. Why is a 10-year-old in [...] (03/02/10 09:00 PM)

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64. AP Forms New Digital Unit; Subscription iPad First Product. The Associate Press is pushing deeper into digital publishing by forming a new business unit to create content and products for the myriad platforms that are emerging. The first order of business for... (03/01/10 09:00 PM)

65. Surviving in the Job Market: An Interview with BriteTab’s David Rogers.

    Jobs--or lack thereof--are the one thing touching almost everyone in the current recession. How many of your friends, acquaintances and family members have lost a job in the past several years? How many have found new work? If responded "none"... Read more

    (03/01/10 09:00 PM)

66. Improve Your Site’s Search Engine Optimization. Search engine optimization can raise your website’s profile, delivering more traffic, more customers, and bigger revenues. Inc.com shows you how to make the most of this essential marketing tool. 1. Give stuff away. Does your company offer free samples of its product? Do you have any handy applications or an ebook you can let site visitors [...] (03/01/10 09:00 PM)

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69. Mother & Son Keep Their Business Cooking. We’ve bought products from mom and pop stores. We’ve even purchased services from father and son businesses. But, The Augusta Chronicle wonders, when was the last time you ate at at a mother and son restaurant? Jackie McCalla and her son Clinton McCalla Jr. hope the number will be many as word of mouth [...] (02/26/10 09:00 PM)

70. Sales Copywriting - What it Means to Write Online. The basic idea behind sales copywriting has not changed. This is essentially the kind of writing used to sell a person, idea, product or service. The role of the copywriter is to convince readers that... (02/26/10 09:00 AM)

71. Advantage Products Group Has It All For Brides & Beyond. It takes a very determined business owner to keep their business growing at a time when so many have gone under and Sandy Keller is one such owner. Sandy is the founder of Advantage Products Group LLC, which is the umbrella company over a series of 7 different online shops. From products for brides to [...] (02/25/10 09:00 PM)

72. Bloom Box: Best Product or Simply First Mover?.

    Silicon Valley startup Bloom Energy unveiled the Bloom box yesterday. The Bloom box is a solid oxide fuel cell that can power multiple homes independently of the existing energy grid. Bloom Energy´s design is groundbreaking--until you look at... Read more

    (02/25/10 09:00 AM)

73. Toyota, Congress Posture With the Best of Them.

    Toyota President Akio Toyoda voluntarily testified before a congressional committee yesterday. Toyoda´s intent was to rebuild American confidence in his company´s products. The Wall Street Journal has the story: (During the) three-hour... Read more

    (02/25/10 09:00 AM)

74. The 10 Most Common Pitfalls of Brand Licensing. Combining your product with top brands is an incredible way to escalate growth. If you are looking to drive revenue, enter new markets, or reposition your product, brand licensing can lead to dramatic results. As with any new endeavor, however, pitfalls abound. (02/23/10 09:00 PM)

75. Inventor Launches ‘Rock-It’. Heck with a better mousetrap. Jason Lucash, 26, is busy inventing compact products that help people listen to music. The Danville Express News reports that Rock-It, developed by Lucash, is a gadget that allows music fans to use any household object as a speaker – it’s the “first ever portable vibration speaker system,” explains Lucash. Hook it [...] (02/23/10 09:00 PM)

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77. Unicast: 10 Tips for Publishers to Increase Ad Visibility. The top issue for online advertisers - at least as they state make their objectives to publishers - is that they want more eyeballs on their product. So says Unicast, which offers the following tips... (02/22/10 09:00 PM)

78. The Placebo Effect Works on Products, Too.

    Image: Chemistryland.com When consumers associate a certain effect with a product, they tend to underestimate the time it took for the product to delivered its desired effect, according to a Journal of Consumer Research study: “People... Read more

    (02/22/10 09:00 AM)

79. 9 Poorly Conceived Marketing Campaigns.

    The world of marketing is a tricky thing. Most companies need to get the word out about their new product or service, but finding the best way to do it is often easier said than done when you want to be memorable, informative and entertaining all... Read more

    (02/18/10 09:01 AM)

80. Proof it’s not about the benefits, but your product. Go look at Anne Holland’s Which Test Won. Sorry to bypass the quiz screen, but my post’s title already gives away the answer. “Version A, with its main visual of the printer itself, enticed 37.2% more visitors to complete the online call-back form, thus generating more sales leads for the industrial printers.” While an awareness of the [...] (02/17/10 09:01 PM)

81. Five Simple Link-Building Tips. Link-building services are the most commonly outsourced aspect of SEO. The process involves finding qualified and thematically relevant one-way linking partners who will link to your website. Spammy, automated products often never cultivate valuable links and tend to do more harm than good. Doing it right means link-building by hand. ... (02/09/10 09:01 PM)

82. Tertiary Keyword Rankings: Using Your Search-Engine Presence to Power Your Customers. In the world of B2B marketing, what would you say your customers want most from you? Some of the obvious things are quality products, great service, reasonable prices, and solutions that increase profits. But what would they really want if they could have anything from you? How about more customers? (02/02/10 09:00 PM)

83. Selling Like Billy Mays: Five Essential Character Traits That Make a Product Easy to Sell. Billy Mays, who, sadly, passed away at age 50, was a potbellied, black-bearded Atlantic City carnival barker who wore a blue long-sleeve shirt and a white undershirt. And direct marketers loved him. According to Mays, to be great and an easy sell, a product must have these five essential character ... (01/26/10 09:00 PM)

84. Defining Market Opportunity?You Be the Judge. At its core, market opportunity is your sizing forecast for a specific product or service, now and over the next several years. At a minimum, you should know that information in terms of sales dollars. A solid understanding of opportunity will guide you to the best markets and warn you ... (01/19/10 09:00 PM)

85. Stop Trying To Be Better Than the Competition.

    Stop Trying To Be Better Than the Competition
    
    This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

    Stop Trying To Be Better Than the CompetitionThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing And start figuring out how you can be different than your competition. So many business owners or would be start-ups sit around this time of year trying to figure out how they can be better than the competition – better product, better service, [...] (01/12/10 09:01 AM)

86. Increase Your Revenue - Become an Outstanding Sales Copywriter. The responsibility of being a Sales copywriter is pretty intense. The words you put together and the way your copy "flows" can define if a product sells or not. Having this burden on your shoulders (o... (12/10/09 09:00 AM)

87. Master Copywriting and Reap the Rewards. Copywriters are a rare breed. They earn tons of money for writing a few lines that can trigger increased product sales. At the top of the heap are copywriters who get fat bonuses, travel privileges, a... (12/10/09 09:00 AM)

88. Why We Really Buy.

    Why We Really Buy
    
    This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

    Why We Really BuyThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing Marketing podcast with Martin Lindstrom (Click to listen, right click and Save As to download – subscribe now via iTunes Project Buyology was a fascinating research project conducted by Martin Lindstrom that used brain scans to better understand what really motivates someone to buy a product or get [...] (12/08/09 09:00 AM)

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90. Two new web services from my inbox. Maybe these are useful to some readers: 1. Trade your contacts with others with the Reach Lead Network ala Jigsaw. Cool feature is that they can resolve ’social media’ contacts (i.e. Twitter followers) into real contact info. 2. If you are looking for new product/brand/company names to trademark, searching out conflicts is a pain. Well, until you’ve [...] (11/23/09 09:01 PM)

91. Effective Copywriting. As you already know, writing good sales copy is the key to selling your product. Whether it's your own product, an affiliate product, or any l... (08/06/09 09:01 AM)

92. Role of Retail in Sustainability. Just posted Role of Retail in Sustainability on my business blog. I'm surprised at how few retailers are stepping up to the plate and helping consumers make educated choices on sustainable products. Best Buy is a laggard, Home Depot is... (07/30/09 09:00 PM)

93. Copywriting Improvements on Your Sales Letter Can Double Your Marketing Success. Copywriting involves the use of words to promote people, products and businesses. Copywriting is very important to advertisers when attracting potential customers to their products; those commercial j... (07/15/09 09:01 AM)

94. June is Entrepreneur's "Do It Yourself" Marketing Month!.

    For those of you who are not yet fans of Chase's Calendar of Events, you'll find that it's a great resource for you or for your clients when seeking those special holidays to tie your promotions to! In fact, there only ONE entry in the entire book with the word "marketing" in the title, and it happens to be in honor of Entrepreneurs "Do It Yourself" Marketing Month in June. Of course, that's reason to celebrate.

    In order to do our part for the celebration, we've created a cool little e-book with some marketing planning tools and 30 ideas for entrepreneurs, along with a 30-day e-course starting on June 1st. What's even better is that there's different content and different ideas in the e-book and the e-course, so it's like you're getting two for one!

    Learn more about Entrepreneurs "Do It Yourself" Marketing Month at: www.diymarketingmonth.com

    Below is the press release signaling the launch of Entrepreneurs "Do It Yourself" Marketing Month coming up in June.
    

    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

    Contact: DanaVanDen Heuvel
    The MarketingSavant Group
    888-989-7771
    dana@marketingsavant.com

    MarketingSavant Group reaches out to entrepreneurs with "DIY" marketing in honor of June's "Do it Yourself" Marketing Month

    Green Bay, WI -- (May 13, 2009) Even in struggling economic times,
    small businesses' entrepreneurial spirit continues to be a driving
    force in the American economy.

    A Green Bay, Wis.-based marketing consulting and training firm is
    reaching out to the backbone of American business, providing a
    Do-It-Yourself Marketing Plan customized specifically for
    entrepreneurs. MarketingSavant is delivering free marketing tools just
    in time for Entrepreneurs "Do It Yourself" Marketing Month in June.

    "As an entrepreneur myself, I know how challenging it is to keep
    marketing 'top of mind' and to stay front of mind with your customers
    when you're wearing multiple hats," said Dana VanDen Heuvel, president
    of MarketingSavant and creator of the month-long Do It Yourself
    Entrepreneur Marketing Plan geared to small business. "But effective
    marketing is even more pivotal to a small business' well-being than
    their larger peers'."

    Not to mention the sheer number of small businesses ripe for
    marketing assistance. Small business is not equated with small
    financial impact. Consider these statistics:
    

    
    
    • In 2008, there were an estimated 27 million small businesses in the U.S. (Source: Small Business Administration)
    
    
    • In 2008, 12 million people were involved in starting new firms. (Source: Small Business Administration)
    
    
    • For 90 percent of these beginning entrepreneurs, it takes more
      than five years for an outcome to be determined. In that time,
      one-third disengage, one-third continue in start-up mode and another
      third implement a new firm. (Source: U.S. Small Business Administration)
    
    
    • Small businesses provide half the nation's nonfarm, private real
      gross domestic product, and half of all Americans work for a small
      firm. In addition, small businesses have been the primary job generator
      in the U.S. economy, creating 60 to 80 percent of the new net jobs
      annually from 1994 to 2004.(Source: Small Business Administration)
    
    

    
    With numbers like these, there's a substantial audience that can
    benefit from Do It Yourself marketing tools customized to their unique
    needs. The MarketingSavant DIY Entrepreneur Marketing Plan includes
    several resources that entrepreneurs can quickly put to use, as well as
    tools to build their long-term marketing plans, including:
    

    
    
    • "30 Days of DIY Marketing" e-book, an excellent resource that
      provides a marketing calendar and more than 30 do-it-yourself marketing
      ideas to grow your business over the summer;
    
    
    • 30-day e-course, delivered daily by email, highlighting marketing tips;
    
    
    • Eligibility to receive one of 10 free copies of the book, "Guerilla Marketing in 30 Days" by Jay Conrad and Al Lautenslager;
    
    
    • Free access to a BlogTalkRadio program featuring insights from Lautenslager, a well-known and respected guerrilla marketer
    
    
    • Tips for reaching out to the media to obtain media coverage on your event/product/service
    
    
    • Much more!
    
    

    
    "Realistically, entrepreneurs want to take charge of their own
    marketing, just as they take charge of everything related to their
    businesses," said VanDen Heuvel. "The DIY Marketing Plan makes this
    good intention a reality by delivering a comprehensive plan
    specifically for entrepreneurs in an easy-to-implement, do-it-yourself
    format."

    To learn more about the DIY Entrepreneur Marketing Plan and/or to
    participate in the plan for your small business' benefit, visit www.diymarketingmonth.com today!

    
    
    (05/14/09 09:00 PM)

95. No More Stretch Marks - Sponsored Link. Ad - I Cleared Stretch Marks in 14 Days using 2 Free Products. (04/07/09 09:01 PM)

96. How Toyota Followed Baby Boomers. Last week I presented on a panel with Professor Arturo Perez-Reyes (UC Berekeley) at an event in San Francisco we put on with Jupiter Research. One story the Professor shared about Toyota was something I hadn't heard before... He said that Toyota followed the baby boomer generation as a market. They looked at the demographics and spending power of that generation. I think it went something like this... They started with the Corolla, then Celica for when they got into college, then Corona/Camry, then launched Lexus when they had discretionary income. They followed the 'bulge' of spending the baby boomers had. It's an interesting way to think about the markets you're going after. Is it big? how will it evolve? How will it effect your product strategy? (04/03/09 09:00 PM)

97. My Wrinkles Are Gone! - Sponsored Link. Ad - Learn How a Mom Combined 2 Products to Easily Get Rid of Her Wrinkles. (03/31/09 09:01 PM)

98. My Wrinkles Are Gone! - Sponsored Link. Ad - Learn How a Mom Combined 2 Products to Easily Get Rid of Her Wrinkles. (03/30/09 09:01 PM)

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100. No More Stretch Marks - Sponsored Link. Ad - I Cleared Stretch Marks in 14 Days using 2 Free Products. (03/27/09 09:01 PM)