How To Be Creative

Another must read from Hugh at GapingVoid.com. Here is his list of 31 lessons and advice on how to be creative. Click through to read Hugh's great wisdom on each lesson and order some of his classic cartoons:

1. Ignore everybody.
2. The idea doesn't have to be big. It just has to change the world.
3. Put the hours in.
4. If your biz plan depends on you suddenly being "discovered" by some big shot, your plan will probably fail.
5. You are responsible for your own experience.
6. Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.
7. Keep your day job.
8. Companies that squelch creativity can no longer compete with companies that champion creativity.
9. Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.
10. The more talented somebody is, the less they need the props.
11. Don't try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether.
12. If you accept the pain, it cannot hurt you.
13. Never compare your inside with somebody else's outside.
14. Dying young is overrated.
15. The most important thing a creative person can learn professionally is where to draw the red line that separates what you are willing to do, and what you are not.
16. The world is changing.
17. Merit can be bought. Passion can't.
18. Avoid the Watercooler Gang.
19. Sing in your own voice.
20. The choice of media is irrelevant.
21. Selling out is harder than it looks.
22. Nobody cares. Do it for yourself.
23. Worrying about "Commercial vs. Artistic" is a complete waste of time.
24. Don�t worry about finding inspiration. It comes eventually.
25. You have to find your own schtick.
26. Write from the heart.
27. The best way to get approval is not to need it.
28. Power is never given. Power is taken.
29. Whatever choice you make, The Devil gets his due eventually.
30. The hardest part of being creative is getting used to it.
31. Remain frugal.

The Best Show on TV: Man vs. Wild

Have you seen it yet?

If not, run to your Tivo and start recording it. It's on the Discovery Channel. You just have to see a few episodes to see how incredible it is...

To absolute or not to absolute...

Another great piece of wisdom from the Signals Vs. Noise Blog:

"Be careful when attaching absolutes to your position. Attaching absolutes is like throwing a Hail Mary pass—it’s an all or nothing play."

Special Birthday Screening - Thanks Mom!

The following footage was filmed moments and days after my birth on January 3, 1974. The first time I ever screened the footage was to a group of friends and family on my 30th birthday. Since 3 seems to be my lucky number, I thought I would share it again today to celebrate my 33rd. Thanks mom!

Version one: Teardrop



Version two: Angel

Basstectonics.com Launches In Beta

Straight from my friend Scudder Steven's blog, "After three years of testing ideas, developing new skills, and learning the hard way, Basstectonics.com has finally launched!"

Congrats Scudder! Me likes what I hear so far...I'm loving the dub streams from my friends at Easy Star records.

So what is Basstectonics? From the site:

Basstectonics.com is a digital download retailer that offers its product catalog to customers in the form of audio streams. These streams are free to preview, at 96kbps, but must be purchased to enable the download of the audio files. Either the entire mix or each individual track, featured in the mix, is available for purchase. Basstectonics.com offers individual tracks in MP3 or FLAC format, and streams are available as MP3s only.

The music featured on Basstectonics.com is created by independent artists and record labels. When you purchase music from Basstectonics.com you are directly supporting these independent artists and record labels, not the greed of the Music Industry.

I look forward to seeing the evolution of the site over the coming months and helping however I can...

OrganizedWisdom.com Makes the Wall Street Journal

I was thrilled to wake up yesterday to see Laura Landro's article in the Wall Street Journal titled, Social Networking Comes to Health Care (subscription required but this link should work for 7 days).
There are several important web communities featured in the article and OrganizedWisdom.com is listed in the following break out box as one of the new health sites adopting social-networking, custom search and new interactive technology.


Landro's article is a major trend piece about what's going on with online health care, and the validation and coverage from such an important news source is a great way for our company to enter 2007.

Since you may not have access to the WSJ, here are a few highlights:

The social-networking revolution is coming to health care, at the same time that new Internet technologies and software programs are making it easier than ever for consumers to find timely, personalized health information online. Patients who once connected mainly through email discussion groups and chat rooms are building more sophisticated virtual communities that enable them to share information about treatment and coping and build a personal network of friends. At the same time, traditional Web sites that once offered cumbersome pages of static data are developing blogs, podcasts, and customized search engines to deliver the most relevant and timely information on health topics.

The same technologies are making it possible for advocacy groups, government agencies and health-care providers to update consumers on relevant health news and deliver personalized health-awareness messages, reminders and alerts to email accounts, wireless devices and mobile phones. Online collaborations known as wikis, which let different users jointly work on Web-based information such as photo albums and contact lists, are developing to help communities plan for public-health emergencies, such as fluwikie.com, a flu-pandemic planning site. Mainstream advocacy groups and government agencies are offering their own specialized health-information "feeds" to consumers, and even experimenting with three-dimensional online computer worlds that use surrogates known as avatars to let visitors interact.

Landro continues...

While some sites don't offer all the bells and whistles of full-blown social networking sites, they are taking advantage of the phenomenon to reach out to special audiences. The Wellness Community, a nonprofit group that provides free support and education to cancer patients and families, launched a Web site, grouploop.org earlier this year to help teens with cancer connect in a private, safe environment. The group says it has reached more than 15% of the approximately 50,000 teen cancer survivors in the U.S., and is also connecting teens in nine other countries. In addition to weekly scheduled support groups moderated by a professional, teens can log in at any time of day to post or read messages in a password-protected site. A comprehensive search engine allows users to search for other teens with cancer on such criteria as age, location, or diagnosis.

We have big plans and many exciting new developments for OrganizedWisdom.com in 2007. Thank you all for your support helping us launch the company this year. Your contributions, feedback, and suggestions have been invaluable. Please keep checking in and sharing your personal health wisdom to help others!

Happy 80th Birthday Peter Black!

We wish you a Happy Birthday and healthy New Year Peter!

Click here to see pictures from the Peter Black's 80th birthday party hosted at Roger and Marcia Bridgeman's home on December 9th, 2006.

I hope I look that good when I'm 80!

Oasis!

Three More of Mark Cuban's Invaluable Business Rules

Mark Cuban's Blog Mavrick is always one of the first blogs I click to in my news reader. That's because he's always sharing such useful advice and wisdom that as an entrepreneur I find invaluable.

Like these 3 Lessons he details in his recent post about Success and Motivation:

1. Everyone is a genius in a bull market

2. Win the Battles you are in before you take on new battles.
Its a huge lesson for entrepreneurs. Win the battles you are in first, then worry about expansion internationally or into new businesses. You do not have unlimited time and/or attention. You may work 24 hours a day, but those 24 hours spent winning your core business will pay offer far more. It might cost you some longer term upside, but it will allow you to be the best business you can be. To use a sports metaphor, get the fundamentals right and then add to your fundamental skills before you try to take on the trick shots.

3. Few businesses only have one opportunity.
Every entrepreneur's mind goes crazy with the new and exciting things they can do beyond the new and exciting things they are already doing. The risk is that you can drown in all these opportunities. Far too often when an entrepreneur hits a rough patch or competitive challenge, the temptation is too "turn on the thinking cap" and find something new for the company to do. Don't fall to the temptation. As an entrepreneur you have to know what the core competencies of your business are and make sure that your company focuses on being the absolutely best it can be at executing them. Bottom line is this. If you are adding new things when your core businesses are struggling rather than facing the challenge, you are either running away or giving up. Rarely is either good for a business. In fact, by chasing these opportunities, you may be assuring that you drown in them.

These rules may seem like common sense to many business pros, but the reality is, it's useful to rethink/relearn/remember great lessons like this as frequently as possible and to ask yourself frequently: am I following these rules?

Indian Thriller: Nothing to Say But Wow!

Joe Apology Gets Some Press

My good friend Andy DiSimone launched a very interesting blog last March called JoeApology.com. It's a simple concept that packs a punch and is starting to get noticed. Take a look at what The Standard Report had to say about the site last week here in its article titled: Shh...I'm Sorry. Give him a hand by Digging the article by clicking here.

Congrats Andy!

Is Web 3.0 Really About Technology?

I was a bit surprised by John Markoff's Nov. 11 piece on Web 3.0, or the "semantic Web" based on artificial intelligence (AI).

Surprised because Markoff, and those quoted in the article, are still talking about the Web in terms of technology, rather than human behavior. That is, is the Web really still about technology? To me that's like us talking about television, radio, or print in terms of black and white vs. color, frequency and watts, and types of printing presses. So I ask, is Web 3.0 really only about technology?

Since Markoff writes the technology column I guess I shouldn't be that surprised, but from what I am seeing take shape online, the emerging "Web 3.0" is something much more fundamental than the tools and platform running on the back end.

If Web 1.0 was millions of linked online brochures ("web sites"), Web 2.0 a more sophisticated version of applications mashed together ("mashups"), then I guess it makes sense that Web 3.0 could be about AI. But to me, I think what's more interesting is to define the innovation that is occurring online in terms of how this change is impacting human behavior. So in a Web 1.0 world, ordinary people got access to a networked world that was interactive, visual, and affordable. With Web 2.0, the impact of scale, collaboration, participation continues to impact pricing, information access, the job market, relationships, social interaction, our news media and so forth. So how will Web 3.0 change human behavior? How will people be impacted by the next wave of innovation and progress?

It seems to me that a Web 3.0 world, is about people/companies/organizations leveraging all of the great tools and infrastructure created from Web 1.0/2.0 and using it to develop things/products/services that actually make a difference in their lives and those in their community (where ever that community exists - online or off).

I believe Web 3.0 is about "nichification" and specialization. It is about harnessing all of this great innovation to develop things that people are actually interested in or that they actually need. Of course, this has been going on for many years already, but now it will go on in virtually every industry and for every idea imaginable. It's not about a cool new calendar application that features AJAX. It will be about a calendar that has meaning to my life and changes my behavior. What does that look like? I don't know...

Because people not only have the tools, capability and infrastructure to take control, they will do so in ways relevant to their lives, and not just because a computer told them so. But because nichification and specialization are now possible in a Web 3.0 world. While the technology may be getting better, what is really changing is how people are leveraging these new tools for change and progress. The question to me is not about the types of technologies running behind the Web, or how they are working, but rather what they are doing to help real people. And that is an exciting thing to be a part of...

Lapa: Rio's Symbol of Samba (And My Favorite Neighborhood in Rio)

Finally, the mainstream media (see below) is starting to cover Lapa, an area in Rio de Janiero. For years I've been telling everyone I know in Rio, if I could buy a building anywhere in that magnificent city, it would be in Lapa. And for years, people from Rio have said that I'm crazy. It's too dangerous. And all sorts of other fear-filled exaggerations.

So when the The New York Times published a great article in the Travel section this week: In Lapa, Rio de Janiero, the Samba Never Stopped, I was both pleased and annoyed. Pleased because of the validation factor, but annoyed because I don't yet own a building in Lapa and I don't want to see too many people crowding such a great place before I get there!

With its magnificent and classic architecture, great musician and art scene, street characters, night life, and non-stop samba, don't listen to the guides who tell you to avoid this place. Go there straight away...

Why Not Give A Goat This Christmas?

Tired of giving people the same old stuff for Christmas? Want to share something meaningful and give back a little more this year? Here's an idea: give the gift of Kiva.

Kiva lets you connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world in small amounts (like $25). By choosing a business on Kiva.org, you can "sponsor a business" and help the world's working poor make great strides towards economic independence. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates from the business you've sponsored. As loans are repaid, you get your loan money back.

There are all sorts of interesting entrepreneurs you can sponsor from helping farmers in Africa buy more chickens to helping a village raise enough money to buy more goats.

They even have gift certificates here.

Help Orny Beat K-Fed

The race is on...Click this link to watch the race between Orny Adams and K-Fed. Who's CD/DVD will sell more copies? K-Fed is already taking a nose dive in week four. Orny's making traction in his first week, which is great to see since he is doing 100% of the distribution himself and his marketing is all word of mouth.

Go Orny go.