Life in Action

Photo by Don Mirra

See People in Action at TED. Technology, Entertainment, Design - Inspired talks by the world's greatest thinkers and doers. Ideas worth spreading. Videos range from 4-20 minutes long by some of the most inspiring people in the world. It doesn't cost anything to view, please take a moment and glance through TED. It is important to understand our personal and world problems so we can fix them.

This TED video inspired me because it made a visual image of our daily behaviors that we are not seeing but should. Ignoring it will not make anything better. Knowledge is only half the power.

I mentioned this before, but if you want all your news in one paper, pick up a copy of The Week. It is a great short magazine that has all the top stories from the week. It takes about 1-2 hours to get a good recap of all the major happenings in the world.

Carpe Diem,
Angela DiCarlo

p.s. Thanks Don for sharing these with me. Your stories and your photography are inspirational. Don Mirra Photography


UPDATE: July 30, 2008 Don Mirra will be leaving for Kenya. Let's send him our best wishes for a safe and bountiful journey.

UPDATE: Don returned safely from his journeys.

Big Toys to Please Your Inner Child

You take your car to work, I'll take my...BuzzBall. Human hamster wheel or the next great high end toy? Large field required. Let me know when you get one of Evento's BuzzBalls and I will join you. Get the BuzzBall story here thanks to OhGizmo's Andrew Liszewski.

Nerd Alert - Coolest Sites for Latest Technologies

Every day, my colleagues and I email each other the latest new technologies. I thought I was just a nerd, but one day I realized I was a full-fledged, early adopter, hybrid driving, organic food eating, green advocating, tech geek. There is no doubt about it. Here are some of my favorite sites for ultra geekiness. Subscribe to their RSS feeds if you want and enjoy daily coolness.

Want to stay on top of the latest techie news and toys? Find news and gadgets you never thought you needed but can no longer live without like Darth Vader USB Hubs that are abundant at Engadget

TechCrunch is full of useful stories like how Google Employees Get Japanese Space Toilets.

Make your home more Green while still being sexy at Inhabitat. And if you want to feel like you're outside when you're really inside, go to
The Sky Factory to dream about getting a virtual landscape ceilings for your home or office.

BBC is a great place for world news. Be wowed by innovative architecture with the 80-story Moving Skyscraper coming to Dubai on BBC.

In case you missed it, Bill Gates retired from Microsoft as CEO officially Friday, June 27, 2008. There's an awesome video with Bill, Jon Stewart, Hilary Clinton, Barack Obama, and many more. Take a few minutes if you can to enjoy.

If you have time to read one paper a week, this is it. The Week arrives every week in my mailbox with the top stories from around the world for the past week. Takes about an hour to read from cover to cover. No more searching multiple papers for interesting news, it's here.

I stll get Maxim and Fast Company. Yes, I am a lady but I enjoy Maxim, Men's Health and the occasional Vogue. Oh, and yes, women do love the smell of AXE. You need to take a shower anyway, so why not try it and see what happens, the last three men of interest had one thing in commmon...AXE.

And if you are a lady or have a lady in your life, there's a sale going on at Frederick's. Buy her something sexy. Try to get something she will like to wear like sexy cotton hiphugger panties and something for you to enjoy seeing her in like a patent leather corset or thigh high pantyhose.

By the way, I don't get paid for your clicks so don't think I am trying to push anything on you. I just felt like sharing some of my favorite sites.

Carpe Diem!
Angela DiCarlo :-)

Raise the happiness meter in the world.
p.s. If you tried to call me recently, you probably heard my GrandCentral voicemail. I was waiting patiently to purchase a Samsung Instinct Phone since my much beloved LG Fusic jumped out of my pocket and took a dive in the toilet. But the Instinct was well worth the wait. It's an amazing phone. I never used an iPhone, so I can't compare, but I am hooked on my Instinct. Total cost out of pocket was $247, with a $100 rebate coming in the mail. Instinct's everything a phone could ever want to be, including a 2 megapixel camera with direct upload to web, email or picture mail, awesome GPS with navigation, video camera, email access, messaging, calendar, and so on....Check out the Instinct if you're interested in a new phone.

p.p.s. My GrowMyProfit.com website is still going through some construction. If you know any more about Flash than me, please email me. The load page takes 30 seconds, so I had to put the incomplete HTML up.
Argh. ]:-O LOL

Resources For Entrepreneurs

Here are some organizations that provide information that may be helpful for you as an entrepreneur. Use at your own discretion. Best wishes to you and your success.

Business.Gov
This website is the official business link to the U.S. government. Business.gov gives guidance through a maze of government rules and regulations providing access to services and resources helping businesses develop, grow and succeed.Visit Business.gov.

Count Me In
Count Me In is the leading not-for-profit provider of micro loans and business resources for women entrepreneurs. Apply to the Make Mine a Million $ Business awards program to get the assistance to grow your micro business to a $million enterprise. For more information visit MakeMineAMillion.org or CountMeIn.org.

Enventys
Enventys provides vertically integrated solutions to product development. For more information visit Enventys.com.

Everyday Edisons
Everyday Edisons a PBS television show, introduces viewers to the process of invention and help them understand how to take their own ideas to the next level. For more information visit EverydayEdisons.com.

Inventors Digest
Inventors Digest provides education and inspiration to independent and professional innovators. For more information visit InvestorsDigest.com.

FastTrac®
FastTrac is a practical, hands-on business development program designed to help the entrepreneur hone the skills needed to create, manage, and grow a successful business. FastTrac participants don't just learn about business, they live it. They work on their own business ideas or ventures throughout the interactive program--moving their ventures to reality or new levels of growth. For more information visit FastTrac.org.

Kauffman eVenturing
to high growth. The site provides original, relevant, practical "just-in-time" information, articles, and tools. Written by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs, and aggregates "the best of the best" content on the web related to starting and running high-impact companies. For more information visit Eventuring.org.

Manufacturing Extension Partnership
MEP is a nationwide network of not-for-profit centers in over 400 locations nationwide, whose sole purpose is to provide small and medium sized manufacturers with the services they need to succeed. Centers are funded by federal, state, local and private resources to serve manufacturers. That makes it possible for even the smallest firms to tap into the expertise of knowledgeable manufacturing and business specialists all over the United States. These specialists are people who have had experience on manufacturing floors and in plant operations. For more information visit www.mep.nist.gov.

SCORE ®
The SCORE Association (Service Corps of Retired Executives) is a resource partner of the Small Business Administration (SBA) dedicated to entrepreneur education and the formation, growth and success of small businesses nationwide. There are more than 10,500 SCORE volunteers in 389 chapter locations who assist small businesses with business counseling and training. SCORE also operate an active online counseling initiative. Score.org.

Small Business TV
Small Business TV is a video news and information destination site for America's small business community. Their commitment is to provide small business owners with the resources and tools to manage, grow and protect their ventures. For more information visit SBTV.com.

StartupNation ®
A website and nationally syndicated radio program directed to the nuts and bolts of entrepreneurship. Visit StartupNation.com.

United Inventors Association (UIA)
United Inventors Association is resource for inventors/entrepreneurs seeking help in bringing inventions from garage to market. An educational non-profit delivering expert advice, product evaluations, patent searches, news and opportunities. For more information visit uiausa.com.

United States Small Business Administration
The SBA provides small business counseling and training through a variety of programs and resource partners located strategically throughout the U.S.
sba.gov.

Women’s Leadership Exchange ®
The WLE mission is to provide the knowledge, the tools and the connections women need to be successful in their own businesses, the corporate world and the not-for-profit environment. For more information, go to WomensLeadershipExchange.com.

In addition to the sites noted, use your local “Yellow Book” as an additional resource. Under the “Contents” page you will see a reference for U.S. Government listings. Use this information for contact telephone numbers for the Small Business Administration. This toll-free information is available for use in English and Spanish.

Online Tools for Advertising and Sales

I spend a lot of time online managing advertising for PhonePeople.com offering affordable 800 numbers to businesses. Every weekday I am online trying to figure out how to best reach my target audience of growing small to medium businesses.



TODAY'S TOP SEARCH TRENDS
In order to see what's catching people's eyes, I turn to Google Trends Lab. You can see what people are searching for most on Google. It's updated constantly. Take a look for yourself.

ONLINE ADVERTISING
The majority of my advertising world revolves around Google AdWords. They have online text ads and banner ads and you track direct conversions and cost per order. Google also make it easy to advertise in print, TV and Radio. The best part is that all of your marketing is in one place, which makes it easy to track your advertising spend. If you set up tracking codes or custom phone numbers, you can track advertising success.

I also use Visit Yahoo Search Marketing for advertising but get less traffic and have to monitor conversions more closely for accuracy. Yahoo is also a good tool but a little slower to get significant results, at least in the testing I have done for the last few months.

ONLINE SEO
SEO, short for Search Engine Optimization, is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via organic search results for targeted keywords. In other words, it places you higher in the search results without you being a paid sponsor. It's definitely a good goal to get higher organically for keywords related to your content and what you are trying to sell or promote. You can do this by providing relevant content, adding metatags to your site, linking to blogs, promoting your site, sending out press releases and/or hiring an SEO firm if you need help. If you can get high in the organic search, then you can reduce your online advertising spending and make more money with lower expenses.

These are some of the tools I use and hopefully at least one thing can help you.
Best of luck,
Angela DiCarlo

p.s. For you Wikipediacs, there is an upcoming conference in Egypt July 17-19, 2008 for people who contribute to Wikipedia. I use Wikipedia at least twice a day to find information on whatever I am researching.

Pecha Kucha - A New Form of Presentations

Here is a novel idea I came across this morning - Pecha Kucha presentations. If you haven't heard about it yet, then check it out. It may make your world of presentations and networking meetings better than ever.

The idea behind Pecha Kucha is to keep presentations concise, the interest level up and to have many presenters sharing their ideas within the course of one night. Therefore the 20x20 Pecha Kucha format was created: each presenter is allowed a slideshow of 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds. This results in a total presentation time of 6 minutes 40 seconds on a stage before the next presenter is up. Each Pecha Kucha event usually has 14 presenters. Presenters (and much of the audience) are usually from the design, architecture, photography, art and creative fields, but recently it has also stretched over to the business world. (Wikipedia)

So instead of dreading the writing of a long presentation, you could make and hear multiple presentations that are less than 7 minutes long each. What a great way to make more time for real interaction after peaking the audience interest.

There are a lot of great videos on YouTube that demonstrate Pecha Kucha. Video About Pecha Kucha.

Have a great week!
Angela DiCarlo