Richard Morris Gallery

1) World Changing

www.worldchanging.com

While not specifically urban planning focused, WorldChanging.com is an excellent resource for cutting-edge news, commentary and resources on many important planning issues — including innovative housing design and construction technology, sustainable transportation, community development, and environmental justice. The site, which is supported by a small Seattle-based non-profit, has gathered a great deal of attention of late for its efforts to highlight the new technological trends and ideas holding extraordinary potential to create positive change in global society – and has even spawned a 600 book and 12-city tour.

2) StumbleUpon

http://www.stumbleupon.com/

Channel surf the internet with the StumbleUpon toolbar to find great websites, videos, photos and more based on your interests. StumbleUpon learns what you like and makes better recommendations. This is so great; it’s like having your very own pay per view on your desktop (of course you don’t pay for it)

3) MetaCafe

http://www.metacafe.com/

Sleeker, Faster and a super fast growing community when compared to Google’s very own YouTube. A great place to share videos and even get paid for it. MetaCafe also has a downloadable tool, which continuously downloads new videos based on your preferences.

4) Palma Research

http://palmaresearch.com

This is perhaps the only stocks research site that provides a vast coverage (over 250 stocks as per the website) which is published and updated everyday by real professionals. A great source for Research on tap – you get the view on a stock of your choice (within the coverage) on any day of your choice. They also have a Members Choice section where in members can request coverage of stocks of their choice. Palma Research is an independent investment research firm with a mission to become the world’s largest provider of research opinions based on technical analysis to self-directed investors. Founded in 2005, Palma Research has one of the largest teams of technical analysts in the world and publishes daily research on over 250 US stocks.

5) Logoworks

www.logoworks.com

A great startup that’s making small companies looks good! Logoworks’ mission is to make small businesses look great. They do this by providing small businesses with graphic design services that are inspiring, fresh and clean! With over 45,000 clients having chosen Logoworks to design their logo they are one of the largest logo design firms in the world. They’ve created a unique business model designed to eliminate the hassles and uncertainty of traditional logo design.

6) Amie Street

http://amie.st

Amie Street, which launched in July, has a brilliant DRM-free music sales model. Bands upload music, which can then be downloaded for free by users. As songs become popular, the site starts to charge for it. They start at $0.01 and go up to $0.99. Users looking for popular new stuff go right to the more expensive songs. More adventurous types try out lots of new music. I’m somewhere in the middle. This free-market place to set the value of DRM-free digital music could be the future.

7) Loopt

http://loopt.com

Loopt is an awesome concept that integrates the GPS and Web with your cell phone.

They have built a revolutionary “social mapping” service to change the way people use mobile phones to keep in touch with their friends. Loopt uses GPS (and other location technology) to show you where your friends are by automatically updating maps on your mobile handset. loopt also lets you send messages to nearby friends or receive automatic alerts when they’re nearby so that you never miss an opportunity to meet, and to journal your life with our geo-blogging feature.

Revision 3

http://revision3.com/

Revision3 is the first media company that gets it right. Unlike aggregators, mash-ups, clients and web sites, Revision3 is an actual TV network for the web, creating, producing its own original entertainment and content.

The content is designed for a new audience. This audience, like television, expects dependability and quality, but unlike television, wants a more gritty, edgy, highly-targeted and in-depth form of entertainment. With the proliferation of mobile video, iPods, Tivo and other Internet-connected set-top-boxes, video that is both on-demand and tailored to suit is Revision3’s specialty. Revision3 delivers technology, comedy, music, cooking, and more, all with the familiar faces you all know with years of experience.

Finally, Revision3’s philosophy on content is neutral to how it is distributed. We will work with almost any distribution platform; iTunes, Odeo, Bittorrent, Palm, you name it…and using every video encoding format available, including flash, making our content accessible to the greatest possible audience.

9) Biz Wire

http://bizwire.in

A very cool site that provides you with the daily news, but with a dash of humor!

A new concept in staying informed and starting your day with a laugh. It’s presently related to only India.

10) AdMob

http://admob.com

AdMob is the world’s largest mobile advertising marketplace. Founded in 2006, AdMob allows advertisers to reach their customers on the mobile Web and publishers to increase the value of their mobile sites. AdMob offers both advertisers and publishers the ability to target and personalize advertising to their customers in 150 countries. A very niche and cool concept!

Kiran Pk
http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-articles/top-10-sites-to-watch-out-for-in-2007-133406.html

White Skin And Long Dark Brown Hair

Growing up in the Philippines, I was always exposed to this idea of colonial mentality. See, we were colonized by Spain, the US, and other countries before we achieved our own independence. So basically, being “white” was to be cool. Or rich. Or important. Or what everyone else wanted to be.

Everyone ogled when they saw a white guy on the street. People thought you were somebody important if they saw you as friends or hanging out with one. And if you’re actually ‘half’ or are related to somebody from another country, well then, you’re above everyone else.

I have friends from around the world. I’ve met them through different parts and stages of my life and we look as different from each other as a Benetton ad. If there’s really one thing I’ve learned from all the people who have become part of my life, but don’t necessarily live next door to me, is that we are all the same. We are all made of the same elements. Sure each culture is different, but if you open up yourself and your eyes and your home, heck even you heart, you see that the person who speaks another language completely different from your own can be your own kindred spirit. Every person, regardless of skin color or hair shade, has dreams, and frustrations, and drama with their boyfriends or girlfriends, and secrets. Everyone has a story to share.

I always get the, “Oh Elaine you have so much white friends” comment – sometimes as a way of teasing, sometimes as a form of flattery, and even sometimes as a form of jealousy. What I feel most of the time though, is misunderstood.

I choose my friends, not by their skin color or how exotic their accent is from mine, but by how they treat me, how they treat other people, by how we get along, by their values and the way they see life. I don’t care if you look like a model that came out of the Ralph Lauren runway or forgot what a razor is after you’ve backpacked around the Philippine Islands or Europe. I don’t even care if you can write a perfect paragraph in English or can only speak straight Tagalog.

I know that some people just want to have a foreigner friend. Or a foreigner boyfriend. Okay, I get it. It seems cool. But at the end of the day, you see that a person isn’t made of what they look like but by who they are. It’s about sharing a joke or a language only you two can understand. It’s knowing that you’re way past the physical stuff and you know that the things you see on the outside really don’t say much about what’s in your heart.

The funniest thing is that the people I am closest to are the ones that live furthest away from me. Thank God for the internet for making they feel closer. But being misunderstood in a society where people think that you’re different just because you mingle with people from another country can get frustrating. It’s like sometimes, I myself am treated like a foreigner. That people can’t relate to me anymore. Truth is, I’m just like anyone else.

I am Elaine. I am a Filipina. I have tan skin and long dark brown hair. I know if you like me only because you think that combination looks exotic. I can detect bullshit. I am a mix of where I grew up and all the other new places I now call home. I have left myself and given bits of my heart to people I may never see again and I have brought them along with me. I know when you love for who I am. And I know when I love you too, not for what you look like, but for who you are.

WHAT I’M REALLY TRYING TO SAY IS, I hope people can get past the whole white skin thing or the traces of colonial mentality in the way they see other people. That French guy sitting next to you likes burger king as much as you do. That Australian wears his slippers more often than you do yours. That South African walking on the street?? He can eat as much balot, probably more, as you can in one sitting.

See past the skin and be proud of who you are.

Because love and friendship, baby, know no boundaries. ?

- Elaine Abonal

Elaine Abonal
http://www.articlesbase.com/non-fiction-articles/white-skin-and-long-dark-brown-hair-728812.html

Do you have to sacrifice all of the creative and artistic elements of your web site to rank in the search engines? Later in this article I’ll show you a real case scenario and the design and SEO approach used.

Thanks to the birth of professional search engine marketers the top ranks are saturated with the pages of companies that can pay for such insight. That said, it’s certainly possible to employ high ranking tactics in your own website. Actually, the most basic tactics can move you up from an 800 position to a 300. However, it’s the top of the scale where efforts seem almost inversely exponential or logarithmic, you put a ton in to see a tiny change in rank.

How do you meld the ambitious overhauls required to attain significant ranking and NOT compromise the design of your site?

DESIGN CAN’T BE IGNORED

if you have an existing site, you’ve probably tied it into your existing promotional content. Even if you’ve allowed your website to cater to the more free form of the net, it should still be designed as a recognizable extension of your business.

The reasons for doing so are valid, and can’t simply be ignored for the sake of achieving a first age position, can they? If your research into search optimization leaves you shuffling around thoughts of content, keyword saturated copy and varying link text, you correctly understand some of the basic pillars of search engine optimization.

And, you aren’t alone if you have this disheartening thought-If I do all this SEO stuff and reach number one across the board, who would stay at my site because it’s so stale and boring I’m even embarrassed to send people there!

There are two ways to successfully combine design and SEO. The first is to be a blue chip and/or Fortune 500 company with multi million dollar advertising and branding budgets to deliver your website address via television, radio, billboards, PR parties and giveaways with your logo.

Since chances are that’s not you, and certainly not me, lets look at the second option. It begins with some research into your market, some thoughtful and creative planning, and a designer who is a search engine optimizer, and understands at least basic CSS and HTML programming techniques. Or a combination of people with these skills that can work very well together.

DESIGN IS FOR BROCHURES, INSTANT RESULTS ARE FOR THE WEB

that’s not the whole truth, but it will help compare and contrast design and SEO. In reality, SEO needs the quantity and detail of supporting text that a brochure has, but good web design has to catch a viewer’s attention in 5 seconds. It’s pretty difficult to read and absorb the content of an entire brochure in less than 5 seconds.

Search engines need rich, related, appropriate, changing and poignant content. And for them to rank you, all of that must be on your pages. But if it’s not well organized and broken down into bite size chunks, no one is going to bother learning about what you’re offering.

CONSTRUCTION 101- ATTRACTIVE DESIGN AND SEO

sadly, it’s very difficult to optimize a site without completely overhauling it. You’ll soon understand why. Design and SEO must be strongly rooted into every aspect of each other, possessing a true, symbiotic relationship. Lets look at a simplified example of this. Lets say you are optimizing a page for the keyword phrase, “pumpkin bread recipe.”

From a design standpoint “Pumpkin Bread Recipe” would be the heading for the page, in a nice, readable font with the words perhaps an orange-brown color. And lets add a fine, green rule around it.

There are many ways to create that simple, colored heading. However, there is only one way that is best for both design and SEO. That is to use Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS. In addition, that line of code containing “Pumpkin Bread Recipe” needs to be as close to the top of the page as possible (which CSS also allows).

To a viewer, the recipe text might be read more if it were located to the right of a photo of a buttered piece of pumpkin bread on a small plate next to a lightly steaming cup of coffee.

SEO needs to read that ingredient list and baking instructions. Search engines now understand on a rudimentary level that the ingredients are indeed related to the optimized words- pumpkin bread recipe.

Additionally, it would take many extra lines of code to make a table in this example if you didn’t use CSS. Search engines don’t like extra code. In fact, given enough times, that “extra” code will make the keyword phrases seem less important and hurt rank.

Note: In the page code, a few thousand characters more than you need to get all of that content organized would normally just add to your page load time, and might be acceptable. But to a search engine, that time can really add up. It wont read through page after page, site after site, billionth after billionth character of unimportant code to find the relevant text. Therefore, the less code, the better your chances. Moral- Less code, more content.

SEO USUALLY MEANS REDO

In the previous pumpkin example, CSS will eliminate the need for almost any extra code at all, and provide the means to place the text to the right of the photo.

Now, imagine that someone had already created this page, but done so using other programming methods. The page could very well be W3C compliant, well programmed and got the job done. However, without designing and programming for optimization as in the above illustration, the end result would have no significant rank compared to others that do.

You can be sure that there exist at least 30 web sites built to rank for the keywords “pumpkin bread recipe”. Note- why did I use the number 30? It’s safe to assume if you’re not on the first three results pages of a search, you’re not being seen.

While this is a simple example, hopefully you understand that it would be impossible to optimize this simple page without redoing it. This isn’t always the case, but extrapolate this into detailed, multiple pages in an entire website and the issue is greatly magnified.

AESTHETIC IMPORTANCE VS. TRAFFIC

everyone has an idea of what they want their site to look like. The pretty factor- splash pages, cool flash and graphics must now be justified as to their importance to the bottom line. If you want/need to establish an online presence, you will have to make some compromises in these areas.

Understand exactly the role your site should play in your company marketing.

Ask- What is the goal of your website and who is its audience? Is it for existing clients to see? Is it to reach new clients? To venture into yet untapped market segments?

Ask- How strongly do your other marketing efforts promote your site?

Ask- Is your website an extension of your existing collateral that must reflect the same graphical look?

Ask- Is your website meant to assist to your sales force or is it your sales force?

Chances are you wont have any single answers. That’s ok. It will give you some meat for your designer/SEO to digest and develop a solution for you.

REAL CASE OF DESIGN BALANCED WITH SEO AND SALABILITY

if you sell jewelry solely online, you must have a catalog of exceptional photography and detailed, high-resolution close up images. But, you must be optimized and rank well if you want to sell any of that jewelry.

If such a company approached me with this project, my recommendation would be this: If you sell a product, people have to see that product. Lots of good images. The site should be slick and sheik and easy to navigate. The home page has to capture the buyer’s attention. If it’s very expensive jewelry, the site should have a lot of class and elegance. If it’s home made jewelry, the site shouldn’t look home made.

However, as you have no store front, if the online community can’t find you, you’re business will fail. So I’d have a very optimized home page with some discussion of the quality of your product, the history of your company, etc. This is also great sales copy. Ad a few special catalog pieces with descriptions below some smartly placed gifs, jpegs and readable type graphics built out of CSS and you’ve got a cool to look at, content rich, and well optimized layout.

I’d make the link to your catalog very obvious and prominent. Note the catalog is not the homepage. I’d also include subsequent well written, in depth pages about the history of some specific pieces. Load them with targeted keywords and a few images. Again, make your catalog link very prominent. In doing so you’re creating relevant content for search engines AND providing additional pages that can rank.

The catalog can be database driven, simple and changeable, and you have the foundation to build your search rank.

PLANNING YOUR SITE

if your designer is not a search engine optimizer, hire one to work with your designer from the initial development stage of your site. If you would like a visible presence that is not dependant on traditional marketing efforts to get your name around, then you will have to optimize.

However, with advances in html and css, text itself can be a very flexible and attractive design element with endless possibilities. Site optimization consists of some rigid, unbendable rules. It can be intertwined successfully with very creative and attractive design. If your Designer and SEO aren’t the same person or company, make sure they have the same, close working relationship.
If you want/need to establish an online presence you will have to make some compromises. But how many? How much do you have to sacrifice in the aesthetics of your site to be seen? Examine the problem and read a real world case solution.

Babita Kumari
http://www.articlesbase.com/business-ideas-articles/design-and-seo-make-site-look-good-and-rank-well-503713.html

You have attention deficit disorder or someone close to you does, or you probably wouldn’t be reading this article, right? Let’s talk a bit about organization, ADD, and how you can avoid the dreaded “stuff everywhere” syndrome.

The most notorious place for attention deficit induced clutter is in your bedroom. Clothes are probably scattered over most of it, shoes may be piled sky-high, and what’s a laundry hamper? Right? We know how this feels, and had the same kind of problems, but we learned that if you can create an ADD-friendly system to handle the clutter, life will be much smoother for you and for your loved ones.

If your bedroom is large enough, buy three big trash cans, about the 30 gallon size. If you can buy them in different colors, that would be ideal, but in lieu of that, what if you just spray one white; one a dark color, like navy blue or black; and one red?

Every day when you take off your clothes, decide whether they should go into the bin for white clothes, the bin for dark clothes, or the bin for colored clothes and then, just throw your stuff into the appropriate bin. How cool is that? They’ll already be separated when it comes time to wash them. Plus, there’s the added benefit of not walking into your bedroom and tripping over a pair of underpants.

For shoes, you can do the same kind of thing. Buy open-ended (veggie-type) bins so the shoes are easier to see, maybe one black, one brown, one colored, or just one, period. (It depends on how many shoes you have, but we ADD people are always collecting.) Here, it’s the same principle. You’ll be able to just toss your shoes into the bins, instead of leaving them all around.

Let’s move to our ADD-littered office. What’s everywhere, even on the floor? Books? Papers? Are there sticky notes all over the computer monitor or the hutch above your desk? How do you help your attention deficit brain remember your appointments?

Books need bookshelves, and people with ADD need plenty of space in them to store their books. Have one as close to your desk as possible and be sure not to overload the shelves. If a book won’t fit, get rid of another so that it will and don’t let your attention deficit get in the way. ADD people tend to the pack rat syndrome, too. If you haven’t used the book about the joys of cooking blowfish in 6 months, you probably won’t. Get rid of it, or get another bookcase.

Then, tackle those sticky papers. Get a small notebook that will fit on your desk beside you. You can buy inexpensive books or whatever you like. If you really like the book, your ADD brain will use it. But any note that you have to make during the day should go into that book–everything. Telephone numbers, quick notes to yourself, addresses. So make sure it can open flat and that pages can be turned back. Your attention deficit may drive you to that purple suede journal, but if it’s like a hardback book, it won’t work well. Get something that’s more ADD convenient.

Then, either at the end of the day or the next morning–whatever works, but make it a routine–transfer what needs to go into your address book to your address book. Use a desk calendar, too. Write all of your appointments into the calendar and keep it directly in front of you every day. You can’t make any mistakes that way, and all of your notes will be in one place if you need to refer to them later on. No more ADD panic over where you put that important phone number!

As for the papers. Gather all of them, and you’ll have to take time to sort them into piles: important, not quite as important, and throw away. Because your attention deficit won’t do well with the boredom this will create, get yourself a timer. Set it for 5 minutes. Go through your papers for 5 minutes every morning, then stop. Don’t go one minute over. Take 5 minutes a day to file your papers in hanging files in a file cabinet or box. You’ll be amazed at how much you get done in that short time. Before you know it, your paper stack will be gone.

But you’ll be adding to the piles every day. Get three file bins for papers and just toss papers into one of the bins as they’re received. After a while doing this, it will take less than 5 minutes to clear things up each day. How great will that be?

People with attention deficit really don’t like clutter, they just have trouble dealing with boring things like filing, hanging, and putting away. Give yourself an ADD-friendly system and follow an ADD-simple routine. You’ll be a much happier person for it, and your non-ADD family members will love you.

Tellman Knudson And Stephanie Frank
http://www.articlesbase.com/self-help-articles/adult-add-the-end-of-sticky-messes-109862.html

I WAS playing waw call of duty for 360 and in the pre game lobby i saw gamer-tags flashing,moving,blinking just doing cool stuff if anybody out their could tell me how to do this it would be cool because when i ask them they all act like their better than everybody else.

well they are hacking. i was actually playing waw and i was wondering to, but i checked some things and learned they wetre hacking

.

womzer

Recently I got a free subscription to Business 2.0. In my profession I get lots of these free subscriptions. Some are great, some are just excuses to sell me things I probably wouldn’t buy anyway. But Business 2.0 is one of those rare ones that has data that both large and small business owners can use, and I recommend it.

I received the January/February 2005 issue, and came upon an article entitled “7-Eleven Gets Sophisticated” by Elizabeth Esfahani. In this article, she described all the things that 7-Eleven was doing to reinvent themselves, and as a result they have improved their price per share, inventory turns, and revenue. Being in the inventory control business, I was immediately sucked in. The article describes in detail, how 7-Eleven worked with “technology that rival’s Wal-Mart’s.” I wanted to know about that too, since I sell technology solutions. So now the author has me hooked in two ways. This was key research for me. It was a Sunday morning. I was excited. I told my family that I needed a little time to do this research. They could see that look in my eye that said, “Dad’s into something heavy. Let him go.” I closed the door to my office to begin reading.

I began pouring through the article to look for the “cutting edge inventory control technology.” I wanted to know what this giant retailer was doing, and how they were leveraging the same technology that Wal-Mart was using to improve their performance. I was hopeful that these hidden industry secrets would be revealed to me. I could then take this data to Island Pacific and encourage them to add it to Retail Pro, which would help all of our customers successfully compete against the “big boys.”

The article begins by discussing where 7-Eleven was at (not doing so well) and the research they were doing to improve their image; to remove themselves from the simple “gasoline and cigarette” retailer to something more sophisticated. On top of that, how they were using “some of the most sophisticated systems for gauging demand, predicting sales, and filling orders in the business today.” Wow. And they were spending more than $500 million in the last decade to develop it. Wow again.

Jim Keyes, CEO of 7-Eleven is quoted in the article. He says, “Technology has allowed us to take back our destiny.” Those are words that I certainly understand. But now I want the meat – the juicy stuff of what they exactly implemented – that took their turns from 12 per year to 19 per year. I thought to myself, “they probably developed some new technique, some new measure of inventory and sales to do that.” It’s in this article. I’m going to find it. I’m on a mission.

I scanned through the marketing data about how 7-Eleven was going to market itself as “cool.” Interesting data, but I wanted to know what technology they were using to improve their turns. Finally, I found it. I took out a legal pad to make notes. I’m ready.

The first nugget appears on page 96. This new technology that 7-Eleven has leveraged allows any store manager to pull up real-time data about what products are selling best at their location. Retail Pro already does that. Nothing new here. The store managers can also get inventory information on other stores in the chain. Retail Pro does that too.

Their system also tracks the weather for them, so they can forecast umbrella sales. OK, Retail Pro doesn’t do that. But anyone with internet access could get that data and apply it to their merchandise if they needed to. At this point, I figure that the author is easing me into the vast technological discoveries I’m about to read about. OK, I’ll be patient. I read on.

In order to tweak their inventories, 7-Eleven developed a hand-held device that enables them to recount inventories on a regular basis, so that they can be sure they are looking at good numbers. They also use these handhelds to help place orders for items that need to be replenished. The article describes how one particular store manager used the system to “calculate how many have moved since last week and suggests an order.” I have several customers doing that today, using Retail Pro’s Min/Max and Auto PO features. The stores suggest purchase orders to the corporate location, which are converted to real orders and then shipped. This empowers the store managers to order what they know they can sell. Proposed purchase orders have been part of Retail Pro since I started in Version 4. (We’re on version 8 these days.)

The article now goes into how 7-Eleven has altered its warehousing. They’ve done an amazing job of distributing product that way, but so few of my customers work that way, that it doesn’t hold much interest for me. But a great deal of what they are talking about is available in IPMS, the merchandising system that Retail Pro will soon link with, which will enable multiple levels of replenishment from multiple warehouses.

In the next section, the focus shifts to 7- Eleven’s VP of Merchandising. I’m sure this is where the real sophisticated stuff is going to come out. The article describes how he looks at sales by location to figure out what is selling where. Retail Pro’s On Hand and Sold report (in the Merchandising area) does that. The article goes on to talk about how he uses the sales data he gets to develop new products (a towelette that removes coffee stains – I need that. I make my first note – find out where I can get that towelette).

The article continues, now talking more about the clever changes 7-Eleven has made to their merchandising offerings – better, fresher food, more interesting choices, etc. And then the article ends. What? Where were the vast technological changes that I had heard about? Did I miss the new formulas, new methodologies? The cutting edge technological advances? I’m worried. I start re-reading the article. The truth is, everything they offer, we can already do. How can that be? I opened the door. My family was surprised to see me so soon. We had lunch together. I was a little disappointed, but they quickly cheered me up. I have a great family. “I guess there aren’t any new secrets,” I thought. The basics of retailing are what makes stores profitable. We already own a lot of what this giant retailer is discovering.

As I thought more about the article, I realized that I wanted to communicate something to our customers. I wanted them to know that they had great technology that they could leverage. I wanted them to be proud of what they had. More than that, I wanted them to use this technology to the same advantage that 7-Eleven had. Sure, it’s an investment to get this going (both training time from us, and our customers’ own personal time to invoke this in their own businesses), but it surely isn’t the $500 million that 7-Eleven invested! I also realized that this is why our membership program works so well. The membership fees that our customers pay are used to create developments in the Retail Pro software. These developments are not dreams created by programmers; they are suggestions made by the thousands and thousands of retailers who use Retail Pro software every day. And these retailers are bright, inventive entrepreneurs with vision, who contribute these great ideas to everyone’s benefit. It’s a community approach, but it works. It combines the resources and ingenuity of thousands of professionals. We all win to the degree that we all participate in making the product better and better.

So I certainly suggest to all Retail Pro customers (and in fact, to anyone who has a technology solution in their store) that they invest in their own systems and their own technology. Take the time to get FULLY trained on the product, and learn all the great features, the nooks and crannies, that will improve your bottom line. Participate in the membership programs that provide the research and development necessary to make the software even more powerful. That’s how all of us, as a community, can win.

For more information, visit www.onestepdata.com.

Dan Jablons
http://www.articlesbase.com/technology-articles/giant-tools-for-wouldbe-giants-105572.html

I’m in Japan at the moment, and there’s so many cool anime and video game things here, I want to send some back home to Australia as presents for friends, but I’m not sure what to get.
SO I’m asking what sort of stuff would you love to get as a nerdy souvenir of Japan?

a mario statue……….

I live in Fort worth and i want to find cool stuff to sell such as fossils, gems, etc.If you can help id like to know how to find it and were to look.Thanks

Unless you live on a ranch with hills and a stream they only thing you are going to find are: worms, rocks, tin cans, broken glass, rusty nails and and other scraps of building materials.

Soil in subdivisions have already been dug up and moved around.

Smoking has forever been a tension reliever and stress buster for millions of people around the globe. Smoking pipes are still delighting the connoisseurs, who take pride in being pompous and love to show their class.

Smoking gets attached with more than a few epitomes, and you tend to hear lots of stuff, good or bad about smoking all over the world. For some, it brings a sense of pleasure, while the rest assume smoking as the best mode of relaxation. Cigarettes have forever charmed people, but now almost a passé like thing, though still a force to reckon with. On other side, smoking pipes have retained their old charm and sense of aristocracy even after so long.

Pipes lure people to follow a degree of etiquette. The culture of smoking pipes is not a new thing, as it easily features among the ancient items the human got along with. Still there tends to be drastic variations for pipes across the world, as every country has its own culture and set of people. Like the pipes, the   substance being smoked shows a mighty diversion from country to country, and no one can easily predict what is being puffed up with smoking pipes.

The design of a smoking pipe tempts people to no end, and the temptation to resist some of the breathtaking pipe designs is hard to come to terms with. You will sense pleasure while holding pipes for their delicate and stunning designs and fine materials. Smoking this way is an art in itself, and only few and far between come out victorious on this smoking front. For feeling magnificent aroma and realising great taste, you got to get along with the smoking pipes for sure.

The stuff like clay, porcelain, stone, wood, glass, metal etc are just few from which some wonderful and designing pipes are churned out. If materials are diverse, then methods tend to be poles apart as well for making pipes. Water Pipe and Glass Pipes are quite different from the rest, and they come into the scene only while smoking methamphetamine. These are also branded as bongs and happen to be specific in nature. Plain glass bongs resemble hookahs and are used to cool the smoke well ahead of taking in anything.

Similar is the case with colour glass bongs, as they turn out the inhalation a bit simpler and paves way for large amounts of tobacco, cannabis to be easily sucked in. Bongs are just like usual smoking pipes, but endow one to use far more inhaled stuff than cigarette or common pipe.

Keep in mind that smoking should be avoided at all, and if you find hard doing this, then use pipes and be in style.

Smit Mathur
http://www.articlesbase.com/business-articles/revisit-the-golden-eras-charm-with-delightful-of-smoking-pipes-672938.html

Since the popular notion that capitalism is evil, would we have electricity, telephones, computers, internet, medical marvels, cars, microwaves, flat-screen TV’s, iPods, air conditioning, refrigeration, space shuttles, satellites and all the other cool stuff we take for granted? Had we followed the failed USSR model, who would bother to invent, innovate, create and work really hard for a dream, or vision?

Acid rain, climate change, a cyclical cycle of poor, corporate welfare, really cool huh…Vote Independent. My logic for this is that the political parties are already corrupted and controlled by these lobbyist institutions and with Independents in office it is harder for corporations to control the legislation and the politicians will not be able to hide as well as they do

There are no lefties or righties, just Democrat and Republicans, of course those numbers are shrinking. Independents and other parties are slowly gaining, I figure in 10 years there will only be Independents and minority parities