How to Become an Idea Barista: Blending Creativity and Caffeine to Brew-Up Brilliant Ideas The Canton AdFed is hosting my presentation of "How to Become an Idea Barista" on March 30, 2010! The event will take place at The University Center at Kent State Stark, with lunch being served starting at 11:30am and the presentation ending at 1:00pm.
Brand new website I learned about via www.springwise.com this week. It's the latest crowdsourced business incubator. Quirky.com allows anyone to submit product ideas, plans, etc. for $99. The community then decides which submissions to develop, and the top votes result in a new product released WEEKLY.
It's certainly a bit bold to announce you'll be producing a product every single week, but the concept is certainly promising. Obviously spawned from concepts like threadless.com, Quirky stands a chance for survival if the submissions are creative, yet boot rooted in enough reality to justify production and sale to a supportive audience.
I think Quirky will need to quickly grow their consumer base beyond their site subscribers in order to maintain any long term viability. Unlike the crowd at threadless.com, not every member is going to be a prospective customer for every item produced.
Learn more by visiting the Springwise summary page or the company website at Quirky.com. A video produced by quirky to provide a quick overview of their concept is embedded below.
Did you know the first patent for glue was issued in England for an adhesive made from fish, or that the first television remote was patented by Zenith in 1950 and was called the "Lazy Bones?"
My book "100-WHATS of CREATIVITY: One Hundred What-If Questions to Spark Your Creativity, Unmuck Your Mind, and Break Through Your Mental Blocks" is now available through Amazon.com!
For a limited time, you can buy it through my on-demand storefront and save 30% off the cover price of $12.95. Just visit the link below and use the discount code: 7CTTGLG8 --
I'm finally ready to launch a newly revised and updated paperback edition of '100-Whats of Creativity' and would appreciate your feedback on the concept, content, and cost.
I've recently discovered the on-demand publishing site CreateSpace.com and plan to use it as the publishing vehicle, which will make the book available for the first time ever on Amazon.com!
CreateSpace also has a pretty cool preview tool, which makes contributing your feedback a snap using their online form. You get to download the table of contents and a few free pages, and then I hope you'll take a couple seconds to provide a some quick answers to five short questions.
I'm going to be eliminating the current Yahoo Group sometime within the next 5-10 days. If you're a member of that Group, your email address has been automatically imported into my new private email list. As with all previous messages, you'll have the opportunity to opt-out from any email sent to the list at anytime.
Frankly, I made this decision based on Facebook's new content policy. I need to ensure that I retain full rights to distribute and control access to the content I worked hard to create. A lot of the content that I have posted in that members-only group holds tremendous value to me, and I wouldn't want Yahoo to flex it's corporate policy and try to claim some sort of infinite permission to post and provide access, as it seems the folks at Facebook are want to do.
If you've been a member of my Yahoo Group for any length of time, you already know I rarely use it to send messages -- preferring to keep info posted on my blog instead. You'll soon see me adopting a more regulated email schedule and providing some exclusive content to list members only. Some things in store for list members:
Free mini-brainstorms in each edition on topics YOU choose
Reduce fees for consulting services
Reviews for media that sparks ideas
First-access to new content
An occasional bit freebie loot given to list members
If you're a member of the Yahoo Group, you're already a member of this new list. If you've not signed-up for the old group, I hope you'll consider subscribing to this new list. I promise not to abuse your time or attention.
Please sign-up today! PS: If you're a member of that Yahoo Group, I'd advise downloading and saving anything you want from the "free" files section of the site. I plan on shutting down that group and its content as time permits, and probably won't provide any additional warning.
I just purchased Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten's "The 100 Best Business Books of All Time" over the weekend. I was suprised by how many of the books I'd read, by how many I hadn't read, and by how many I'd bought and then put on a shelf without reading.
I also noticed some books that I felt were missing from this august list, and few that seemed out of place for being included.
If YOU were going to edit the list, which books would you add -- and which books would you remove in order to make room for your choices?
Time has announced their 50 favorite inventions of 2008. I must say I definitely have a few favorites among them, but there are few that came in out of left field.
Apparently there's a website (PickyDomains.com) out there that will create a list of available domain names for your personal or business website for a fee of $50.
My friends at MorningToast.com are relaunching their CAVEradio program "TED and The Other Guy." The webcast begins tonight (12/4) at 10pm ET and someone is walking away with a free brainstorm from DTIG!
I'm experimenting with a new blogging tool I found at tumblr.com -- not really impressed with ability to customize so far (but it IS very simple to use.)
I get daily Google alerts on a variety of topics, and one of them is set to notify me of anything related to "Jeffrey Gitomer." He's a favorite sales guru (correction, he's THE sales guru) and I thought I'd simply repost the alerts Google sends to my email each day.
Once I got the site up and working for a couple of days, I had the thought to include a Gitomer quote to accompany each day's links. Today I started adding an embedded Gitomer video from YouTube.
Author Brad Meltzer (Book of Lies, Justice League of America) sheds light on the fact the house where Superman was born -- the home of Jerry Siegel -- has fallen into horrible disrepair and can only be saved by ordinary people.
From the website: "The house where Google was created is saved. The farm where Hewlett Packard was founded is preserved. And Richard Nixon’s house is a museum. But the house where Superman -- one of the world’s most recognized heroes -- was created? It’s a wreck. So, with the creation of The Siegel & Shuster Society, we hope to raise enough money to repair the house and make sure it will be saved, restored, and there so you can take your kids one day."
I like Larry's take on this. "Discover your uniqueness and learn to exploit it in the service of others." Listen to the audio linked above for the rest of Larry's insight into this topic.
Visit LarryWinget.com for additional content from the "Pit Bull of Personal Development." I can't wait to read his new book, "People Are Idiots, And I Can Prove It!" Larry's books are always filled with useful in-your-face realities that will push you forward by the simple fact that "someone called you on your bullshit."
I love it when I share an idea with a friend and see them run with it. Such is the case with my new friend, author Gregg Fraley.
Gregg wrote the book "Jack's Notebook" that I blogged about recently, and after linking on a couple social network sites, I suggested that he create a Twitter account under the guise of his book's main character, Jack Huber. My thought was that he could provide value to the Twitter community by sharing the creative lessons learned within the book from Jack's point of view, and at the same time promote his book to an audience who I believe would really enjoy the business fable.
If you're already on Twitter, be sure to Follow JackHuber. If you're not -- it's quick and easy (and free) to sign up. ...And don't forget to Follow Don The Idea Guy!
I really like the shared bookshelf at Shelfari.com -- hence the new widget below my blog entries. Any other Shelfari users out there that would like to link as friends on their site?
If you spend all your time reading email instead of literature, you might want to try a little recreational reading in bite-sized bits.
DailyLit.com sends books in serialized 'episodes' right to your email inbox. Each installment can be quickly consumed in as little as 5 minutes (and you already know you can access email from just about anywhere -- that's why you can never find time to crack a 'real' book!)
Choose a book from over 750 titles and select the frequency of the emailed episodes (daily, weekdays, or Monday, Wednesday and Friday.) If an episode leaves you with a cliffhanger that you simply can't wait to see resolved, there's also a 'send next part immediately' option.
More than 250 titles are available free of charge, with the rest sold using a 'Pay-Per-Read' process which allows you to abandon books in which you lose interest. There are even sample installments available at no cost.
The most approachable guy in the world -- Scott Ginsberg (That Nametag Guy) has launched his latest and greatest project NametagTV.com! I know he's been working hard on this project over the last year, and Scott has truly hit a homerun.
NametagTV.com has four specific content channels: Sales, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, and Frontline. Each channel already has a wealth of content to view, and I know Scott is determined to keep this site fresh and filled with valuable information and advice on becoming a more successful human being.
The design is simple and friendly (you might say it's a very 'approachable') and includes an RSS feed for his videos (Yay! More food to feed my iPod!) Scott has included direct links to each of his episodes, as well as embeddable code to make it easy for others to feature his content on their website (as I have done below.) If I had to take one poke at the site, it would be that the videos won't function unless you have the latest version of Flash. Since it's so reliant upon using that version, I think I would have added a bit more emphasis on that fact -- though Scott DOES include a small line of type beneath the player stating as much, along with a link to the required download.
A couple more quick ideas I'd like to see on the site... 1. Include a bit more text info in the episode descriptions. 2. Within those episode descriptions, include an email link to get the free article featured in that episode, or to actually download the file itself. 3. I know he's using DIGG and Del.icio.us links, but why not use sharethis.com to include all those and more -- plus the built-in send-to-a-friend feature.
...But it's easy to look at it now that it exists and think about things to change and improve. The important thing is that he created it to share with all of us! Do yourself a favor and stop wasting time in front crap on your "normal" television set, and make an appointment to tune into valuable programming content that will make you more successful in business and in LIFE. Tune into NametagTV!
In a brilliant act of confronting Apple with its own words (and then making them eat those words) a YouTube user with the screen name "KeeptheiPhoneFree" created a video mashup of all the third-party iPhone software that was effectively rendered useless when Apple released the firmware update 1.1.1.
The real act of brilliance was in using the audio from Apple's groundbreaking "Think Different" campaign. Listen to the narrator (who I think is Richard Dreyfuss) call out Apple's salute to "the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently." According to Apple's script they have no respect for the status quo -- yet that's just what Apple is trying to maintain by fighting the iPhone hack that allows for greater user ability by these self same "Crazy Ones."
So, according to Apple it is okay to Think Different -- just don't think TOO different from them.
I'm a journal freak. Out of necessity I am constantly scribbling ideas down on paper (Post-it notes, napkins, business cards, whatever...) Most everyone has learned that if you can't capture an idea immediately, it may be lost forever.
Although any old piece of paper will do when inspiration strikes, there's nothing I like better than writing down my ideas (and sometimes that means transferring them from napkins to the page) in a journal that has a little pizzazz to its design or format.
The website HoboArona.com takes vintage and antique books and turns them into eclectic and unique journals. From a Germanic version of a Tennessee Williams play, to the Boy Scouts of America's Cubmaster Pack Book, to a short and sweet 18-page journal created from Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven -- original front and back book covers house acid-free journal sheets made from 90% recycled content. Page size and count vary from book to book and many have the original front and end pages intact, as well as more than a few of the original library checkout cards in the back.
Perhaps the most unique aspect of these journals isn't the original elements of each book, but the handwritten note from the website owner that is included in each journal. HoboArona includes a bit of the book's history, along with jottings about the book's plot, author's achievements (or misdeeds) and documents the publication date along with the page size and count.
Often we have to dig deep within ourselves to find the inspiration to create new ideas and document them. How much more convenient if the documentation tool can help provide some of that inspiration.
Visit HoboArona.com for more details, and to see samples of the available journals.
