slamboard

My brain hurts from trying to think about the implications of a battery that uses plant sugars as its energy source. The announcement as reported by Reuters has no information as to when these might actually be available to the public.

The only prediction that I can make with confidence is that complimentary sugar packets at restaurants and cafes will disappear when these batteries hit the streets. The low amount of electricity produced is suitable for operating things like iPods. I think the recent break-throughs with solar panels will make this sugar battery kind of pointless.

I really like Pine Beds and the items featured at Wooden-Beds.com are a good example of the kind of beds that I like. Simple yet elegant design without any impractical elements. That is what I want in a bed.

I had been given a second hand futon once and, being the handy man that I am, I took it apart and used the lumber to make a computer desk. Futons are not among my favorite things. I like to be a good foot or two off of the ground when I am asleep. This Plank Bed is my favorite. The pine beds sold on Wooden-Beds.com have a lacquer and wax treatment that gives them a rustic look and practical durability.

Most people get on a self improvement kick of one kind or another on a regular basis. Personal goals might be related to wealth, health, relationships or any number of other things.

The self help industry is lucrative because people don’t typically decide to improve themselves, find the best resources, achieve a goal and then stop. The typical cycle is for a person to set an unrealistic goal, seek out resources that promise to help them achieve that goal, fail, and lay some of the blame on the resource. This blame is well deserved in many cases.

The Law of Attraction videos bypass the steps that are more like stumbling blocks for many people and if in 6 weeks you fail to see results, your money can be refunded with no questions asked.
If you enroll in the Law of Attraction course on or before August 30th, you will be eligable to receive a free upgrade to Gold membership status.

The key points of the law of attraction method involves recognizing and overcoming obstacles.

Kiva is a website that provides very low interest loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries. We have been supporting this model since late last year. Our experience from the lender side is exactly what is portrayed in this very well produced video.

I highly recommend participating in Kiva . The website is featuring another great video in which a NYT journalist visits his own loan recipient at a bakery in Kabul. Here is a PDF of his article.

Thoof is primarily used as a source of personalized news. I have blogged before about its features from the point of view of a source of information.

If you are a blogger and you have any ego at all, you tend to consider your very own self as a valuable source of information. Thoof can be used to put your blog posts up the proverbial flag pole. It is really easy to submit a post or article to Thoof. Once you have added your post, you receive an embed code that you can use to place a badge on your blog. It seems that every different bookmarking site likes to use a different terms for stuff. Technorati recently began using the term AUTHORITY. Thoof uses the new word ThoofRank. I don’t think they have to worry about any redundancy with that mouthful.

I chose to submit the first part of my Kimkins series on Thoof. It will be interesting to see if that brings in a broader audience. I will know if it is getting any traction just by looking at the rank on my badge. I’ve been looking at the way Thoof works and trying to decide if it is more or less susceptible to subversion and gaming. I think that it will not be quite as skewed by those activities for now, just because it is such a new site.

The process of joining and submitting a post was very simple and fast.

The beautiful Christmas garlands from Christmas Farms would be a great item to have delivered to a far away loved one during the holiday season. They are the real thing, made from Fir, Cedar, Pine and Boxwood.

I was actually employed at a Christmas tree farm one Summer during my teenage years. Summer is when the trees get pruned to improve their shape and promote thicker growth. At the farm where I worked, the trees were also selected and graded by the farmer. Color coded ribbons were tied to the trees so the winter crew would know which trees to cut to fill the orders.

The trees that I pruned were mostly destined for a commercial lot in Boston.

Christmas Farms is based in Michigan and provides free shipping on all its orders.

Take it from somebody who has stared at a LOT of Christmas trees, the trees at ChristmasFarms.com look very nice.

I wonder if any Christmas tree farmers have ever thought of getting a Cut Your Own Tree lot geared up with web cams and robots so people anywhere in the World could cut their own Christmas tree. This idea could backfire if two users want the same tree and a robotic chainsaw fight ensues. Although, that might add to the buzz around the site. If anybody wants this idea I am hereby giving it away.

I learn something new almost every day. Today I learned about the term Empty-Leg. I had never heard this term up until today. It refers to the part of a voyage in which the carrier vessel or vehicle is without any paying cargo.

Obviously a private airline would want to have as few of these empty-legs as possible. Elite Jets has a number of partners that submit upcoming empty-legs to be included in a data base. Charter Flights from Elite Jets can be obtained at significant savings (30% is typical) over what you might expect to pay if you were booking directly from one of these partners.

Flights can be booked with as little as four hours notice.

All aircraft that are part of this network meet safety standards.

I worked for a medium sized company a few years back that is in the coffee business. There is quite a bit of travel involved in being a coffee importer. I regret that I never went to any of the source countries. I did fly to a few American cities for trade shows and training sessions. We were in the middle of an expansion and we were purchasing some production equipment from American companies. I wish I had known about Elite Jets back then because we did have to fly some technicians up on at least one occasion while I was working there. Flying on commercial airlines seems to get more stressful and time consuming all the time. It doesn’t seem to be getting any cheaper. If private jets were of a comparable cost, I would want to always consider them as an option.

Judging by the benefits that Elite Jet tends to emphasize on their website, I am guessing that they see dissatisfied commercial airline passengers as a chance to grow their market share. I had an experience about 6 months ago that was like something out of that reality show Airline. I haven’t said ‘Never again‘, but I am getting close.

Thoof is touted as a personalized news page. Before I get into my review, I want to say a big THANK YOU to the creator of a video demo for the site. I have jumped into using various sites in the past only to realize weeks or months after the fact that I had been blind to the potential of some of the features. The video shows viewers step by step how to use Thoof to its full potential.

The feature that makes Thoof stand out is almost like a non-feature. When you are signed in to the site, you can click on headlines that interest you and this act in and of itself is like a positive vote for that story and other stories that may be similar to it. I like this functionality. It just makes sense to me.

What will happen with repeated viewing is that your page will adapt to your preferences. I just signed up, so my page doesn’t represent my interests yet. I watched a couple of cool topical videos and I clicked on the hide button beside a story that just sounded stupid to me. If you click on not interesting after you have read or viewed something, it disappears from your page, and similar stories are less likely to appear on your page later.

If you want to get more involved, you can submit stories. You can also improve stories that are already posted by changing the description or adding tags. This process is like a proposal, your changes go into effect only after other users approve of them.

I just noticed that there is a history tab. That will be very convenient for me because I work beside my wife and sometimes she is too involved in customer service to take time out to hear about whatever cool thing I found on the internet. With Thoof, I can have a list of what I thought was worthwhile at the ready.

I just did a quick check and found out that stuff that you are not interested in do not stay in your history. I really like this site and I think I will continue using it. In the future, it would be cool if they provided some widgets for bloggers to put on their sites.

Vat19.com is a really well designed online shopping experience. After looking at a couple of pages, I am very impressed.

The layout of a page for a store item is very user friendly with large images and simple, well written descriptions. Check out this cookbook stand. I notice one very smart thing, they put pictures that illustrate the unique features like an embossed conversion table higher on the page than the picture of the stand holding up a cookbook. I think that this item could be useful for other types of manuals besides just cookbooks.

VAT19.com has videos showing off their products. They have created 82 of them so far. There is a video for these recycled sail bags. The videos are simple and illustrative. In the case of this sail bag, I think the ruggedness and the size of the product came across better in the demonstration video than it does in still images. The product itself is fantastic. It is an over-size beach tote made from used sail material. What is really neat about it is the inside label that gives details of the type of vessel that the fabric came from and where she sailed. I would like to have one of these for the beach, but I would probably take it with me to shop for heavy items at the corner store as well.

If this Banana Bunker Video doesn’t go viral, there is something wrong with the Universe.

If I had been writing this post at a different time of day, I might have focused on the healthy fruit baskets that The Fruit Company can have delivered to the recipient of your choice. However, it is time for dessert and I saw that they also ship sampler packages of their sinfully decadent CHEESECAKES.

The sampler looks very tempting. If you have a favorite already, they probably make it. I am fascinated with the idea of nationwide delivery of something so delicate and environmentally sensitive. I grew up in lobster country, and I also worked at an international airport. It was always interesting to see the packaging technology and the procedures involved in shipping live lobsters overseas. Cheesecake doesn’t get delivered alive, but it does help if it stays chilled. The Fruit Company uses a state of the art cool pack packaging system. They provide you with a delicious cheesecake delivered to your door, guilt not included.

I browsed around some more on Thefruitcompany.com and I did notice an amazing fruit basket called The Epicurean. The best thing about this gift basket is that whoever gets it will most likely cherish the basket after the fruit and other delectables are long gone. It is truly a gift that anyone would love to get.