I am always on the look out these days for the more environmentally friendly product. Be it made with more sustainable products or recycled products. Even better if it is then locally made. Today I found a very cool pair of shoes that not only look great, but fit the following criteria:
- The men’s Sno Tire-Hemp shoes contain no animal byproducts or even regular animal products. This shoe is vegan friendly and veggie friendly.
- Hemp and organic cotton
- Your new favorite sneaker.
- Organic cotton linings
- PET laces
- PET pedbeds
- Yes, that outsole used to be a car tire
- Vulcanized rubber sidewall, toecap, and heelcap
- 100% post consumer paper pulp foot forms
You can get SImple Shoes at Kathmandu. They have a huge sale on, and I was trying to pick up a pair of sale shoes, but these were worth the full ticket price.
If you are still dropping into Urban Grind these days you will know that I am still harping on about TED.com. Some watch the T.V. news while eating dinner, but in our house we watch TED.com. Even Oscar our 2 year old son yells out TED as we sit down to dinner. Sure after 2 minutes he wants to watch Elmo, but so far he knows nothing of the violence and death that is portrayed by our media. He will grow up with a different idea on his fellow man and woman. He will know that there is a strength in mankind to do positive things on a scale that few have witnessed, let alone can imagine as being capable of by this so called flawed species, the Human. He will know that in the face of all of that negativity he can still choose to change the world. He will know that if he chooses to try than he will. He will have a wealth of inspiration and wisdom to draw from. He will not be afraid.
Tonight I set out to put together my top ten list of TED vids for a couple of my friends, but I had trouble stopping at a top 20 list.
So here is my Top 21 TED Vids List:
Eva Vertes: My dream about the future of medicine (This is number one, the rest were too hard to rank.)
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/eva_vertes_looks_to_the_future_of_medicine.html
Joshua Klein: The amazing intelligence of crows
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/joshua_klein_on_the_intelligence_of_crows.html
Dean Kamen: New prosthetic arm for veterans
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dean_kamen_previews_a_new_prosthetic_arm.html
Johnny Lee: Creating tech marvels out of a $40 Wii Remote
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/johnny_lee_demos_wii_remote_hacks.html
Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html
Eve Ensler: Finding happiness in body and soul
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/eve_ensler_on_happiness_in_body_and_soul.html
William McDonough: The wisdom of designing Cradle to Cradle
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/william_mcdonough_on_cradle_to_cradle_design.html
Dave Eggers: 2008 TED Prize wish: Once Upon a School
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dave_eggers_makes_his_ted_prize_wish_once_upon_a_school.html
Jonathan Harris: The Web’s secret stories
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jonathan_harris_tells_the_web_s_secret_stories.html
Majora Carter: Greening the ghetto
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/majora_carter_s_tale_of_urban_renewal.html
E.O. Wilson: TED Prize wish: Help build the Encyclopedia of Life
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/e_o_wilson_on_saving_life_on_earth.html
Jaime Lerner: Sing a song of sustainable cities
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jaime_lerner_sings_of_the_city.html
Emily Oster: What do we really know about the spread of AIDS?
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/emily_oster_flips_our_thinking_on_aids_in_africa.html
Cameron Sinclair: TED Prize wish: Open-source architecture to house the world
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/cameron_sinclair_on_open_source_architecture.html
Jeff Skoll: Making movies that make change
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jeff_skoll_makes_movies_that_make_change.html
Jimmy Wales: How a ragtag band created Wikipedia
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jimmy_wales_on_the_birth_of_wikipedia.html
Deborah Scranton: Scenes from “The War Tapes”
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/deborah_scranton_on_her_war_tapes.html
Al Gore: New thinking on the climate crisis
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/al_gore_s_new_thinking_on_the_climate_crisis.html
Larry Lessig: How creativity is being strangled by the law
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity.html
Jacqueline Novogratz: Investing in Africa’s own solutions
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jacqueline_novogratz_invests_in_ending_poverty.html
Burt Rutan: Entrepreneurs are the future of space flight
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/burt_rutan_sees_the_future_of_space.html
Ok so I don’t use Firefox as my main browser because I am a Mac user but Firefox is a great browser for both the Mac Lovers and especially Windows users. It is more secure - those annoying popup windows that dial you in to other internet providers will stop. You will get less viruses. It is also a better browsing experience. It shows you web pages in the way that the designer intended. I do a bit of web design and Internet Explorer is the worst. All IE users should be downloading Firefox, you have no idea what you are missing. You may have even come to accept mediocre as normal and this could be spilling over into the rest of your life. It’s not worth it, set yourself free and make my job easier, because the more of you that use Firefox the less web designers have to care about coding for IE.
It is said that a web designer spends 20% of his time designer for every other browser and 80% of his time then getting that same design to work properly in Internet Explorer. I think we can all agree that the internet offers some really cool things, but they only got there because of designers putting the time onto these cool things. How much time is being wasted? How much innovation are we missing out on because Microsoft made a crap Web Browser that most of the world got sucked into using??? But I digress… this was not meant to be an IE bash, but who can resist.
Sometime tomorrow starts Firefox Download day. They are releasing their latest version (FREE) and trying to get the whole world to download it, increase there market share, free you from IE and maybe just make it into the Guinness Book of Records for the most copies of a software downloaded in a day.
Click on the image above to get all the details.
So many of you have been waiting for this and here it is. You can now take our Chai Tea home with you in 200g packs. This really is an awesome Chai and we get asked a lot to sell it in take-home packs.
It is called a wet Chai which as far as I can tell has something to do with the fact that it is infused with honey. It means that we have to keep it in the fridge but it also means that the spices etc in the mix are spread evenly giving you a very consistent flavour every time. If you love Chai you really do have to try this one. $11 for 200g.
iPhone Killers is a term that you are going to start hearing a lot. I am going to tell you now that there is no such thing. In fact everytime someone says ‘iphone killer’ they are saying iPhone and that is good marketing for Apple because it keeps telling everyone that the iPhone is so good that it is the only one to try to beat. It also doesn’t promote the product that is being reviewed. It promotes the iPhone, then shows you something it has already told you is less than the iPhone.
If I was Blackberry (for example) I would be begging, even buying off every newspaper to get them not to use ‘iphone killer’ when reviewing my product. If any of these products are going to have a chance they are going to need to stand on their own two legs, assuming they have legs to stand on.
So what do I know? Firstly. Name me an iPod Killer that succeeded! Secondly. I have personally experienced the iPhone for the past 3+ months and I am left with two things to say about it:
1. There has never been a device where the only thing that you can believe, is the hype.
2. The novelty doesn’t wear off. It is simply replaced by lifestyle integration.
The iPhone is coming and whether you want one or need one if you get one you will use it and you will love it.
Sent from my iPhone
Often we have joked that Urban Grind is something you escape from as opposed to escape to for a coffee. Turns out that Australia is the 3rd largest Urban Grinders in the world, behind the US and Japan. I have also read that this does not make us among the most productive. In fact I think the case is that countries that work more always produce less. Can’t remember where I read that but if you consider how much you achieve when you are run down, wouldn’t you be better recharging your batteries? Something I am going to try and do more of this year.
So on average Australia works 1870 hours per year. I know I work more than that. And 1870 per year actually looks really attractive. So for those working too much I am not sure what we do about it, but boy it got my little head thinking when the average is considered high and I am above average. I don’t want to be above average. Anyway food for thought, next time you are relaxing over a coffee.
