Adventures in Candyland

Yesterday we toured a very cool house in Brentwood. Wired Home by Living Homes (obviously, Chris Anderson didn’t completely turn me off). The house used state-of-the-art technology and environmentally conscious steel, glass and reclaimed redwood-encased Prefab for Living Homes by celebrated architect, Ray Kappe. The home is completely wrapped in windows - allowing the outside to be brought it - a concept that is throughly appealing to me. It was 4,000 sq. feet of design and technology exquisitness and absolutely the kind of house I see in my future. There was so much coolness in this house (forget the house keys, how about an iris reader instead) and we’re real suckers for it. Here are a few shots(sorry about the crappy camera phone) that really don’t do it justice.

The interior was also pretty spot on - modern yet not cold. The art was interesting, particularly from this artist -Andy Diaz Hope. Here’s something kinda trippy that I took - reminded Danielle of the show, “Flight of the Concords”. This was the mirror in the upstair bathroom.

But, there was only one issue - the price tag. The house is on the market for 4.3 mill. I don’t know if I will be able to afford this in the near future. And that begs the question, how many people really can? I understand that this home was for touring and sets the standard, but when will the masses, or even the upper middle class, be able to afford a sustainable PREFAB home. The definition of Prefab has definitely changed and so has the price. I don’t know the exact price of putting one of these homes up, but I’m assuming it’s quite costly even when they aren’t customized.

For me, the home symbolizes the green movement. Lots of new ways to be environmentally conscious, yet ironically, the majority of products are typically more expensive than their non-green counterparts. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule so you don’t need to list off all the ways or products I’m wrong about, but if we are to move in this direction, I hope that this kind of lifestyle can become more cost-effective and easily accessible for more people in the near future. I, for one, am waiting for the day.

Did you know today is Blog Action Day? It’s a cool idea. Basically, a group of bloggers set out to heighten the awareness of one of the most important topics, environmentalism, throughout the blogoshpere and all on the same day. This mass blogging event will be the topic of the day on 15,000 blogs and reach 12 million readers. So - of course I wanted to participate. What is more important than preserving our earth?

So full disclosure, I am kind of a dork (yes, I like Sci-fi) and I love the NEW Battlestar Gallactica. The premise is humans invented robots, the robots rebel, kill many and take over the world, so the humans left have to flee into space to preserve the what’s left of the race. The characters are constantly craving earth’s environment, so they all want to get away on this one ship that replicates the beauty of earth’s outdoors. A reoccuring theme in shows of this nature for sure, but it always reminds me of how many of us take what we have here for granted. So, hopefully all this awareness will turn into action and not peter out because the reality is: this kind of revolution takes time. This month’s issue of Wired focuses quite a bit on this topic of time and trial and error particularly in regards to the future of energy.

One of the articles addresses the very prevalent molecule, cellulosic ethanol. This molecule is the answer to all our energy woes and even better, it’s just waiting for a good use in everyone’s lawnmowers! Problem is - it’s hard to break down. So even though there are ways to do it, it can’t be done at the proper scale and speed at this point. Sort of the like the whole corn ethanol deal - fuel can be made from it, but it’s not effective and efficient enought. I’m not going to get into the chemistry of it, but I think the underlying topic here is creative solutions and raising awareness regularly so people will continually clamor for solutions even if there isn’t a real answer for many years. Because in truth, there is no option for the US or the world whether due to the environmental or financial ramifications. Therejust isn’t a choice. And there needs to be mavericks who make it their goal to not let these issues just coast along.

In fact, check out these two guys, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger. These two probably might not being having a lot of “coffee talk” with mainstream environmentalist. A result of their controversial manifesto from 2005, “Death of Enviromentalism” and new book titled, “Break Through: From “The Death of Environmentalism” to the Politics of Possibility,” but I bet they do inspire passion and hopefully change. They opine current mainstream ideas proposed aren’t extreme enough to make an actual dent in the reality of greenhouse emmisions and the only way for change to be had is if the solutions are, “pro-growth, pro-technology, and pro-environment.” Seems like common sense right, but apprently these are the non-conformist ideas that will turn the enviromental movement onto its ear so something actually gets accomplished. Well, that and money of course.

Whatever they inspire, at least at least they inspire something! Me, I am going to do something too, not world changing big, but world changing in my life big. I drink coffee at least once a day, so I going to make it a point to to use my own cup because it kills me when I see the 30 cups from the past week piling up in the trash. It’s definitely not going to make the impact Nordhaus and Shellenberger want to make, but we all got to start the change somewhere. What are you doing?

Last week I attended the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) Convention. It’s basically wall to wall (and there were so many walls at this place) aviation. In fact, there were 1,152 exhibitors - meaning no lack of men wearing navy suits. Aviation is an odd industry. Though it would make the most sense that this industry would be technology forward and filled with early adopters, in actuality ,it’s the opposite. To illustrate my point, just look at the dated air traffic control industry who still use a 50 year old system of radar and radio beacons. The the lack of female representation is also paltry. At NBAA there are 10 men for every one woman, and many of those women are “booth babes,” strutting the floor in miniscule red numbers. With the way the men reacted to them, I felt like watching a scene straight out of Mad Men(fabulous show BTW). I’ve attended this show before, so none of this was too surprising, but again it represents the antiquated world of aviation. Thankfully, it seems change is in the air.

I know I’ve mentioned Very Light Jets(VLJs) and Eclipse Aviation which are probably the biggest advancement aviation has taken in a long time. In any case, these new mini-jets may very well change the way we all travel in the future. Take a look at Day Jet, a new airline carrier flying Eclipse planes. DayJet is the world’s first per-seat, on-demand jet service, an entirely new approach to short-haul (under 600 mile) regional business travel. And it’s supposed to be semi-affordable probably right now around $600-$700 a flight, but hopefully if it works, closer to the $300-$400 range -even I can afford that! Right now, Day Jet is trying the concept out in Florida - so we shall see how this new niche progresses. Day Jet believes time is at a premium, especially for their target, the business traveller. Time is also at a premium for the wealthy, which is a nice segway into why I attended the show.

Wouldn’t it be nice to fly from NY to Paris in four hours and 14 minutes? Doesn’t seem possible does it? Well, if you have 80 mill and can wait a few years, you’ll be sipping plus de cafe au laits sur l’avenue Montaigne(finally using my French minor). Aerion Corporation has designed a Super Sonic Business Jet which will fly above and just below mach speed to get 10-12 lucky passengers from NY to Asia in nine and a half hours… and in comfort and class to boot! And all made possible by the jet’s unique wing structure. Check out what this sweet machine will look like. It is a quite an interesting company with superlative leadership. Anyway - I was working the booth to handle the media who attended and wanted to speak to executives. Check out this picture I took of the wind tunnel model. Pretty slick hah? Just about seven more years till take-off! Now this would be an advancement in aviation.

We just need a few more clients so Sweet Talk can put the company name on a reservation list! Thankfully, we have a few more years.

Innovation never stops and never ceases to amaze. Last Sunday, Danielle and I ventured downtown to the LA Convention Center to experience Wired Nextfest, one of the coolest “tradeshows” I’ve ever attended. As we browsed the booths, we were continously awed by the creativity and cool factor of the products and technologies shaping the future of our world. We were reminded that we’re living during an amazing period of time, where interactivity is the sign of the times as well as the proliferation of communities continually being by reshaped by the technology and inspiration featured at this show. The shape of things to come is about customization, collaboration and innovation tied into entertainment and culture tied into creating a more sustainable and empathetic world.

Honestly, I could write chapters on the innovations we saw Sunday, but instead, I’ll just hightlight a few of of my favorites.

Light Harp
This is the first interactive art you experience upon entering the show. The sound coming from this thing was really beautiful.

Brainball
Are you calm enough to win a game of brain ball. I know I’m not, but it might be a good challenge for me. Brainball is a game where you compete by relaxing your brain and move a little ball across a table into a little circle using your brainwaves. The person who is calmer will get the ball in first. Seriously, who needs mediation when you can just play this game. Everyone was circled around these two players sitting their with their eyes closed while their brain waves were being charted on screen behing them. It was fascinating!

Desktop Factory 3D Printer
This is so cool and so inexpensive when you compare it to the past cost of creating some kind of prototype. The machine looks like a microwave oven and basically layers what sort of looks like sand to create a 3D model of the digital data you feed it and only for $4995.

Jukebots
People DJs may soon be extinct with the introduction of Jukebots, industrial robots who scratch, spin and mix records. They kind of dance as the decise which record they’re going to pick. Ridiculously cool!

LifeStraw
It’s difficult to imagine living somewhere without access to a clean water source. It’s painful to realize children still die from contaminated water — soooo these LifeStraws, which are shockingly inexpensive and simple( $3 )will save many, many lives.

Obviously I could chronicle every experience that seemed significant or fabulous, but I don’t want to bore you. So I’m going end this entry by illustrating the use of technology and art.

Today, text messaging is taking the place of calling, emailing and yes, talking. So I think we can all expect to see many iterations of this technology in the future. Here are two we learned about and took advantage of many times that day. So many times in fact, the guy from Nanikawa who was running the Wind and Swimming Messagesystem was either thinking we were really crazy or really annoying. The other is TXTual Healing, SMS Enabled Interactive Street Performance. Both very cool and the wave of the future. Below are a few samples of what I’m talking about, but please don’t judge me for my camera work, which is absolutely painful and pretty much unbearable - I truly apologize, but I want to illustrate what I’m talking about. Today, we actually bought a really cool handheld video camera by PURE DIGITAL, that we learned about at a PSFK conference. We’ll blog on how that benefits my awful filming ability later.

Both of the below technologies allow you to call a number they provide, enter your message which is immediately rendered into these two artistic forms.

TXTual Healing - Text Message Customizable Graffiti Art

Wind and Swimming MessageSystem - The wind blows your text from screen to screen in front of a beautiful background

Which unique technologies and products do you think will make an impact in the future?

Did you know that there are over 15 billion web pages?  I learned that today from Common Craft, a consultancy which offers probably one the best services on the Internet today.  I was watching their video on “Social Bookmarking in Plain English.”  They know how to boil a topic down to base understanding and use illustrations and simple language to make it completely understandable.  Seriously, how could I ever describe del.icio.us to my mom - I’m sure I would lose my patience in .5 seconds (if anyone has a solution for impatience, please contact me ASAP).  I think Limor may have blogged about the true neccessity of Common Craft a while ago.  Check it out.

And though I may be a little late to jump on the bandwagon, del.icio.us is my current love.  Because there are over 15 billion pages, there is no end to the information you can take in.  And being an information junkie, I contracted a horrendous bookmarking disease very early on.  But in that ridiculous format, it’s impossible to see what your’ve bookmarked so I never go back to what I wanted to remember in the first place.  So for me, del.icio.us is a god send.  It even helps me truly understand and narrow down my interests. Architecture, Food, Design, Marketing, Trends have the most tags, but my page is growing quickly because I love seeing what other people who love what I love are bookmarking - it’s total genuis. Just think how lost I would be with out my daily dose of Tokyo Street Style or Streetsy.      

In this complex and over-informationed society of ours, there’s nothing yummier or more del.iciou.us than simplification.

Yesterday the Sweet Talk crew went for a little shopping trip on our lunch hour.  I was on a mission for a new pair of sunglasses since the nosepiece had fallen off mine over the weekend.  It was only an hour, so it had to be a quick trip, and I was laser-focused on finding the glasses…until I heard, “I know!  And did you hear about Owen Wilson?  I know!  Can you believe it?!”

Yep, that would be the chick standing in the aisle next to me talking on her cell phone (actually, it was more like yelling into her cell phone).  I tried not to listen, but really, how could I not?  She was trying on glasses in the mirror next to me, balancing her cell between shoulder and ear as she took pairs on and off.  I put a pair on, but couldn’t really tell what they looked like because of this: “And he used to date that little actress I love.  What’s her name?  Ummm…I can’t think of it, but I LOVE her.  Yeah, that cute blond.  I know, I know…what’s her name?  Nah, she’s not Kurt Russell’s daughter…she’s from the first husband.  Yeah - I love her!  What’s her name?!”  Seriously, I was so distracted I almost yelled “KATE HUDSON.”  But I didn’t. 

Instead, I mozied over to the shoe department.  And there were tons of shoes on the sale racks, but guess what?  You got it - couldn’t really focus on those either ’cause of this: ”Isn’t it weird that school starts Thursday?  Its so hot, it still feels like summer.  I know!  I couldn’t really buy them school clothes either ’cause its still so hot.”  Yeah - its hot outside, but you’re INSIDE.  If you’re gonna talk about how hot it is outside, maybe you should head out there so we don’t have to all hear your conversation!

I’ve gotta say, (even though we’re all guilty of it) this is one of my current pet peeves.  Why, oh why is your conversation so important that you feel compelled to talk about it so loudly in a store full of strangers?  Do you think we can’t hear you? 

But alas, this morning I was perusing one of the trend-spotting email newsletters I receive, and I saw this post about a mobile phone booth at the Copenhagen airport.  It actually says “Please, speak softly or speak here.” 

And I had a vision!  You know all those payphone booths in places like the mall that are always empty now?  Can’t someone, somewhere, somehow turn those into mobile phone booths so people can hang out in there talking about Owen Wilson, and I can actually get some shopping done?!

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been doing a lot of networking on LinkedIn.  If you don’t use LinkedIn, its basically a social networking site for professional use - like MySpace but for your career. 

Anyway, by using LinkedIn we’ve met new people from as far away as Hong Kong and as close by as the next town over; we’ve reconnected with old friends and colleagues; and we’ve generated a few new leads.  But my favorite feature on LinkedIn has to be the Answers section - what a resource!  Here, people post questions about everything from attending conferences to finding venture capitalists to planning events. 

Browsing the questions is a great way to monitor trends, to find out what cutting-edge ideas people need more info about; answering questions is a great way to share your expertise or new ideas; but asking questions may be the most fun of all. 

Last week we asked a few questions about things that were stumping us - we needed some better terminology for one of our ideas, we needed a consolidated resource for some statistics, etc.  And most of the answers we got were fantastic - really interesting ideas, professional concepts and phrasing, helpful links and introductions to experts.  

The answers really are out there.

Have you asked or answered questions on LinkedIn?  Let me know how it worked for you.        

Once upon a time (before children and starting a business) I had time to read my city’s daily newspaper each morning, listen to news radio in the car, check news on the internet throughout the day, and read a magazine and part of a bestselling novel before watching network news each evening.  Oh yeah - there was also time for reading the NYTimes on Sundays.  All of that is really important if you’re in PR - some might argue its really important if you’re a human, but particularly important if your job involves monitoring current events and the media so as to develop and pitch timely story ideas for your clients. 

So along came a kid and a biz, and suddenly my mornings are consumed by cartoons while trying to get everyone out the door, my car rides consist of listening to ”family rocker” Dan Zanes (who by the way offers the coolest kid-friendly music!), I barely have time to visit my homepage at work, I can’t stay awake for the network news and let’s face it, Sundays aren’t much different.  So what’s a PR girl to do?  Well, all I can say is thank god for Google Reader.

Give me a half-hour a day with Reader and I can consume more news than I ever have before.  With Reader I can subscribe to all kinds of feeds (my subscriptions vary from the LATimes, to parenting blogs, marketing blogs, celeb-tracking sites and business and monthly pubs) then scan the user-friendly list of headlines to click on the articles or posts I want to read.  And I can email items of interest to my friends, family and partners directly from the Reader list.  Its so easy…AND it save trees! 

But wait, there’s more!  There’s another little handy-dandy Google tool that lets me be an even better media monitor - Alerts.  Alerts lets you monitor certain topics by sending you email updates of the latest relevant Google results for that topic.  So for each project or client I’m working with, I can set up an Alert and will receive daily emails about that topic - from articles in community papers, to international coverage, to personal blog posts about the same topic.  And with these being forwarded to my PDA each day, I’m always up-to-date on my media…even when I’m watching Dora the Explorer or falling asleep on the couch.

Thanks Google! :)     

A few weeks ago I wrote a post that mentioned Google - you can see it below.  I said I’d follow up with some posts about the Google tools I can no longer live without, and so I’ll start by talking about Google Analytics. 

Google Analytics provides free, in-depth tracking - really in-depth.  The cynics out there say that Google blatantly sinks a ton of money into making Analytics the best so that they will increase revenue from AdWords…businesses can analyze their traffic and site marketing, and then make wiser pay-per-click purchases.  Frankly, I think that’s Google’s brilliance at work.  Sweet Talk can see the words people are using to find us on searches, and perhaps respond by choosing the appropriate AdWords for online advertising. 

Actually, we’ve yet to do any pay-per-click advertising, but we’re learning a ton about our site and it’s traffic by monitoring Analytics.  For example, our traffic volume has been much higher than we expected in it’s first quarter.  As a new business, that’s encouraging. 

In addition, we have a client with members all over the world, and they have generously promoted our site.  Its amazing to see that we now have people from places as varied as Ghana, Saudi Arabia and Smyrna, Georgia visiting our site on a regular basis.  

Also interesting is that we can track the networks our traffic comes from.  Sometimes, if we’re pitching new business or trying to contact the media, it is helpful to see if someone from a specific company or corporate entity has taken the next step and viewed our site for additional information.  And now, with a Blog, it is nice to know that not only are people from all over the world interested enough to check our posts on a near-daily basis, but so are people in organizations as close by as the mid-Wilshire district of LA.

Google Analytis is really an enlightening tool…one we will use to help us direct our online presence.                       

I know there’s that whole underlying Google backlash brewing just below the surface - they’re tyrants, they’re planning to take over the world, they’re just plain mean and evil - that kind of thing.  And in fact, wasn’t it just last week that we heard about Google acquiring DoubleClick, an online advertising company - can you see antitrust issues down the road?  So its safe to say I started out a bit skeptical (okay, cynical) about Blackle.

If you haven’t searched with Blackle yet, its basically Google search with a black screen.  Why?  Well, Google explains that its an attempt to be more environmentally friendly.  In the first conversation Sweet Talk had about Blackle, I was convinced that it was a great marketing stunt from Google.  With green living so hot right now (see Lauren’s post below) and more and more companies trying to find ways to be eco-responsible (btw - I have no idea if that’s a real term), it seems an obvious time for Google to craft and present that image as well.  The launch of Blackle this month garnered some good publicity - so much that it actually went down for a bit after the onslaught of visitors.  But I wonder how many people have switched to Blackle as their homepage.

Despite my cynicism about Blackle being a marketing stunt, I checked it out anyway.  It looks pretty cool.  And here’s what Google has to say about it:

“How is Blackle saving energy?

Blackle saves energy because the screen is predominantly black. “Image displayed is primarily a function of the user’s color settings and desktop graphics, as well as the color and size of open application windows; a given monitor requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen.” Roberson et al, 2002

In January 2007 a blog post titled Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year proposed the theory that a black version of the Google search engine would save a fair bit of energy due to the popularity of the search engine. Since then there has been skepticism about the significance of the energy savings that can be achieved and the cost in terms of readability of black web pages.

We believe that there is value in the concept because even if the energy savings are small, they all add up. Secondly we feel that seeing Blackle every time we load our web browser reminds us that we need to keep taking small steps to save energy.

How can you help?

We encourage you to set Blackle as your home page. This way every time you load your Internet browser you will save a little bit of energy. Remember every bit counts! You will also be reminded about the need to save energy each time you see the Blackle page load.

Help us spread the word about Blackle by telling your friends and family to set it as their home page. If you have a blog then give us a mention. Or put the following text in your email signature: “Blackle.com - Saving energy one search at a time”.

There are a lot of great web sites about saving energy and being more environmentally friendly. They are full of great tips covering the little things that we can all do to make a difference today. Try Blackling “energy saving tips” or visit treehugger.com a great blog dedicated to environmental awareness.”

And yes, after reading this, my cynicism miraculously vanished.  As part of a recycling, Prius-driving family, how could I not set Blackle as my homepage?  So…this post is my plug for Blackle.  It might be just a marketing stunt, but at least it’s one you can feel good about - one search at a time.