Is The Creative Commons License The Answer to Copyright?
The Internet has presented a huge problem with the current Copyright Laws of each land, the Internet, is in fact a giant copy machine that violates most Copyright type licenses every second of the day. Great debates have and are taking place as to what the answer may or may not be, the laws are about control, the Internet is not, it wants to share everything it finds and at no or very little cost. So, how does one get paid for their work if that later is indeed true.
What is a Creative Commons License? I’m not even going to consider trying to explain it to you because I don’t know! I am however going to let you understand it better through this video, now pay attention, you may be very interested to know that this is close to what we may be looking for here on the Internet.
Does this Creative Commons License work for you? What do you think?
If you want more information on the Creative Commons License, here is the link to the website: Creative Commons License
Flying Cars in 2011!
A friend of mine in Seattle is very much a transportation expert, in fact, he predicted flying cars would be here sooner than we anticipated, but I was skeptical. Not any longer. I can remember as a young boy talking about how someday we would be like the Jetsons, but here on earth, not in space. Do you remember the cartoon based show, every Saturday morning we would watch the Jetsons and pretend it was me flying around in one of those fan-dangled vehicles. Glen Hiemstra from the site Futurist.com, made a statement not to long ago, here’s his quote, ” Looking ahead, over the next decade or two we will, nationally and internationally, need to be thinking systemically about travel demand and supply, advanced transportation technologies, and how to achieve sustainable transportation, if that is possible.” Advanced Technologies, could it be that Glen is talking about flying cars? Probably not.
The truth is, the 1st flying car is expected to be available in 2011, that’s right, a company called, Terrafugia Inc. has produced a vehicle that flies! Barring government interference and the FTC, we should see this car soon. Now I figured you wouldn’t believe me so I am going to let you see for yourself, I have for you a video of the car actually flying, and parked in a driveway. Wrap your brain around this, I can see all kinds of problems making this car available. Hell we can’t drive properly on roads now let alone be flying too! On June 3rd, 2009 this car took it’s first flight, here’s the video:
Headway Themes New Soon To Be Released Theme – A 1.7 Overview
As many of you know, I’m a huge fan of Headway Themes and highly recommend it for anyone running a WordPress Blog. This is a short video by Danny Brown of http://www.dannybrown.me – Danny will give a quick overview of the new 1.7 version. In my humble opinion, Headway Themes provides the best solution for website’s, no matter what level of expertise you may have with WordPress, this is the Premier WordPress Theme bar none! A BIG thanks to Danny for this video, if you want to see other sites using Headway, here is a list of 200 for you to review – enjoy!
The Future of Toll Booths
Business is being reshaped online, it has to, the very way of survival is change, it is however, doing a poor job of translating it to traditional business forms. What I call the OLD Business Model still needs to be looked after, but it also needs to be transformed and reshaped to adopt the online mentality if it’s to survive. No longer can we use the phrase, ” we’ve always done it this way”, if someone says it, they should be fired on the spot. It sounds harsh but, if that person has influence, the future of that business is and will be in jeopardy if they stay with that thinking.
Toll Booths are the mechanism for getting paid, online & off, it’s the way of the business world. These toll booths are being reshaped, they are becoming more & more invisible to the consumer. This seamless trend will continue to the point we may not know when we’ve actually paid for anything! The strategic alliances, the partnerships, and the stand-alones must make paying for goods & services effortless in order to make the experience positive. Not unlike the Apple example, iTunes has made buying music almost painless but not completely. You still have to download an application and you still have to have a valid account with a healthy balance in it before you can feel the benefit. Plus, it’s a closed system, you don’t get to touch it, feel it or make changes to it. Still, this toll booth is better than no start to the future of toll booths, and probably one of the best examples to date.
My son recently purchased eye glasses online, it was a great experience, and he saved money to boot! It was a simple three step process, choose your contacts & or designer frames, enter your prescription & customize your order, and then see the savings delivered to your door. It took him less than a week to get his new glasses, he put them on and they were perfect. The company is called Clearly Contacts, a Canadian company that is making it easy to buy glass & contacts, and they accept PayPal as a means of payment! In the future, we will have our eyes tested online so we don’t have to drive to the optometrist to get the prescription.
Soon there will be a secured cookie mechanism, a cert if you will, it will eliminate the actual payment click of the mouse step, it will be similar to the RFID chip. It will be a Secured Digital RFID Cookie that will handle the payment process for you. Of course, you will have to approve it, but as web browsers die, other technologies of viewing websites will make this process even easier.
The current build of toll booth is still too cumbersome, a link to PayPal or another means of making payment needs to be hidden from plain site, making the experience better. The current method makes you feel like you have been violated, or you’ve left the house unlocked, I need to feel things are well looked after, I don’t need to see it. The experience is everything for the user, much like Attention is to the seller. Attention is the new currency for anyone or any business selling products and services online. The problem is, getting that attention is going to get harder and harder, and it’s also going to be extremely difficult to keep that attention. One way of helping the cause, make paying for your products & services as easy as possible. Don’t ask users to fill out a LONG form, requesting name, address, phone numbers and so on, that will be the death of you. Find ways to make the toll booth invisible, and above all, an experience they can’t stop talking about in a positive way.
Where you put the toll booth matters, the experience users have using your site & toll booth will be the difference maker. The future of toll booths? Simple, hide them, embed them, make them work seamlessly online and you will have a winner. Better yet, you’ll get attention, and that means good things for you and your business.
We Need The Small Victories Too
Have you ever found yourself day dreaming, you see some people and they seem to have it all going for them, and they make everything look so easy. We all have people like that in our lives, we see the grass greener in those people, they’re luckier, they get all the breaks, and you don’t. Come on, admit it, you’ve done it, and you’ve probably done that your entire life! I know I have at times, and I’m 52 years old, and have been around a short bit, which means I have probably thought it a million times over the course of my life. There’s a problem with that kind of self talk, many problems actually, far too many and they are far too deep.
Negative self-talk takes us to a place where fear can get a firm grip on us, it can immobilize us, and we start the downward spiral of feeling sorry for ourselves in a heartbeat. You’re probably wondering where I’m going with this, walk with me a bit.
I’ve had many careers, jobs, and have been on my own over the years, and I can tell you that self-talk is critical to your success. I don’t mean getting yourself all jacked up with unrealistic expectations, they will almost always fail, and when things don’t go as planned, you’ll lose your momentum. I didn’t say, don’t have big dreams, that’s not what I’m saying. Big dreams need to be broken down into manageable parts & goals, why, because we need the little victories to keep us going.
Those people in your life, or the ones you might know, aren’t as happy as you think they are, and I’m certain things weren’t as easy as you perceive them to be, they too needed the little victories to get them to where they are today. I struggle daily with not having enough small victories to keep me in a happy place, to keep me motivated, I have to get out of my comfort zone most of the time to get them. I hate that!
I’m willing to wager that when you find yourself having these little envy chats, it’s almost always related to money. I hate money actually, there I’ve said it. Money makes us focus on all the wrong things, it distracts us from whats really important. I’ll let you decide what’s important to you, but what’s important to me is my wife & two boys. I have never heard anyone say on their death bed, I wish I had more money. They will say, and I mean everytime….I wish I had spent more time with _________,you fill in the blank.
So what are those little victories, sometimes we can’t recognize them because we are focusing on the wrong things, or we’re distracted. Most of the time, these little victories are as simple as writing a Blog Post, a chance meeting with someone you never thought you would meet, an opportunity to help someone, it could be a phone call that helps you secure the next project or job. They could be even smaller, telling your wife & kids how much you love them, thank your neighbor for letting you use the lawn mower. But for most of us, it’s usually business related, that’s where the little victories really gets us charged up. Why? Probably because we made money, and we like money. Money is what we measure success by, I think we need to get back to something more valuable for measuring success.
I know in my business, I need to have something positive happen everyday when it comes to cash-flow, when it doesn’t, I start the bad self-talk. We all do it, I’m a failure, what could I have done different, or better? Recognize the questions, we start asking what we did wrong instead of what we did right, and what the next right step should be! One of the problems is, we rely on our own knowledge to solve problems, and you know what? We don’t know, what we don’t know. Success always requires other people, they are the ones who give us perspective and possibly vision. They are also the ones that give us those small victories 9 times out of 10.
I have found over the years, other people helped move me along to the next step, they either encouraged my, gave me an idea, and more importantly, they believed in me. It’s the affirmations, it’s the validation of others that gives us the courage to stand in the gap when times are bad, so we can stand tall with our chin up. Don’t believe me, watch this video and tell me what happens to you while you are watching it.
So, everytime you catch yourself thinking how someone has it better than you, is doing better than you, is smarter than you, STOP IT! Find out what motivates you, and then list the small victories you need from it. Yes, it’s hard work, life is hard work and it sucks, but you are not different than everyone else, why? We all need the small victories too.