Springtime’s Bike Dispenser is a sort of vending machine that allows you to rent an RFID-tracked bike from one stand, ride it to your destination, drop it off at another stand, and then walk away.
The Dutch company won an award at the 2007 Spark Design & Architecture Awards for their idea, which works perfectly for an urban environment.
Very cool and practical idea… I love it…
[Via: Gizmodo, Trendhunter]
The Georgia Guidestones are a huge granite monument located on a hilltop in Elbert County, Georgia, USA.
A message comprised of ten guides is inscribed on the monument in eight modern languages, and a shorter message is inscribed at the top of the structure in four ancient scripts: Babylonian, Classical Greek, Sanskrit, and Egyptian Hieroglyphs. The monument was meant to “offer direction to humanity”
The message in English reads:
1. Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
2. Guide reproduction wisely – improving fitness and diversity.
3. Unite humanity with a living new language.
4. Rule passion – faith – tradition – and all things with tempered reason.
5. Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
6. Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
7. Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
8. Balance personal rights with social duties.
9. Prize truth – beauty – love – seeking harmony with the infinite.
10. Be not a cancer on the earth – Leave room for nature – Leave room for nature.
Wise words and directions…
Unfortunately, we’ve pretty much screwed up on every single point…
[More: Georgia Guidestones (Wikipedia)]
Hmmm, it seems there’s more to Green Tea than meets the “tongue”…
These findings, published in the August issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, suggest that a green tea concentrate might help some people strengthen their metabolic defense against toxins capable of causing cancer.
[Source: Biosingularity]
I’m not much of a tea person, although my wife loves the stuff, and I have a friend who worships it; I only occasionally drink it. But from now on, I think I’ll be working more of it into my drinking habits; some green tea, with mint and pine nuts is always great.
Starting yesterday 11:30AM, the network of Tunisiana, Tunisia’s only private mobile phone operator, has been having problems, even going down for hours, and with outgoing and incoming calls being impossible. The problems persist to this very moment for two whole ranges of numbers.
Tunisie Telecom, the first telecom operator, also ran into similar problems yesterday, with their network rejecting calls. But things got back to normal on their side a bit quicker.
Many Tunisian blogs have written about this already, and it has been covered quite enough, but well I want to talk about a whole different angle of this problem.
This critical incident has been an ongoing one for over 24 hours, and up to this very second, not one of these telecom operators has said one thing about it to their clients; nothing, nada, zip, rien, zilch.
Their websites don’t even have the tiniest of messages announcing or explaining the problem, apologizing for the inconvenience caused to millions of clients, let alone giving insight into the reasons behind it and how long it is expected to last.
The news yesterday didn’t say a single thing, the newspapers today didn’t mention it, and generally speaking, there’s an information blackout surrounding this problem.
Online, the only things I find about this problem are on blogs and on WebManagerCenter, a Tunisian business news portal.
I find this totally abnormal, unprofessional and unexceptable!
When are Tunisian companies going to learn to communicate more with their clients, be more transparent about their plans and problems, and own up to their mistakes?
We’re in an age where information goes around very quickly, and unless you want the wrong information and lie packed rumours going around behind your back, you have to be the first out there with the right information and with answers for your clients.
The relationship between a client and a service provider is all about trust, that is what generates customer loyalty. Trust isn’t just by providing a great service, it’s also about being honest with your customers and telling them that you’re doing everything you can to make them happy even when things go wrong.
Tunisian companies in general have to stop taking their clients for granted and start working on building clear and transparent channels of communication with them; providing better services and customer support; going out of their way to make the client happy and be sure they’re satisfied.
As a client, I want to know what’s going on, and I personally feel let down and dissapointed in how this situation was handled, just like many others; that translates into a big chunk of trust and respect lost.
Bits of news like this show me we have yet a long long way to go ahead of us before anything like peace, understanding and mutual respect is reached…
Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right Freedom Party, called for the ban in a letter published in De Volkskrant newspaper.
[…]
“I am fed up with Islam in the Netherlands: no more Muslim immigrants allowed. I am fed up with the worship of Allah and Muhammad in the Netherlands: no more mosques,” his letter concluded.
[Source: Al Jazeera]
With fools like this guy in governments and high places from both sides of the divide, the madness will just go on and on, making things worse and worse for us all.
There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult.
The other day I was thinking about what it would take for someone to just disappear, just seem to have dropped off the face of the earth, if they were to wish to do so.
I’m not talking illegal stuff, no, just using strictly legal means; how can a person just disappear into thin air without a trace?
It’s not like I’m planning to do this anytime soon or ever really, but well sometimes my mind does wonder off to such weird ideas, and I think that it’d be cool to have a plan if someone ever felt the urge to do something like that, even for a little while, if one day they just got fed up of it all maybe.
So I’m thinking these following steps could somehow work and make it seem like you dropped off the face of this earth:
– Throw away your mobile phone, blackberry, whatever connected mobile devices you have.
– Sell whatever you don’t need to different people so no one gets suspicious.
– Choose a destination country to move to that is vast, where you can move around freely and easily extend your visa.
– Get a visa to that country.
– Make one-way plane reservations through a number of different travel agencies transiting through some other countries to get there, with the outgoing flight not on the same day as your incoming one.
– Travel without saying goodbye to anyone.
– Once at your destination country, move to a small rural town or island.
– Find a simple job at a small place that doesn’t get you too much attention.
And well, for as long as your passport is valid, to everyone you know, it’ll basically seem like you just dropped off the face of the planet.
Now that I’ve finished this post, it feels even weirder that I’m thinking of this, but well the time has been wasted so I’ll publish it anyway.
What do you think? Would you ever think of doing something like this? And do you think there is an easier way maybe?
So, some interesting news between Tunisia and Jordan in the travel area…
The discussions led to signing a MoU aims at liberalizing air transport between the two countries and direct allowing aviation companies, designated by the contracting parties, to operate any number and any kind of flights without restrictions.
The two sides agreed to add Aqaba as an air route to the schedule of the bilateral air transport agreement to the Tunisian side and to add Tabarka and Tozeur to the Jordanian side.
[Source: Petra]
Well, maybe it’s not as interesting for everyone, but considering that I’m a Tunisian and my wife is Palestinian-Jordanian, and we travel to Jordan as often as we can, I think it’s pretty obvious why it’s interesting to me.
So, from my side, above all, I hope this results in cheaper tickets and more flexible flight schedules.
On the other hand, I wonder how successful the extra air routes to the selected cities will be, but well I guess if some tourism agreements between the two countries are thrown in there as well, they could potentially become pretty popular; especially that these 3 cities are great destinations for tourism all year round.
Last night I finished reading “Winning” by Jack Welch, Chairman and CEO of General Electric between 1981 and 2001, transforming the industrial giant from a sleepy “Old Economy” company with a market capitalization of $4 billion to a dynamic new one worth nearly half a trillion dollars.
“Winning” describes the management wisdom that Welch built up through his four and a half decades of work at GE, focusing on actual management techniques.
The book is divided into five major sections that cover management from all sides:
Underneath It All: Here he talks about missions and cultural values, as well as candor, differentiation among employees, and inclusion of all voices in decision-making.
Your Company: Here he covers issues around one’s own company or organization: things like leadership, hiring, letting go of people, the people management in between, as well as crisis management.
Your Competition: This discusses competition, and the external factors that can influence a company’s success: strategy, budgeting, growth, mergers and acquisitions, and the implementation of Six Sigma.
Your Career: This takes it a bit more personal with a focus on individual career issues; how to find the right job, get promoted, deal with a bad boss and go about work-life balance.
Tying Up Loose Ends: Here he answers some general interesting questions that don’t fit into any of the previous categories and that he’s received in the last several years while traveling the globe addressing audiences of executives and business-school students.
“Winning” is a great management book based on the true and successful experience of one of the best managers of our time. It’s a very worthwhile addition to any management bookshelf, and I personally recommend it to everyone who is interested in the subject.
[To buy: Winning – Jack Welch]
So here are the thoughts of Tom Tancredo, one of the 2008 Republican US presidential candidates…
