Adam-Jackson

While at the 140 Characters Conference in Los Angeles, I spoke for about an hour with Rich Greenberg about Twitter and lifestreaming and where things are going. I’ve long been an overshare person on the web just because I want to have some things to look back on when I’m old. You can read the two posts below for a glimpse into how important data is to me:

• Keeping Multiple Macs (& PCs) in Sync
• My Favorite Image Sharing / Hosting Services

As you can see, I certainly put a lot of time into data retention because I have a mantra that time must be accounted for in some way even if it’s something basic like keeping a photo forever because I experienced that moment, took a photo and losing it to a service that goes under or to a hard drive crash isn’t an option. My parents have photos in boxes and I keep mine on hard drives. You lose boxes and hard drives crash but that’s why I have 4 hard drives that replicate weekly and are stored at different locations or I send photos to Zannel, Flickr and iPhoto at the same time so I always have a copy. This is serious but it seems that I’m the only person that gives a crap about the moments that I capture.

Services that backup your data, tweets, blog posts and photos aren’t exactly thriving. People are using these services but they’re not signing up by the thousands like they are to Twitter. It would seem that if you want to spend hours a day broadcasting your life to Twitter, that you would also like to keep that data safe when Twitter eventually goes away.

Will you have memories stored in photo, text or video form when you get older? My YouTube account was suspended due to an error about 6 months ago. I had copies of all of the videos on my hard drives so no big deal I would just lose some of the virality of those videos and viewer count plus the 100 subscribers that I had. It’s amazing how many people have emailed me freaking out because they don’t have copies of the videos uploaded to YouTube, their account was suspended and now they can’t get their videos. Yeah that kind of sucks. Who in the right mind depends on a service like YouTube to keep those life memories FOREVER?

I don’t trust Twitter, Flickr, Facebook or YouTube. I don’t trust any one service for the next 12 months which is why I send my media to multiple sources and have daily backups / snapshots of my accounts. Neither do I trust that my content will be available for the rest of my life so I store everything locally across multiple drives. Despite all of this Rich and I went deeper.

What happens in 10 years when USB 2/3 and FireWire 400/800 aren’t available anymore? What happens to those photos you burned to a CD-R in 2004 and now in 2015 you can’t find a USB 5.0 optical drive that reads CD-Rs so now there’s a coaster that has photos that you can’t even access! This will happen. What then?

So what if I have 4 hard drives that store all of my life moments. So what? The connectors on those drives will soon be obsolete and won’t work with my MacBook Air revision G in 2015. It’s actually pretty crappy how commercialized and fast-paced this has all gotten.

My grandmother has photos taken of my mom in 1975 (11 years before I was born) when my Mom was a cheerleader. Those photos sit in a box or framed on the wall and they’ve been there for 15+ years now! If my grandmother stored them on a 5 1/4 inch floppy 15 years ago, we’d have no way to access them. Imagine trying to find a computer that reads that SCSI hard drive with your child’s baby photos on it and having issues. Photos that are real & physical last forever but digital has to constantly be updated.

Digital is cheaper and easier but it changes so quickly and formats die so often that it’s very hard to embrace it for moments that we really want to save. 12 year ago, the high-end Sony Digital Camera used 3 inch floppy disks and the photos were in bitmap format. Good luck in 5 years trying to find a floppy drive that works with a modern PC.

It brought me to this conclusion. People are all about sharing right now and don’t really think about the real memories. It’s about real memories and looking back in 50 years at those memories and not a single company is preserving memories like that. Everything is about what i ate and here’s a picture of my new car and not focused on the future and how to access it later.

I don’t have an answer. I just want you to think about it.

On October 22nd, I started a 5-day cleansing. Well, I also never posted a follow up that showed how that went and what I learned. It’s safe to say that fasting saved my life simply because my body was more asleep than I imagined prior to fasting and this brought me back to the awoken state where value on what we put in our bodies was now important again.

If you haven’t already take a glance at the post where I explained my cleansing and what I was going to do. [LINK]

I began on Wednesday and lasted through Monday. Following the fast, I started slow eating minimal meat, drinking tons of juice and focusing on vegetables like rich salads and maintaining that same water diet. This was crucial for a few reasons. The first was that my body didn’t need the shock of 5 days without food and then trying to digest a steak dinner. I don’t really eat steak anyway but had to make a point of both extremes. The second is that parts of your body begin to shut down and metabolism slows. That’s why you’ll lose serious weight in the first 3 days and then start losing less during the fast because your body starts to conserve more energy.

Overall, I lost 18 pounds in 5 full days. Since then, I’ve gained 5 pounds back but since I’ve been running and eating more healthy, I’m confident that this will stay pretty steady. That’s a great sign that my body was able to drop so much weight so quickly.

As far as the effects, I was fine on day one but because of the water and juices and had to pee constantly. Day two was when the hunger pains set in. They kept going until the evening of night two but by that time, I stopped going to the bathroom and the only thing I was doing was peeing. Before bed on day two, I felt great! No headache, no pains, no hunger and the only thing that happened was that I slept for 15 hours that night. Yeah, I’m serious.

Day three, I woke up at 10AM and I felt really good. I was fine all day and only caved in for some food around 6PM when I had a tablespoon of walnuts to chew on and taste. It was really basic and kind of curbed my appetite. Day 3 was easy and fun and the juices kept me very satisfied.

Day 4 and 5 were when things started getting rough. The thing is, it was purely psychological. I was craving food. I wanted candy, coffee, meat and cheese. If someone placed a buttered piece of bread in front of me or piece of tuna I would have caved in. It was just the fact that the taste and texture of food were on my mind.

Nights are the hardest. I’m not a big snacker but it was around 7PM that I craved something hearty. My juices ran out on Saturday night and Sunday was strictly water fasting. This was the day that things went downhill.

Juice fasting was easy because my body got the nutrients it needed to get by. On water, my body was being depleted and it didn’t like that. Still, I wasn’t hungry nor did I have pains but I was tired and feeling lazy. Sunday night I went to bed early with a tweet that said, “i’m so hungry and I want to eat something”.

On Monday morning, I had an egg with fruit, carrot juice and a glass of water. For lunch, I had a fruit salad with carrots and for dinner I had 2 eggs with a piece of bread. The reintroduction of food into my body felt great but I wish I could have gone for 10 days. Yeah, I only lasted 5.

Overall, cleansing is awesome and something I recommend to everyone. If you’re in your mid 20s and live the typical American lifestyle of burgers and beers then yes it’s long overdue. For me, I eat relatively healthy and rarely splurge but it was still an excellent experience just because I was able to control my body and gain independence from food. It made me more conscious about what I put in and careful about food choices. It’s certainly affected my diet and exposed me to just how sweet and fattening a lot of foods that I eat really are.

I meet a lot of entrepreneurs, authors, politicians and all-around good people and if you ask them what their goals are, most will default to a response that they want to change the world. Well, I have news for you. It’s pretty easy to change the world. In fact, here are some things that you can do to change the world right this moment.

• Buy a sandwich and throw it at someone.
• Have a kid
• Wake up and drink a glass of water
• Burn a tire
• Buy a canoe and go fishing
• Take deeper breaths
• Go for a hike and take a rock home with you

In fact, pretty much doing anything will change the world. On day one after being born, you’ve just changed the world and so have your parents. Changing the world is really easy because we all change the world in big ways every single day just by waking up and even if we don’t leave the house, by doing that we’ve changed the world.

How about this. I’m going to stop responding to people saying that I plan on changing the world. Instead, I’m going to say that I’m going to make the world a better place.

In my lifetime, I will assist in making the world a better place and will leave the world having a positive impact in small and big ways because that’s what’s important. Hell, Osama Bin Laden changed the world. I think we can come up with better word choice and goals.

I’m Afraid to Tears About Our Future and it Involves Twitter

I just returned from Jeff Pulver’s 140 Conference where I was a Character along with a few hundred others. It was a great conference but most of it was focused on validation of Twitter and not real-world skills that you can apply. That’s ok because between sessions I was able to meet some amazing people and re-introduce myself to those that I haven’t seen in a while. It was a large conference given the very narrow view (Twitter) and price point but the conference opened my eyes to a few things.

These things I’m going to list off are wonderful, exciting and yes they’ve given me a job and income for over 2 years.

Twitter

Facebook

Google Search

Google Wave

Flickr

iPhone

3G-Everywhere

YouTube

What I’ve listed off are platforms. YouTube and Flickr are services but they have APIs that you can develop on. Each of these services has an API (aside from 3-G which is also a service) that you can develop for, extend and expand beyond the initial scope of the product. Everything I’ve written about in the past has finally come full circle and I’m afraid. You should read these posts or at least skim them before you read the rest of this piece:

1. Google Wave – Social Media
2. Robot Uprising is Real
3. A Hypothesis of Our Future

Real life friends of mine know that I don’t like strictly web-based services. While talking to the product manager for Google Wave yesterday I flat out told him that I won’t use Google Wave as long as the domain name ends with “google.com” to access it. He said they’ve open-sourced it and I’ll be able to run it on a local server w/ Apache & MySQL. This would be the first Google service that did this so naturally I was surprised. We need to de-centralize everything right now or the human race is going to fall.

I’ve never been called a conspiracy theorists so before you start pointing at me, please let me finish.

This “OMFG We’re Doomed” moment came when I read Paul Carr’s post on TechCrunch prior to going to 140 Conference. Please read his post before you continue [LINK].

Shortly before the conference started, I saw this month’s cover of The New Yorker. (pictured right) and I read a fascinating article about a new demographic known as iPhone moms. These are moms that have iPhones which subsequently means their kids have access to iPhones and they can play kid’s games and explore them. This is a market as defined by advertisers that is growing and ads are being targeted at children even though kids don’t own iPhones. Yep, kids are embracing touch, real-time and always on hyper-meta-local communications.

The photo from The New Yorker post didn’t scare me but it did give me an “oh shit” moment and as I looked at this post, I was at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood and had just checked in to pick up my conference badge. I looked out from my MacBook and saw every single person in the room walking to their destination staring into an iPhone screen and a young woman nearly collided with another like something out of a teenage sitcom from the 80s. Lucky they missed each other but it wasn’t due to awareness and was simply luck.

I nearly had a panic attack because I was in it and I was the only person looking around. During the conferences, there were 140 very quick sessions. 80 of them were validating twitter, another 40 more were pretty useful and 2 actually focused on taking it offline and making this real-time web real which always involved putting away your phone and giving your friend a hug!

Drew Olanoff (pictured below w/ the cap), my friend and creator of #BlameDrewsCancer spoke at the conference. His sessions involved asking the audience to open the phone application of the iPhone and call your family and tell them you love them. He dialed his fiance and told her he loved her and I went on stage to talk to my sister and put her on speakerphone as I told her that I loved her and missed her since I haven’t been home since January.

Drew gets it and we all missed it. Another session was a man who was homeless and now tweets and blogs telling the stories of other homeless people to give them a voice instead of just someone we see everyday as we walk to work that’s asking for change. As the courageous man stood on stage talking about how he used Twitter to affect people’s lives and not simply tweet about his food, a woman walked past me and whispered to her friend, “I don’t want to hear this shit.” and it was at that moment that I realized she was speaking for an entire generation of people who would rather broadcast their entire useless lives in an act of vanity instead of using the tools for real change that affects people.

Let’s talk about me for a second. I have over 53 thousand tweets and tweet over 100 times a day. My sharing is a different model and yes I’ll be reducing it soon. It takes me under 3 seconds to write a tweet on iPhone and about 2 seconds on my desktop. That’s really it. I type over 75 words per minute on the iPhone, a tweet comes to mind and I send it. Those sites that say every tweet takes 1 minute to compose are false. Those that have been doing this for a while have it to under 10 seconds. Broadcasting a photo takes 15 seconds and then I’m spending the other 5 minutes actually observing and looking. Adding it up, if every tweet took 15 seconds at max, I’d still only spend 30 minutes a day to send 120 tweets. In reality it’s about 5 seconds on average and less than 100 a day (most days) which would mean just 8 minutes a day tweeting. I’m enjoying, living and experiencing most of my day to day without tweeting it despite the fact that I share everything that you all would find interesting. Besides, I’m using Twitter these days not for self-serving broadcasting of what I’m eating but I spend hours a week taking notes and observing how my followers respond & interact with each and every tweet. You’re being monitored so be yourself and act naturally. When I’m done with my research, my twitter volume will go way down almost as if I never existed. You can read between the lines on that one.

Session after session at 140 Conference was filled with more about taking a dive into the river of information. During the panel with Robert Scoble (right), Dom Sagolla and Cathy Brooks, it was the most severe. Robert was begging for more filters so he could get more info that mattered to him in real time. Dom responded that Twitter is here to dip your toe in from time to time as needed but not a river that you should constantly be diving into. Robert continued on praising Twitter lists, search and his need for geo-tagged meta-data w/ real time content from every source so he could always be in touch.

Despite the fact that Robert is my friend, I felt like shouting from my “cheap seats” that he should just plug into the matrix tomorrow and be done with it! “Plug in Robert and live your entire life just receiving the data stream directly into your brain because that’s what you want!” During that panel and throughout those two days in Los Angeles, it was clear that there were so many people at the conference that were ready to plug in and live their entire lives as a console that sends & receives data. I’m not ready to live that way.

So many panelists would mention very odd things like, “but don’t tweet and drive kids” or a quote that really threw me off was, “I’m going to try to remember when my kid is being born next month that I need to stop tweeting and actually watch the birth.” And suddenly, I do a virtual *FacePalm* and feel like giving up.

I took the past few days off Twitter. At this writing, I’m still not tweeting. At some point, I was so busy sharing that I lost the concept of listening. I found it pretty funny how I help businesses use Twitter and social media. I know a few tips & tricks that people find valuable and I’m extremely cheap to hire and it’s something I enjoy. Something I say a lot is that we need to engage your customers and interact with them. Taking a step back from the situation I just used the words “engage” and “interact” and applied it to a service that consists of ones and zeros. That’s not how we should be living. I shouldn’t engage or interact with anything in a virtual world and if I do, it shouldn’t be called that because that’s not what it is!

Since returning to San Francisco, that is a very connected city, I realized that it was more “normal.” The 140 Conference was a gathering of Twitter fanatics who spend their lives and careers using Twitter, like me and it makes sense that the small group was so engulfed in their devices and not truly interacting in person. San Francisco being a very tech city isn’t a tenth as bad as it was during that conference so I imagine that back home in central Florida, people are still interacting and still engaging with each other in person and less over the web. We’ll see when I go home for Thanksgiving but I hope for our sake, that when I go out with old friends that everyone isn’t typing frantically into their phones sharing what kind of beer they ordered or that they have to pee.

One thing is for sure though. Just as silicon valley adopted the mouse and was first to start using Twitter, it will spread and the best products that come out of the bay area, eventually do go mainstream. 140 Conference was a glimpse into our future and it’s slowly taking over big cities like NYC, SF and LA and I’m pretty sure when I go home to Florida, there will be one person who is constantly glued to their phone when we all go out. It only takes one person to start a forest fire. As the fire spreads, our future will be bleak and full of humans who rarely interact or engage in real life and often share and receive virtually.

I even fear that one day our spoken language will disappear and simple brain impulses will be shared instantly as we think thoughts and opt to share them with our connected friends. Why such a crazy hypothesis? Video conferencing was the future and even an AT&T commercial from 1992 showed a mom video conferencing with her daughter from across the world and soon webcams were in computers, laptops and even cell phones. Video conferencing is dead. When is the last time you did a video chat with a friend and how does that compare to the amount of times you’ve tweeted or uploaded a photo from your cell phone?

Voice and video communications are not our future. It’s text now but soon it will be thoughts and what we see and hear will be dumped directly into our friend’s brains instantly as we become dumber and filled more with useless knowledge. How do I know that we’ll be okay with this? Because we’ve embraced the “boob tube” for 30 years now as content became less educational and more brainless and shows like Seinfeld soared in ratings as a “show about nothing” Seinfeld was a real-life story w/ no edge and it was totally believable. A story we can relate to is going to resonate better with us. A show about an explorer or documentary about history is boring because we can’t relate and don’t want to open our mind to something new. I can guarantee you if I told you to watch an hour of me sitting at a bar or about how food is metabolized and stores in your body, you’d go for the bar show because it’s easy and numbing. Lifecasters like Justin.tv and reality television has proven this over and over.

How quickly will we reach this state of being plugged in at all times? As quickly as technology can get us there. It’s not a question of will there be a market for this? There’s a market now for a small single digit percentage of the world if they’re able to optionally unplug whenever. It won’t take long before they receive the stream and send the stream 24/7 for the world to see.

I have a question. When the entire world is broadcasting, when will we have time to evolve and progress the human race? Never and this is what makes me cry.

My life is Twitter now and I make a lot of money helping people with Twitter. Twitter can exist as a tool without giving ourselves to it but inventors and scientists for hundreds of years have created tools and each time, the inventions stopped being tools and turned into weapons, entertainment devices and serve as another thing to own, use and become absorbed into. Think of any invention in the past 100 years that involves technology. It helps the human race get lazier. Everyone owns a treadmill that is never used but all of my friends have a desktop, laptop, iPhone, Wi-Fi everywhere, big screen TV, Xbox and some even have a kindle. It’s all entertainment and things aren’t going to get any better.

How has social networking and constant connection helped us as a race? It’s done more good than harm up until this point. Just as the television helped us watch the moonwalk live in the 60s and then quickly went downhill until every channel was reality TV. Twitter has connected people and helped raise awareness for those that are never given a chance to speak their voice. Twitter has helped news travel faster and helped me learn more about life in India, Bangladesh, Japan and even how often a baby kicks in real time. It’s helped me find a job, an apartment and even led me home when I got lost one night in SF. I found great rates on a Vegas hotel and learned that there was a blood drive a block from my house that I could go and give to. Twitter has been wonderful but it will slowly destroy us if we stop using it as a tool. The writings are on the wall as more people are plugging in and for the wrong reasons.

I hope the masses wake up before it’s too late; me included.

Here’s the 140 Characters Conference Video with Robert Scoble and Dom Sagolla

Photo Credits:

• One (Photo by Curious Josh)
• Two (Photo by Jason DeFillippo)
• Three (Photo by Curious Josh)
• Four (Photo by Curious Josh)

My review quoted below was actually posted over on Amazon. Dom Sagolla’s book was just released and I had a great time watching it transform from an inspiration in Dom’s mind to something that I can hold in my hand and share with others. This is a style guide through and through and worth the $9-$12 purchase through Amazon.

I’ve read the book, 140 Characters, twice now and have become a better user of social media because of it. In my generation, we grew up with Myspace and blogging and the idea of social networking is just as common as a cell phone. all of my peers use Twitter but there was something missing.

I was a user but I knew there was more to this and more that could be learned to effectively broadcast my message of “what I’m doing” to nearly 4 thousand followers. Dom Sagolla helped make that happen.

Sure I’m friends with Dom and may have gotten a copy of the text early but that doesn’t mean I didn’t learn something and now want to shout if from the rooftops.

140 Characters is for a person who is new to Twitter or who just celebrated their 3rd year of using the service. Of course, users of Facebook and Myspace aren’t excluded. this book helps readers cultivate their story, engage their audience and capitalize on Twitter’s impossible message limitations.

I say “impossible” because that’s how I felt when joining Twitter. “140 characters? How am I going to post what I’m doing in such a small space?”

Well, over time, I adapted my own style and continue to improve on that. Dom’s book merely took my hand and opened a few more doorways to explore. There are styles & processes that I never would have used and the only way to go beyond “using Twitter” and “mastering Twitter” is to read 140 Characters, stopping often to try what you just read.

The Kindle version is cheaper, portable and works on iPhone or Kindle. It’s a great way to get the book NOW. However, the layout and design of the print version is excellent as well. Get both!

I’ve since bought the book twice in paperback and once on the Kindle. Soon the iPhone app is coming and I’ve been testing it out and it’s going to be a fantastic experience on your phone! The book comes alive on the iPhone and that’s probably all I can say.

The concept of fasting was common knowledge to me as a small child when my Dad told tales of ancient masters who fasted for over a month as a cleansing process and to elevate themselves spiritually. I’ve long wanted to undertake this and made a promise to myself that my 23rd year on this world would be full of challenges, new adventures and full of big chances. So far, there have been some crazy adventures and risks that I haven’t even shared on Twitter but the cleanse is something I wanted to do this year.

Why not earlier in my life? Well, my body and mind have been developing rapidly up to this age. I think by the time you’re in your mid 20s, things start to settle in, metabolism slows and you stop paying attention to what is popular on TV and on the radio. Additionally, I have 23 years of toxins that have built up over time that must be pushed out. My goal is to do a 5 to 10 day fast once a year in the fall. It’s a kick-start and awakening. The process releases toxins, opens your mind and also provides a sense of accomplishment if you make it through the entire fast.

According to Wikidedia, Fasting is defined as:

Fasting is primarily the act of willingly abstaining from some or all food, drink, or both, for a period of time. A fast may be total or partial concerning that from which one fasts, and may be prolonged or intermittent as to the period of fasting. Fasting practices may preclude sexual activity as well as food, in addition to refraining from eating certain types or groups of foods; for example, one might refrain from eating meat. A complete fast in its traditional definition is abstinence of all food and liquids.

However, where it applies to Buddhism, here is a brief description of the origins and goals of fasting:

Buddhist monks and nuns following the Vinaya rules commonly do not eat each day after the noon meal [11]. This is not considered a fast but rather a disciplined regimen aiding in meditation and good health.

“Once when the Buddha was touring in the region of Kasi together with a large Sangha of monks he addressed them saying: ‘I, monks, do not eat a meal in the evening. Not eating a meal in the evening I, monks, am aware of good health and of being without illness and of buoyancy and strength and living in comfort. Come, do you too, monks, not eat a meal in the evening. Not eating a meal in the evening you too, monks, will be aware of good health and….. and living in comfort.’ ” (Kitagiri Sutta-Majjhima Nikaya)

I practice the path of Buddhism but I don’t actively attend services or read the teachings of The Buddha religiously. I believe in following the right path is more important than worshiping a man who was simply pointing the right direction.

My reason for this is pretty clear. Practice discipline, remove toxins and regain full awareness of my body as it undergoes pain, hunger and the slow shut down of my organs. Yes I’m prepared.

Since this is my first fasting, it was important to follow strict steps and follow a program that is more safe than risky. I chose to use the company, “as seen on TechCrunch” known as BluePrintCleanse. The juice program can be ordered in 1, 3 or 5 day quantities and it costs $90 a day. I know for a fact your mouth just dropped as you read that. Yeah so I’m paying nearly $500 before shipping to fast for 5 days. You’d think that fasting would be cheaper cause I’m not eating any food. Well, not with the BluePrintCleanse system but it comes highly recommended by a few friends.

Here is the email they sent me on the eve before my juice shipment arrived:

Hello Cleanser!

By now, you have probably made it through your first juice and asked yourself at least once why you decided to embark on this somewhat strange and green journey. The answer lies ahead – your body will thank you at the end of it all!

As you have already been advised, this cleanse is what you make it. The closer you stick to it, the better the results will be, but hey, you get props for even getting this far, so we want your experience to be as enjoyable as possible.

Your juices are numbered and you should follow the order we’ve set up for you, for easy digestion and maximum absorption of nutrients. Each bottle lists the ingredients that the juice contains.

INSTRUCTIONS:

When you begin on your first day start off with some water or water with lemon. Hot is best, but room temperature is just fine too. This is to wake up your system and get things moving. From there, drink your juices in their numbered order as often as you need to. Because we’re not all operating on the same schedule, a good rule of thumb, as far as when to drink (the juice), is to wait at least one hour between drinks and to finish the last beverage at least two hours before you sleep. Consuming anything before or close to bedtime does not allow your insides proper rest.

Throughout the day, keep flushing your system – drink water, green tea (regular or decaf) and herbal teas, as much as you like. Just keep it coming! If you notice you are having… trouble… (which is totally natural, as you’re not taking in any fiber while on green juices), some flax seed oil added to the juices, an herbal supplement, or a colonic is an excellent way to keep things moving. (See our website for laxative and non-laxative suggestions under “how” and “hydrate & eliminate”).

And if you’re feeling like you’ve just GOT to chew something, we can offer a small list of approved methods, a cheat sheet (below), if you will: a couple of celery stalks, some cucumber slices, a mashed avocado (add lemon!), some warm (low-sodium!) vegetable broth. The main thing to avoid is extra acid like vinegar or Tabasco, or salt – these will interrupt your digestion and make you feel … funny. And not funny ha-ha.

Other tips for the full benefit of detoxification:

1. Try getting a massage to help those toxins move on through
2. Exfoliate! Scrub away dead cells and reveal your new healthy skin
3. Colonic hydrotherapy – The Full Monty! If you’re up for it, there is no better time to do this than after you finish your cleanse.

Cheater-Cheater-eating-during-your-cleanse-eater:

While we recommend you abstain from food during your cleanse, we realize you can’t always resist temptation; so if you’re going to do it, at least be safe.

• a few celery stalks
• a quarter of an avocado
• a couple slices of cucumber
• dilute any drink with water
• warm vegetable broth (low sodium)
• a half cup of black coffee (no sugar/milk … unless it’s our nut milk!)
• drink half of the cashew nut milk in the a.m
• add a pinch of celtic sea salt to any drink for energy
• Please feel free to send questions along and we’ll try to help you as best we can. And that’s about it! You’ll receive a last day email explaining how best to break your cleanse once you’re finished. Enjoy your cleanse!

All the best!

– Blueprint Cleanse

I ordered the 3 day system BUT I’ll be drinking half of the suggested juice content and doing a water fast half of the time. So instead of 3 days of juice which I think will be too easy, I’ll be doing one day of juice and one day of water back and forth. What’s a water fast? This site has a description that I’ve copied below.

Q. What is the difference between water fasting and juice fasting?

A. During a water fast, only water is consumed. During a juice fast, any variety of fruit and vegetable juices are consumed.

People detoxify and heal more quickly with a water fast than with a juice fast. This is because with a water fast, your digestive passageway and organs are able to rest completely, allowing for all of your energy to be used for cleansing and repair of damaged tissues. With a juice fast or a cleansing diet of fruits and vegetables, your body must use energy to digest nutrients, leaving less available energy for detoxification and healing. When a person’s health condition is related to a weak or damaged digestive system, recovery may depend on fully resting the digestive passageway and organs through water fasting.

Another significant difference is that more fat tissue is burned during a water fast, as your body must rely exclusively on fat reserves to supply its energy needs after the first 1-3 days of water fasting. Your body stores the bulk of incoming toxins in your fat reserves. As these reserves are burned for energy during a fast, any stored toxins will be released into your circulation, to be eliminated through various eliminative channels like your urine and respiratory tract. This mechanism of detoxification also occurs with juice fasting, but at a slower pace.

All of this considered, both types of fasting can be used with effectiveness, depending on your circumstances and goals. If your situation and goals include wanting or needing to make significant gains in your health in a short period of time, water fasting may be the best route. If a person has a long history of taking extremely toxic drugs like certain chemotherapeutic agents, an intense period of detoxification through water fasting can cause damage to the kidneys. In this type of circumstance, juice fasting or a simple diet of organic vegetables and fruits may be the best first step to recovery.

Finally, a water fast is most effective when you are able to get a lot of physical and emotional rest. If your life circumstances don’t allow this, juice fasting is a better choice.

My goal is to do a 5 day fast but if on day 5 I feel no pain and am holding up great I’ll keep going for a few more days. This will be a fun experiment that I’m sure will result in a ton of complaining over Twitter

I’ve been to Las Vegas way too many times in the past 12 months. I think this is my 4th visit to Vegas and I’ll be going again in January for CES 2010. I love The Vegas but not for the reasons that most people do. I’m not a gambler, despite the fact I do really well at the slots and I’m not a big drinker even though I do drink when out with friends and I’m not a big fan of the flashing lights although they make for some great photos! Actually, it’s mostly just because of conferences that I go to Las Vegas and each time it’s been a promise to myself to see a Cirque Du Soleil show. Finally, with the help of a friend, I went to a show and now I’m an addict!

It was a Tuesday in Austin, Texas and I ate ate a great Spanish restaurant for lunch with Jessica Berlin (AKA @JessBerlin on Twitter). We had lunch and I was so intrigued by her job and how she manages do accomplish so much each day. Jess is a resident of Las Vegas and she’s the community manager for Cirque Du Soleil. I still don’t know how much she does or how she keeps up with such a huge responsibility. All of the Cirque shows have their own identity on the web and there are dozens of shows. Enough about Jess though, cause the show is what I’m supposed to be reviewing.

I’ve always had dreams of attending a performance but at the cost of $150 a person and up, it was always something that was out of my budget and I didn’t make the time for it. Cirque was doing a special for bloggers where we’d attend a show and write about it and in return we’d get a press badge. I’m not required to blog about it (just an FYI to the FTC) but after seeing this show, I’m completely compelled to share the story.

I’d have some pretty epic photos of the performance but there’s no photography allowed inside. Good, because it kept me focused on the fast-paced and constantly changing choreography and music. It’s safe to say that I’m a total Cirque fanboy now. I’ve bought CD soundtracks and even a t-shirt from the show that I’ll proudly wear because the experience was inspiring.

Yeah, I cried during The Beatles LOVE show but I laughed just as much. These were the songs I knew and loved and the storyline made those songs so much more real. The acrobatics actually weren’t as breathtaking as I expected but other shows are known for flashier moves. This was a show that gave tribute to The Beatles by bringing their songs to life and expressing “LOVE” in so many ways. It’s safe to say this was more of a play than a typical Cirque show and there were even speaking dialogues even though those were clearly pre-recorded.

The track list of the soundtrack specifically engineered for the show gives you an idea of how things moved along as they started with a big opening, moved into songs about the war followed by those TigerBeat years where The Beatles were heartthrobs and finally taking a more philosophical approach to life, love, loss and hope for a better tomorrow.

The show closed with the song, “All You Need Is Love” as the cast members all came on stage throwing peace signs in the air and expressing their love for the audience. I was taken back to 1960, 1965 and 1970 as costume, stage design and song made me look inward for perspective and the audience became one as we joined in song to sing along with our favorite tracks. Cirque Du Soleil captured my childhood wonder with LOVE and now I have made a promise to myself that I’ll see every other show on the strip because sometimes we need a good solid cry even if those tears are inspired by joy and love of all things.

I may even see this show again once I’ve seen all of the others. That’s how amazing it was. I also recommend seeing the Cirque documentary, “All Together Now” which has the wonderful 6 year story of how this performance came together from concept to opening night.

At the end of the documentary, Paul McCartney says, “The Beatles are the greatest act that has ever lived. I wouldn’t have said that 20 years ago but now when I look back at the music we made, I can safely say that we are the best there ever was.” I agree.

Air travel has become mundane, boring and a necessity among travelers. Honestly, I blame our poor train system in the US but events such as 9/11 didn’t force the airlines to actually cut costs, they maintained their price structure and took out amenities which includes putting seats closer together and not serving food even on 6 hour cross-country flights. A cheap ticket equals 2 layovers and a soda is $3.50. If you’re 6 feet tall, expect to have leg cramps and when your laptop dies 2 hours in, it’s too bad because now you are forced to taking sleeping pills to fall asleep and hope you don’t wake up with horrible neck pain. Welcome to typical boring Domestic Air Travel!

Virgin America launched in 2006 as a different kind of airline company. They launched amid an industry downturn where most of the airlines had filed for bankruptcy or had seem massive restructurings to stay alive. Virgin America, the dream child of Sir Richard Branson was different and it appealed to the geeks.

Virgin flies to the top geek destinations. The hub is San Francisco and popular destinations include NYC, LAX, Seattle and Las Vegas. Honestly, over 90% of my flights are to those cities. Virgin has me roped in from the beginning. Despite a great network, I had never flown with Virgin America before. Why? Because I’m cheap and that $20 premium didn’t seem worthwhile. Lately, their aggressive pricing has my flying with them 3 times in one month and I couldn’t be happier.

Honestly, United is the cheapest airline followed closely by Southwest. United’s hub is San Francisco which makes for cheap flights to my home town of JAX via ATL. $299 round trip flights are common. With Virgin, I can fly to Ft. Lauderdale for $99 each way and then rely on a family friend to pick me up. This idea never would have crossed my mind if I hadn’t hopped on Virgin America for my flight to Vegas last week. They changed everything about how I fly and I can never go back to another airline, if I can help it.

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The Experience: Virgin operates out of San Francisco’s International Terminal which is nice and new. This is a good touch since I’m based here. It’s new and has the interior of an Apple Store with metal & glass. Other VA terminals aren’t as lovely. The planes are all less than 3 years old so you have a nice unsoiled plane with new interior and shiny exterior and none of the BO smell that airlines like United have.

It’s important to note that I have only flown Virgin America as a first-class rider. Sure it was more expensive ($15 extra per flight) but was totally worth it!

Anyone that hops on a VA flight has great comforts such as leather seats, extremely friendly flight attendants and a modern entertainment system full of on-demand movies, satellite TV and even an in-flight chat room that everyone can join in to chat FOR FREE. The movies cost extra but it’s a great experience. You can even order food and drinks from the RED entertainment system and swipe your card there. Additionally, all travelers have a USB port and 3 prong power plug (like the one in your home) to charge your gadgets. I immediately sit down and plug in my MacBook Air and iPhone 3GS for charging while in flight. Yes this means a 6 hour flight is completely possible!

Most flights on VA now have Wi-Fi so I can open my notebook or power on the iPhone while in the air and hold Skype conversations and get things done from 35K feet w/o any issues! No longer must I be unproductive while on a flight and have to deal with my laptop power dying. A 7 hour direct flight to Florida will now be a 7 hour power work session while watching Satellite TV and drinking a cosmo. Yes, it’s that amazing!

First Class is a different story. The photo above of the seats is what first class looks like. The leather is white instead of black which isn’t a huge difference but the chairs are more plush and more comfy! They even have foot rests and an option that auto reclines the chair far back and with 50 inches of leg room, there’s no problem stretching out!

Once my feet are out and the seat is back, I’ll put in an order for a Vodka Cranberry drink via the RED television screen in front of me which is easy to reach and at eye level and then immediately enable the massage chair option. That’s right, one button and my back is getting an exquisite massage while my cocktail is being made. Immediately afterward, it’s time to plugin my laptop and iPhone in the charging ports and get those going for that long flight.

I have to add that I’ve done all of this before the plane takes off! First class gets a red-carpet treatment (literally) when you check your bags in and the same red carpet treatment by being the first to board. I’m on the flight with a cocktail in hand before anyone else even boards. I also have to say that on VA and as First Class, you get two FREE checked bags! That’s right, those bags are free to check up to 75 pounds each. Most airlines don’t get you a free bag and it’s capped at 50 pounds. On united, the first bag is $15 and if it’s over 50 pounds, the price becomes $125!!!!!

While I’m in flight on the first class area, all cocktails are free, on-demand movies are free and one flight attendant is taking care of only 6 first class seats so that next cocktail or an order of chicken w/ carrots is a touch away or wave of the hand! First class is the way to go. My advice, when you go to the gate to check in, just check to see what the first class upgrade flight is. If it’s $50 or less, GET IT! You’ll drink 3 cocktails, eat a hearty meal and enjoy free on-demand movies while getting a back massage.

I was always told First Class is a waste! It’s for those guys that fly so much that they get free upgrades but VA makes the class totally attainable and totally worth it. The perks outweigh the price and if I have the money, I’m going to upgrade from now on.

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The price: Cheap! It’s pretty killer. Flights to LA are as cheap as $40 each way and vegas round trip is around $109. I can fly one way to Miami / Ft. Lauderdale for $99 and round trip to NYC is around $250-$350 depending on how you time it. Yes it’s that cheap and so cheap that you can’t not fly VA if it’s available in your airport. They’re concentrating on the big cities and destinations for frequent travelers. ATL, DFW, Portland and Chicago are all excellent airports but geeks aren’t flying there. Adding Austin, TX would be great but that’s a pipe dream and something that probably won’t happen.

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Overall: I sat down next to a guy in First class on the way to Vegas last week. He was in his 50s, holding a kindle and sipping a Gin & Tonic. He said to me, “first time? you’ll never be able to fly with any other airline ever again.” After I got off that flight, it was apparent that he was right.

It’s always great to hear insight and advice that I heard as a kid when my Dad was teaching me eastern philosophy. The Bruce Lee quote, “Don’t think. Feel.” comes to mind. Chris Brogan, who delivered this message in a longer form even said, “don’t even blog about what I’m saying!” Okay Chris and I’m with you there but I promise to keep it brief because I’m not doing much talking when it comes to teaching about social media. In fact, I refer inquiring companies to others because I’m not qualified to teach anything to anyone. If they’re persistent I’ll give some tips out about Twitter that anyone knows after using the service for a few months.

Chris’ semi-rant was inspiring to me but it contradicts so much about what Chris and others are doing. Even delivering a keynote at blogworld goes against it but, as I said on my review of Michael Moore’s latest flick, I’m never a person that calls hypocrite or any other mundane stone throwing title because it doesn’t matter. Chris is acting as the finger pointing to the moon. I see his speech and blog as a direction or map that points to the truth. He has noticed like many others that people started becoming so obsessed with the finger that they lost sight of the heavenly glory that is “the moon” (figuratively speaking of course).

I’m going to keep talking because what I talk about is bull anyway. It’s something that inspires me and inspires others and I’m cool with that. I never want to be the finger no matter how much it feeds my ego. Speaking of ego, I’ve fed it enough this year and it’s time to start doing, which is exactly what I’ve done.

Since March, I’ve reduced my talking a lot but not reduced volume and instead changed the talking to more informative, sharing and collaboration. I’ve also learned the lesson to never pre-announce anything. Stuff takes a lot longer than you think so the more you announce, the less luster you have when it comes to actually shipping things. One comment on my 50 Thousand Tweets blog post that I didn’t approve because he / she is a fucking troll said this:

Adam.. How many times have we heard
all about your big plans, the book, etc? The book is finished but will we ever see it?

So many tweets of yours are leaving Twitter to only come back in a few hours. Taking a Twitter break, announcing you hate Twitter, you love it.

I get it. It’s your personal Twitter. Say what you want.
But shit or get off the pot. I’m tired of your big secret ideas…

Her comment kind of rambled on from there about some bullshit but it doesn’t matter. I took about 5.76 seconds and glanced at her Twitter profile and it was a bunch of troll BS but the comment made sense. Honestly, and on a side note, I would have approved the comment and emailed her / him if they left real contact info and I would have explained everything in detail because I really do want to ensure everyone has the complete story but I didn’t have that info so the comment was ignored.

Anyway, don’t pre-announce anything. I’m not even going to offer a status update on how things are going because it doesn’t matter. I’m working from 7AM to midnight every day of the week on so many things and sharing as much as I legally can with all of you. That won’t post forever by the way (the super-sharing) so enjoy it while you can.

So with all of this said, I’m going to keep talking and sharing but also keep doing. Cutting back on parties was key, traveling and meeting more people outside the bubble was extremely important and now getting actual work done means so much to me and it’s at the point where I’d rather finish another lesson in my book or make headway on another project instead of going out to a tech event.

Don’t worry though, I haven’t given up on anything that has been announced here but to answer the troll from earlier, I’m taking a massive shit so you should just find another stall. I’m gonna be here for a while. I think of it this way as well. I’m not a prodigy or wunderkind and I’m not some genius that has an MBA from Stanford and has a trust fund that’s valued at a few million. No I’m a broke 23 year old with big dreams and ambitions that make some people’s heads explode. it’s taking time. I’ve launched three huge projects this year, gained 40 pounds and lost a lot of friends in the process. I’m doing and doing and doing and yes there will be one day when I flip the switch on everything and it’s gonna be great or maybe not. That’s the chance I’m taking.

I love what Chris said though and I see it first hand a lot. Too many experts are teaching w/ their blogs and proving how amazing they are with graphs or just re-blogging what others say. Enough! If you’re so smart, do something and stop talking about it.

I’m going to do the same more and more. My goal has always been to inspire others and that’s happened a few times. It’s not about money or fame, it’s about making changes and I do that every day for myself and others. It’s so rewarding and I wouldn’t change this life for any other life.

While reading two posts today, I got angry and embarrassed for how things are going and where we’re heading. The first post from WSJ.com called, “The End of the Email Era” This piece in a respectable paper (even the online edition) lead me to have an internal argument / rant as I sipped what was meant to be a relaxing oolong tea. My rant on this post was simply too long to put into less than 10 tweets so I kept it to myself with no plans of writing a blog post.

Later in the day, a post from my friend MG Siegler on TechCrunch called, “Google Wave And The Dawn Of Passive-Aggressive Communication” simply put me over the edge. I’m not calling out the respective authors of these op-ed pieces nor am I calling out the publications. Honestly, I’m calling out myself and the masses who power up their computers and smartphones everyday and shape the future of online communication.

I profit on social media. It’s become my bread and butter and the daily evolution of how I communicate online with friends, colleagues and people that I’ve yet to meet. Social networking has changed my life and until now, I’ve fully embraced where we’re going (most of the time). The next couple of years look pretty awesome. The market I love and embrace will continue to grow, evolve and connect more people but the next 10 years are certainly leading to doom us all.

Last night I was talking to my Dad on the phone for over two and a half hours. He’s taught me so much in life and his teachings have lead me on many paths, some that I don’t think he wholeheartedly agrees on such as my embrace of technology. He doesn’t follow eastern philosophy and instead he lives it in his daily life. His approach to technology is the exact opposite of mine but he’s the only person I can talk to for hours on end without a single mention of phones, TVs, computers or Twitter. We talk about history, philosophy, the martial arts and journeys of our bodies, minds and spirits. Naturally, Dad doesn’t embrace social networking but he understands its current value to a future world without borders where anyone can connect with anything without delay, cost or filter. True communications that make the world smaller.

This benefits of social networking, beginning with email, are apparent to us all. It’s how this new form of communication has affected us that bothers me and furthermore, where we’re going bothers me even more.

MG makes excellent points in how he weighs in on the differences between Email, Instant Messages, Twitter, Facebook and Google Wave. Wave’s success is uncertain at this time. No one knows if Google Wave will be huge or simply become something that us geeks use as a niche product. Gmail, which had invites going for big money on eBay a few years ago has trumped AOL as the #2 webmail client in the world. Google Voice (formerly called GrandCentral) is still invite only and only after I show it off to people, do they get excited about it. Wave is exciting but many people are left disappointing. This is comforting to me.

Google Wave fills the void between Twitter, Email and IM by allowing users to engage in the conversation or let it slip by w/o adding commentary. Emails pretty much need to be replied to or at least the person sending you a message expects a reply. I’m surprised that tools weren’t put in place long ago do make sure that an email isn’t ignored. There’s that annoying Outlook “Read Receipts” option that just pisses people off but it’s not server side and only works if they’re running Outlook too. In concept, Google Wave appeals to me but in application it’s the biggest time sink I’ve ever been a whiteness to.

A typical moment in Wave would be emails coming in, replying to them as a chat format, sharing attachments and ultimately collaborating with 1 or many people in real time quickly and seamlessly. For this, I embrace Google Wave but the inevitable collapse of being unable to disconnect is upon us and yes I’m looking at you Neo because Google is making The Matrix more and more of a reality each year.

Many people make the argument that email is counter-productive but it’s not really. It’s an organized and more importantly comfortable communication medium for people that call themselves “non-computer users” My family who is, for the most part, not technically savvy will use email fluently without complaints. Email may be counter productive for the hyper-active real-time folks in the tech sector but real-time isn’t where it’s at because frankly, business moves slow and a real time communications tool isn’t going to make it that much faster.

Social networks are counter productive if you’re measuring productivity in units. If I have 10 tasks to complete today and all social networks are banned aside from an internal collaboration tool like Yammer or MS Sharepoint, I’ll get that work done faster by far than if I had Twitter & Facebook status updates popping up to say hello. throw in some social networks and productivity drops significantly. Some would argue that Google Wave is exactly like Microsoft Sharepoint. The utility and major uses are identical but Sharepoint isn’t real time. I find RT distracting as things move automatically on the page and prefer email notifications or checking it when I find time in the middle of the day.

Business won’t move faster with RT because, like today, there’s always that decision maker that doesn’t stay connected to Email, Sharepoint and soon, Google Wave because he doesn’t want to or he’s simply too busy. For business to benefit, everyone has to be on board.

Collaboration is great when it’s used to improve workflow. Merging or “mashups” of technologies such as Email and IM is a bad choice. Furthermore, making it web based such as Google Wave just bites cause I like owning my conversation and not Google. It seems like everyone else is okay with giving Google everything. For now, we’re okay to sit back and open wide for the convergence of email, IM and social status updates w/ real time collaboration tools but soon I think we’re going to collaborate so much that no work will actually get done. The time when a typical corporate drone spends all day checking what his co-workers are doing, who’s eating lunch, who’s turning in a project, what is done here and there and the exact location of that cute girl in accounting (GPS auto-location), will be the ultimate collapse of “optimization” and we’ll become victim of useless information overload. Those that prevail will be those who “don’t get it” and just use email “cause it’s easier.” They’ll be getting so much done and we’ll be collaborating on and on and on.

“What did you do today hun? Oh man, I collaborated so much my head hurts! We collaborated some great ideas and I look forward to sharing more tomorrow. We’re working so hard but it feels like we always fall short of actually getting anything done.”