Central Perk

luni, 5 august 2013

Damn Cool Pics

Faith in Humanity Restored

Posted: 05 Aug 2013 12:07 PM PDT

Great photos. Some are very sad but still great.

A father and his son throughout the years:

"Our first hello and our last goodbye."

Alex's last words:

Little girl's inspiration:

Arnulfo Castorena winning his first gold medal in swimming for Mexico in the Paralympics:

This person received a letter from a developmentally disabled man who visits their barn and found out their horse was hurt:

Kermit and his dad:

Capitán, the dog that sat by his owner's grave for over six years:

The terminally ill mother watched her daughter's wedding over Skype:

The parents made their son's wheelchair into the best Halloween costume ever:

A dog's purpose:

The German shepherd has become a seeing eye dog for a blind spaniel:

When Ellie, a blind spaniel, was adopted by shelter manager Jean Spencer, she never expected that her other dog, Leo, would choose to become her very own seeing-eye dog. "I take them for walks in the park and Leo guides Ellie around," says Spencer. "He is so protective and herds the more boisterous dogs away from her."

Toddlers connecting with complete strangers:

Death In Transit [Infographic]

Posted: 05 Aug 2013 09:06 AM PDT

The "unsinkable" Titanic was carrying more than 2,200 souls when she struck an iceberg in 1912, resulting in a loss of about 1,500 people. A hundred years later and transportation has grown so much that ships can carry 6,000 people, bullet trains carry thousands, and the world's biggest passenger plane can now accommodate more than 800. Add in the now massive venues for cultural events, and the tendency of large crowds of people sometimes stampeding and the potential for accidents is huge. From sinkings, to crashes, to derailments, to stampedes, the National Post has charted the last 100 years of major accidents and incidents (excluding wartime battles). In order to make the timeline, a minimum of 100 people had to die — therefore no automobile accidents.

Click on Image to Enlarge.

Via National Post.

Building a Better Foundation

Featured

Building a Better Foundation

Homeownership is a cornerstone of middle-class security. So helping responsible homeowners is one of President Obama's priorities as he seeks a better bargain for the middle class -- and it's what he'll be talking about tomorrow afternoon in Phoenix, Arizona.

Find out more about President Obama's better foundation for homeownership.

Seth's Blog : Q&A: Purple Cows and commodities

Q&A: Purple Cows and commodities

Earlier in this series, I wrote about the failure of Survival putting me at the end of my publishing rope, publisherless. Then I self-published Purple Cow (the original, now-out-of-print edition came in a milk carton) and the self-referential marketing, combined with great reader buzz, got me back into the good graces of the publishing world. That wasn't my goal, but in retrospect, it had a big impact on my output as an author.

Josh asks, "How do you turn something that is considered to be a commodity into a Purple Cow, when the lowest price is the only thing that seems to matter to customers?"

If you tell me that price is the only thing that matters to customers, I respond that nothing about this product matters to them.

When something matters to you, you talk about it, care about it, research it, tweak it... If all that we've got to care about is the price, then the price is the discussion, not the item itself.

Businesses have worked overtime to turn things into commodities, telling us that they sell what the other guy does, it's the same, but cheaper. No wonder we've been lulled into not caring.

Every time you say, "all they care about is price," you've just said, "they don't really care, they just want to get the buying over with, cheap."

The thing is, it doesn't have to be a commodity if you don't want it to be. It's easy to forget, but before the smartphone, cell phones were treated as a commodity as well. Nucor figured out how to turn steel from a cheap commodity into something worth caring about. Not cared about by everyone, but cared about by enough buyers. And that's the opportunity in every industry, in every segment, for any product or service that has become a commodity.

No, you can't magically make it interesting to all. But yes, with enough effort and care, you can find those that are interested enough if what you create that they'll choose to talk about it.

And if you can't, go make something else. Something that people will choose to care about and talk about.

We sell commodities by choice.