Chikodi.Chima's blog

What if you had the ability to designate where a small portion of your tax dollars were spent instead of giving 100 percent of your income tax to incompetent politicians?  What if government agencies could compete directly for a small piece of your federal income tax returns for special initiatives? The crowdfunding model that is being tested in journalism could also help spur innovation and transparency in government by making agencies compete for money using social media and a good, old-fashioned charm offensive. Let's call this new tax regime 'Flex Filing.'

Part of the democratic process is electing leaders who are responsible for spending public money, but in many ways, it's like throwing your money into a black box.  In 2008 the U.S. Government spent over $3.16 trillion on the military, forests, education, health care, roads, bridges, tunnels and a million other things. Some of the government's priorities I agree with, such as investing money in scientific research, while others I oppose, such as two wars and domestic spying. 'Flex Filing' would enable you track your tax dollars and follow the results from start to finish.Continue Reading...

These two moguls in the making were at Lennox Lounge tonight selling home-made candies for $2 apiece. Elijah, age seven, (right) said the price was 4 x 50 cents. Not bad math for a second grader. Said elder brother, Giles III, age 14, theirs is a multi-generational business. Angela’s World of Creations, which sells chocolate and hard candy lollipops, edible arrangements and assorted souvenirs is a mult-generational business.      

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Passion lacks an expiration date, and those who have found themselves in its warm embrace are wont to relinquish the delight. Man does not live by work alone, for passion is that which drives us beyond survival to strive for success.

I’m not often given over to poetic ramblings, but on this Valentines Day, I feel myself entitled to at least one swoon and maybe more before the sun sets. After all, today is one marked by monumental sacrifice, altruism and selfless conviction, or so the grammarians tell me.

It is passion that guides my humble words dear readers, but today it is not my own passion for language, but that of another; a nimble wordsmith of truly remarkable talent. The cunning linguist of whom I speak is Marina Orlova, the philologist in chief at “Hot For Words,” a concept that straddles the intersection of pornography and higher learning.

Orlova’s plucky videos dissect the origin and etymology of words whose usage ranges from the inane to the elusive, such as floccinaucinihilipilification--the longest non-technical word in English, or metrosexual.

Unlike the naked news, Orlova is no stuffed shirt. According to her wikipedia page, she was a high school teacher in Russia before she moved to the U.S., where she was able to turn her love of words into the 16th most popular YouTube channel on planet Earth. In 2007 Wired magazine voted her "world's sexiest geek."

While Orlova flirts with the web cam, she is also filling heads with what all men crave--vocab! Orlova is the quintessential branded journalist and an Internet sensation, who's playful use of technology spices up her vids with a little je nais se quoi?

I stumbled upon Orlova quite by accident, and it is hard now to know whether my current infatuation stems from her iron-curtain good looks, her insatiable curiosity or a combination of the two. In either case, she and I share a similar fascination with words and turn of  phrase, but I was seriously beaten to the punch.

On this day of lust, dear readers, remember that it is passion that moves mountains and  once you have found your fount of aplomb, Internet stardom and calendars with your picture surely await.

Never underestimate the viral power of the Web. This Is Why You're Fat, a new sensation that launched today,  is sure to be one of the February's most ballyhooed memes, with pictures of pizzas topped with hamburgers, french fry-wrapped hotdogs and a 60-lb. Rice Krispy treat. It is exactly the type of hilarious, gross-out site that has be shared to be believed and a testament to how powerful social networking can be.

According to Sitemeter the site is approaching 1 million unique visitors largely because of it's placement on Perez Hilton's blog, but also because everyone who sees it wants to be the first one to show their friends. My roommate and his girlfriend are going bonkers over the In-n-Out 100x100 Burger. When they're finished, I'm sure they will each tell two  or three people too.

(Sitemeter screen grab of first day's  traffic)

I don't know if the folks behind this site plan to make money from it, but one thing is certain; they've already made a splash. According to SiteMeter, the average site visit is a whopping 13 minutes. If the New York Times could duplicate the success of This Is Why You're fat, we might not be having these conversations about saving newspapers.

There’s nowhere to hide from the buckets of bad economic news that keep sloshing over weary Americans. According to CNN more than 200,000 jobs have been shed since the start of the year and most economists agree we haven’t seen the worst yet, but there are occasional glimmers of hope.

Thecanned.com, which launched this Tuesday, one day after 71,400 job cuts were announced, is a resource for “people who get canned, downsized, fired, axed, marginalized, let go, shown the door... or otherwise find their way to unemployment,” according to their press release.

Thecanned.com offers straightforward information on how to file for unemployment benefits in your state, how to maintain your health insurance coverage and how to look for new jobs beyond the mainstream job boards, all while keeping a sense of humor.In addition to its informational resources, the site has a blog dedicated to “layoff beards.”

A recent story in the Wall Street Journal chronicled the phenomenon of the layoff beard, whereby forlorn former financiers were freed to flaunt facial hair that would have been forbidden on the trading floor of their old firms. With no job, no important meetings and no one to judge you based on looks, it's finally ok to wear a beard.

“I’ve been growing a layoff beard for months,” said Mike Trapenese, who co-founded The Canned with his partner Chris Merrit-Lish, after losing his job at a boutique New York strategy consulting firm in August. Trapanese said that since he started growing the beard he has convinced several former consultants and financiers to join him in support of the cause along with friends who are current law and medical students.

Chris Giardina who was unaware of the layoff beard blog on TheCanned.com, nevertheless became part of the layoff beard phenomenon after losing his job with a healthcare-focused hedge fund in October. Giardina says he will never go back to work in the finance industry. “Those days are over.” Wherever he goes to work in the future, Giardina expects he will be able to keep his beard.

(Giardina sporting the "Sabertooth" layoff beard)

Typically the layoff beard is temporary fashion statement that adorns a man’s face while he contemplates his next career move, but with Wall Steet in inexorable decline, the layoff beard may become a more lasting statement as more laid off young people have more time to radically rethink their life’s goals.

Trapanese also believes his finance dream is over and ideally he would like to get into the clean tech field in for his next job.

Although The Canned launched this week, Trapenese said the response has been immediate and positive. He has been contacted by two major news outlets, including a radio station, to speak about his experience being laid of as well as starting a Web site. In such hard times, the saga of the layoff beard on is “a fluff story people want to hear,”  said Trapanese. Furthermore, making the best of a bad situation is a good reminder for us all that losing a job can be the start of an exciting new life, or at least a new beard.

The name Morten Lund had never come across my radar before today, while I was reading TechCrunch. The 36-year-old Danish entrepreneur and owner of the venture firm Lund XY  recently lost his shirt on a deal that would deliver free print newspapers to people's homes in Denmark. Lund, who has a personal portfolio over 80 startups recently filed bankruptcy after the newspaper deal, one of his biggest gambles, turned out to be a losing bet.

In spite of burning 30 million euros of his own money, which would qualify him as one of the biggest losers at the conference, Lund  was remarkably upbeat about his prospects for the future and shared some tremendous advice for anyone who dreams of becoming a successful entrepreneur.

I'm reposting on College Mogul because I feel what Lund has to say, from a position of failure, is so important that it holds the keys to succes and happiness. If I had to sum up in three bullet points, I would chose the following:

Be confident

Embrace Risk

Have Fun

 Continue Reading...

If the Internet has taught us anything, it's that unapologetically nerdy is as cool as cool gets.

As kids we looked up to millionaire athletes who, paradoxically, now work for the billionare Web gurus whom we idolize as young adults.

At first glance, it doesn't seem that athletes and inventors have much in common, but it all boils down to passion; the best athletes have a passion for the game, while unabashed nerds have a passion to innovate and a passion to make a difference in people's lives. While athletes have established venues for their craft and receive praise in public, most inventors toil in obscurity and their names are known to just a handful of folks.

With the idea of bringing some of New York's most passionate and creative minds out of the shadows, David Friedlander launched LucidNYC, which he sees as a younger, hipper and less exclusive version of the TED conferences, while still harnessing the philanthropic energy of the multinational event.

"There are few opportunities for intellectuals to sew their brainy oats outside of academia, industry and interest-specific events," Friedlander said. The Lucid formula is a combination of philanthropists, enternainers and innovaters who deliver presentations while people drink wine and nibble on snacks. Lucid is "a nightclub for nerdy, do-gooders," according to Friedlander.

The first Lucid event was hosted in a Chinatown loft in August 2008 and featured a presentation about the history of competitive eating by Nerd Nite co-founder Matt Wasowski, as well as a rundown on the ethics of freeganism.Continue Reading...

Who says technology can't be romantic?  iFog, the new application from Tel Aviv-based startup, Ap Party, proves that circuits and sweethearts can go hand in hand.

“One day I wrote a message on the fogged-up bathroom mirror to my girlfriend and she really liked it and thought that it was romantic, said Barak Ben-Ezer, App Party co-founder, and a former Microsoft mobile device program manager. “I thought to myslef, wouldn't it be cool to be able to do this on her iPhone,”  Ben-Ezer said and soon the iFog was born.

Ben-Ezer and his partners developed an algorithm to identify when air passes over the iPhone’s mic, gradually filling the screen with realistic looking fog. Users can then write messages or draw pictures in the fog and shake the screen of its contents when they are done.

The iFog harnesses the same technology used to launch Smule’s wildly popular Ocarina, which allows users to create songs by blowing over the mic and playing a melody with their fingers, but it functions like Zephyr, another Smule app that also allows users to draw messages onscreen.Continue Reading...

A massive blackout crippled the Northeastern U.S. on Aug. 14, 2003, leaving over 50 million people without power across a giant swath that reached from Toronto all the way to New York City. We were all to blame.

In New York, we're not used to thinking about electricity as a finite resource, how it's produced or what it costs and nothing short of a colossal power failure will get people talking about this crucial matter. To be fair, however, New York City as part of the broader region was only part of the problem that led to the 2003  blackout, just as energy consumption on a person-to-person basis contributed to a power grid overloaded only after human error and computer malfunctions caused a wide scale network failure.

However, the question remains to be asked, how much electricity do we really need and how much should we be using?

“The West as a whole thinks we have a right to energy,” says HEMS Tech founder and CTO, Bill Melendez. “We’re at the very beginning of a change of attitude globally concerning the use of energy and electricity.”

Melendez’ company, HEMS Technology (Homeowners Energy Management Systems) has invented a wireless technology that will help homeowners and utility companies track and regulate home energy consumption while simultaneously reducing electricity bills and curbing the emission of greenhouse gases caused by power generation.

The product looks like a regular electrical socket, but when an appliance of electrical device is plugged in, the socket sends a wireless signal to a "gateway" receiver detailing how much electricity has been used and for how long.Continue Reading...

Two years ago, when it became passé to ask someone for a phone number, "I'll find you on Facebook," was the preferred way to say, "let's keep in touch." Social networking sites provided a great alternative to the awkard, public exchange of pertinent information when there were only a handful of "mainstream" social sites to which anyone belonged.

Today, however, I'm drowning in social networking--not literally, of course, but every few days it seems a new network comes across my radar and I don't know if I'm missing the boat by not jumping onboard.

When my brother studied abroad in Fiji I had to join Hi5 in order to see his travel photos. My cousin, who is studying engineering in Finland, sent me two invitations to  different networks and we're already friends on Facebook!

Call it the perils of the network effect. Joining a new social networking site means creating a new profile, uploading photos and convincing your friends to join, otherwise it's a waste of time. Once I've join, I'm essentially trapped because my profile stays behind the perimeter of a walled garden erected by whomever built the site.

Furthermore, growth among social networking sites is highly cannibalistic. I have seperate accounts on Myspace, Facebook, Friendster, LinkedIn, Migente, Hi5, Orkut and, several more, but for any one to grow, it has to snatch users away from other sites.

There are  now hundreds of  seperate social networks catering to thousands of distinct constituencies, but each audience is "trapped" inside whatever tank their social networking site has created to house a specific profile. Openfriends from Citrusbyte, a Los Angeles-based site-launch lab promises "life beyond the fishbowl."Continue Reading...