10 free iPad Wallpapers

Posted by Christopher S Penn on May 31, 2010 in Photography, Photoshop fun | 3 comments

10 free iPad Wallpapers

Got one of the two million new iPads out in the wild? Grab yourself one (or all) of these free wallpapers derived from photos I’ve taken over the years. iPad wallpapers are 1024×1024 pixels (square to adapt for rotation). Click on any image to get the various versions and choose full size for the iPad specific image. If you’re on an iPad, just tap and hold for a Save Image box.

Enjoy, and if you like them, please throw a link back to this blog post.

iPad Wallpaper: Autumn

iPad Wallpaper: Billiards

iPad Wallpaper: Bird in flight

iPad Wallpaper: Patriotism

iPad Wallpaper: Violins

iPad Wallpaper: Hibiscus

iPad Wallpaper: Chris Brogan

iPad Wallpaper: Day lily

iPad Wallpaper: Rose

iPad Wallpaper: Otters

My images are released under the Creative Commons By Attribution, Non-Commercial, Sharealike License, US 3.0. You must provide a link back to www.ChristopherSPenn.com if you republish these images.

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On Memorial Day

Posted by Christopher S Penn on May 30, 2010 in Awakening | 0 comments

“We are all the sum of our tears. Too little and the ground is not fertile, nothing can grow there; too much, and the best of us is washed away.”

“There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities; it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender. The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.”

- J. Michael Straczynski

May your Memorial Day be filled with the hope that so many have fought and died for.

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No such thing as a free lunch

Posted by Christopher S Penn on May 27, 2010 in Marketing | 26 comments

No such thing as a free lunch

How much did you pay last year for Facebook? For Gmail? For Foursquare? For Twitter?

Right.

Nothing.

How much value did you derive from these services?

If you don’t know or can’t tell, the easiest way is to ask yourself how much you would have to spend out of pocket to recreate them. Take something like Gmail, as an example. You’d need a computer with an Internet connection, the Linux operating system, the Postfix mail server, the Apache web server, knowledge of how to securely configure all these pieces, and the web interface.

You’d need to administer this server, applying software updates and security patches on a frequent basis. It’s not an impossible task – I did it for years as an IT administrator – but it is not a simple thing to do, and it is not an inexpensive thing to do.

How much would it cost you to develop your own Facebook, where you could set your own privacy terms, run the service exactly the way you wanted it to, be everything that you wanted it to be?

Services like Twitter, Facebook, and Gmail are not free. They have never been free. Up until now, the costs to you have merely been deferred. They have real costs that are traded in exchange for something of value from you. In this day and age, that’s personal and behavioral data. Your goodwill? Your word of mouth? Both combined with $5 will get you a cup of coffee from the local commercial coffee chain. What’s for sale is you, the consumer, to advertisers and partners.

If you don’t like how these businesses – and they are businesses, seeking to make profits – treat you, don’t use them. Don’t sign up for them. Don’t give them your time, data, or mindshare. Build your own or use businesses that are more aligned with your values – and be prepared to pay cash out of pocket for them.

There is no such thing as a free lunch.

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Know when to skimp and when to splurge

Posted by Christopher S Penn on May 25, 2010 in Awakening, Money | 15 comments

Know when to skimp and when to splurge

Have you ever noticed that people skimp on the strangest things?

For example, I moved into a new office complex at Blue Sky Factory and the new place had neither a coffeemaker nor a filtered water system. However, the new place has plenty of other expensive amenities like a giant office printer.

I’ve noticed this when people purchase electronics. They’ll spend thousands on a new laptop and then skimp on memory or drive space, two items that will make a giant difference in their experience with the laptop. They’ll commit to buying an iPhone or an Android and then will get the smallest, lowest cost amount of memory possible.

I’ve noticed this at hotels, especially. Hotels will have 300 thread count sheets on the bed but will have sandpaper in the bathroom, making your stay there a literal pain in the ass.

Why do we skimp on some items and splurge on others?

I suspect it’s largely what gets our attention and what mindset we’re in when we’re making purchases. Toilet paper and coffee seem like commodities to us, while laptops and sheets may not be, at least not mentally. The more we buy of something, the less we may be inclined to pay attention to the quality of what we’re buying. The more mundane and unsexy something is – like toilet paper or laptop memory – the less we are inclined to pay attention to it.

The paradox is that some of these commodities make a bigger difference in the richness of our experiences than the highly focused items. I’d gladly take last year’s laptop stuffed full of memory and disk space over the latest and greatest machine that’s starved for operating resources. I’d gladly trade down a model of office printer for a coffeemaker or water filter on site – and I’d bet a company would generate far more productivity via the coffee machine than the copy machine. I’m more likely to stay at a hotel where the quality of experience is more even – nicer toilet paper, slightly rougher sheets (I can’t tell the difference between 200 thread count and 300 thread count, honestly) – rather than luxury sheets and a roughed up bottom.

Want to make a difference in your own life? Look at the nearly unconscious choices you make while spending and evaluate whether or not a slight upgrade could have a major but quiet impact on your quality of life. Some things won’t matter – generic , white label sugar at the grocery store is no different than Brand Name sugar. Some things will matter a great deal – a slightly better kind of coffee may taste MUCH better to you.

Here’s a relatively simple rule of thumb: the more you use it, the more you should invest in quality. If you’re buying a stereo, for example, and you plan to use it once a year, it probably won’t matter what you buy. If you plan to use it every day for 8 hours a day, buy a very nice stereo because crappy sound will make you feel worse rather than better. If you drink coffee once in a blue moon, buy any quality of coffee and coffeemaker. If you drink coffee several times daily, buy decent coffee and a good quality machine.

Look for opportunities to trade expenses as well. For example, at this office space, the employees (lacking access to a filtered water system) bring tons of bottled water and buy Starbucks every day. Rather than chew up money doing that, it makes much more sense to get a countertop pitcher that will filter water to a better quality than even bottled can deliver (you do know that 30% or more of bottled water is someone else’s municipal tap water, yes?) and brew your own higher quality coffee rather than drop $5 a cup to the coffee shop. No one loses out except the bottled water company and the corporate coffee shop.

Are you skimping and splurging in the right places for maximum quality of life on the same fixed budget?

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Mandatory viewing: Sir Ken Robinson at TED 2010

Posted by Christopher S Penn on May 24, 2010 in Education, Video | 5 comments

Mandatory viewing, especially if you’re thinking at all about education and how badly we’re failing the generations of students now in school. Read more at TED.com.

Get this and other great articles from the source at www.ChristopherSPenn.com! Want to take your conference or event to the next level? Book me to speak and get the same quality information on stage as you do on this blog.