Stop Junk Mail Before it Reaches Your New Home

Everyone gets too much junk mail, right? Of course, you hate to think about it, but somehow your information must be making the rounds to a bunch of data brokers who are making money by exchanging information with other marketers.

A new service called ProQuo will help you remove your name and personal information from thousands of marketing lists.

It will give you peace of mind to know that your information is less freely available and that you will have saved a ton of trees and fuel from being consumed in your name.

Thought of the day

Isn't this the most perfect money clip ever?



When you have no money, you seem to be more resourceful, more mindful, more resilient. Having money does not make you happier, more fulfilled or in any way satisfied. It just buys a more expensive life.

So, if I weren't trying to be more mindful, I would get this money clip and think back to the days when I had to dig in the couch cushions for enough money to split a Little Debbie's brownie with my roommate. We'd fly down our three floor walk up and buy the single $0.25 goodie from the bodega under our apartment, carefully splitting it and taking tiny bites to make it last.

I would think back to the days when Little League was an extravagance not wasted on a girl or the fact that I never had my own bicycle until I was making a six figure salary.

I would think back to sitting in the hatchback of a Honda Civic because there were now four children in the family.

And I'll be more grateful and generous that day.

Watch out for the Schwaggin Wagon

Now this is what it is all about. In a Robin Hood like fashion, the folks who have put together The Schwaggin' Wagon aim to redistribute the wealth of freebies given in overabundance at conferences to inner city children and soldiers in Iraq.



The grand tradition of Schwag, or promotional items, appears to me to be on the decline in recent years in lock step with the economy. But at every conference, I still manage to effortlessly collect a handful of pens, squeeze toys (my favorite being the Sumo Wrestler Squeeze toy at a major banking conference - connection? Didn't think so), cell phone doo dads, lanyards, post-its, etc. Those of us who go to way too many conferences (and can walk the major conference cities' airports blindfolded) just don't need any more stuff!

Now what used to collect in bottomless drawers at my house and an extensive collection of mismatched bags (although these make great reusable shopping bags), can be used daily by people who will truly appreciate them.

Check out their site for more stories about their colorful adventures. They have a modern day Scooby Doo and pals van and great industry connections, and are known to prowl several west coast conferences, so you won't miss them.

Kudos to a Kid For Sensibly Helping the Environment

It takes a kid to figure out that there might be a solution to our over population of plastic in landfills problem just crawling around in the plastic rubbish itself.

16 year old Daniel Burd won the Canada-Wide Science Fair when he isolated and cultivated the bacteria that accelerate the decomposition of plastic bags.

Maybe next he can work on reversing the deforestation from too many flyers advertising the science fair!

To learn more about Daniel and his astoundingly simple fix for the environment, see this article in the DailyKos

Strong start for Causes.org

One year into their business, Causes reports reports over 12,000,000 registered users who have donated $2.5 million to 20,000 charities.

The founders had good instincts when they decided to take the viral principals of their former businesses (Facebook, Napster, Plaxo) and apply them to social activism.

Here's the catch. When you do the math, that's pennies of donations per user spread pretty thinly over a lot of causes. I love the idea of this site, but in practice, it takes a lot of work on behalf of charities to get people to truly contribute time or money. We can credit this effort with two major accomplishments:

1) Getting an awful lot of people to pledge some sort of allegiance to causes they tangentially care about, and at least that produces warm leads for the real charity fund raising efforts.

2) Nearly raising in donations what they raised in capital within a year. Not too shabby.

What will the next generation of Causes bring? How can advocates for good causes increase engagement and commitment deepen beyond the "Poke me with a Dirty Martini and Throw a Pig at Me" Facebook application stunt phase?

Your thoughts?

Text2Help - Aid to disaster victims from your cell phone

The National Text 2 Help initiative enables wireless subscribers on Alltel, AT&T Mobility, Boost Mobile, Dobson Communications Corporation, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless to use their cell phone to donate to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund. Verisign is providing the infrastructure.

How does it work? Simply text the keyword “GIVE” to "2HELP" (24357). A $5 tax-deductible donation will be made to the American Red Cross for disaster relief efforts. The participating carriers have all agreed not to take their normally high percentage of the transaction so 100% of your donation will go to the American Red Cross. Normal text messaging rates do apply according to your rate plan.

Ice breakers

How do you break the ice when volunteering or welcoming volunteers?

Many people shy away from volunteer activities where they don't feel welcome. Are you too busy taking care of all of the details of your event to thank, welcome and introduce new volunteers to others? Let's remember to take the time to make newcomers comfortable, to thank them and to welcome them back for more events. These are simple steps, but can have great impact on your volunteers and organization.