BrainFuel

The tea at the Empress Hotel was really great. Plus the hotel is cool to boot.

“The quickest way to double your money is to fold it over and put it back in your pocket.” – Unknown (via Gary)

Have you noticed an increase in the number of people who decide to travel the world and at the same time write it off? Take a look at The Traveling Guys web site for a brief moment. Ok? Did you see the sponsors section? No? Well, they have more than a hundred individual sponsors and a good dozen companies sponsoring their trip. Here is a writeup about this site.

Why didn’t I think about that? I want to travel, too!

10 mph is another one where three guys are riding across America on a Segway. They’ve been sponsored by some big companies. They’re doing a movie, too. There’s a good idea. Get a movie done at the same time and sell the rights to it.

The Fat Man Walking is another one that has sponsors. Not as exciting as he’s only walking from San Diego to New York and his web site is ugly, but it’s amazing! He has sponsors. By the way, he’s all the way to New Mexico.

Another guy who hiked across America and has a ton of sponsors. Andrew Skurka. Insane.

Here’s what it takes to make this a success… Of course, I have zero experience with this, so it is just my take.

• Story. You have to have a great story. I think the Fat Man site is perfect for story. You feel sorry for the guy because his life is in the pits and he decided to do something about it. So you wish him success.
• Frequent Updates. If you want any following, and sponsors to sponsor you, you have to have some following. All of these sites get a lot of traffic.
• Pictures. Everyone wants to see what you are doing and hear stories about what happened to them today.

Dude. This is so awesome! I thought about making something identical to this but someone else beat me to it.

Check it out: Fat Fingers

Basically, the idea is, you can save money on ebay through people’s typos and misspelled words. For instance, if I was trying to buy a Cybershot digital camera, this search engine would search ebay using a wide variety of possible matches. I might find an obscure auction listed as “Cybershoot” that nobody else was bidding on (because they couldn’t find it through normal search methods)

Hooray! It’s Friday and that means the weekly caption contest on BrainFuel. Keep it clean and post a funny caption for this picture in the comments. Thanks!!

In 1899, then Patent Commissioner, Charles H. Duell reportedly announced that “everything that can be invented has been invented.”

I wonder how many great ideas he stifiled in his lifetime. There’s some inspiration for the next time you think you have an idea and everyone says it won’t work.

These things grow faster than you think. At Butchart Gardens there was one this big that was only 69 years old.

Continuing from my last post on this topic…

How to be successful in the web design and development industry:

• Do great work.
• Meet and talk to lots of people in the industry. Especially locally.
• Always finish your projects.

Did I miss anything?