Success & Inspiration Hollywood Halloweens before the Twitter selfie: Vintage photos catch celebr By Daily Mail Reporter Published: 20:10 GMT, 31 October 2013 | Updated: 13:40 GMT, 1 November 2013 Before celebrities could show off their yearly Halloween costumes on Twitter and the Today show, they took regular photos that most people would never see. Thankfully, we can still use the wonders of the internet to gaze into a past when Joni Mitchell wore blackface as a pimp, Brooke Shields skated in a disco dressed as Charlie Chaplin, and a very young Drew Barrymore was a crayon. Some of these celebrities date even further back, to when not only were there no computers, but most homes didn’t even have televisions. Even then, silent screen legend Clara Bow smoldered in a 1929 Halloween photoshoot and Howard Hughes managed to be debonair while wearing traditional Alpine garb at a 1934 Halloween bash thrown by actress Marion Davies. These photos prove that the Kardashians didn’t invent Hollywood Halloweens, and that there were celebrity costume shots well before there were selfies.
Twitter's Video Hashtags Automatically Add Media To Text The biggest players in the social media industry monetize people’s shares and views of community-created content. Now a content platform fronted by pop star Lady Gaga is getting a makeover and aims to put the money you generate back in your pocket. The team at Backplane have decided to move the brand forward from creating community sites for big names and brands (including Lady Gaga’s user generated platform, the LittleMonsters.com fan network) to become a user generated social network builder that will generate profit for all those involved, including the consumer. Their model is an open platform where anyone from the public can build their own social networks and do business by selling merchandise, charging subscriptions, crowdfunding projects and, if their community increases enough, selling ads. The aim is to put money back in the hands of organizers, whether that be sports teams, musician fan clubs or volunteering groups. Backplane h/t: Tech Crunch
5 Tools For Creating Your Own Infographics Five years ago, almost nobody knew what the heck an infographic was. (I sure didn’t, and I was a graphic design major in college at the time.) Now that the infographic craze has saturated us with new visual knowledge (and marketing gimmicks), something interesting has happened: The creation of infographics has become democratized. (See also 5 Business & Design Tools Every Tech Freelancer Should Learn.) Trust me when I say that with these tools, you don’t have to be a designer to create a high-quality, effective infographic. With that in mind, I’ve cobbled together a list of five services/methods that even non-designers can use to create or commission great infographics. Infogr.am: All The Bells And Whistles Infogr.am is free, and free is good. One of its best features is the ability to download files in PNG or PDF format. Infogr.am is far and away my favorite online infographics editor. InfoActive: Interactive, Live And Mobile-Friendly Piktochart: Drag-And-Drop Templates Galore
Biophotons: The Human Body Emits, Communicates with, and is Made from Light By Sayer Ji, Greenmedinfo.com Increasingly science agrees with the poetry of direct human experience: we are more than the atoms and molecules that make up our bodies, but beings of light as well. Biophotons are emitted by the human body, can be released through mental intention, and may modulate fundamental processes within cell-to-cell communication and DNA. Nothing is more amazing than the highly improbable fact that we exist. Consider that from light, air, water, basic minerals within the crust of the earth, and the at least 3 billion year old information contained within the nucleus of one diploid zygote cell, the human body is formed, and within that body a soul capable of at least trying to comprehend its bodily and spiritual origins. Indeed, the human body emits biophotons, also known as ultraweak photon emissions (UPE), with a visibility 1,000 times lower than the sensitivity of our naked eye. The lowest UPE intensities were observed in two subjects who regularly meditate.
Help in a Buddhist Monastery in Thailand If everybody makes a difference, the world will be different - Owen Geiger Our Project is located in a in a little forest in the northeast of thailand in a buddhist monastary. Well off the beaten track of tourism we offer an oportunity for everybody to join in a fascinating project where we combine vipassana meditation, yoga, body detox, nutritional guidance, natural building and ecological gardening (especially permaculture) to a system of personal growth and care for nature. We are moving to our new land in the forest monastary now which is a fascinating time! Christian and Anja are totally dedicated to this project! Wow how to begin! What an incredibly special place... This was my first volunteering experience and I would be surprised if it got any better. If you want structure, or a relaxing vacation assignment with plenty of snooze time, you should go somewhere else. INCREDIBLE people!!! I had a wounderful time here. Incredible experience at the forest monastery!! WOW!!!!!
Author: pittr Hi Craig, Thanks for your interest. "I know you said it's not a headache or pain but it sounds like it would be possible to induce stress headaches - which do feel different to "normal headaches" - by doing too much concentration work. Do you find yourself straining at all when meditating?" It doesn’t seem like it. Another good description of my problem would also be that it’s sort of like nausea, but in the head. "Have you tried any other forms of meditation such as vipassana noting or dzogchen, does that cause the pressure too?" I sometimes do objectless meditation, where the idea is to be aware of what’s going on in the mind at the moment, without concentrating on a specific object of meditation. Hope this clarifies the issue somewhatPit
The Astral Pulse - Index 1: Pulse of the City | 10 Urban Projects That Could Change City Landscapes Open public space in cities doesn’t have to sit unused; just take a look at San Francisco’s Pavement to Parks project, which turns wasted space in streets into "parklets" where people can sit and relax. A group of San Francisco organizations have teamed up to enliven public spaces with Urban Prototyping: San Francisco--a project that aims to spawn a number of small-scale, replicable projects for public areas that can improve cities in some way. The project, which is being put on by organizations including the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts (GAFFTA), the SF Mayor’s Office of Civic Innovation, and 5M Placeworks, recently held an open call for projects. Out of the 90 entries received, GAFFTA narrowed them down to 18 finalists--you can see our favorites in the slide show above. Those finalists, along with projects culled from a "makeathon" in the fall, will take over two blocks in downtown San Francisco for a street exposition in October.
NYC’s digital policy should be an inspiration to cities all over the world If there was ever any doubt that your city should hire a Chief Digital Officer, today’s talk by Rachel Haot, who holds that role in New York City, at The Next Web Conference USA would have erased it. In an inspiring opening session at our first American conference, she discussed all the ways that NYC’s mayor and his team have embraced technology in recent years. NYC really is a model for a modern, tech-literate city. Beyond that, it’s got digital engagement licked. Business-wise, the city is now number two in the US behind Silicon Valley for VC funding, and tech acquisitions totalled $83 billion last year. In short, New York is an exciting place for tech right now, and the mayor’s office is helping to drive that. If you’d like to explore what New York has to offer, Haot gave a shot out to initiatives like MappedinNY.com and WeAreMadeInNY.com. Keep up with our coverage of The Next Web Conference USA.