Casey Capshaw

My first podcast as a producer for Falling Fruit debuts today. I am very excited.

The New Man is constantly evolving, changing and growing. He is not the “macho jerk,” mindlessly bullying through the world. He is also not the “New Age wimp,” out of touch with his deepest power. The New Man finds integrity in every moment and always looks for his truest expression.

Men’s specific development work is my truest passion at this time in my life. I have always been drawn to very masculine endeavors, from extreme sports to Zen Buddhism. As I learn more about the practice of personal growth from a uniquely male(or masculine) angle, I am increasingly drawn to it.

With this show, we aim to examine the challenges men face in career, relationship, and deepest self, and learn how to move towards authenticity in every moment.

As my most trusted peer group, I’d love to hear your feedback and suggestions about how this show can best serve the world.

If your still not convinced, this will get you in the spirit!

Yahoo just announced Fireeagle, a platform that will control peoples location information.

It’s still in alpha, but it sounds like they are building in API’s everywhere so this information will be sharable online and into mobile devices. Nice first step.

I am extremely happy to announce that FallingFruit.tv just went live!

For the last few months, I have been holding the marketing perspective in the development of Boulder start-up Falling Fruit. Falling Fruit is a podcast network producing conscious audio shows distributed online.

We are debuting the network with two shows. Conscious Business is brand new, and looks into the emerging world of business that strives for more than mere profit. On Conscious Business we will be talking to many social entrepreneurs and conscious capitalists pushing the envelope to social responsibility.

Buddhist Geeks has been online for several months and has developed a following among young Buddhist practicioners. They have featured interviews with Alan Wallace, Genpo Roshi, and Sharon Salzberg.

Falling Fruit is not only interested in talking about conscious business and spirituality, we are living it. At its heart, Falling Fruit is dedicated to sharing positive information with the world and empowering concerned individuals to affect positive change.

Come by and check us out, I have a feeling you might like it

I recently made a friendly wager with a friend of mine: Facebook will not be around in two years. My friend joins the more mainstream viewpoint that Facebook is a massively valuable web application and i respectfully disagree.

Let me explain my case.

First, technology is increasing exponentially. Ray Kurzweil may be the most famous proponent of this concept, and nowhere is it more apparent than the world of online applications. The world is still figuring out what the internet is good for, and Facebook is simply the shining star of the current leading edge.

Second, internet users(especially young ones, which make up the majority of Facebook users) are notoriously fickle. There is a fine line walked between popularity and passe, MySpace has crossed it, Facebook is getting precariously close to it.

Third, The Google. Google already handles a huge portion of ‘social’ functions on the web for millions of users. Email, scheduling and calendering, document collaboration are all done exceptionally well by Google, and they are working on social networking.

Now what do we really get out of Facebook? “The Wall” ? i guess, but i prefer Twitter. Connections? yeah, thats good, but I don’t need it every day. PhotoShare? They have done it better than most, but its no category killer.

The real downfall of Facebook, and where Google will bring the fatal blow, is that FaceBook is limited to the internet. I have to be online to get any value from it. This is not where I want my social mastery to take place. It’s a great little online community, but the sun is shining. There is a world out there.

Google Wins

Google is developing the gPhone. A handheld device to compete with the iPhone and give seamless access to all Google functions from a mobile device. As Google develops the gPhone, they will be moving more aggressively into social networking. Give the gPhone GPS capabilities and suddenly my online social network is a mobile enabled Geo-Social Network!
“Your friend Doug is in your town.”
“Your friend Mary is leaving this country.”
“There are 10 single women in this vicinity”

Geo-Social Networking via integrated mobile device will be the Facebook killer. I give it less than 2 years. Passive social awareness, (The Wall, Twitter) is great, but i don’t want to bother with input most of the time. My GPS gPhone will handle the spacial location aspects of this for me.

Official Prediction:
Facebook gone by october 2009.

What is something that everybody needs, but nobody is doing remarkably?

That was what Jason and I were asking ourselves on fine summer day in Boulder this year when we both found ourselves frictionally unemployed at the same time.

That is the day SexyTie.com was born.

The most ubiquitous thing we could think of were how-to video’s. These are relatively easy to make, capitalize on unique expertise of the creators and provide serious value to the viewers. Its the “oral tradition” for the youTube generation, our method of passing down valuable information.

A search for “how to tie a tie” in Google yields 92 million results. This is something every male in America should probly know how to do so with that, you have sufficient span. 92 million is a helluva lot of competition though, how can we do it better?

SexyTie.com | How To Tie A Tie | The Full Windsor Knot. – Watch more amazing videos here

The market for necktie instructional videos consists of young men. What do young men think about pretty much every moment except when they are trying to figure out how to tie their ties? why women of course.

This is our purple cow. Let us know how you like it.

Strategy #1 Span

Think of something absolutely everybody needs but nobody is doing well.

Do it well.

Monetize it.

Strategy #2 Niche

Think of something a only few people need but nobody is doing at all.

Do it well.

Monetize it.

What is the common factor. Doing good work gets noticed. A little creativity and you can be the best option in a sea of choice. Make it easy to share and people will share it.

The art of marketing is not finding more money to do more marketing. It’s figuring out how to tell a story that spreads with the resources you’ve got.

Seth Godin hits on the key reason I have been drawn to marketing,,,and what makes me good at what I do.

I am participating in Startup Weekend, a gathering of 70+ developers, coders, designers lawyers and web entrepreneurs with the unlikely goal of launching a fully functional, innovative web application…in just 3 days.

Half way though the weekend, what are we building? VoSnap!

VoSnap is the easiest, fastest tool to coordinate a group and come to a decision. VoSnap uses your mobile, the web, and email to get the decision to any question from any group you chose in minutes.

Want to meet for drinks after work? VoSnap your buddies and ask where to meet, the group consensus is auto sent back to everyone that voted.

With this much talent in one room, the rate of development is unbelievable. We’re covering all the bases and I think this thing really has potential.

vosnap.com

UPDATE: VoSnap missed the launch deadline due to unexpected technical difficulties.

VoSnap Misses Launch Deadline: More News at 11
48-hour Instant Startup Company achieves every goal but one…

Boulder, Colorado — At tonight’s New Tech Meetup in Boulder,
Colorado, Andrew Hyde, founder of Startup Weekend, is set to explain
how and why VoSnap.com was unable to meet its 48-hour product launch
objective.

“Although I’m sure everyone feels naturally
disappointed that we missed the launch, the overwhelming message that
I’m hearing from the 70 founders who participated this weekend is
that they feel like they achieved something historic,” explained Hyde.

The original stated goal of Startup Weekend was to bring people
together and try to launch a company in 48 hours. Except for the
final public release, the Company achieved almost every other
objective it begin with, including legal formation and structure,
comprehensive business planning, product identity design and
development, and marketing and promotion.

According to detailed postings on the StartupWeekend.com website, the
software development team worked until 3am on Sunday night and
ultimately passed internal testing, but by that time it was too late
to marshall the resources of the rest of the team that had already
needed to clear out of the temporary offices by midnight.

Tuesday morning, a prototype version of the service was posted to the
company internal mailing list, but it has not yet been qualified for
release.

The founders have self-selected a core group from each department to
continue development and launch the product. Their initial follow-up
meeting is scheduled for tonight (Tuesday July 10th) at the New Tech
Meetup in Boulder. No current date has been set for launch of the
service.

VoSnap, Inc. is a mobile social voting tool. Users can create a poll,
send it to their friends to vote on, and receive the results via any
mobile device or e-mail. VoSnap reduces time wasted on decision-
making, makes sure everyone in the group has a voice, and gives
instant feedback on fun or serious decisions.

For more information about the details surrounding the company’s
unique inception, visit: http://startupweekend.com

To sign-up to use the service as soon as it it launched, go to:

http://vosnap.com

Competing for Money

Steve Frazee of The Chief Good (Conscious Business consulting) shares profound insights on the nature of money, and proposes that it is the very nature of money itself that is causing so many problems in society. A quote from within his post of Bernard Lietaer:

“The monetary system is programmed — albeit not deliberately — to cause certain behavior. It promotes competition and short-term thinking; it forces economic growth; and it undervalues care, education and tasks crucial to maintaining a society. Economics theory teaches us that people compete for markets and raw materials; I think, in reality, people compete for money.”

The scarcity built in to the monetary mechanism is the source of capitalistic competition and likely much of the reason for problems surrounding money, work, and unhappiness.

Is there a choice?

I can’t wait to see what comes of this line of thought. It points to a problem at such a fundamental, primary level, perhaps deep enough for a solution to emerge.

It’s no secret that the Information Age is fully upon us. Never before have human beings had access to more information, from more sources.

Initially, the advent of the internet rewarded information providers, giving them access to massive audiences at the click of a mouse. As the Information Age matures and grows ever more efficient, these audiences are becoming overwhelmed with the deluge of information coming at us from all angles.
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