Spring Means Green (Markets)

 

End of Winter Spells Start of Fresh Produce

Spring is the season when the branches turn from barren to budding, the weather turns from bitter to balmy, and farmers markets start popping up around the country. Seasonal, fresh produce is the focus of “green markets,” where local farms and purveyors specialize in natural, organic and regional foodstuffs to tempt your palate.

What to look for in spring? Seasonally, certain fruits and vegetables are their best this time of year, including:

• Apricots
• Artichokes
• Asparagus
• Cherries
• Lemons
• Peas (garden, snap and snow)
• Rhubarb
• Turnips

When you’re looking to include healthier foods in your diet, farmers markets are a great place to start. In an interview with WRDW-TV Augusta, Dr. Jessica Reichmuth from Augusta State University noted that “if you eat less modified foods obviously you are getting more nutrients instead of fillers.”

Most cities have at least one regular farmers market, if not several, held in the mornings during the week or on the weekend:

• Southern California
• Chicago
• Seattle
• Dallas
• New York City
• San Francisco
• Boston
• Washington, DC

To find more local farmers near you, search online for “farmers market [your city or state]”. 

Your Life Goes Mobile

 

Top Smartphone Apps for Just About Everything

Truth in advertising may never have been more in evidence than the now oft-repeated phrase, first heard in AT&T’s iPhone commercial: “there’s an app for that.”

Apple’s website touts that there are over 350,000 apps in its iPhone App Store, while cnet.com reportsthat there are about 88,000 apps available for the Android platform.

So what are the top apps? Here are a few of the apps that hit the experts’ top 10 lists.

Flixster — find out what’s playing in a theater near you (some theaters let you buy tickets right from your phone), see what’s opening soon and watch trailers, read reviews from RottenTomatoes.com, keep track of movies you want to see, even view and manage your Netflix queue. (iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone)

• Hipstamatic — making Ansel Adams wannabes everywhere happy, this app offers “film,” “lens,” and “flash” options that transform your ordinary phone snapshots into something else entirely. An integrated connection to Facebook makes sharing your masterpieces easy. (iPhone)
• SoundHound — what is that song they’re playing on TV? Tap SoundHound’s big orange button and it will identify the mystery music in as little as four seconds. You can even sing or hum a tune. SoundHound provides song lyrics right in the app and other features including “discovery,” which lets you check out the most frequently requested songs. (iPhone, Android)
• ReadItLater — ever stumble on an interesting article or page while surfing online and think, you just don’t have the time to read it now? ReadItLater lets you save pages and articles on your computer or your phone to read at your leisure, even if you’re not connected to the internet. (iPhone, Android, BlackBerry)
• Mint — from Intuit, this award-winning streamlined money management app brings all your bills, accounts and spending together in one spot. It also allows you to set goals and budgets and will alert you when you reach or exceed them. (iPhone, Android)

For more indispensable apps, check out these lists:

• David Pogue (The New York Times) — his 10 Favorite iPhone Apps
• Newsweek’s Top 10 Android Apps for 2011
• Time’s 50 Best iPhone Apps 2011
• Mashable’s 10 Apps to Watch in 2011

(Almost) No One Called This One

 

How little is .00003%?

Whether or not you are a sports fan, a March Madness Maniac, a college basketball aficionado, or just someone who loves a good yarn, this year’s NCAA Championship Tournament brought a whole new meaning to the term “Cinderella Story.”

“March Madness” is the marketing term coined by the minds responsible for promoting the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship, and a madness it has become. At the end of the college hoops season,  64 teams face off, hoping to make it through the “Final Four” to win the whole shebang.

But this March, the true miracle of athletic achievement was on display, as the top seeds and odds-on favorites went toppling off the bracket, pushed by determined underdogs.  Of the four divisional #1 seeds, Kansas, Duke, Pittsburgh and Ohio State (who was also ranked the overall #1 seed), not a single team made it to the Final Four. In fact, only one those teams, Kansas, made it to the prior round, known as the “Elite Eight.” Instead, the Final Four were Kentucky and Connecticut, the East 3^rd and West 4^th seeds respectively, and Butler and VCU, the 8^th and 11^th seeds from the Southeast and Southwest.

Just how much of an upset was the 2011 Final Four bracket where the Kentucky Wildcats faced the Connecticut Huskies and the Butler Bulldogs went up against the VCU Rams? According to a story on AOLNews.com, so much so that out of the 5.9 million people who filled out ESPN’s online bracket with their predictions, only two (2) predicted that outcome. Of the 3 million who completed Yahoo’s Tourney Pick ‘Em, only one got it right. Three people out of  nearly 9 million. That’s just .00003% of the fans who completed the brackets. Now, that’s a Cinderella story.

2011: The Streaming, Green, Mobile, 4G Year

 

Trends in Technology That Will Impact Consumers

 

[1]The past 10 years have seen significant technological advances and shifts. In the US, the number of cell phones in use more than doubled from a mere 109 million in 2000 to 262 million in 2008.  Walkmans have been replaced with iPods. Once upon a time, everyone wanted to know, will it be “VHS or BetaMax?” Big business was built on, and then bankrupted by, videotape technology. What’s ahead?

Experts are highlighting a few trends leading this year’s technology innovations. One site, TechWench.com, boils it down to these five: [2]

1. Commercialization of Personal Information— information about us, the consumer, is a goldmine that is simply too valuable to ignore, so the battle between privacy and profit will wage on.
2. Online Video— the essence of instant gratification, this technology will continue to complicate the relationship between content and advertising and compensation, as traditional viewing models, supported by commercials, shift and change.
3. 4G Network — as mobile devices gain in utility and popularity, fat data networks like 4G will impact not only how consumers think about traditional data connections like cable and DSL, but also where they feel confident accessing data (that is, no longer chained to their office or home for data-heavy applications).
4. Green Technology — the economy and energy prices will combine to push technological solutions that are both green and frugal. Look for more eco-friendly services and products as it becomes clear that green does not have to mean unprofitable to the seller, or more expensive to the buyer.
5. Mobile Applications — the transformation of our cell phone from a basic communication device to our base of operations, expected to do everything from wake us up to pay for our coffee means that every day will see new ways to add functionality and features to our mobile devices.

Deloitte, in its Technology, Media & Telecommunications Predictions for 2011, includes a few more trends they feel will shape the technology landscape this year:

1. Diversity — in both hardware and software, Deloitte sees the advent of variety offering consumers more choice on the one hand, as phones, tablets and computers all invade the mobile computing space, but also limiting choice on the other, as developers have to choose from multiple operating systems, such as iOS, Android, Linux, etc., to design for, or spend the resources to develop multi-platform solutions.
2. Tablets — these will transform the way we work and play, offering a new platform for media, presentations, data and more.
3. eGov — this year will continue to see the government implement more electronic resources for its citizens, building on current features such as eFiling of tax returns, online payment of parking tickets, etc.

Mobility and access to data will fundamentally drive innovation in the foreseeable future, as consumers become more and more used to the ability to get more done from wherever they are. Gone are the days when you were only available by phone when you were home or at the office. It’s no longer true that you can’t edit that spreadsheet if you don’t have your laptop with you. The trend appears to be that immediate access to all parts of our life will be with us all the time. Whether that’s progress depends on your perspective.

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[1] Image 1: http://www.thinkstockphotos.com/image/86540874

[2] Image 2: http://www.thinkstockphotos.com/image/108790856