The Greatest Plant In The World Is Ready To Change Everything
There is a perfect storm brewing. The Green movement is in full gear; companies are looking for ways to display how environmentally friendly they, and their products, are. They are also looking for ways to offset the rising fuel costs. Couple these with the fastest growing multi-use plant in the world and you can expect a huge change.
The plant is bamboo. Consider these facts (pulled from Wikipedia and various other sources):
- Is the fastest growing plant in the world, growing three to four feet a day with spurts as high as one to two feet in one hour. This allows it to be harvested as wood in 1-5 years, as opposed to 40 years for oak.
- Can grow in almost any climate.
- The shoots are edible, healthy, and are widely used in Asian cuisine (and are also crafted into utensils).
- Fiber is made into paper in China.
- Releases 35% more oxygen into the atmosphere than most hardwood trees.
- Every part of the plant can be used for something.
- Requires no fertilizer, pesticides or herbicides.
- In Asia, it is used as a source of potassium and to directly treat infections.
- When treated, forms a lightweight durable board. This wood is used to craft everything from furniture to bridges, flooring, boats, skateboards and musical instruments with a million uses in between.
- Fiber is used to make yarn and fabric. Due to the soft nature, it is often crafted into clothing and bed sheets.
If I told you that these facts belong to the easiest growing plant in the world, you would likely reply with “Why the hell isn’t everything made out of bamboo then!?”
Good question.
After doing some Googling, I really can’t find reasons why we don’t use bamboo. The only negative I can find is that it is hard to control from spreading. Not just in your yard and neighbors yard, but it can begin to grow under your house and pavement too. Ouch.
But why is that stopping us from using bamboo? Bamboo isn’t something you’d place in your own garden next to tomatoes, carrots and lettuce. This would be used as a mass resource by manufacturers. It would be grown in miles upon square miles of fields.
In the end I still can not find a reason why the U.S. has not hogtied bamboo. I think it’s only a matter of time before it will.
Sooner rather than later too.
Bamboo isn’t the only multi-use plant in town though. Sorghum is becoming chic in the housing industry as well. Though it’s just a grass commonly used in foods, what companies are finding is that a byproduct can be used to make beautiful trendy wood such as Kerei boards. They are turning waste into a valuable product. Now that’s a powerful sentence any company would love to claim.
A third, more familiar, resource you can throw into this trend is wheat. Yes, wheat. It’s being turned into a ‘strawboard‘ used in building luxury furniture.
Bamboo is a versatile product that domainers can tackle in two different ways: one large bamboo site covering all the products; or a series of smaller sites dedicated to different industries that bamboo can cover. Either way, keep an eye out for bamboo domains.
Is This Megatrend The Biggest Of 2008? The Decade? The Future?
It seems like every single day I’m seeing stories about robots on sites like Digg, BoingBoing and Trendhunter. Many variations of robots, not just the traditional humanoid that frequents sci-fi movies and books.
Speaking of movies, over the past decade or two robots were more of a childlike glee much like pirates and ninjas are. The extent of robot info all came from movies: Johnny 5, Star Wars, Transfomers, Terminator, Robocop among many others. This isn’t a fad either, as the new movie WALL-E (Johnny 5 look alike) will likely help skyrocket robots into the top tier of mainstream once again.
But for the past year or so I’ve read many articles of non-conventional robots fulfilling actual needs and doing jobs that humans can’t, or won’t, do. Whether they be important jobs, such as Dextre on the space station, or tedious jobs for the luxurious, like the golf caddy, real robots are being put to actual use.
Doing a search for “robot” on Digg reveals that there have been over 30 articles relating to robots on the FRONT PAGE this month alone. A couple were duplicates, such as WALL-E news, but that’s still one article per day. There have been about 130 articles that made the front page so far this year.
Not convinced with just Digg? Here is a search for “robot” on BoingBoing. Gizmodo has 52 robot related posts in June. 52! Engadget has 8 this month. What do BoingBoing, Gizmodo and Engadget have in common? They are three of the top blogs on the net.
Trendhunter put together a nice list of the Top 30 robots of 2008. Some of these are absolutely amazing. Other recent news has robots exploring antarctica, being romantic interests and girlfriends, and imitating fish.
This, to me, is a megatrend.
With all this said, it’s puzzling to me that the term hasn’t moved up on the Google Trend report.
Robots are steamrolling ahead and there are gobs of opportunity for domainers to speculate in domain names, fully develop or just make mini-sites. Geodomainers have opportunity as well, with names like Geo+Robotics.com and Geo+AI.com.
Is this the biggest trend of 2008? Or even the decade? The future?
What do you think?
Trend 20 Years In The Making Is Still Picking Up Steam
I’m sure some of you are well aware of Steampunk, and may even be big fans (I am). What actually sparked this post was that I used the word the other day at work, and drew a bunch of blank stares. So even though Steampunk has just about hit mainstream, it’s not in everyones vocabulary quite yet. I think that will change.
I won’t go too deep, as Wikipedia can take care of that for me, but Steampunk is sci-fi/fantasy mashed into the Victorian era, and focuses on steam as the primary source of power. You probably know it best from Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days. The Steampunk Workshop is one of the best sites dedicated to this ‘movement.’
BoingBoing, who, according to Technorati, is the fifth most popular blog on the net, is crazy about steampunk.
Steampunk has inspired loads of DIYers and artists who proudly display how-to’s all over the internet. Just do a Google search, you’ll see.
Steampunk has hit mainstream already in different ways, from the movies Steamboy, Howl’s Moving Castle and The Golden Compass, to video games like the gnomes in World of Warcraft. Even though this trend picked up in the 90’s, I think this is just the beginning. Mixing steam powered engines with computers is just genius and every year Steampunk grows larger and larger.
So, why should a domainer care? I think this is a niche worth developing in, and not just domain name speculating. This has a huge do-it-yourself following. A forum attached to a DIY or art site would do quite well if you put some hard work into it. People love to share their Steampunk finds and original work.
Though there are some great sites dedicated to this gem, there’s plenty of room for more.
13 Firefox 2 Add-ons I Use for Domaining and Trendwatching
Just in time for Firefox 3 I bring you the best add-ons for Firefox 2! There is a reason for this, of course. I’m a big fan of Firefox. You just can’t beat the speed and customization. Sure, it does have flaws, but the benefits far outweigh those.
I know you have read a dozen of these lists thus far… but something tells me you will find one or two on my list that you’ve never heard of.
I use quite a few add-ons for my trendwatching and domaining (Click on the photo for a zoomed view of my browser). I can’t simply make the jump to FF3 until some of my favorite add-ons are made compatible with the new version. That got me thinking: perhaps I should share what I hold so dearly. So, here is a list of Firefox 2 add-ons that I use:
- Torrent Finder Toolbar - Simply type in what you are looking for in the toolbar and it will search oodles of torrent sites.
- Smart Bookmarks Toolbar - My favorite add-on. With Firefox 2 you can drop bookmarks onto a toolbar. This add-on will only show your bookmarks’ icons; and you can even shrink those. I have 60+ bookmarks on my Firefox and this makes it easily navigable… some sites just need to get favicons (It’s driving me crazy! Yes, I’m talking to you SimplyGeo.com, NameBio.com, DNCleaner.com, Freshdrop.net, GeoDomainer.com!). Unfortunately you can’t assign your own icons to your bookmarks.
- Tab Mix Plus - Allows you to heavily customize your tabs.
- Smart PageRank Toolbar - The live Pagerank and Alexa stop working after a while. But I really like the “Valuate” button. Clicking on that will get you a registered date, expiry, # backlinks, # indexed pages and internet archive link. There is also an appraisal tool, but it’s as useless as all the others.
- SEOpen - Toolbar that has backlinks and indexed pages for Google, Yahoo, MSN and Alexa. Also has a link analyzer and keyword density tool.
- Screengrab - Captures screenshots. Allows you to customize the size of the screenshot.
- Right Click Link - Highlight a word or words, then right click it and select open. This ‘cleans’ the selection by taking out the spaces, opens it in a new tab and adds a .com at the end. I use this all the time to check instant availability of keywords I see in articles.
- Restarter - Restarts Firefox. This is valuable if you use Firefox v2; I don’t know if v3 needs it. This comes in handy if Firefox starts eating too much memory and needs a restart, allowing you to keep all your tabs on the restart.
- PDF Download - Couple this with PDF-XChange and you will stop hating PDFs.
- No Script - A blocker of everything. For sites I visit all the time I give permanent permission. For sites I’ll visit once I’ll give temporary permission that will expire when I leave. Also blocks popups and hijackings.
- FasterFox - Makes the browser faster. This may be outdated now.
- Delicious - Adds Delicious and a toolbar that shows your last 10 or so Delicious bookmarks.
- Download Statusbar - Uses the statusbar as a download manager
Luxurious Trend For The Geodomainer
There isn’t a huge market for buying or renting private islands. However, it is a highly targeted consumer. And when someone has that much money, the money doesn’t even matter.
Just about everyone has had the fantasy at some point in their lives of owning their own island. Celebrities such as Richard Branson, David Copperfield, Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio (and his eco-resort) have been in the news recently regarding their own private islands.
Of course, owning an island isn’t neccessarily new as celebrities and millionaires have been buying them for a long time. If you would like to buy one, then you should read this how-to guide. The growing trend is actually renting private islands (or parts of them) for weddings, secluded romantic getaways and parties.
A couple articles/sites worth researching:
- 10 private islands you can’t afford to live on
- Forbes most expensive islands of 2007
- Private Islands Online
- Private Islands Blog
Good luck finding any private island/resort affiliate plans; I couldn’t find any. The way to monetize this would be to list these islands with reviews, and sign up with a flight affiliate.