In the summer of 2010 a group of psychologists went on a three-week rafting trip down the Grand Canyon without any connectivity whatsoever. No email. No cell phones. It was just them, the river, and the great outdoors.

The purpose of their trip was to see if they observed in themselves a change. Would their thinking patterns be different after their time in nature? Would they grow frantic without access to email? Or would their minds become more tranquil?

According to an article about the trip in the New York Times, in just the few short weeks, the psychologists did notice a few changes in themselves. They felt calm and clear-sighted. They would not go far as to say their little experiment held to rigorous scientific standards, but they were ready to "recommend a little downtime as a path to uncluttered thinking."

It is becoming apparent that in some key ways our brains are like computer processors. That is, the more stuff we bombard them with, the more tired they tend to get. And when your brain is tired, it becomes harder for it to engage in high-powered tasks like creativity.

As a tonic to this ailment, I'd like to introduce the practice of focused solitude. It is sort of like what those scientists did, but on a smaller, shorter, and more local scale. 

Focused solitude sounds simple, but in reality it is not--especially if you have conditioned yourself to the hyperactive world in which we all live. What you do is find a place where you won't be interrupted. Your bedroom. Behind a shut door in your office. Your car. The stairwell. Once you've found your spot, you go there in the middle of your day, turn off your cell phone and relax. Simply don't do anything. Don't listen to music. Don't Tweet or Text. Try not to think about your problems.

This exercise works because it frees your mind up from the barrage of stimulus that it constantly gets. It's like hitting the reset button. 

After sitting for 30 minutes to an hour, get up, go back to work, and see how much easier it is to get stuff done. If you have the discipline to do this daily, it begins to work like meditation, and the positive results will compound.

Life is full of little and big problems that need solving, and often one of the biggest obstacles to conquering these problems is simply that you need the creative insight to do so.

Suppose, for example, that you wanted to find a way to boost your company's sales by $2,000 this month. Looking at the goal, you may be thinking, it seems possible, but I just don't know how to go about doing it.

Well, today, we're going to talk about a well-known trick that many people use to unleash their creative might. The technique has many names--free writing, power writing, or even steam writing--and it works regardless of whether you think of yourself as a writer.

First a little background. 

Power writing has been used by many of the great thinkers throughout the ages. Leonardo Da Vinci, for example, who was a master of many crafts, found it to be a helpful mechanism for getting out of a rut. What power writing does is help you tap in to  your unconscious mind. 

According to Freud, your unconscious mind is a repository for socially unacceptable ideas, wishes, desires, traumatic memories, and painful emotions, which are all put out of your consciousness by psychological repression. Jung developed the concept beyond the negative, however, saying that it is merely a reservoir for all things which you once knew, but which have since dropped out of your immediate memory--or, in other words, been forgotten. Creative thinkers have always recognized it as a source for depth, something that is a part of your mind but that is fleeting and hard to grasp. Cormac Macarthy once described his subconscious as a committee. If he had a problem in one of his books, he'd read and sleep on it, letting the committee of his subconscious go to work.

Freud said the unconscious mind could be interpreted through your dreams, meditation, verbal slips ( the Freudian Slip), or, most importantly today, through random association. The important thing to note here is that your subconscious can be tapped into, and once you hit the source, it is a wellspring for new ideas. 

Power writing works because it brings a bunch of random thoughts out so they can later be associated by your logical mind.

Here's what you do:

At the top of a notepad write the source of your problem. In our case it would be, "Boost sales by $2,000." This will be a general association to begin working with.

After you've done that, set a timer for 10 minutes and simply begin writing. Write everything that pops into your head, regardless of whether it is associated with your problem. Write at random, without stopping to look back or revise. Keep your pen on the paper. If it sounds stupid write it anyways. Don't worry about spelling, punctuation, handwriting, or anything. Just free your mind and write. You unconscious mind has the problem, so don't concentrate on staying on track--concentrate solely on getting your thoughts out. If they happen to be associated with the problem, good, if they're not, that's good, too.

Ten minutes may seem like a long time, and you may run out of ideas. But you should still write. Write, "blah, blah, blah." Write, "I'm stuck!"

When the timer is up, put your pen down, massage your cramping hand. What you've done over the past 10 minutes is written while in thrall. You've tapped into that superconscious (or unconscious) mind that is so elusive. This is not to say you were immersed in the subconscious for the entirety of the assignment, but I like to think you're hopping back and forth across the border of conscious and subconscious. Simply writing and finishing thoughts, letting the vocabulary and the sentence structure carry out your thoughts for you, stokes your creativity.

Now you can go back over what you've written to cherry pick the good ideas. 

One final thing. For some people, brilliant thoughts bound right out at their first power-writing session. For others, it takes a more disciplined approach. Rather than doing it once, carve out 10 minutes to do it every day. If you have the patience, good ideas will begin to filter from through your unconscious mind to your consciousness.

In the past few weeks, three big competitors have arisen in the realm of online storage for Windows users: Dropbox, Microsoft SkyDrive, and Google Drive. On the surface, each service has similar offerings. But depending on how you plan to use your online storage, one may be a better fit than the others.

What follows is a review based on features and usage scenarios. 

First of all, it is important to envision what you'll use online storage for. Here are the main uses:

Cloud-based File Backup - Personal file backup is the ability to keep your important files in a folder that is connected to the cloud and continuously backed-up and synchronized. That way if your local hard drive crashes, you have an online backup.

Access Files From Multiple Devices - Since everything is continually updated and synchronized in the the cloud, your files can be accessed in their most up-to-date states via a web browser. That means they're available on your tablet, mobile or PC.

Create and Edit Documents - Google Drive and Microsoft SkyDrive let you create and edit docs in your browser. These docs are compatible or exportable to the most common word processors for eventual printing. Since everything is synced, you can edit docs on all of your devices--start one on your PC at home, finish it on your laptop in the airport. And you can even collaborate on these docs by giving people access to them in the cloud. You could, for example, work as a team editing an essay in the cloud, and each member of the team would see the updates made almost immediately.

Share Photos and Galleries - You can upload your digital photos to these services and they'll display in gallery formats. You can share these photos with other users in the cloud. 

File Sharing - You can set up sharing for folders and, as the creator, you decide who has access to to those folders. This is a good alternative to emailing attachments because of auto-syncing and the fact that people do not have to download attachments (files are shared, instead, via links). 

Now that we have a good understanding of the basic uses for online storage, we can compare/contrast Google Drive, SkyDrive, and Dropbox. 

Dropbox:

Storage GB - You get 2GB of free storage and additional storage of 500 MB per referral--up to 18GB. Additional storage can also be purchased on yearly or monthly rates. Pro 50 is 50 GB for $9.99 a month or $99 a year. Pro 100 is 100 GB for $19.99 a month or $199 a year.

Where Dropbox is weakest is that it doesn't allow document creation or editing. It does, however, offer a nifty photo gallery, which can be easily shared with other Dropbox users, via email, and with friends on Facebook and Twitter.

It's available on Windows, Mac, Linux and mobile, including Android, BlackBerry, and iOS.

Microsoft SkyDrive:

Storage GB: 7GB for free upon signing up and current users get a 25GB loyalty reward.

Paid storage (annually): 20 GB for $10; 50 GB $25; 100 GB $50.

Microsoft has a very good photo gallery viewer which can easily be used to share photos within SkyDrive, email, or on social networks.

Create and edit documents using Office Web Apps. This works seamlessly with Microsoft products.

Another unique feature is that you can remotely access desktops that have the SkyDrive PC client installed. Using a feature called "fetch."

Synchronization with other devices and platforms is very good too. It works on Windows, Mac, iOS, Windows Mobile and Android via third-party apps

Google Drive

Storage GB: You get 5GB for free fir signing up.

Paid Storage: 25GB $30 a year; 100 GB for $60 a year

Google Drive's weak spot is that it doesn't allow photo sharing. You must do this through Picassa and/or Google+. Also, you can't share with Facebook.

Basically this is the next generation of Google Docs, which is going to help Google because Docs is already very popular and it fits so snugly in with the rest of Google's products--search, Gmail, Chrome etc.

Works with Mac, Windows (with Windows app), and Android.

Someone once said that good writing is like a good painting; as a good painting contains no unnecessary lines, so should good writing contain no unnecessary words.

Circumlocution is when you use a number of words, often woven into common phrases, when a single word will do. Learning to cut out circumlocutions will help make your writing and speaking more vigorous and therefore more productive.

With that in mind, here are ten common circumlocutions that can be replaced with a single word.

1. at this point in time - now

2. due to the fact that - because

3. with regard to - regarding, about, concerning

4. with the exception of - except or excepting

5. as a result of - because

6. no later than (date) - by (date)

7. in order to - to

8. under the direction of - directed by

9. in the event of - if

10. in a timely fashion - quickly

Circumlocutions come up frequently in speech and from that point they've worked their way into the written word. In the former, they can be forgiven, since speech often requires a certain verbosity for emphasis. But in writing, the listed phrases should always be supplanted with something more concise.

These are just a few of the dozens of overly verbose statements in the English language. Are there any circumlocutions that you hear all too frequently in your life? We'd love to hear about them in the comments.

Consumers are influenced more by what their friends say than what ads are online, at least according to recent Nielsen research. The Global Trust in Advertising report shows that 92% percent of consumers trust what their friends or family recommends more than any other form of advertising. With consumer confidence in more traditional forms of advertising on the decline and a huge growth in the likelihood that people are going to ask each other about a business or service, it leaves a lot of us wondering how can we be sure we're getting recommended?

The research from Neilson isn't surprising at all as a large portion of revenue is generated simply from people recommending us to other businesses. We've worked for ten years to build trust with our customers and take advantage of the word of mouth recommendations. If you're going to adopt a policy of encouraging recommendations, you have to keep a couple of things at the top of your list. When you have the trust of a customer that is willing to say Yes, call them, they will take good care of you that's a promise between you and that customer to do a couple of things for everyone.

Ask For Recommendations

While a lot of people still shy away from asking for help them grow their business, it's clear from this research that people are asking their friends where to get certain services. There's nothing wrong with encouraging your customers to recommend your services to others as long as you're not pestering people about it. There's no harm in saying hey, if you like what we're doing, please let your friends know.

Customer Service

When trying to catch the word of mouth referrals to your business you have to be ready to provide a level of customer service that no one else is going to do. Here, we don't have phone trees or long hold times for our customer, which tends to be a welcome surprise. We don't mind that reaction, since it means we're doing something with our customers that no one else is doing.

Be Consistent

Our beliefs and principals apply across the board. When we hire a new employee, it doesn't matter if they are hired as a writer, developer, or sales representative, they are first trained on the customer service lines before anything else. Why? Because there's a chance anyone in our office can get a customer on the phone at any time and it's important that anyone who has a phone on their desk can help the customer. We made a promise to not have to transfer our customers around to different departments to get a question answered and while it's always mattered to us to keep this promise; it matters to our customers too.

Another interesting note on this information from Neilson is that the things you pay for online seem to be the least trusted. Once upon a time, buying advertisements was something that could bring you business and now it looks like the funnel is changing from advertisement to word of mouth. Companies that are get people to talk about them are doing better than companies that rely solely on advertising.

Trust matters when it comes to helping consumers make decisions. What are you going to develop those relationships with customers?

Gogo, the industry leader for in-flight WiFi, recently filed for its initial public offering, in which it hopes to raise $100 million. The S-1 filing, sent in December 2011, highlights the opportunity for Gogo's in-flight WiFi, and it also gives insight into the future of this freshly pioneered market--Internet connected flights.

Gogo launched in 2008 with 30 Internet-connected commercial aircraft. By September of 2010, it had connected 1,177 planes to Gogo Connectivity, the company's in-flight WiFi service. This represented about 85% of all internet-enabled North American commercial aircraft at the time. Since then, the company has installed Connectivity on 146 additional aircraft and signed contracts to install Gogo on about 525 more, which it hopes to get done by the end of 2012.

Contracts are good for 10 years; the earliest contracts expire in 2018--which is good because airlines are locked in, yet risky because some airlines with which it has contracts, like American Airlines, are bankrupt. Will they renew in 2018, or will they still be insolvent? With roughly 1,850 Gogo-connected airplanes in North America by the end of 2012, the majority of planes will still be without WiFi. According to the filing, only 16% of North American aircraft and 6% of global aircraft are WiFi ready.

That means the market is prime for exploitation, and Gogo, being the industry incumbent, is poised to make inroads. In the S-1, the company discussed expanding its commercial aircraft footprint. To do so it will seek new partnerships and leverage full-fleet connectivity, which are deals that see Gogo installing Internet on each aircraft in an airline's entire fleet. Apparently, Gogo is uniquely poised to do these types of installations on the cheap, which will keep it as the industry leader going forward. But getting the planes equipped is only a small part of the battle.

Based on the filing, passengers have been slow to adopt WiFi in commercial airlines. Consider the numbers: since 2008 about 350 million passengers have flown on flights with Gogo connectivity, yet the company has provided only 15 million sessions, give or take. That means fewer than 5 percent of people who fly on connected flights use the Internet. Yet despite this slow take-up, the filing sites a study by Forrester Research which says in-flight internet usage should increase rapidly over the next five years, from about 15.6 million North American sessions in 2011 to 96.9 million by 2015.

The Takeaway

Gogo is in a good position to take this market and become profitable, yet it is not without risk. The company is increasing its profit per customer (from $0.26 in 2010 to $0.41 in 2011) and revenue (up 89% from 2010). But it still has an operating loss of more than $430 million on $282 million in sales. The key, then, will be to continue expanding into more airplanes and airlines, which are want to offer ancillary services for fees, as they themselves are struggling and vying among stiff competition. The biggest risk seems to me to be the loss of a major contract, such as American Airlines or Delta in 2018, which is not out of the picture in the rocky airline industry. And in the end, it Gogo must find a way to get more passengers connected, something which seems more and more likely as more and more people buy tablets, laptops, and smartphones. To read more, see this article by Dan Frommer on SplatF.

Feed a set of data to the computers at Narrative Science and they will detect significance and write a story, complete with turns of phrase, based on the facts. A story, in other words, written entirely by computers. Narrative Science, a Chicago-based firm, generated its first story in early 2010 by taking the stat sheets from a Northwestern Wildcats baseball game and feeding them to their computer. The computer took the data, framed it out into a narrative structure, and cranked out a grammatically correct, readable story.

Wherever there is data, according to the company's founders, the computers' software can structure it into a story. For the time being, computers are ideal for reporting on stories that are heavy with hard information, such as sports stories or earnings reports. For example, Forbes currently uses Narrative Science to generate dozens of daily profiles on companies. Looking at one of today's profiles, for instance, of a company called Amphenol, the machine used its artificial intelligence to order data into a coherent narrative, telling readers all of the following: What to Expect, Trends to Watch For, Analyst Ratings, Competitors, and Recent Price Movement. "A decline in revenue in the fourth quarter of the last fiscal year snapped a streak of three consecutive quarters of growing revenue," according to the machine, reporting for Forbes. "The 0.1% revenue decline in the most recent quarter can be compared with three quarters prior when it had been rising. It increased 8.9%in the third quarter of the last fiscal year, 15% in the second quarter of the last fiscal year and 22% in the first quarter of the last fiscal year."

As the software improves, it will be able to use its stored data to make inferences about the world, which is basically what a writer does. Then it will give the inferences an angle through which it will enter the story. Using its massive trove of data, and if the machine is programmed with a set of rules--for example, to write in active voice, to vary cadences and sentence lengths--in other words, programming them with all of our knowledge about language and literary narrative--the machines could actually make refined literary pieces. Nonetheless, in the realm of art, it is hard to imagine that a machine gathering data could create something with feeling. According to Joe Fassler, who wrote about Narrative Science in The Atlantic, good writers can still rest at ease: "How, then, could any machine begin to understand the ways we love and hunger and hurt? The net contributions of science and art, history and philosophy, can't parse the full complexity of a human instant, let alone a life. For as long as this is true, we'll still have a role in writing." Photo via Narrative Science.

Our business is located in Fort Worth, Texas, so naturally we know what's going on in our local communities. Many of us commute from different areas of the metropolis into our fair offices. Last week, a few of those commuters watched with the rest of the nation as tornadoes moved through the neighborhoods of Lancaster and Arlington. The Arlington residents here (myself included) in the office froze in shock as an EF2 tornado ripped through highly populated districts. I want to first say that I have never been more proud to be a resident of Arlington, Texas. The City of Arlington, the police department, fire departments, managers, local business, and citizens have been absolutely amazing in light of a disaster that could have been much worse. There were no fatalities in our city and given what some of the damage area looks like - it very easily could have been a situation where we were not just dealing with the loss of property.

I know this because I drive to my home every day through the disaster area. I know this because my mother's home was missed by the twister by only a couple of streets. I know this because I was watching the coverage from my safe office in Fort Worth, and frantically texting my friends and family as they reported the loss of power at their locations. It took only twenty-four hours for the city to have a response center open, safeguards in place for citizens who needed repairs, and setting up special instructions for getting into damaged neighborhoods. With the popularity of social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and even YouTube, the city offices and police departments of Arlington have both been incredibly active, but in very different ways - and in light of this disaster, I think that the City of Arlington missed an opportunity to use social media to connect with residents.

Again, this is not to say that they didn't respond quickly and effectively, I just think they missed a chance to connect with individual residents. On the city website they created a special Tornado Recovery section to keep citizens updated and to give news about the ongoing recovery effort in the city. Their Twitter account (@CityofArlington) is a running stream of messages communicated to citizens who have questions.

What's missing? The Twitter account has a number of @ responses directed to the city and their tornado recovery blog has received some comments - some in praise of the wonderful job that the city has done, some that offer volunteer services, and even have questions about when and where citizens need to put items for pick up. The response? Nothing. Not even a quick response to say "thanks" or direct residents with questions to the place on the website where they can find the information they are looking for. I am of the opinion that if you're going to be on social media, it's especially important to be "there" in the event of a disaster.

On the business side of social media, we talk all of the time about the importance of handling customer service needs quickly and that if we are on a social media network, we need to be prepared to respond to anything that comes through that channel. In contrast to the city, look at the Arlington Police Department's twitter stream (@ArlingtonPD). They respond to questions, thank people for kind tweets, and even do "ride-alongs" via Twitter. My hope is that if / when disaster strikes in our community again, we take full advantage of the communication channels that are available. Residents of a community often view themselves as customers – choosing to live and play in a city that welcomes them. It wasn’t that long ago that another weather crisis struck in the form of ice and snow that made Super Bowl activities very difficult – and the city of Arlington caught national flack for an act of nature that was very much out of their hands.

The biggest take away from this is to listen. Social media networks provide that open channel and if you, your business, or even your city is going to be on a social network – you have to be willing to respond. Otherwise – what is the point?

A new report from the Startup Genome project listed the 25 cities with the most active startup ecosystems in the world. To arrive at the results, The Startup Genome project drilled down into data from more than 13,000 young companies, all of which used the project's Startup Compass, a tool for benchmarking a company's performance. "As we’ve started to dig into the data we have begun to uncover valuable insights into the strengths and weaknesses of different startup ecosystems," according to the blog announcement.

The point of these results, then, is to give insight to entrepreneurs deciding where to start their company, investors deciding where to allocate capital, and larger companies determining where to look for acquisitions. With the detailed data, however, the list is more than just a typical top 25 group. The Startup Genome Project offers insight that is specific to the questions entrepreneurs might be asking. For instance, Silicon Valley ranked number one, but the Startup Compass found that it was extremely ambitious and therefore carried greater risk. So while Silicon Valley may be the number one spot, it may not be the best place for every startup to go. Meanwhile, London, the number three city, was found to be a great spot for launching project management tools or e-commerce startups. Based on the criteria, the top 25 cities for startup cities are as follows: (Click this link for a full list of the 22 criteria, with explanations.

1. Silicon Valley (San Francisco, Palo Alto, San Jose, Oakland)

2. New York City

3. London

4. Toronto

5. Tel Aviv

6. Los Angeles

7. Singapore

8. Sao Paulo

9. Bangalore

10. Moscow

11. Paris

12. Santiago

13.Seattle

14. Madrid

15. Chicago

16. Vancouver

17. Berlin

18. Boston

19. Austin

20. Mumbai

21. Sydney

22. Melbourne

23. Warsaw

24. Washington D.C.

25. Montreal