Category: Body & Mind

Webby Connect Thoughts

I’m at the Webby Connect confernce (or summit) for TakingITGlobal and here’s some thoughts that I’m putting up on The Digital Divide Network:

The Webby Connect conference has a lot of smart people attending it, and that’s putting it mildly.

Today’s lineup of events started with looking at commercially generated content to increase brand exposure and ended with Ariannia Hufifington expressing her views on the sad state of American journalism. Don’t worry she has hope for the future – and rightly so!

As far as the digital divide and today went, there was some interesting things said. When discussing online brand strategies there was a lot of talk of using online video. The popularity of YouTube and other video sites has clearly shown that people want to watch streaming videos (particularly user-generated videos). After the talk, I went up to ask a few of the panelists if they ever thought about broadband constraints.
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Walking Towards Health

While I’m at a conference looking at how we can use the internet for the better, in Toronto there’s a conference on how to use public space for the better called Walk 21. The Toronto magazine Spacing has been blogging about it on their site and I particularly like their recent post on how walking improves health and mental well-being.

“I was also particularly struck by their awareness that walking is important for sustaining good mental as well as physical health. It was a message conveyed in a plenary session in the morning by Nova Scotia researcher Catherine O’Brien, but in Canada this concept is still in its initial stages, and public health departments are only just beginning to realize that maintaining good mental health can be as important as maintaining good physical health. Apparently they are way ahead of us in Australia. For example, VicHealth funds public art projects in low-income areas that will draw people into public space, to enhance mental well-being.”

Proper Back Stabbing Healthy

A recent study has looked at the effect of acupuncture treatments compared to more “conventional” treatments for lower back pain and have concluded that acupuncture is better. The German researchers split participants into many different groups receiving differnt kinds of treatment and those who received acupuncture got better results.

“The superiority of both forms of acupuncture suggests a common underlying mechanism that may act on pain generation, transmission of pain signals or processing of pain signals by the central nervous system and that is stronger than the action mechanism of conventional therapy,” the authors conclude.

Shop on the Fringe and be Healthy

Shopping on the periphery of grocery stores ensures that you’ll purchase healthier food than if you were to go down ever aisle. Life Hacker agrees with shopping outside the aisle.

That’s where all the fresh foods are. The less you find yourself in the central aisles of the grocery store, the healthier your shopping trip will be. Make it a habit–work the perimeter of the store for the bulk of your groceries, then dip into the aisles for staples that you know you need.

All Recipes has a list of ten ways that will help in your regular food shopping including buying organic and shopping on a full stomach.

Eat good to stay good 🙂

52 Happiness and Productivity Tips

For me productivity and happiness don’t always go hand-in-hand, but for some people it does. For a writer over at Zen Habits these two elements are very important elements for a good life, so much so that a list of 52 tips for happiness and productivity was written.

Number 6:

Find your passion. Another indispensable tip. This might be the second on my list of priorities. Find something you love to do, and your life will become immensely improved. You will love your work, the thing that you spend 40 hours (or more) a week doing. You will become more productive, procrastinate less, be less stressed. You will produce something you are proud of, and happy about.

Number 42:

Lose arguments. I know someone who just celebrated his 50th anniversary, and I asked him for his secret to a long and happy marriage. He told me, that if I ever get into an argument with my wife, to just shut up. What he meant, I think, is that I shouldn’t try to be right in every argument. I think this is a reminder many of us need, not just the married ones. But instead of just giving up the argument, instead of trying to be right, instead seek to understand. Really try to understand the other person’s position, to see it from their point of view. This little tip can lead to much happiness.