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Let your dreams take flight…
Galileo from Ghislain Avrillon on Vimeo.
Lowe’s – How To Improve Curb Appeal & Value of Your House
The Case of the Two-Cent Candy
A couple of decades ago, consultant, writer, and “uberguru” of all things business, Tom Peters, told his story of the two-cent candy. There was a retail store in Palo Alto that had a box of candy available at checkout. For Peters, that candy was a last symbolic goodbye from store to customer — a gesture that says thank you and come again in simple sweet fashion for the price of two cents.
Peters revisits the story in his new book, The Little Big Things: 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence, a 400 page volume of 163 strategies and tips for successfully managing life and business. “Make ‘two-centing it’ part and parcel of ‘the way we do business around here.’ Don’t go light on the so-called substance—but do remember that … perception is reality … and perception is shaped by two-cent candies as much as by that so-called hard substance.”
Take a byte out of agriculture
Land continues to hold value for people in the business of farming crops and housing data for cloud computing. Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, and Ask.com already have data centers, not in urban sprawls but in rural areas in the Northwest, and now Facebook wants to claim its territory too.
Facebook, Inc. plans to build a 145,000 square foot data farm in Prineville, Oregon, a town that has had its share of economic heartache. High unemployment and the loss of five sawmills have burdened the town of about 10,000. Facebook’s expenditure of $175 million over the next three years will create much needed jobs and cash flow for residents.
So why Prineville? City Manager Steve Forrester says it’s a combination of “low cost land…and high voltage power lines nearby.” And of course, the weather. “The critical thing was our climate: low humidity and cool nights.”
Check out more details on the story, “Where Clouds Displace Forests: Oregon Town Is Latest in Northwest to Leverage Cheap Electric Power to Lure Data Farm,” in The Wall Street Journal.
Kitchen Remodel: Contractor-HGTV
