Early Bird...

Does the early bird get the worm...or work? If you haven't seen or heard of Aviary before, this is quite interesting. It is an online answer to Photoshop and the whole creative suite. Built on the Adobe AIR platform, in beta, it will be intersting to see where this leads.  And given that in the past..oh decade or so, Photoshop has had no real rival, this has potential for being interesting. Aviary is a a suite of online web applications for artists. I haven't had much time to play, but it certainly does look interesting. You can sign up for the current beta at http://a.viary.com. Or check out all of the other tools from Aviary.

Check out this page or the youtube video morphing Emma Watson int a biker dude.  

And now...the rest of the story?

After yesterdays controversial Dove "Real Beauty" ad scandal, it appears that things have been cleared a bit, or at least that is the spin they are giving. Today, AdAdge has an article stating that the statements from the retoucher were taken out of context and that the "beauties" were not retouched.

A quote from the AdAge Article:

"As directed by Ms. Leibovitz and Ogilvy & Mather, [the Pro-Age] photographs were retouched for dust and color correction," he said. "I did not mean to suggest that the women's shape, size, facial features or age were retouched. Consistent with the intent of Dove, Ogilvy & Mather, Annie Leibovitz, and my own guiding philosophy, the integrity of the photographs and the natural and unique beauty of the women were maintained."

In her statement, provided by Unilever, Ms. Leibovitz said, "Let's be perfectly clear -- Pascal does all kinds of work -- but he is primarily a printer -- and only does retouching when asked to. The idea for Dove was very clear at the beginning. There was to be NO retouching, and there was not."

Kickstart your day! or...the post of a thousand links

As many of you know, I like to reading (OK, listen to) motivational books, and have a number of them listed in my "Books worth reading" or my "Reading for enjoyment" lists. Something about them just keep you going from day to day, looking for the potential in each day while looking optimistically toward tomorrow. Well, a couple of weeks ago, I came a cross a site that offers a daily video dose of just that, and for free. And better yet, if you sign up, each week day, a little 2-3 minute gem is delivered right to your inbox.

The creator of these little gems is Michael Chriswell and the site is called KickstartMyDay.com.

Well, recently in one of the daily videos, Michael touched on gratitude and how he had two daughters in the NICU, and that it was hard to get down on his situation and feel sorry for himself, because all around him, there were other families dealing with worse. His message was to be thankful for your problems. See the video here: http://www.kickstartmyday.com/videos/2008/5/2/be-thankful-for-your-problems.html That was a message that really resonated in me, so much so that I decided to post a response to the video on his site reaffirming those thoughts with my story as well. My daughter, Hope,  was born prematurely and weight 15.6 ounces at birth. And while there were some really difficult days, each time we looked around that NICU and saw other babies much larger than she, losing their battles, or realizing the long road ahead. And each time, we were thankful for the problems that we had, and today, Hope is 11 and happy and healthy and just a completely wonderful kid and we her family are much stronger for having had that experience.

Michael saw my post and replied to me and we became fast friends. So this week after my Mastermind book group (reading Think and Grow Rich and moderated by Jodee Bock) in which we had a discussion on making decisions and fear of failure, I thought I would querie Michael to get his perspective. He posted his reply here:http://www.kickstartmyday.com/blog/a-great-question-from-a-ks-subscriber.html and followed up with today's Kickstart video: http://www.kickstartmyday.com/videos/2008/5/9/take-some-risks.html.

So, what kind of risks are you willing to take? And your fear of failure?

Remember, the only failures you have in life are those mistakes you fail to learn from.