We have no one working fulltime on My Tours (though I suspect Glen Oli may beg to differ at various points), and were now at the point where its sort of make or break.

We’ve already lined up one trip to the US this year, but the BNZ Startup Alley provides an opportunity to essentially buy time for Glen to really push My Tours, while still being reasonably confident of feeding his expanding family.

The finalists were announced a week or two back, so this is sort of old news. But it did give me a chance to reflect on the year that’s been and the year ahead, and provides a good opportunity to check out the competition – and marvel once again at the range and calibre of local startups (especially the likes of Educa, who are a favorite customer of mine :))

I completely agree. People enjoy working with other people. Regardless of whether they are the cleaner or the CEO, there is no joy in working with people in an isolated business situation. It’s probably why people generally form groups of friends at work.

I think it boils down to whether or not you value the time you spend at work enough to form real relationships with the people you work with. I wonder if that’s the only downside to this article, because you can’t teach the ability to genuinely care about the people they work with, and you can’t fake that type of great customer service.

However, it IS cool.

iPoint2 is super simple, all it does is allow you to plot locations, and then, wherever you are, it will point to any of your saved locations and tell you the direction and distance you need to go to get there. We kept the interface suitably simple so it doesn’t get in the way of quickly adding points or viewing one. The only extra cool thing we added, was the ability for you to take a picture or upload one of each place, which the compass overlays. This personalises each of your places and can provide a visual reference for those of us who like that sort of thing :)

BUT what’s cool is how you can use it.

One of the initial thoughts is for all those praying to Mecca – it’s a very simple way of always knowing which direction to face. Or your favorite fishing spot, where your car is parked, where your best friend lives on the other side of the world…

What’s even cooler, is that as people have started to use it, they have come up with their own benefits. As this AppShopper review writes:

“Say you’re vacationing in an exotic location and want to head back to your hotel but also meander around a little on the way to see the sights. Or you’re exploring a large park and want to keep track of where you are in relation to the park’s entrance. iPoint2 is perfect for these types of situations and many others.”

I love it and highly recommend spending $1.99 and getting yourself pointing in the right direction.

For anyone who’s interested in their own mobile app, iPoint2 was developed by the geniuses at Able Technology

Turns out, starting your first horse dentistry business Germany proved fairly hard (for many reasons), and she is in mid plan-revision mode again.

When she wants to do something, she just goes with it, assuming that regardless of how things go, everything will work out fine.

When I compared myself with her, I came to the sad and alarming conclusion that Ive stopped doing that. It was quite a hard hitting fact and really hard to come to terms with. Ive sort of given up the joy of crazy risks for the comfort of knowing everything toddles along fine.

I never thought I would be that person, I think I know why I have become it, but I want to change.

So after weeks of soul searching and half thought out fears that Im somehow missing something… I think Im going to spend some serious time in the near future, thinking about what I really want to be doing…

I think Ive gone from feeling sort of lost and down to that old spark of excitement returning….

Fotoshop by Adobé from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

Again, from Amy…

After the recent unveiling of the scam that is glossy magazine pictures, the air brushing, the before and after shots that completely transform the subject… ‘Fotoshop by Adobe’ is a breath of fresh air.

This video rips into everything that we clearly believe about beauty products and celebrity photo shoots… While also making you laugh at yourself for buying into it all. When you switch a real product with Fotoshop, the whole idea of these ads suddenly just seems really lame.

Check out the video and the behind the scenes action here.

Her big trick? Quite simple really… In an age of electronic transactions, she bucked the tide and withdrew her allocated allowance every week. When that was gone, so was her ability to spend.

Ive managed to avoid debt (outside of business debt early on, and my mortgage) and I think as a result, Ive become somewhat flippant about money. I have a sneaky suspicion that while Im merrily not monitoring whats in my bank account, Im spending extra on things I really dont need.

So, after several conversations about the requirement for a break somewhere tropical this year, Ive decided to make a real effort to monitor my spending.

My budget is drawn up, my next pay is tomorrow and from now on, I will come complete with a wad of cash.

I keep re-writing this. I think maybe because last year was probably the first in a while with no one defining moment, and it sort of feels like it all went by so fast there’s nothing to look back on and say ‘yup, that was my 2011′.

One thing I think I really realised in 2011 is that life is short, routines are easy to fall into and as the years have gone by, Ive become more and more scared of change.

Instead of plotting out my 2012 during the holidays, I had some good conversations about how life would go if you got to start again, what is more important, being secure or really living? and how easy it would be now to settle into a new, smaller business (as much as Ive enjoyed it so far, I wonder if the smaller you get, the smaller your vision for what’s possible becomes).

So 2012 will hopefully be the year after the year of cruising. The year that Im refreshed and ready to get my teeth into something scary, challenging and life changing.

Who knows what I will be writing this time next year. I would like to think some of the things that are taking off now will be quite solid by then. I would like to think Ill be closer to feeling comfortable with my decisions and myself. But most of all, as with 2011, I hope to look back and say ‘wow, that was a fun year.’

Last week, I read this inspirational story, a timely reminder that life throws curveballs and there’s not a whole heck of a lot you can do about it. For some reason, the fact that this family is facing this right now, at christmas, feels just that much more unfair.

After several hours pondering this horrific lack of fairness, I am none the wiser, or at peace knowing that this sort of thing is just part of life. Its one of those fundamentally life changing stories that we should all change our lives as a result of, but never really do. Embrace every day, you just never know how many you have.

I’ve been trying to pull some lessons or actions out of this, but have failed dismally. However, if you have some spare cash or time this christmas, this family would love to put on a wedding. They and all the other families around the place who are struggling along are very much deserving of some of that christmas cheer that is what this season is actually about.

So off we went and ran 21.5kms on Saturday (yes that 0.5 extra is very important to me).

There were no land-speed records broken, it took us nearly 2.5 hours. But in our defense, we finished with a 6km (slight) uphill climb from Island Bay to Brooklyn and I really did not feel the need for speed.

As with all my fitness achievements though, instead of everyone I know patting me on the back and giving me the rest of the year off, I just get sent hopeful links to even more extreme activities.

So for anyone who needed it, this is proof that life isn’t fair :)

But also, that when you are feeling a bit off-kilter, the best possible thing you can do is push yourself and feel like you’ve achieved something pretty cool on an otherwise ordinary Saturday.

Boom! I’ve felt awesome veer since!

Powershop is a huge success story, with around 40,000 customers by the end of August this year, New Zealanders are really embracing the power that they have to control their energy bills, and enjoying significant savings as a result.

We set up Flower Power to jump on that revolutionary bandwagon. Flower Power has always been about the power of the masses (as an aside, it’s very hard to write a post about ‘Power’ as in electricity, and ‘Power’ as in control without getting the words all confused). As part of that, we have always wanted to get a picture of what our customers/supporters believe in, and do some cool stuff on their behalf, that none of us could do on our own.

The big, obvious one, is supporting people and organisations within our communities in a way that can go beyond the $20 donation that most of us can afford. At the beginning of this year, we wanted to get started, and then the second earthquake in Christchurch hit and there was absolutely no doubt that in New Zealand, the one and only option we had was to give a lump sum, on behalf of all of us to those who were suffering. So every single one of you who has bought Flower Power, contributed to the $5050 donation we made to the Christchurch Earthquake appeal.

Time has moved on, and christmas is fast approaching. We thought it was high time we resurrected our Facebook page and get it to start doing what it was meant to be doing all along – being the place where we could all get together and do some cool things. So this time, we’re leaving the choice to you: who do you think deserves a $1,000 boost this christmas? All you need to do is nominate them and encourage others to agree with you.

Whatever group gets the most votes after nominations close on December 5, will get a $1,000 cash to cover some of the extra costs christmas brings.

So get nominating: On facebook or go to our website and click that nifty banner at the bottom of the page to enter your favorite.

And if you have any ideas about what we could do in the future, we’re always open to them… And thanks for believing in power to the people!