As far back as I can remember, I have always been very close with my grandmother. We are more alike than any other two people in the family and she has always been really fun to hang out with, as well as the kind of wise woman that always has the best advice no matter what kind of trouble you find yourself in.

A few years ago, she invited me to go play Bingo with her and all of her friends. It was a weekly thing for them and since most of them didn’t get out of the house much, they always made a big deal out of it and had a really great time. I had never played Bingo before, but I knew it would be fun if her friends were anything like her, so I accepted the invitation and went with her the next night. 

It was an absolute blast and the ladies were all wonderful, fun, spirited older women. It soon became a weekly event for me as well and I always had a great time hanging out with my grandmother and all of her friends. Since they were all grandmothers and had all been going to the same Bingo night together for years, they called themselves Team Grandma. They even had team colors and little team Bingo pins that they all wore.

So, last year for Christmas, my grandmother and I decided that we wanted to get each of them something cute and fun that would be another part of the team wardrobe. I went online and found24hourwristbands.com, which had silicone bracelets in Team Grandma’s colors. So, I grabbed my laptop and headed over to my grandmother’s house to show her what I had found.

She loved the idea and we immediately placed an order for 10 silicone bracelets in the team colors, each with “Team Grandma” printed on it. They were very affordable, even for such a small order, and the every woman on the team absolutely loved them. Now, every week the whole team (including me) can be seen proudly wearing our Team Grandma silicone wristbands and shouting Bingo!

So here I was faced with the overwhelming task of choosing the perfect wristband for our group. What color did I want? Red, pink, green, orange, purple, yellow, red, blue, black, white, or a mixture of colors? What message did I want the wristbands to say? What size did we need? Could I design the wristbands myself? Did I want the bands color filled, or the message raised on the inside? How many wristbands did I want to order? Decisions, decisions. Wristband shopping was harder than I thought it would be. But I finally made my decision. I would order green wristbands, with the following message: “Aren’t you glad you’re not green from our cookies?”

After going through just about every gift possibility I could imagine, I decided to get her a bright blue silicone wristband. I had the wristband for my girlfriend neatly wrapped up, and when I took her out to dinner that night she opened it. Her eyes light up and she told me how excited she was to wear something that I gave her. She was so happy I remembered her favorite color was blue, and I told her I remembered because her eyes were so blue.

Almost a year later, my girlfriend still has the silicone wristband I gave her for our one month anniversary. She said she has always treasured it and while she was away for summer vacation, she wore it everyday to remind her how much I care for her. She also loves it because it’s so fashionable, and looks great with just about anything she wears. For our one year anniversary, I am going to get her more silicone wristbands, inscribed, and telling her how much she still means to me.

Since most businesses do not have tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend on marketing – you need to think of a better and more affordable way of getting your message out.

If you have ever tracked any amount of your marketing you will agree that word of mouth marketing is by far the highest conversion rate and the most likely method to establish long-term loyal customers. 

Great! Word of mouth is fantastic, right? But how do you get people to talk about you and your business? The easiest way is not always the best way. You can rest assured that doing bad business will create word-of-mouth. In that situation, the statement ‘Any News Is Good News’ is flawed.

Another method of promoting word of mouth marketing is through providing a unique experience that produces customers that cannot help but tell your story to others. This is a wonderful way of doing business and is highly recommended.

However, even with the most unique offering, eventually life will happen and people will move on from talking about you. That is why we recommend having people wear your message. Silicone wristbands are a popular accessory and they prompt others to talk about you and your business.

The conversation is simple and often initiated by a friend – ‘So, what is that one for?’ and then the story unfolds. You are no longer interrupting people with your marketing, but you are being invited in to their time and world.

Increase your mind share, increase your word of mouth marketing, and do it in a way that makes every customer a raving fan – let them wear it!

I downloaded and tried out 20 solar-related iOS apps–all I could find as of July 15th, apart from those that were restricted to customers of certain utilities, were geared toward professional solar installers, or were merely reference books without any ability to calculate. I don’t have an Android or WM7 phone and would love to hear by Twitter or email from users who have tried out solar apps for those devices.

To see what might be done to turn things around, I talked to Paul Cole, vice-president of Tendril, in April and again yesterday. Cole is a psychologist by training and has been conducting some pilot projects to see what might get people to save energy. “We have gotten it wrong so far” he says. “It’s less a question of user motivation than that we energy technologists haven’t gotten the right products to the consumers.”

Conscious technophiles can add this bag to the existing list of green computers, briefcases and vibrators solar powered also by solar rays.

It can be used domestically, such as for cooking (stoves, solar) to generate hot water (SWH) or for heating. It is also used at industrial level, where water is heated to evaporate the water vapor moves turbines to generate electricity (solar thermal power plants).

Using more is now known that solar energy is thermal solar water heaters for domestic use. These consist of two main parts, the solar collector and storage tank. The solar collector is a box about 2 m2 in which there is a series of tubes through which water, which when in contact with the sun is heated, a hot time is stored in the storage tank (a tank insulated like a thermos), where it remains hot for when needed. These heaters can produce up to 91% of hot water consumed by a family, depending on usage and the amount of sun that is in the location of the heater.

Another use of solar thermal energy is taking a lot of momentum inside the houses are solar cookers, as they are very cheap (you can build one in your house) and easy to use. A solar cooker can cook rice in about an hour and a whole chicken in 3 or 4 hours, so that gas use is reduced significantly and immediately in households that use them.

Within the branches of solar energy, solar power is cheaper than PV, so the energy is more support and growth has in recent years.

As we said, solar thermal energy can also be used to generate electricity. This is done by building a tower on top of which there is a giant tank of water around the tower is placed thousands of mirrors that face the tank so the water is heated and evaporates, the vapor is forced to pass through turbines to generate electricity. At night the water condenses and fills the tank so the next day re-generate clean electric power.

Heat pumps, of whatever variety, give you the giddy feeling of breaking the laws of physics. The gas boiler in my basement is 80 percent efficient; burning gas unavoidably heats the exhaust gases as well as the water for the radiators. An electric heater is almost 100 percent efficient. But a heat pump can be more than 100 percent efficient. A 1000-watt electric heater emits 3400 BTU of heat in an hour, but the same amount of electricity, used to run a heat pump, might transfer 15000 BTU of heat into the house.

That’s what social networks could be good for. People’s competitive instincts might well be the country’s biggest energy source. Also, there’s so much confusing and conflicting information out there that it would help to be able to share our experiences of what works and what doesn’t. In the past couple of years, a number of sites sprouted up to meet this demand.