Greenhouse gas is not worth anything, it’s simply waste. But, as with any waste – once it piles up in tons and tons and tons it becomes a threat to the producers of the waste. And around the waste a market for waste management starts to grow.

Greenhouse gas, and CO2 in particular, is different from most other types of waste:
A: It can be turned into valuable material, wood in particular, in combination with other resources. And
B: It moves freely across borders, from nation to nation and even over continents.

While I and many with me believe that technology will actually prevail, and save us from burning up, the “CO2 Reactor” will not work for decades. We need to capture this gas now, and we need to use proven “technology” to do it. Well here’s some news: There is a great, working process called Photosynthesis that has been around for a couple of billion years, and that actually works!

To capture and store CO2 NOW all we have to do is to beef up the planets photosynthesis capacity, harvest the captured CO2 and keep it on the ground!

Capturing and storing CO2 is slowly becoming a new business opportunity for many third world countries. The social and economic effects are many and quite amazing:

• Get paid to plant a forest: The main thing to grow if you want to capture CO2 is trees. Forests are emerging, particularly in Africa, as pure CO2 capturing ventures. The execution cannot be digitalized or outsourced, it is done by the locals.
• Get shadow and water: The trees will provide shadow and the root systems will make the ground water level raise considerably. A forest landscape on the edge of the Sahara will lower the temperature at the surface with as much as 6 centigrade!
• Introduce forest agriculture: There is forestry, meaning growing a forest, and forest agriculture, meaning growing crops in the forest between the trees. Yes, with shadow and moist in the ground it is possible to grow wheat and other stuff within the forest – on places where agriculture was impossible before.
• Commercialize Biochar: Forestry and forest agriculture produce tons of biologic waste, containing tons of captured CO2 that naturally decompose back into CO2. There is a way, called biochar, of permanently keeping this CO2 out of the atmosphere for thousands of years, and it has been known for thousands of years. Why is it not exploited? – It could be a billion $ biz…
• And so much more: Forests hold the main natural recourses for medical production. Forests do NOT consume clean water, they PRODUCE clean water (anyone saying anything different is lying!). Forests are housing the richest animal life on the planet, providing us with ecosystems, in turn providing food, protein-sources, tourism, good TV, and much more.

We need to look seriously upon the possibility and opportunity to make the entire area around the equator between the north and the south polar circles into a green zone. I’m not kidding…

And finally, this is worth seeing:
www.giversign.com

“We’re aiming to reach one billion people, more than 1000 cities, all joining together in a global effort to show that its possible to take action on global warming.”

Earth Hour 2009 by WWF – Sign up for Earth Hour!

Viral, as in viral,
TIMEs, as in time(s) of course, but also as in: Telecom, Internet, Media, Entertainment, and the “s” can stand for whatever you like: Society, conceptS, diffuSion or Spread maybe? Why not Social change?

Now, prior to last year we had only seen truly viral campaigns based on one or at the most two of these areas. Typically, Internet is involved in pretty much everything called viral and “web 2.0 viral” has so far been 80% video (Internet + Entertainment) and 20% other stuff like Facebook apps, flash campaigns etc. (Internet + Entertainment/Media).

I think (and about a million other bloggers) that everything in the viral domain changed with the Obama for America campaign. There’s no need to get into campaign details here, there is plenty of blogs and websites out there that cover the campaign strategies and execution well, but I want to make an important note to self and others:

Obama for America managed, for the first time, to fully embrace all TIME branches under a viral strategy. They used Telecom not just to make “robot calls” but really managed to integrate telecom concepts (e.g. call your friends widgets) to drive viral diffusion. They used Media as Media (also to get people online) and Entertainment as Entertainment, mixing them appropriately when needed, and turned Media into Entertainment (news casts turned into viral videos) and eventually they also managed to turn Entertainment into Media when the news media started to report about Obama’s viral videos. Plouffe, Hughes, Slaby (campaign CTO), Axelrod and a bunch of other campaigners are clearly viral geniuses…

Lets hope they can deliver some change in other areas (than TIME) as well! I’d love to see some viral social change strategies executed… Need technology, Mr President?

If this sounds interesting, you can send Arnaud an e-mail for further information:
arnaud@asaasco.com

I have gone from being a super-naive entrepreneur to become an almost-as-super-naive entrepreneur AND CEO of a VC funded Internet startup with, for the time being,  the world’s greatest web-technology under its wing.

Internet World gave me a 12th place at their hot-list for 2008, next year I’m hoping to climb the list! Please?

I’ve also moved with my family to Gothenburg and moved my HQ to Gårdatorget 1. A bit painful but even more a fruitful activity.

And, I could tell you a million other ego-centric stuff. But frankly, who cares…

We are breeding a future biz-superstar, this guy is hot! 10% young, 10% naive (i.e. fearless), 10% know-how, 10% French, 10% Swedish, 50% drive. Add 100% cool. Check back in 2009 to read more about Arnaud and the rest of the growing team!

Thanks everyone who made 2008 a fantastic year!

Now – come 2009! Fuck the financial crisis, the world is changing and we are going to be change-makers more than ever. A cash-drought is just a lack of paper and guts, don’t listen to all that economy-BS. When the world experience a lack of good people and opportunities then I will listen. But now!? No way! There are literally millions of opps out there, millions of talented people and new ways to blend the two like the world has never seen before.

Have no fear, 2009 will be fenomenal! Happy New Year!

Now…

Fasten Your Seat Belts – We Gonna Kick Ass!

You love to make things simple (not necessarily easy) and you have a passion for making web based services/sites that ANYONE can understand and use. You know your way around xhtml, css and java, you have a good eye conceptually as well as visually and you master the Adobe CS suite. Using Flash because it’s Flash is NOT in it self a good enough reason for you, you look for the right tools depending on what you must achieve. You may or may not be a programmer, but setting up a few PHP functions is not a problem for you. You pay great attention to details but also understands that nothing digital is perfect.

You are an entrepreneurial spirit and ready to set up your own operation within the company, your goal is to become a partner with a key position in the company as soon as possible. You will be working with some of the world’s largest, most important, fastest growing viral advocacy and fundraising campaigns. You will also be working with some of the smallest nonprofit organizations and to you they are of course just as important as the big ones. Still, you know how to prioritize when things heat up…

I don’t care about your background, education or work experience. You need to prove to me that you are the right person for the job, I don’t care how you do it. Office is located in Gothenburg. Good luck!

linus@asaasco.com

www.giversign.com

I’d like to say -Thank You! to the Swedish Breast Cancer Fund for being digital frontiers and believing in us, and to everyone who contributed to the campaign. Thanks, keep it up and stay cool! – Changing the world will never go out of style!

Bröstcancerfonden – Digitala Rosa Bandet

When it comes to Peer-2-Peer marketing – things are different. First of all, who would sign up to advertise for cars in communications with their friends, family and colleges? No, other things are better suited for this model – like supporting non-profits and backing grassroots campaigns.

When you look at P-2-P marketing from this point of view the targeting is stunningly effective! First of all, this kind of marketing is by definition a push-marketing process. You literally force a message onto your peers as you communicate other, ordinary things. The initial studies we have made are showing attention-rates 10 times higher than the average targeted pull-advertising counterpart (i.e. banners). Additionally we see a very positive attitude to the messages distributed P-2-P.

That may of course originate from that the messages we work with are universally good-hearted and easy to like. But I think that we generally tend to like what our peers like. Think about it, fashion works that way, the music industry too. And if you let your mind exercise that statement for a minute you’ll find that most things that matter in our society are networked and endorsed Peer-2-Peer.

It strikes me that we are only just now beginning to learn how to sustainably leverage P-2-P marketing and advocacy possibilities on the Internet. That is certainly an important part of the future of online marketing. And I am lucky enough to lead the company that has developed the world’s most integrated, easy-to-use P-2-P marketing tool.
At least that’s what I think!

1. Definr – incredibly fast dictionary.
   http://www.definr.com/
2. Addictomatic – inhale the web. (Great search)
   http://addictomatic.com/
3. Whisher – Building the world’s largest wifi network. (Fon on any router (?) )
   http://www.whisher.com/

Enjoy!