In Russia, I made a short movie about the financial life of students. For my movie that I made in Prague I wanted to do something a little more different as its my home. Thanks to Michel the idea of doing a short video about Czech fashion design came into the works. I wanted to write a short blog as a prelude to the movie and let you know about the experience itself.

To start off, I decided to meet with Helena Fejkova who is one of the top Czech Fashion designers. She designs mens and womens clothes and has really built a name for herself in Prague and the rest of the fashion world. My mom even goes to her for custom pieces sometimes.

Performing the interview with Helena like all of the designers was a slight challenge because although they speak english well enough they don’t like to do the interviews in english! The result is a series of interviews in Czech-English that proved difficult to edit.

When I asked Helena where she got her inspiration from she first answered that it was from daily life and then later as I looked at her ornate designs and diverse materials I asked her again. She told me that during a trip to India she was inspired to create a line a few years ago and so indeed she does get inspired from her life but it is certainly not a simple one! Helena Fejkova’s designs have seen the top fashion cities in the world as she attends fashion week in Paris, New York, Rome and Milan.

Fejckova related how once she was having a show in Paris and the venue was an abandoned bus station! To Fejckova, fashion is about beauty and not necessarily for the average location, or people and feels that fashion should be presented in places of beauty, like palaces and museums. Fejckova has built a name for herself and her business has grown but according to her, she leaves the business side, to her husband.

Ivana Follova represents the majority of Czech fashion designers. Her clothing designs are exclusively for women and with their earthy colors and materials they have a distinct Czech style to them. Follova also prides herself on making stylish clothing that is designed for every woman. As a result, Follova has been blessed with a loyal customer base but missed out on the cutting edge side of the fashion world, a side, she says she doesn't miss. Its been a long road for Follova from working in a communist clothing factory to starting her own line. At one point Follova had four stores in the Czech Republic and now she is down to just one. She says that it grew so big that she had to decide if she wanted to be a manager or a designer. She decided to be a designer and serves an older base of women with her ready to wear and custom designs.

Jozef Sloboda represents the other side of Czech Fashion design as he designs purely mens clothing. Talking to Jozef it was clear to see that he was a business man as he was the only designer to have his PR manager come to the interview with him.

Sloboda, unlike the others only designs ready to wear clothing and although it is still couture he makes about 20-30 of each item he sells. Sloboda stopped making custom clothes some time ago and claims that it doesn't make good business sense and that working on building his brand is the best business move he can make. Jozef Sloboda spends almost a third of its profits on advertising in mens magazines and claims that its paying off. Creating an online store (something none of the other designers has done yet) has also done the company good. If there is one thing that stands out with Jozef Sloboda it is that he is a business man first and a fashion designer second.

For more info on Fashion in my home country check out www.czechfashion.cz/ and keep an eye out for my short film on Czech Fashion designers coming soon!

So, the thing that sucks about making the transition from total parental dependence to financial independence is that it takes work. That may sound obvious to you, but for me the transition was some distant minor problem I would face in my future and nothing worth worrying about now. Well now I’m here, doing my best to take the advantages my parents have given me to work hard, progress and start down the path to financial independence. Don’t get me wrong I’m certainly not independent yet but this blog is about what I'm doing this summer to prepare for the inevitable.

I decided that this summer I would go down to Spain and work in a hotel there. Thats where I am right now: in a four star hotel on the beach in Spain. Sounds amazing doesn't it? Well, its not exactly as it sounds. My goals for this summer are to improve my Spanish, gain work experience and hopefully save some money...Oh! And get an amazing tan of course! So now its been four days since my first day and this is what has happened.

Where I live

As I turned the key in the door to my apartment that the hotel was providing for me I could barely handle the anticipation. I have always been lucky enough to live in nice, clean places and was nervous to see where I would be for the next two months. Nothing. I mean nothing I could have imagined would have prepared me for this place. In the room the was a cot, two chairs, a tiny sink, a small fridge which was jammed between the bed and the sink and a closet with a toilet in it. That was it. Seriously. No table, no shower, no stove and only a tiny mirror!

Obviously, someone who wants to learn independence doesn't want to start screaming, storm out and refuse to live in the place that was just presented to me. I wouldn't want to appear like a diva and so I simply said okay and asked “where can I shower?” The reply was no more comforting then the smell in the room “shower you in laundry around corner” Right. I can handle that. It just means that every time I want to wash myself I need to go and ask the superintendent for the key. Thats normal. “Gosh I miss my condo” I said to myself as I feel asleep that night after getting used to the drone of the fridge next to my head. Luckily, I was moved to an apartment with a shower later but instead of the sound of the fridge, I was greeted by a multitude of cockroaches in the morning. I thought it was a fair trade.

Where I work

Every day I bike to work in the morning heat. Its a really nice bike ride along the boulevard that runs parallel to the beach. Its fun to bike to work and watch the tourists exercising in the morning and they always stare back at me in confusion because Im in a suit. The hotel Sunway Playa Golf where I work is really beautiful and right on the beach. I work in the reception and so I get to look out at the sea all day long (it makes me thirsty). Because its high season right now my colleagues don’t really have time to “train” me and so the first few days have been insane. All day long guests come and ask me for something (in Spanish) and then I have to do it (without having learnt how yet) and thats how I learn. One thing after another I have to observe and do and basically train myself (in Spanish).

By the end of the day my brain is killing me from speaking Spanish, German, French and Russian all day and doing things I don’t know how to do. But I find hope in the fact that tomorrow will be easier and I will do better and frankly, that feels great. I somehow find it empowering to start working at the bottom and not letting colleagues now that my parents have shares in the hotel. I enjoy doing this because it makes the preparation for my transition more real. Every day for me right now feels like an episode from an upper middle class version of “The Simple Life” and its easy to get discouraged.

I suppose it would be appropriate for me to write a post-blog disclaimer to clarify for the sake of potential responses to this blog. I am in no way complaining about what I have or don’t have I simply exploring it for the sake that it might interest others. I feel very lucky to be working in Spain, learning Spanish and killing cockroaches.

In downtown Prague there is this beautiful art nouveau style cafe in the municipal building that is quite famous. My mother and I went there the other day with some American guests of ours. As we all sat there enjoying the balmy summer evening, my eyes wandered and I stared intently at the man playing the grand piano, wishing I could play more than just ‘ode to joy’ on my favorite instrument. Then my mom said something that caught my attention: “I know what we shall do tonight Henny, we shall go and see ‘Sex in the City’!”

This moment was one of surprising realization. After my initial desire to remind my mother that the film was, in fact, called ‘Sex and the City” (although her title was just as suitable considering the content of the show), I found myself considering the irony of the situation. This consideration led me to conclude that something between my childhood and now had seriously effected my life, my country and my culture.

My mother grew up in the Czech Republic and had very fashionable, proud, parents. My mother herself is and always was a symbol of independence and female empowerment. After all, she was there in 1968 when the Warsaw pact invaded her country and she jumped on their tanks to express how pissed off she was at them in true Czech retaliation. I suppose, for me, her saying that she wanted to see that film was a surprise to me because she was also a symbol of European culture and fashion to me and others, and the way I’ve always imagined a woman should be.

Attending the film with her made my mind wander even further. We rushed out of the historical gem that we had just dined at in order to make the 8:30pm premiere of what was named ‘one of the summer's most anticipated films’. As we entered the massive multiplex cinema and found our theatre I was astonished to see that it was absolutely packed! The room was buzzing with pre-movie whispering as young and old, male and female Czechs waited for the film to begin. I don’t know quite how to explain the surprise that I was feeling. I mean, this movie was in english (as most cinemas play movies in english in Prague) and it was about four American girls, sex and fashion. It seemed shockingly ironic to me that so many Czechs, who have always been very good at sex and fashion were turning to this product placement filled melodrama from the west!

It was a sign of something I already knew was happening. Prague was changing, Moscow, London and Paris too. I remember the not so old days when my family and I would travel to the Costa Brava and enjoy shopping there because everything in the stores was so unique and different from home. It was a thrill to see how the Spanish dressed differently and to be able to take a piece of that home with you. Now when I go to Barcelona I see all the same shops that we have in Prague. Whats the point in buying something in Spain if you could have just bought it at the Zara on Robson street? Isn't half the fun replying when someone compliments your shirt saying “thanks! I bought it in Rome”. Moscow is the same way with sickly new “mega malls” popping up monthly. If you look around on the high streets of Europe’s most famous cities you will see every trend possible and less and less culturally typical fashions. Someday it will have all of them and the time that people traveled to buy things they cant buy at home will have died.

I am of course not oblivious to the benefits that the globalization of Fashion has brought to Europe and North America (much more North America). It gives people choices, they can be a skater punk if they want, dress like a ruthless New York lawyer or a Parisian princess, they have access to whatever style they choose. All this choice however, comes with a cost. The cost is that one of the best parts of fashion: culture, is lost and we find ourselves watching two and a half hour long advertisements like “Sex and the City” to tell us what’s in style. Such a shame.

The internet revolution has created a new field of at home workers who go online for their livelihood. The websites that facilitate this form of employment are endless but for some time Elance.com has caught my eye and I’ve been curious about how it functions and whether or not it works.

The Elance idea revolves around its obvious pun with “freelance” and its functionality is built on that same ideal. Users are separated into either providers or buyers and built their identity on the site as such.

Buyers can go to the site and post a job that they need done under a certain category, post a suggested payment range and can invite providers to bid. For example, let's say that you had a business and you wanted to take it online, with Elance you could post a project online under the Web and Programming category and then wait for professionals to bid on your job. Once the bidding is over you can select one of the bids and form a business deal and get the job done considerably easily without ever leaving your house. For more info on the buyers side check out Sramana Mitra's blog.

On the other side of the game the providers go through what the essence of freelance work is really about: competition. After all one of the main selling points of the site is that it offers buyers with choices and choices mean competition. As a provider when you join Elance you have to pick the category(s) that you will be bidding under. For me I picked writing and translation as an experiment to see if the site could benefit me. After doing this I set out to Elance University, which is required if one wants to start bidding on jobs. Elance university is basically a series of tutorial videos on how to use the site followed by multiple choice tests. Now that I had passed the tests and graduated from Elance university I was ready to get bidding!

Just like the real world, however, in the world of Elance, education is simply not enough and I had to work on my profile to prove to my clients that I am deserving of their work. On Elance, the way it’s set up is that you can create a sort of interactive online CV that shows your education, abilities, previous jobs and even a portfolio of your work. I even went so far on mine as to add a short video in my profile that explains my abilities. After working hard on my profile I clicked on the “find work” tab and felt as though I was some sort of online struggling actor.

During the first day I bid on five jobs and I felt extremely good about myself. “That was easy!” I exclaimed! Then I waited...and waited...and waited as I watched the bidding closing date get closer and closer. 8 days...7 days...6 days...the anticipation was killing me. Then, finally the day came that all the bids had ended and I found myself as a struggling actor must feel...rejected. None of my bids had been accepted and all I was left with was five messages that read “buyer choice other bid”. I couldn't understand why I didn’t win any bids. Did I ask for too much money? Was my portfolio not good enough? Did I need more experience?

It was then that I headed to the “water cooler” which is where you can find the Elance Blog. After spending some time at the water cooler and blogging with some fellow “Elanceers” I realized that I wasn't alone and got some tips for how to be more successful on the site. Some of that advice included getting “verified”, which essentially means that you pay Elance to contact your references, your school and your previous employers in order to prove that you have the abilities you do and then it will show up on your profile, or your CV, that you are who you are and have done what you have. The other option is to start bidding and offering very low costs for the jobs and then when you get one you work hard and do it well so that you get good feedback and in the future can place bids at a reasonable price. Check out what out this other non-Elance blog for more tips on how to succeed on Elance. Either way, both of these ideas are investments that are risks that could potential provide a future full of freelance work. So I decided to try again and put these ideas into action and we will just have to wait and see what happens but Im looking forward to seeing if Elance can really work for me.

Some of the things I love about Elance are the fact that you learn about the freelance life as you make proposals and try and sell your abilities. Some of the negative aspects are the system of bidding that Elance uses which means that every bid you make will cost you and that limits how many bids you can place per month. I also found the high price of verification which is $15 dollars US per verification but $25 if it is in Canada! Come on Elance! We aren't that far north and its not as if its going to cost you that much more to call Canada compared to, say, Alaska!

Whilst making this movie "Despicable Metal" I learned a lot about life in Moscow as a young person and how different the financial world is there than in Canada. The title for the film comes from a Russian saying that describes money as the "despicable metal". To learn more about the socio/economic situation in Russia right now check out Russia Today. I hope you enjoyed the film and keep checking my blog this summer to see movies around other topics as I travel around Europe. I want to give a special thanks to Oleysa, both the Katya's, Andrei and Lena for helping me out. Thanks guys!

I’m not from Canada originally and so every year I make the journey back to Europe to visit my parents. My father lives in Moscow, Russia and that’s where I am right now. While I’m here I decided to make a video about what life is like to be a young adult in Russia and how 18-30 year olds get by financially in Russia’s capital. I’ve learned a lot this past week that I found fascinating so I wanted to write up some of the things I found and my video will be posted on here next Tuesday so be sure to check it out!

This year I just got back to Canada and I have also been slowly transitioning into independence from my parents (not entirely by choice!). All of this has changed the way that I think in relation to money and for me to return back to Europe and to see how people my age in Russia view and use money was fascinating to say the least.

The financial situation in Russia right now is hard to describe in one blog and so I decided to mention just a few things that might be of interest to you.

Last week I went to go pick something up from some friends of my dads who work for a large American oil company. They have a very nice four bedroom home in a secured community on the outskirts of Moscow. The house is attached and has four bedrooms and I would estimate was about 2,500 sq ft. While I was talking with them I found out that they had to move to a smaller home down the street because the rent of their house was being raised. When they told me that their rent was being raised to $23,000 USD a month I nearly jumped! That’s just one example of the astronomical housing prices that Moscow has. It is a true sign that prices are out of control when an oil company can’t afford to pay its expatriate employees' rent! Don’t be mistaken that this is a purely foreigners property phenomenon; the situation for the average Russian seems impossible with rising food and rental prices in the worlds third most expensive city.

This situation makes renting in a central location unfathomable with one bedrooms renting as high as 10,000 USD a month downtown which makes buying property more than impossible! The cause of this insanity is the demand to live in Moscow with its higher wages and better education it is worth the struggle for some Russians. The massive disparity between rich and poor in Moscow doesn't help the situation either. Moscow is said to have the second highest number of billionaires as residents in a single city after New York and with a population of 12 million it doesn't take much to imagine the poverty that must exist in the city. With high fashion stores such as Tiffany’s, Bentley and Gucci lining the streets downtown and the outskirts of the city a jungle of derelict concrete high rises, it only takes a brief look to see the extremes in Moscow.

In order to live in Moscow you either have to be born there, be a foreigner with a visa, or “register” as a resident in the city. Registering is something that all Russians and foreigners have to do and it’s a way that the government controls the populations in the desirable cities. If someone from Chelyabinsk wishes to move to Moscow for work they must pay and register to do so and even then may be denied. It’s a sort of immigration control within a countries own borders. Imagine if you had to register every time you made a trip to Ottawa from Toronto or if you moved from Vancouver to Montreal. This registration process forces a lot of young people to make the move illegally so that they can make a better living. Life without registration isn't easy however and makes getting a bank account impossible and getting other benefits such as healthcare and education complicated.

I knew about most of these issues while I was living here and attending high school but it wasn't till I recently came back here from Canada that I thought about how different life and money must be for young people here. When I heard that only about 30% of Russians had bank accounts I decided that I wanted to make a short movie about “despicable metal” (what Russians call money) and young adults. So check out my video next Tuesday and the similarities and differences between Katya, Oleysa, Andrei and Lena’s experiences with money and yours.

Not so long ago I had a little addiction to playing blackjack. So, to continue for my month of blogs about different "investments" I thought I would discuss the issue of gambling and finance.

Blackjack was the game for me. Ever since I saw it first played in a casino in Prague I loved it and wanted to get good at it. I had a friend that became my mentor of sorts that taught me the basics of how to play the game. These rules included not hitting if the dealer has a six or a low number (depending on what you have) and learning to stick to basic blackjack strategy. When I first started to play the game I played it for fun and didn't really care if I won or lost and just hit or stayed whenever I felt like it. Eventually, the game became more serious for me and I developed my own strategies and stuck to them.

I would go to the casino alone and scope out all the tables for about thirty minutes before I played. Once I found one I liked I would take out some cash and promise not to use more than that amount that night. Then I would go and sit at a low minimum table and bet the minimum. If I won I would bet the minimum again and if I lost then I would bet double my last bet. I stuck to these rules to ensure that if I ever lost I would be able to win my money back right away. The funniest thing about gambling is how smart it can make you feel when your winning and how dumb it can make you feel if your loosing.

To make a long story short I was winning at the game for a while as long as I stuck to my rules. The problem is of course that nobody ever does. I began betting irrationally and was so focused on winning back what I had lost. Don't get me wrong I was never in serious trouble and this was a short minor stage for me but it gave me an idea of how much of a bad investment gambling is.

Last weekend I went and saw 21 in which a young college student starts playing blackjack to pay for his $300,000 school costs. In short the payoff that he's getting doesn't last and I like to think that the moral of the story is that if he had spent his time and money elsewhere he would have achieved more then his wasted efforts. This got me thinking about students everywhere and that I should address the horrible investment that gambling is.

Blackjack is popular no doubt and as the most popular card game in the world it draws in people from all ages. For students, gambling and blackjack is becoming increasingly popular and this is exacerbated by the extreme media exposure that the game receives online and on TV. I just wanted students everywhere to know that gambling in any form is a bad investment. I see blogs like Blackjackblog.net and how it offers tips on how to win by strategy and it worries me. If you are going to play blackjack please do learn some simple rules to make the game more fun but as an investment don't waste your time.

There are much better ways however, for students to spend their extra money and their time than games. From my own personal experience I will let you know that if you take your extra money that you have and invest it in stocks, RRSPs or real estate you will get a much better high and return than from gambling.

Trust me, I understand the need to take risks and the excitement that comes from playing with your money but if you take the time to do some research and make a good investment the risks will be exciting, safer and much more rewarding. The high that I received from buying a place and all the work that went into doing that was much more exciting than any night at the casino.

So next time your bored and looking to have some fun with your money think about the other choices you have when it comes to investing your cash.

VIPBDS-The Finale!

To start off my “investment answers” month I decided to write about the final chapter of my Vancouver Investment Buying Disorder Syndrome saga. As you may know from my other VIPBDS blogs I have been caught up in the chaotic experience of finding a place to purchase as an investment for my parents.

After finding an agent and figuring out what type of property I wanted I finally found a beautiful apartment that I wanted to buy. We put an offer in on the place and negotiated the price so that we could get the Canadian Property Transfer Tax back. There was a tax of approx. $8000 when I bought my property. If you are a first time buyer however, you can get the Property Transfer Tax back. Also, if you are buying new you may get a GST rebate.

Rule #5

Save money where you can! There are lots of ways to save money on your investment if you buy sensibly. For example, if your parents buy a place in your name they can save on the tax because it will be your first property. One way that I saved money is by giving the previous tenants an extra few days to move out after I paid for the place.

Rule #6

Do your research! Even though you may love a place you need to make sure that it will be a good investment. In order to find out if it will be a good investment you have to take into account things like:

• area
• price per square foot
• comparisons between similar properties

Now your agent will do most of this research but it won’t hurt for you to do it too. Prices in Vancouver are insane right now but like in any real estate investment what matters much more than the price is what others are paying for similar units. If people are buying similar places for that price then you should be in good shape.

Investing in real estate is a tricky matter but it can really work out if you work hard at doing it right, Some people argue that there are better investments than property and they might be right but when I think about how much I have learned and gotten out of my investment it was well worth it to go through all of the pains of VIPBDS. So don’t be afraid to go out there and take on the real estate investment market as soon as you can because before you know it you may be chilling in your new place living it up like a rock star.

We're reporting live from RBC Desifest, a festival of South Asian Culture and Music, where some of the country's leading South Asian artists and dancers are performing!

But a few minutes ago, I was on the RBC Blue Carpet to report on the goings on! It's slightly rainy here in Vancouver on this cool Saturday morning, but the weather will innevitably get better as the day goes on!

From Vancouver, this is Henry and Michel at RBC Desifest!

12:10pm PST: The fun has started here at RBC Desifest and we've managed to capture the first set of performers! The rain has stopped and the weather seems to be improving.

We've had a chance to witness the awesomeness that is Bhangra as we captured the UBC Girlz Bhangra Team! Check out this video of the action to date below, or come and check it out in person, on Water St. in Vancouver, between Cambie and Cordova Sts!

1:30pm PST:

I've just managed to get an interview with the UBC Girlz Bhangra Team! Those are the benefits of having backstage access!! We're blogging from the Green Room where the artists are getting ready to go on stage! Follow along and take advantage of our access

2:45pm PST:

I've interviewed a dance performance troupe named Entouraas... Here's the interview, and a slight bit of their dance:

4:30pm PST:

Here's Michel on the RBC Blue Carpet, where people are getting their pictures taken by the Paparazzi. RBC has this great system set up where you get your picture taken at the event, and you can then retrieve your picture later on at www.rbcbluecarpet.com with your unique pin! They'll be doing this at RBC Desifest Toronto on May 31st, at Dundas Square. Come out and see us if you're in the neighbourhood!!

5:40pm PST:

We've seen a lot of awesome dancing so far here at RBC Desifest... Here's a short recap of some of the dancing... Some people in the crowd, some on stage!

6:30pm PST

I've been busy getting interviews with the performers and the attendees here at RBC Desifest. Backstage access does have it's advantages! I had a chance to speak to Dhol Nation Academy (DNA), a school that teaches the art of the Dhol drum, a traditional North Indian Drum. Here's the interview:

Here are a few interviews with some of the attendees:

7:30pm PST:

I had the good fortune of interviewing EnKarma, another one of the performers at RBC Desifest! Here's the interview and a bit of their music!

It's now 8pm and the event has wrapped up here in Vancouver. If you were at the event and received a card with a pin for your picture, you can retrieve your picture at www.rbcbluecarpet.com

We'll be at the RBC Desifest Toronto Event on May 31rst, blogging live from the RBC Blue Carpet! Be sure to stop by and see us, where you could be featured on the site!!

Are you freecyling? If you're not, you should be. Freecycling is a term that comes from the group freecycle.org which is a website that connects users to each other in their communities so that they can give away stuff instead of throwing it out.

"Our mission is to build a worldwide gifting movement that reduces waste, saves precious resources & eases the burden on our landfills while enabling our members to benefit from the strength of a larger community." -freecycle.org

Sounds like a very noble cause but does it work? From the sounds of things freecycle.org is doing pretty well in fulfilling its purpose. With 4 million members strong, it is a power for change to be reckoned with.

The way the site works is that it connects you to your local freecycle group (usually these are on Yahoo groups or MySpace or something similar). Then you can go to the group and browse what people are giving away or post what you want to give away. If anything, it's really fun to see what stuff people are giving away and the fact that people are taking it.

An article in Fortune discusses freecycle.org and its success:

“The Freecycle Network is an amazing Internet phenomenon. In four years, it's become one of the most effective environmental groups around. It's also an example of how social networking can be used to address social and environmental problems.”

As a result of this success freecycle.org has won a variety of internet awards and has shown the world that internet activism can make a difference. After all, having 4 million people give and receive instead of buying and throwing out is a lot of saved trash.

“Freecycle's inventor, a man named Deron Beal, estimates that the network keeps the equivalent of 300 tons of stuff out of landfills every day.”

Offering a service like freecycle is still not easy though and Beal has struggled to keep the site alive. By accepting a very controversial sponsorship from Waste Management (the largest trash collector in North America and has a history of environmental abuse) the site lives on. This move however, caused some of Freecycle's “founding fathers” to create a split off site called freesharing.org which has a meager 350,000 members, but apparently better morals.

“One man's trash is another man's treasure.”

This mantra has new concrete meaning with the success of freecycle.org. According to treehugger.com the website is a success and is making a difference. In one of their blogs they share their story about using freecycle and they had people coming to pick up a huge variety of things that they had posted. All this exchanging of strange items makes me wonder what people do with the stuff or use it for anyways? What does it matter in the end though? As long as people are not throwing it out its better then the alternative and with 4 million people Freecycling its making a real difference. So next time you are throwing something out give Freecycling a chance.

I wanted to make a video about good investments and bad investments and what that meant to me, so here it is!

It’s called Freeconomics and it’s happening right now. Freeconomics, not to be confused with the book Freakonomics, is the phenomenon of the advancement in computer technology based on Moore’s law that is essentially making products “free”. Gordon E. Moore was Intel's co founder and he predicted that, as computer technology advances exponentially, it would become exponentially cheaper and eventually free. A recent article in The Economist claims that “What is getting too cheap to meter is processing power, storage, bandwidth and all the other enabling technologies of the digital revolution”.

On Chris Anderson’s blog, “The Long Tail”, he discusses the changes that have occurred in the computer industry and how it has affected consumers:

I remember my first 6 MHz 286 PC in 1982 that did 0.9 MIPS. I have no idea what the CPU cost then, but the PC it came in cost nearly $3,000 so it couldn't have been cheap. Say it was around $1,000/MIPS back then. Now it's $0.01/MIPS. I know I shouldn't be astounded by Moore's Law anymore, but that really is something.

The fact that computer hardware has become so cheap has made virtually everything it touches (which in our age is a lot) astronomically cheaper. Think Gmail and its “too big to fill in a lifetime” mailbox. Facebook and MySpace allow users to post their entire lives for free. The plummeting cost and increasing size of iPods proves that memory is becoming cheaper than gas. What this means for the consumer is that as hardware prices become practically free, the products that use them do too.

The Economist article discussed that Moore’s law is the reason that online products like Skype and YouTube and their free services are revolutionizing the internet and making “free” a reality. The idea of “free” isn't really that new and the motto of “Be the first to give away what others charge for” has existed for some time (remember the Microsoft Explorer drama). According to the Economist this phenomenon is possible because businesses use “free content to build audiences and selling them to advertisers”.

What is the cost of this revolution to us then if its not money? Well, first of all, anything free becomes something we humans tend to waste. I know that ever since I’ve had my Gmail account I have lived the slogan “never delete an email again”. Its also led to cheaper, faster computers that we consumers buy new almost every year. We do the same thing with our digital cameras and our cell phones. This wasteful attitude is costing us in the environmental realm as a study by the Government of Canada shows that “recycling and disposal of IT waste would increase to 91,000 tonnes in 2010”.

The bright side of this whole issue was brought up by one of the replies to Anderson’s blog: “When things in entertainment become free, the ‘cost’ I pay for consuming them is my time and attention. The question changes from ‘how do I want to spend my limited money?’ to ‘how do I want to spend my limited time?’” This made me think and although I know that I waste much more time using You Tube and Facebook then I did before they were in my life, many of my friends are much more selective of how they use their time and have that choice because of Freeconomics.

Although there is much debate about Moore’s law, its validity and whether or not really really cheap should be called free. In my mind however, Freeconomics is a trend that seems to be continuing and I’m concerned about anything that grows exponentially and will always try to remember that my mother used to say “nothing in this world is free”, so next time you see “Free!”, ask yourself what the cost really is.