As it matures, the driving force of the sharing economy will become time, and the companies that can do business in real-time will occupy a more strategic, and profitable, place in the ecosystem.

Fresh off its billion valuation, Airbnb is the most common reference point for all manner of “this for that” pitches bouncing around the Valley right now, with many new ventures proposing to be the “the Airbnb of X.”

But Airbnb is only one species of the sharing economy genus — a genus that will stratify over the next few quarters.

Real-time makes your brand a hero

Hotel Tonight is a great example of the flip side of the Airbnb coin. It focuses on real-time reservations, and the real-time use of latent capacity.

Airbnb’s transactions typically take place five or more days in advance of a stay, and any requests inside that window are put on a standby list. In contrast, Hotel Tonight only offers rooms for the current night, with a cutoff of 2 a.m. local time. It’s a fascinating constraint, and one that has propelled their business forward. When people need a room immediately and you’re able to provide them one, they will remember you.

Real-time can command premiums, not just discounts

Of course, different markets and different kinds of capacity have unique sensitivities to time.

Uber’s car service business is incredibly time-sensitive. One of its most common use cases is trips to and from the airport, which usually involves a high-stakes deadline on at least one end of the journey.

Other popular uses are travel on a busy holiday (think Halloween or New Year’s Eve in New York City during a public transportation strike).

The more time-sensitive a market becomes for buyers and sellers, the more lucrative the corresponding business opportunity.

This is an old lesson — price and revenue optimization wizards hold time in the highest regard. And as the time-sensitivity of a situation increases, the number of parties we’re willing to entrust with our affairs dwindles to a small handful.

Real-time puts coveted data in your pocket

What Hotel Tonight, Uber and my company LiquidSpace have in common is that we all know a lot about our customers’ travel patterns.

Additionally, we can extrapolate a ton of information about preferences — from who customers are likely to collaborate with to where they like to work or hang out.

With this real-time data, we’re primed to find other ways to make your stay, ride or meeting that much more enjoyable. We can quickly provide add-ons that customers need, such as snacks or printing, or partner with other vendors who can.

Whether by offering new services or opening up this powerful real-time data, we are exposing new revenue streams that the sharing economy enables.

With enough time, any latent capacity can be utilized. Each year at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, we see twelve month’s worth of planning make use of every nook and cranny.

On short notice, sharing economies are harder to organize, and they involve more risk. Real-time capabilities mean that you sit closer to purchasing decisions, closer to strategic imperatives, closer to profit and loss, closer to sealed deals and averted crises.

Real-time is difficult, and precisely because it is so challenging to do real-time well, and safely, the market will reward those who invest in making the “here and now” a priority. In short, you’re closer to risk, and closer to reward.

Consumers want real-time access, and businesses demand it. The sharing economy is not only online, it’s also picking up speed.

Mark Gilbreath is co-founder and CEO of LiquidSpace, a mobile application that helps people find and share available workspaces.

Image courtesy of Flickr user psd.

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So here we are — the last day of 2011 and the end of the first year of me writing my occasional newsletter, Om Says. Being on a break, I decided to not read the web and instead go analog and read a lot of books to nourish my mind. For me, it was an enjoyable year of writing these newsletters and I have picked out 12 stories from the archives that I feel are something you might want to revisit during the New Year’s weekend. Happy 2012, everyone.

The top story of 2011 that impacted me personally:

• Steve Jobs and the sound of silence

Steve Jobs left a big hole not only for his company, but also for the tech industry. In a time when so many companies focus on short-term decisions, Jobs taught us that real success is in taking the long view. (Also, The Tao of Steve.)

My thoughts on media:

• Old Media Is Being Unbundled, Just Like Telecom Was

The unbundling of telecom resulted in the free-ing of the last mile, which in tandem with rise of the Internet resulted in the destruction of the voice-minute economy. The media landscape is going through similar unbundling, thanks to the Internet, which takes away controls over distribution networks.

• The Distribution Democracy and the Future of Media

Unless media corporations stop defining themselves by their products, they are going to be unable to navigate the big shift that is changing the rules of the game — what I call the “democratization of distribution.”

• Why the Medium Is Not the Message

One of the biggest mistakes we as a society in general, and this industry in specific, make is that we mistake the medium for the message. Those who can keep their eye on the message — Amazon and Netflix for example – profit handsomely. On the flip-side you…[MISSING REST OF SENTENCE]

Some trends I see emerging:

• Why the Future of Hardware Is Services

There is a re-definition of the consumer electronics landscape and we are seeing a future for hardware that combines hardware, software and connectivity with specific services. Without services, the devices may lose our attention and end up at the back of the proverbial drawer.

• How iPads, phones & sensors will redefine our homes

An Internet-connected, sensor-based and iPad-managed terrarium — a microecosystem — by London-based product designer Samuel Wilkinson is an artful marriage of physical living and digital worlds and it could be a precursor for what homes and gardens could become in the age of connectedness.

Observations on the “apps” and app revolution:

• iPad May Be Magical. Apps Aren’t. Here’s Why.

Steve Jobs called the iPad magical. Fast forward to today, and I (and about 15 million others) agree. However, if iPad, the device, is more magical, the applications (apps) for the device are anything but. Where are the apps befitting the device and its hardware capabilities?

• Money Can’t Buy You Love: Why Some Apps Work, Some Don’t

The crowded consumer Internet has made it difficult for startups and services to get attention from the people who really matter: the end users. The question is: How do you get that much-needed attention? Not with VC dollars. Instead it is something less tangible.

• Why Apps Need Some Sense and Sensibility

The biggest frustration I have with my iPhone is when the phone switches between Wi-Fi and 3G networks and just hangs. In solving this problem, MIT researchers used motion sensors, showing how mobile devices need to become an extension of us.

• What Makes Apps Delightful?

With over 650,000 apps seeking our attention, it is not an easy task for apps to get it. In order to be successful and stand out, mobile apps have to have little friction, and in the process overcome smartphones’ and the mobile web’s three limitations.

And some random musings:

• The Economics of Attention: Why There Are No Second Chances on the Internet

The economics of attention are much more ruthless and unforgiving than the real economic underpinning of a product. Just as it is hard for a movie to recover from a bad opening weekend, today’s apps lose if they don’t make a good first impression.

• Is the Internet the “Paris” of the new millennium?

I started my recent European tour with a visit to Loic Le Meur’s annual celebration of the Internet, Le Web. If attendees were an indication, startup culture is everywhere. Perhaps it’s the setting, but this celebration of technology and startups reminds me of another creative age.

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Vehicle crashes are caused because of a number of reasons. Vehicle crashes are one of the dangerous accidents that may happen on the streets. Vehicle crashes are the number one killer of teens in the United States; any new insights into this dreadful scourge could save thousands of teenager lives each year. Vehicle crashes are the leading killer of American teens, killing thousands each year and injuring hundreds of thousands more. Vehicle crashes are one of the most frequent causes of fatalities each year, and the biggest non-medical cause of deaths each year.

Vehicle crashes are the No. 1 cause of inadvertent death in the US, by a large margin, though last year marked a new record low in US highway fatalities. Vehicle crashes are the primary cause of violence in our country. Vehicle crashes are the primary cause of death and permanent injury in youth. Almost all vehicle crashes are preventable and are caused by a driver doing something wrong. Side impact vehicle crashes are responsible for around 9,000 deaths each year.

The teenager fatalities in car crashes are at an all time high, more and more, it turns out, because of cell telephone distraction. On the flip side of the coin, car crashes are the primary cause of death for the age group 15–20. Almost sixty percent of fatal teenager car crashes are because of drunken driving accidents. There are a lot of reasons why vehicle crashes are America’s number one cause of inadvertent death. Two-thirds of teens that die in vehicle crashes aren’t buckled up. In a collision, your unbuckled body also can hurt others in the vehicle. Many people seriously injured in vehicle crashes are shocked when an adjuster for the other driver’s insurance provider calls almost at once and offers to send a check including damages to cover injuries suffered in the automobile accident.

By far, the most common reasons for vehicle crashes are distracted drivers and drivers which are under the influence of alcohol or drugs. In some cases, the injuries caused by vehicle crashes are permanent and victims necessitate years of rehabilitation and counseling. Some of the most common injuries sustained in vehicle crashes are back injuries and head and neck injuries such as whiplash, traumatic brain injury, and spinal cord injuries. Furthermore, the NHTSA also stated that around 40% of fatal vehicle crashes are DUI cases. Even though vehicle safety is getting better, and automobile related deaths are declining, vehicle crashes are still a leading cause of death in the USA. You can check crash test assessments, side impact and rollover assessments, and other security features for each vehicle, both new and used. You can make use of these crash test assessments and results from the NHTSA to discover the safest autos.

It has been a rather hectic few days, thanks in part to the pressures of preparing for our Structure Big Data Conference in New York next week. On the flip side, it has been a special week for me; after living in San Francisco for nearly eight years, I went (almost) to the top of the Pyramid, aka the Transamerica Building. It was an amazing experience in more ways than one; I’d been invited to attend a lunch meeting with a group of very smart people.

One of the attendees was Bill Liao. He’s an Australian-born serial entrepreneur, and his latest effort was co-founding Xing with Lars Hinrichs. Xing.com is Europe’s LinkedIn and has done well for its founders and employees: It was sold to Hubert Media Group for million. Liao, if you read his Wikipedia bio, is one of those entrepreneurs who marches to his own drummer. It’s a polite way of saying he’s just unusual.

Bill had been in San Francisco after attending the TED Conference. After our little lunch, he told me he was going to go home. For you and me, jumping on a plane would have been the normal course of action. Not for him; he doesn’t fly. “When I became an environmental diplomat, I took a stand not to fly again until we plant the trees we need to re-balance the planet,” he said.

In 2008, he became involved with the WeForest project, which involved restoring “roughly two billion hectares of forests out the four billion hectares we have already messed up,” he said. The logic is that because trees help create clouds, and clouds reflect the sunlight, more trees mean more cloud cover and thus a cooler planet. He’s getting companies involved in the project, and they have already planted 250,000 trees. The target is to get to 2 trillion saplings planted by 2020. Mission impossible? Don’t tell that to Liao.

Walking the Talk

Talk about walking the talk! “Trains, ferries, buses, ride sharing, an electric car, container ships, horses and my own two feet get me around,” Liao said. Since he officially splits his time between Ireland and Switzerland, the most recent visit to TED is a three-month round trip. “I am on the train back across the country,” he said. “To cross the Atlantic took 10 days, and my fractional use of the vessel The Amber burned less than a liter of bunker fuel, which if it were refined into jet, [it] would be less than half a cup.”

Liao is also a big gadget nerd — the latest iPhone, Macbook and an iPad 2 are always with him. When I asked him how these devices reconcile with his eco-friendly life, he pointed out that he and his family live on a 5-acre permaculture farm next to the sea where they have 20 kw of solar thermal cells and 5 kw of solar PV and a 6-kw wind turbine. “We feed power back into the grid,” he said. “For every device I have, I also plant a tree a year (50 cents a tree) so I am confident that I am doing more good than harm as are my family and community.”

The reason I am telling you Bill’s story isn’t because I want you to follow his path and live an eco-fabulous life, although you should if you want to. Instead, it’s because his story offers us all one major lesson: Believing and then following one’s convictions is a hard, arduous process, but in the end it’s the right though to do — for you. Just look at the hoops Bill is jumping through in order to follow his convictions.

The iPhone and Five Fingers

Now let’s put it in context of business world. When Apple first released the iPhone, it was so different from the idea of a phone that it had an equal chance of bombing and succeeding in the market place. Even though it was only three-and-a-half years ago, it took a lot of conviction to go up against the convention — phones with a twelve-button keypad had been around for as long as the cell phone itself.

Someone at Vibram, a 70-year-old Italian shoe-components company, had to have a lot of conviction to release those goofy looking barefoot, Five Finger shoes. Tim Ferris, a well-known author, was the first guy I know who was wearing them. I mean, they make you look like you have gecko feet and are against any conventional idea of shoes. When launched, in 2006, they were slow sellers for a while.

The original target market was boaters, kayakers and those who enjoyed sailing. Small market, if you ask me. They called their shoes “foot gloves” and focused on touting the natural foot mechanics. In his book, Born to Run, Christopher McDougall talked about the benefits of barefoot running and Vibram’s Five Finger shoes. The rest was history.

In 2009, Vibram sold only 400,000 pairs, but in 2010, it sold 2.5 million pairs, and the shoes now account for about 30 percent of Vibram’s sales. They are flying off the shelves and have their own copycats. There are counterfeits too — now that is success. (PS: if you have some time, check out this awesome You Are the Technology website from Vibram that goes into detail
as to why the human body is built the way it is.)

Lessons for the Rest of Us

Would that have happened if the company hadn’t followed its conviction? It had a breakthrough product; it was unique, and it was better than everybody else. Sure they had to pivot, retweak and reposition their offering, but they didn’t get up and say, “Well, this is not working, let’s make something new.”

Like Bill, Vibram and iPhone, we entrepreneurs need to have a lot of conviction in what we do in order to get to our final destination. It’s particularly hard following your own convictions, because today’s world has a lot more distracting noise. With the cost of creating a web-centric product or a service or a mobile application going down, we’ve seen a boom in the experimentation and the products competing in the marketplace.

Just because someone announced a new product or raised more funds, that doesn’t mean your strategy is wrong. It means you need to fight harder in the marketplace. It means you need to keep fine-tuning your strategy, but not change it. I know; it’s easier said than done.

But just look at Bill: He’s doing what he believes is right, and figuring out how to do it along the way. As you go into the weekend, I want you to think about that.

Have a great weekend everyone!

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It seems obvious what soothing music is. You’ll easily get an idea of what it’s all about by just reading the phrase. You might easily imagine solo piano music. The truth though is that, there have been a couple of vital changes to how this term is now defined.

You can arrive at a basic understanding of the term if you listen to the compositions that are categorized under it. In general, any song or instrumental piece can be considered calming if it has a slow beat. Compositions with fast beats are often considered to have an opposite effects on the mind and body.

The traditional definition of this musical type stems from scientific research. Studies show that soothing relaxation music with slow beats tends to slow down the heart rate and regulate brain wave activity. Hence people who listen to them are usually considered to be in a toned down state. On the flip side, those who listen to fast beats experience faster heart rates and more dynamic brain waves. Depending on the tone of fast compositions, listeners may experience a variety of emotions and responses ranging from anxiety to a desire to perform activities faster.

Recently, changes to the old meaning of soothing sounds have come into play. The main reason behind this is the uniqueness of individuals. Different listeners have different opinions. Hence, what you may think of as soothing music may not necessarily be thought of in the same way by other individuals. This is why jazz or pop songs that aren’t entirely slow still sometimes fall under the umbrella of soothing tones. This is despite the fact that more individuals regard slow beat compositions to be more relaxing than their fast beat counterparts.

A crucial part of evaluating music is defining it according to how it is intended to be used. An example of music purpose is general rest and relaxation. For this use, music that supports the feeling of relaxation may be viewed as soothing. On a personal level, there are many other intended uses for soothing relaxation music. A great way to use it would be for yoga and meditation or for slow stretching exercises. Many also commonly use slow beats for various tasks. Sculpting, painting and crafts are only some of the tasks that match slow sounds well. There are also some folks who prefer to listen to cool sounds when they need to work fast but accurately to prevent making mistakes.

Professionals and commercial companies have now also found a variety of ways to use slow tunes. This is often considered the preferred type of compositions by therapists and a number of medical practitioners simply because it can keep patients or clients less uptight. Business owners now also use slow beats to keep the working atmosphere or at least the upfront client environment more appealing and pleasant. This works well for people in high tension industries or businesses.

You can no longer put a definitive box around soothing music. It has changed through the years. One thing remains true though. People still need them to feel better. The right tones can take care of all the emotional and physical stresses that usually come your way every single day.

The idea of having a portable audio player emerged many years ago, when the only option was a fairly big audio cassette player with two speakers. Ultimately these audio devices got smaller and the first hand sized cassette-tape audio players was made available to music lovers in the late 70s.

Now, owning to an improvement in the technologies used for manufacturing MP3s, a corresponding evolution has taken place with MP3 players. Using any one of the new audio format MP3s that are made nowadays, one can satisfy one’s needs for a portable audio device through the use of MP3 players.

MP3 players are widely popular among the masses and, therefore, it is very common to see people using them while doing many activities such as jogging, commuting, buying groceries, browsing through websites etc.

The most commonly used MP3 players are

Flash Memory Players

Hard Drive Players

MP3 CD Players

Mini disk MP3 players

Hybrid Players.

When compared to all the other types of MP3 players, the one with the flash memory is the smallest and the lightest.

Hard drive players have more features embedded into them because of their size. MP3 CD Players are a new variety of CD players that apart from supporting the MP3 format also have the ability of playing songs belonging to all the other standard formats. These players also enable individuals to burn CD R/RW discs with songs present in their old CD collections.

An MP3 CD player is comparatively cheaper than the flash memory and hard drive memory players, but is much larger in size. Mini disk Walkman digital music players are the best options if one wants to have all the standard features in a single device, however, the flip side of this facility is that these devices are quite expensive.

Portable MP3 players have also become must have products, especially with the youth segment of the world wide population of music lovers.

The internal memory of an MP3 player determines the number of songs capable of being stored in the device. While, some models may have an internal hard drive for storing songs, however, the size and the price may go up a little bit and these devices are certainly not logical options for all those who love to have routine workouts. For them, the wonderful option lies in the form of MP3 players having the option for memory cards.

One should be very clear about the battery life while buying a player as it determines the performance of the MP3 player. There is a remarkable variety of MP3 players in terms of their size and they also have many other majestic features such as a

Larger screen

Video capability

Hard drive etc.

For an ardent lover of music, an MP3 player must be able to connect to a computer. The latest model support high speed USB 2.0 transfer and many other wonderful features.

There are many who feel that an MP3 player must have other features besides the capability of playing MP3 songs and, therefore, there are many devices that come along with features like an FM tuner and an audio recording capability.

One has to be specific about one’s needs and requirements while buying an MP3 player. The reason for this is the influx in the number of brands in the sector of MP3 players owning to an increase in the demand. Hence, the customer has a massive pool of choices when it comes to buying an MP3 player.