I’ve been going to TED for regular doses of inspiration.

Here you can watch videos of short talks from people who are changing the world: Al Gore, Bill Gates, Cameron Sinclair, Bill Clinton, Frank Gehry, William McDonough, and hundreds of others. TED stands for, “Technology, Entertainment, Design,” but has gotten bigger. It now brings together, “The world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives.”

If Vverdant becomes what I want it to, I’ll be at TED soon.

Something I've been asking myself a lot lately.

I’m currently reading What Should I Do with My Life by Po Bronson, and thinking about the impact I want to have on the world. The book isn’t extremely well written, but the biographies presented are inspiring. The author interviews people who have made big decisions in their lives to find their calling. It’s interesting to read about people who are in the midst of latching onto a dream, when I find myself attempting to do the same thing.

I want to do work that has a positive impact on people, and make enough money to support my family. I have a triple bottom line goal to work toward social, environmental, and financial success. My entrepreneurial ideas are focused on finding the best way to make this happen.

Since I began thinking about starting a company, I knew I had to have a great domain name. But I had no idea how difficult this process would be. Not only should your domain name also be your company name, but it should be short, memorable, and easy to tell people about without having to spell. It’s not simply a matter of coming up with a great name, but coming up with a great name that is available.

Domain names are essentially web real estate, and the market becomes more and more crowded each day. Most good names are taken and finding one that is available seems to involve considerable creativity. These are two strategies I’ve been using to come up with new domain names: combining Latin roots to create new words, or making a list of names I like and combining syllables from different words to create a new word (check out dot-o-mator).

I’ve been using GoDaddy to check availability, but a friend also sent me a link for Instant Domain Search, which is a better search tool, because you never have to use the back button. So far I’ve had a couple decent ideas, but nothing I’m too excited about. The process is consuming. I’ll get out of bed in the middle of the night to write down an idea and get up in the morning to find that it’s taken. I hope inspiration strikes me soon….I’m in domain name hell.