Philippe Matthews Show Guru Advice, Author Reviews, Tech Reviews, Entertainment News

Rebecca MacDonald, a Canadian immigrant born in the former Yugoslavia who started with nothing and is now executive chair of Just Energy, a $2.3 billion (market cap) energy firm, delivered such a vivid and passionate speech at the Womens’ Presidents Organization annual conference on Thursday afternoon in Vancouver, that the entire audience of 650 women business owners spontaneously leapt out of their seats to clap, howl and cheer her on. “I laughed, I cried, I almost had to leave the room when she spoke about her relationship with her mother,” said Nancy Lyons, president of Clockwork in Minneapolis, raving about the range of emotions MacDonald inspired just moments after the remarks. So what can you do to make a speech that spurs your audience to similar applause and admiration?

Rebecca MacDonald, a Canadian immigrant born in the former Yugoslavia who started with nothing and is now executive chair of Just Energy, a $2.3 billion (market cap) energy firm, delivered such a vivid and passionate speech at the Womens’ Presidents Organization annual conference on Thursday afternoon in Vancouver, that the entire audience of 650 women business owners spontaneously leapt out of their seats to clap, howl and cheer her on. “I laughed, I cried, I almost had to leave the room when she spoke about her relationship with her mother,” said Nancy Lyons, president of Clockwork in Minneapolis, raving about the range of emotions MacDonald inspired just moments after the remarks

Baby boomers have been nicknamed the "Silver Tsunami" for their impact on every facet of society. Now, as 76,000,000 of them reach age 60 and beyond, it seems they either can't or don't want to stop working.

A few days ago , I met Ben, a first-time founder who's been working on his business idea for 10 months. I asked him to give me the two minute overview of his business idea (or the "elevator pitch" in investor speak)

Twenty-five years after the tragic runaway fission and fire at Chernobyl , tons of concrete shield workers and visitors from the dangerously radioactive puddle of melted fuel that lurks in the basement of the building housing reactor No. 4. Similarly, more than 30 years after the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, concrete shaved 2.5 centimeters deep guards a hollow reactor vessel, its partially melted down fuel rods having been taken out over the course of a decade and shipped to Idaho National Laboratory (INL) for study

Your electric car might get you into heaven, but it's not going to save the Earth if China keeps up at its current pace. But while China may remain the world's largest energy consumer and CO2 emitter--that's just what happens when you represent 20% of humanity--the country can still put a dent in its energy and carbon consumption, stabilizing its emissions before mid-century

Move over massages, martinis, and manicures. RapidBuyr wants to sell you printers, pens, and PowerPoint. (Yes, we adore alliteration!) The daily deals moshpit has mostly been a consumer affair so far

... And Living Social and anyone in the deals business, which has, until now been focused on scoring the deepest discounts for individuals. Here's why Facebook Deals inaugurates a new era.

In emergency situations, establishing reliable comms can be vital for saving lives--but often established grids are taken out by the disaster itself. Enter AT&T's portable cell phone tower. AT&T's new product, the Remote Mobility Zone, is specifically designed for fast deployment in post-disaster situations, and as well as connecting to existing cell networks in situations where a local tower is not working, it can even send phone signals up to sat-com systems.

In the past two weeks, Google has made two staggeringly large renewable energy investments: a $168 million investment in the Ivanpah solar farm, and a $100 million investment in the world's largest wind farm . We had a chance to speak with the man behind these investments--Rick Needham, Google's Director of Green Business Operations and Strategy (pictured in stylish duds, center)--to find out why the search engine giant has seemingly all of a sudden become a major clean energy player. When Needham came to Google in 2008, the company had already made early-stage clean energy investments through Google.org (the company's philanthropic arm), but Needham spent most of his time figuring out how to make Google's own operations more energy efficient.

The facts paint a grim picture . Women make up half of the U.S. workforce but represent only 25 percent of the technology industry.

George Doriot, the father of venture capitalism, liked to quip "Someone, somewhere, is making a product that will make your product obsolete." Doriot died in 1987, but his ideas about venture funding can be seen to this day; Intel, Apple, and Cisco (to name a few) are some of the first companies to be funded by venture capitalists. The VCs that followed in his footsteps—including Tom Perkins, Arthur Rock, and Don Valentine—have, through their work, trailblazed a path of American innovation.

Switching from incandescent to compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) is easy, affordable, and can cut costs right off the bat. CFLs use 75 percent less energy, saving up to $200 for every five bulbs replaced, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Plus, lighting expenses make up as much as 50 percent of the average commercial building's energy bill

After a decade of dealing with environmental and regulatory red tape, the first offshore wind farm in the U.S.

Ramon Ray, journalist and editor at Smallbiztechnology.com , sums it up perfectly: "Small businesses can do BIG things using low-cost technology and readily available expertise." It doesn't matter if you're running a business out of your home, the local Starbucks (free Internet), or an abandoned warehouse, if you have the right tools to reel in a large consumer base, it's not necessarily important how small your business is because it's doing big things.