Mark Bowness

Inside the beautiful eco-home

Okay, so what do you do if you are the proud owner of a gorgeous underground eco-friendly house which was featured on Channel Four’s ‘Grand Design’s’[ programme, but in this credit crunch world you cannot for the love of money sell it?

Well, here is what you do NOT do. You do not set up a website called www.pixahome.com, which is a www.milliondollarhomepage.com twist, but you throw in a twitter element because it is relevant, ensuring that one twitter owner wins the house, for free. You may be asking, why, prey tell, you do not do this?

a) a milliondollarhomepage.com project will never work again. The only other guy to make money from this project was the guy who sold the MDH script to others who thought that they could copy Alex’s success. It never happened.

b) the branding is confusing, pixahome.com with no mention of twitter in the title at all.

c) the whole model is completely confusing, something about buying pixels to promote your twitter link, but you dont have to buy anything to win it, or something.

As a result of this, the guy has not sold that many pixels at all and, quite clearly, this is doomed to failure. Not that this is a problem, we learn from our mistakes.

So, what would you do with a house like this? I have some pretty cool, nifty ideas, if the owners are interested to hear about them, get in touch!

Go take a look: www.pixahome.com

So, who would have thought that over nearly 3 years ago, when I came up with the concept for Tribewanted, it would have resulted in my sister moving to Fiji, meeting a guy and having a baby!

Little baby Dylan was born at the end of last year and, just this past week, had is first week on Vorovoro to meet his new ‘Fiji family’. A fantastic video was uploaded of ‘The Son of Vorovoro’.  Dylan had a great time presenting a Wales tooth to Tui Mali and engaging with the whole Fijian custom! So, take a peak:

I am very much looking forward to meet my new nephew, at the end of July when the whole family will be heading back to the UK!

Over a year ago I met a fellow scouser, Graham Hughes, who was on a mad, crazy mission to set foot in all of the Countries of the world, in one year, without using a plane, whilst raising a heap of cash for the charity water aid. Well, he has only gone and launched the adventure.

Now, I have not been in contact with Graham for a while, until he was recently featured in the news, for being in prison!

Check this out: Liverpool Globe-trotter, Graham Hughes, held in Cape Verde prison cell

Thankfully, Graham is now out of prison!

Check out the video above, Graham is one highly talented guy!

I was seriously intrigued to read about www.barebones.tv this week, this is a website for one British family, from Liverpool who are are web-casting their families life, live 24/7 over the net.

This family are seeking to go one set further than Big Brother being inviting the World to see their life, un-edited, warts and all as they invite viewers into their family home. As you log on to the site you can choose which camera from which part of the house you would like to see. Available areas of the house include: The Kitchen, the Lounge, The Hall and The Garden. It is a clear and obvious question that if it is warts and all, why their are no video cameras in the bedroom! However, the desire for privacy and some personal space is understood. There is also a diary room for each member of the family to record their own video diaries, in true Big Brother style.

Barebones.tv is a really interesting concept and I am not certain that this has been done before. The only problem that I can see with it is that this Liverpudlian family of mother and father, 4 sons and one daughter seem to be a real nice family not leaving much room for drama, tension, bust ups, sex and rock and roll which will make any such project a true web hit.

Nevertheless, barebones.tv is certainly one to follow and it will be interesting to see how this story grows.

Check it out: www.barebones.tv