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We all know that we have two parts to our brains. Our left brain that is analytical in nature and our right brain is the source of our creative juices. Some are more left brained while some others are more right brained. But how much do we know or realize the capabilities that our brain gifts us with? How much do we understand the capabilities of each of these parts?

I can almost hear you say, why should I care?

Yes, Why should you care?

If learning about this helped you live your life more holistically, if learning about this helps you relieve some of your stress-points, if learning about this changes who you are for the better that you always wanted to become, wouldn’t you care?

Judith Auslander of Wise Heart Coaching (commercial break: Judith has joined the privileged group of Boomer411 trustees. So watch for her web site/article recommendations on Boomer411) shared this insightful video, titled ‘My Stroke of Insight’.

Click here to watch the video, titled ‘My Stroke of Insight’.

In this video, Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, neural anatomist shares her own experience in an engaging, gripping conversation with us. To keep the element of surprise, I am not revealing her experience. But I am very positive that it will touch you and stimulate you to look at your life differently; it sure touched me. Be sure to sit down, relax and watch the video with a calm and open mind for maximum learning.

As you watch this, think about how annoyingly left-brain oriented, as a society, we have become. What a wonderful gift it would be to our lives to find that Nirvana, that inner joy to resonate throughout our lives?

After you watch the video, scroll down and answer this question…

Who has the power or control to let that life force, that inner joy to resonate throughout our lives or not?

Do post your comments/thoughts on the same.

Did you say where is my lense?

Na aah.. not the lense you wear on your eyes! But the lenses that help you see information on the web.

Say What?

Well, I am talking about the Squidoo Lenses. (For those hearing it for the first time, Squidoo is a website that allows users to create lenses or web pages on a particular topic. Thus it is a lense on that topic and hence the name). So where are the squidoo lenses for Baby Boomers? and how do I find them?

Say no more. Your wish is answered by Susan via the SquidBoomers lense. She has compiled a very interesting collection of lenses on topics of interest to Baby Boomers. Also, to top it all off, Susan also runs a blog on the same subject that gives you more information on these lenses and other related topics. So check it out. You’ll probably find something that takes you back to those good ole’ days.

So did you say where is my lense? Find it all right here.

GM is coming out with vehicles that are more adaptive to older eyes, older bodies. And other automakers are thinking to follow suit. As Baby Boomers get older and reach retirement age, along with it come the health related issues and reduced eyesight. This is hightime for automobile makers to take notice and redesign the cars to accommodate this changing needs of Baby Boomers. Make no mistake. For those manufacturers that sieze this opportunity, it is big business. Apparently, GM is coming out with vehicles equipped with high-tech gadgets that help with blind-spot monitoring, lane departure warnings and so on.

Chuck Nyren of the Advertising to Baby Boomers blog has posted the following nice post covering the recent Business Week article on the subject, ‘The coming Boom in Boomer Friendly Transport‘, as well as his own prediction on the topic much earlier. This articles also talks about the need for the roads, road signs themselves to change to be more convenient on the aging bodies. Click on the links above for further reading on this topic.

When I introduce Boomer411 to other people, I am usually asked to explain how a discovery engine is different from a typical search engine. Most importantly, people want to know how it can benefit them. So I decided to post about it with the hope that it may benefit others.

At a fundamental level, a search engine helps you find information on the internet and a discovery engine also helps you find/discover information on the internet. So in that sense they are similar. But the similarity stops right there. Before we go into the differences, let’s first take a few minutes to understand what discovery engines are. To make this description more meaningful, we will use the implementation adopted by the RawSugar family of channels as the example in our descriptions here. (Note: Boomer411 is a channel of RawSugar)

Let’s say you wanted to learn more about insurance/ medicare options, may be for yourself or may be for someone you know.  

First, let’s visit any generic search engine of your choice and search for the keyword ‘insurance’. You will get a lot of results very quickly. Let’s say you got around 9 million search results. Now the onus is on you to find the results that match your needs. Even if you search for the word ‘medicare’ you will still get about a million results. In the interest of time, we usually look at the results in the first page or two and then give up. But a result on page 30 or something might very well be matching what I am looking for, but I would never get there. 

Now let’s visit http://www.boomer411.com/ using the browser. Notice that below the search box, you have a bunch of entries in the mid-section of the screen titled latest entries. These are the various links. Also notice that on the left side of the screen, there are a set of keywords organized under some headings. These are the broad categories/topics or tags that help you narrow your search further.

Now let’s see how this works…
1.       In the search box, type ‘Insurance’ and click on the search button.
2.       Now you see the results of your search in the mid-section of the screen (i.e., various links related to insurance). Also, notice that tags or keywords on the left changed dynamically and now list options for you to narrow your search within the current set of results.
3.       Scanning down the tags on the left, you find ’organizations’ as a sub-heading.  Under the sub-heading organizations, you see more keywords such as ‘aarp’, ’ship’, etc.
4.       Not knowing what ’ship’ is, you become curious and click on the word ’ship’ on the left.
5.       Now you see the screen refresh and show the results for ship under medicare. Your search results for the word ‘insurance’ are now further narrowed down to include the word ’ship’. The first link/result listed is ‘SHIPtalk’. Upon clicking you learn that SHIP stands for State Health Insurance  Program, that is actually a government funded program that people can use to get advice and counseling regarding their medicare, Medicaid and long-term care insurance needs. May be it would be useful to someone you know.  Thus you discovered a new option or resource for  insurance advice.

The Benefits:
Instead of the insurance related articles running through 100s of pages of search results, through successive narrowing down, you make those articles or links to bubble up to the top of your search results.  Thus bringing the results you are looking for on to the first page, rather than you scanning through 50 or 100 pages.

What does it do?

It could save you the time and frustration involved in clicking through many uninteresting links before you find the ones that interest you.

What is the discovery part here?

You may not have known that there is a free counseling service that is reliable. Of course this is just an example and so is simplified. But hope you get the point. You may not have known and discover information related to ‘Stand-alone Rx plans’ or ‘medicare advantage plans’. Thus in the process of finding answer to your questions, you end up discovering a new option or possibility that better meets your present needs, but you weren’t aware of it. All of this with less effort than scanning through 50-100 pages of results.

So going back to the original question regarding the difference between a traditional search engine and a discovery engine, while the purpose of visit to either one is the same, the process, the experience and the quality of the outcome would be drastically better with a discovery engine. Having gone through this example, I will let you answer the specifics of these differences and how they are better for yourself. May be we can cover them in another post…

Also, coming soon in a future posting, why Boomer411 links are more reliable or better?

With all the spam and noise on the internet, it is no secret that finding good, reliable information on the internet through use of generic search is becoming increasingly difficult, if not time consuming and frustrating at times. It is hard to differentiate between the sites that are dishing out information in an effort to sell us something and the sites that are an authority on the subject. It seems like everyone is claiming to be an authority. Just read the article listed below from CNN.com to find out how one has to sort through to get reliable medical information. It is a shame that we have to go through such lengthy search techniques to find good information, but on the other hand, one has to put in an effort to good results, in spite of the fact that the marketers would like us to believe otherwise. 

Tips for Savvy Medical Web Surfing

If you are looking for alternate sources of reliable medical information for a health condition you or your loved one is suffering from, please do take the time to read the tips in this article and it may help you find that doctor or medicine that can make a difference.

In a more general sense, you can see in this article, how there is a general lack of trust for the information on the internet and for a good reason. But the downside is that even the good, trustyworthy information cannot be trusted anymore on the internet. There is an urgent need to be able to sort the ‘diamonds’ from the other stones. And this is precisely the problem that Boomer411.com attempts to address. Boomer411 takes the help of experts in the field that have inside knowledge of issues and solutions and only indexes content, information that is approved by such experts. These experts are called Trustees on Boomer411. So instead of throwing every single article at the user, it only shows articles from reliable, authoritative sources and passed through a level of expert review, in a new, innovative user interface (screen) that allows you to narrow your search smartly.