Richard Branson, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin are ready to start life on Mars.  They have just announced their new partnership ‘Virgil - The Adventure of Many Lifetimes‘

The goal of course is to set up a full time colony on Mars.  If you want to apply, you can take their questionnaire to see if you have what it takes.  It might be wise to have sent them an email yesterday.  Fortunately thanks to another new Google application on the Gmail side of things, you can!

I can’t wait to see what some of the other websites and companies come up with today.

I recently finished reading ‘The Art of Deception - Controlling the Human Element of Security’ which is a book written by Kevin Mitnick. In case you haven’t heard of Mitnick before, he is the most famous social engineer ever.

Social Engineering is basically using the social skills of influence and persuasion to get whatever the the persuader wants. It relies heavily on the reliance and exploitation of basic human trust. It’s quite similar to being a conman, only usually it’s done against a company rather than an individual.

Mitnick talks about various workarounds in security systems that can be bypassed by anyone using the correct lexicon who sounds like they know what they are talking about. He explains different methods of attack and ways to get a hold of information using different scenarios.

A good portion of the book is about shielding your company from attacks from social engineers and possible policies that you might want to employ. This portion of the book is done very well and I would recommend checking it out, espicially if you have never heard of social engineering before.

Now that you have seen a couple of games that are great for developing strategy in groups, what about good old ‘one on one’ games? Well there are some great ones out there, just waiting to be discovered and played.

1. Hive - In this two player game you control half of the hive, a collective of insects and spiders buzzing, jumping, and scurrying around. You’re goal is to surround your opponent’s queen bee completely.

   Each insect has a different movement path that it can follow. Grasshoppers can jump over clusters. Ants can march around the perimeter. Beatles can crawl over the top. You can never break the hive into two parts, so everything is connected at all times.

   You will be able to either move one of your pieces, or place a new one on the table. The game is quick, and it jams in quite a bit of thinking into that time. I like to compare it with chess, every piece has specific move it can make, and the goal is to take out one piece.

2. Carcassonne Hunters and Gatherers - While this game can be played with up to 5 people, it really plays well with only two. So I have decided to include it here as well.

   The idea in the game is to control different sections of the land as they are ‘discovered’. Each turn you draw a tile and have to fit that into the game in a way that all the edges match. (Forests on Forests, rivers on rivers, and plains on plains) Then from there you have an option of placing one of your ‘meeples’ (miniature people) onto the board. Once that section is complete, you will score the points of it and get your meeple back.

   The game isn’t huge on strategy, you are at the mercy of which tile you draw. But there is quite a bit of tactics in where you place that tile, and if you do add a meeple to the board. It is defiantly worth a play.

3. Scrabble - Now Scrabble is a game that you have to have heard of before. Because of that, I’m not going to go into much details on it.

   Simply use your rack of letters to play words on the board in a crossword like manner. Placing the letters so that you get to that triple word score is key, but creating good words is also going to make a big difference.

   Like Carcassonne above, this game can be played with more players; however, Scrabble plays the best with only two.

I hope that these will be able to challenge you, and whoever you decide to play against. As in most games, the more you play the better you get, and the more ideas you can try. So give them a shot, and see what you think.

Do you have a favorite two player game that forces you to think?

Last week, I found myself critiquing and tisk, tisking the coffee selections at an organic grocery store. I don ‘t even drink coffee!

But I was in the progress of reading, Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time. I picked up the book to learn about fast-growing startups and found myself picking up a few tips on the best roast and coolest coffee house colors from the Starbucks point of view. So what did I learn (besides the perfect foam spread) from “one of the most amazing business stories in decades”?

There is no more precious a commodity than the relationship of trust and confidence a company has with its employees. If people believe management is not fairly sharing the rewards, they will feel alienated. Once they start distrusting management, the company ’s future is compromised.

In daily life, you get so much pressure from friends and family and colleagues, urging you to take the easy way, to follow the prevailing wisdom, that it can be difficult not to simply accept the status quo and do what ’s expected of you. But when you really believe in yourself, in your dream you just have to do everything you possibly can to take control and make your vision a reality. No greater achievement happens by luck.

To any entrepreneur, I would offer this advice: once you’ve figured out what you want to do, find someone who has done it before. Find not just talented executives but even more experienced entrepreneurs and business people who can guide you. They know where to look for the mines in the minefield. If they have thought and acted boldly in their own careers, and proven successful, they can help you do the same.

One of the most fundamental aspects of leadership, I realized more and more, is the ability to instill confidence in others when you yourself are feeling insecure.

Success is not an entitlement. We have to earn it every day. Just because Starbucks has achieved all its goals in the past didn’t mean that we were immune to mistakes. We had to be in a mode of constant renewal and recognize that the future of our company was not based on what we achieved yesterday. We had to preserver, even when our near-term targets seem out of reach.

So would I recommend this book? I ‘m not sure. The first hundred pages were great; I couldn’t stop reading. Of course, I also don’t know if I’ve ever been in an actual Starbucks, so I was seeing the business as more than a conglomerate giant that is consuming America and the world. I saw the company from the personal and passionate vantage point of the CEO. I enjoyed wearing the rosy glasses. And I enjoyed the constant reflections the stuff you and I can gain from in our own lives.

But then the book started to drag on. I didn’t see so much reflection, just a lot of bragging. The rest of the book took me weeks to finish, and I didn’t get much out of it. The last two chapters wrapped up in the typical “we ‘ll keep working to be the best and live happily ever after”. I wasn’t reading Disney, though!

Can you measure your life beyond your net worth? I’ll be the first to admit that a lot of my transactions revolve around a mental note of how much wealth I want. But what’s the point of more money in your life?

I spent the last week in a hospice in Germany where my husband’s grandmother taught me some great life lessons in her final moments.

1. What’s the point of money if it doesn’t grant you more opportunity and experiences?
My husband’s grandma grew up in Czechoslovakia under communism, which you probably know was a world of black market survival. People who had things to offer like food and medical care were in high demand. You could skip a few bread lines and police punishments if you had something to bribe with. In communism, money meant higher survival. It also meant a chance to escape to the west. Use the resources you are given to create a better life for yourself and others. Don’t steal from the poor; enrich lives.

2. Don’t work for money; let it work for you. Have a reason for wanting money besides just wanting money. After establishing themselves in the west, my husband’s grandparents started with nothing and worked hard to establish a good life. Use money to spoil your guests with the best ice cream, get a good education, own a computer capable of meeting your needs, and travel the world… and not just in five-start, English-speaking countries, for goodness sake!

3. Don’t let anyone else tell you what to do with your money.
Have you ever noticed how many “friends” people who win the lottery have all of a sudden? Everyone has an idea of where your money should go. Some people have your best interest in mind. Most people, of course, have themselves in mind. If you’re working hard with integrity, you have the right to spend your money as you see fit. You have to be smart about your spending and investing, of course. Yet something tells me that if you have worked your way to wealth, you’re going to be smart. Nonetheless…

4. Treat yourself when you’ve earned it, and save and save when you haven’t.
At first, you might think of Dairy Queen treats and French fries. Don’t forget the computers, cell phones, cars, and other fancy upgrades that you “need” and “want”. The media floods us with expectations. How many advertisements tell you that you deserve their product? They don’t even know you! They can’t say what you deserve and what you don’t. Resist the easy ability to dive into debt. It’s hard; you’ve got to try, though. Make smart choices. Live a good life.

The biggest problem with working for other people is flexibility – you’ll probably have none. Many authors like Malcolm Gladwell (author of Blink) and Jennifer Weiner (author of In Her Shoes) work for hours in coffee shops, restaurants, and other places away from the desk. Working in new environments is a great way to gain a new sense of motivation and ideas.

Whenever I didn’t want to study in college, I packed up my books and relocated to another place on campus. On the weekends, I’d head downtown to study. The shift toward inspiration was incredible. I was at least twice as productive despite the distractive atmosphere.

As crazy as it sounds, sometimes it’s easier to concentrate when you’re surrounded by distractions. These distractions are different than at the office or home; you can tune them out because you know that they’re distractions, and you know that they won’t influence your day or your responsibilities. At work, you start listening to peoples’ phone calls to know the latest information that you won’t otherwise gain. At home, you start thinking about what’s for dinner, what you’d rather do, what you need to clean, and how many cookies are left in the cookie jar. In random places, you also don’t get the interruptions unless it’s the waiter offering you a refill of coffee.

As the weather gets nicer, the lack of flexibility when you work for someone else becomes more obvious. A warm body with nothing to do often matters more to a boss than a happy, productive… and absent employee. But great ideas don’t usually come knocking on the office door.

Doing something well means that you like what you’re doing. Even if you’re fascinated by your line of work, though, motivation can wane. Passion can drop even faster. Unless you live to work (when you should work to live), consider the following ideas when you work for someone else or are thinking of hiring a staff:

1. Allow flexible hours. Some businesses have official open hours. As long as someone is around during those times, everyone else is free to come as he pleases. Employees tend to stay longer in places like this because they know they won’t likely find such flexibility again. The boss also knows that he can pay these people less; his flexible environment is in demand.

2. Let employees work from other places. An hour of e-mail and cell phone communication doesn’t need to be done in the office. Even a picnic table outside of the office creates a tempting environment to work.

3. Offer a get out of work early day. Most employees don’t get any time off from New Years until Memorial Day. With spring on its way, employees are going to get antsy to be outside; they won’t be as productive. Encourage them to work hard and leave a few hours early on a designated day. Does the phone really ring that much on a Friday afternoon anyway?

In the meantime, try to maintain that spring fever.