Fresh (ish) from my New York trip I unfortunately didn’t get to catch up with the gang from Sesame Street as I was’nt sure if it was set in the Bronx or Queens! The trip was a success as an East Coast publisher requested the manuscript of GO! Smell the flowers so we’ll have to wait & see.

With the U.S  of A’s hearty food portions (tick tock diner filled me up) I was never short of energy enjoying walking around the east side, meat packing district, MOMA, Bryant Park and the theatre district. 

Central park by horse, Manhatten island by boat and the subway wherever possible I really got back into the New York way of life (beep, beep)

Back to the topic in hand – FOOD! I was impressed to find this clip of one of the most powerful women in the world preaching healthy foods on Sesame street, brough to us, of course, by the Childrens Television workshop:

Good old Elmo, taking it in his stride and I wonder if cookie monster is now surplus to requirements?

Comments welcomed on the state of healthcare situation in super-sized America in conjunction with sharing who your favourite Sesame street character is!  Try and link the two in your answer and let’s see where this one GO’!s

This post was brought to you by the number 8 and the letters F, Y & I.

It’s been quite a roller coaster of a year both on and offline and it’s high time the coffee community had an update on the place where it all started – GO! Smell the flowers!  With 3 years of time together we found the energy to finish the book with the ‘keeping it real’ ending which is now complete as we approach prospective agents & publishers with our manuscript complete with the foreword by Allan & Barbara Pease.

As the coffee community is brewing up nicely the flowers site has returned back to the way it was originally with the aim of promoting the book. Feel free to head over to GO! Smell the flowers which will have occassional flower smelling posts as our story is told with more twists & turns than a twisty-turny thing.

Comments welcomed! Cheers.

As Flora 2000 leave GSTF after a 2 year affiliation I wanted to thank them for providing a great flower delivery service and providing the flowers for the caption contests and the free flowers for 2008 to one lucky blogger.

So why the split?

The bottom line was the content as GSTF didn’t match up to the Flora 2000 brand and wasn’t  announced to Flora 2000 customers, as originally hoped. As I was responsible for all the content and posts it was my lack of direction, delivery and communication that wasn’t effective enough to keep this strategic alliance going so Flora 2000 understandably withdrew from the project.

Despite the ups & downs of the last 2 years I’ll still use Flora 2000 and wouldn’t hesitate in recommending them to anyone else.

Al Pacino says it far better than I do with hope that our community will continue:

Comments welcomed – thank you.

Following your requests and emails regarding an update and after the drama of last week I’m pleasaed to inform you that all that is required for my domain www.gosmelltheflowers.com is for Rehan to unlocked the domain and issue me the authorisation code.  He was travelling yesterday and had no internet access so hopefully it can be done today.

To make it simple I’ve opened a godaddy account leaving me to deal with the transfer between godaddy and 1&1 - thanks to both providers as they’ve been a great help  – both clarifying the final step that is required.

Once it is GO! smell the flowers will return to the way it was pre-Flora 2000 and be donating 50% of everything to do with brand GSTF to Emma wheat and focus on getting our story published. We need to clean the GSTF site up pretty quickly as we’ve a couple of publishers and agents reading our manuscript now.

I am still being denied master admin access to my GO! smell the flowers site and cannot post an update, so come on RYK is me my admin code back and send the authorisation code:

I’ve honoured Rehan’s request not to publish or share his 1 on 1 emails to me here but I’m happy to share mine. I’ve just emailed him the following request to enable this issue to be closed out in a timely fashion and nor be dragged out:

Hi Rehan,

My next interview is this coming Tuesday – I intend to report the direction of both sites and require you unlock the
domain and return it back to me as promised by 18:00 hours Dubai time on Monday 13th July.

To either godaddy or 1&1 is fine – I presume transfer to godaddy will be quicker.

I can then clean up both sites  and focus on the positives.

I’ll post an update at coffee now keeping the readers updating so we can close this out.

Cheers,
Jim

I’m still waiting to hear if the so called Cyber crime charges have been dropped (for instructing our content to be moved somewhere safe and that wasn’t under threat from a $60,000 ransom) and have also asked Rehan for an update on this so an innocent victim isn’t caught up in this ridiculous saga.

This was discussed during my interview on Saturday extra on  Local radio sation Dubai eye which went well and a big thanks to john Deykin and the team. 45 minutes in the hot seat running through the history of flowers and latterly coffee. I’m collecting a CD of the show later today which I’ll listen to in due course.

The tagline at coffee is ‘wake up’ and this certainly has been a wake up start to this place – we’ve more readers than ever and only a few brave souls posting comments which is understandable after such a negative start to the place.

I’m meeting a couple of potential supporting partners this week for coffee including a Dubai based adventure company and a fair trade coffee company. Rather than throw the towel on the community idea I’m going to pursue it and am drawing up plans over the coming weeks applying what I’ve learnt to date.

In the meantime I invite the contributors to post, welcome newbies Absolute Adventure and O’DB in the forest and crack on with comments and get this place GO!ng again.

Thanks for your support & understanding,

Cheers,

Jim

Hello coffee smellers, just when we thought things were going to return to normal!

It appears that domain provider www.1&1.co.uk can’t transfer www.gosmelltheflowers.com back to me from www.godaddy.com without an authorisation code from RYK who is trying desperately to release it back! So whilst 1&1, myself  & RYK work out what authorisation code is needed GO! Smell the flowers remains as it is for the time being.I’m still locked of my GO! Smell the flowers admin so can’t post an update there!

As soon as GO! Daddy clarify the authorisation code to RYK flowers will be transfered back to me – I get the authorisation code, enter it and the transfer is done but nobody knows where the code is! Come on GO! Daddy…help!

Sadly there has been a case lodged against one of my team in India for an alleged Cyber crime! – the  ‘cyber police’ are involved and require the passwords for the posts that I’ve protected (a goodwill gesture on my part for damage limitation) and I have the passwords for.  I sincerely hope the charges are dropped and this whole domain issue doesn’t become my media focus that drags the last 20 days back up and spend time and money on legal!  The ‘cyber police’ have asked to meet one of the team this Tuesday but it is me they should be talking to as the action of the last week stand squarely on my shoulders aiming for a positive outcome to all this.

I’ve taken all your comments, emails and phone calls on board regarding the futures of flowers & coffee and am beginning to get clarity on the future direction. I’ll be in a position to post about this when everything has been cleared up. RYK also has a couple of excellent suggestions on how the communities can grow and the energy focused to a positive.

Suggestion have been made that the last few weeks have been staged and it has all been done for self promotion of a book and a blog. Could anyone have scripted this, really?

I’m not granted admin access back to my site www.gosmelltheflowers.com so can’t post an update but anytime soon. Local radio sation Dubai eye have invited me on to talk about the community and anyone can listen – wherever you are in the world : 09:30am Dubai time on Saturday – the Saturday extra show!

Just click here to stream and listen.

Afterall, it’s about bouncing back, Alan:

What happens between now and then will dicate what is discussed on the show. What a start and a wake up call to the coffee community! What wake up calls have you had recently?

Thanks & Rgds,

Jim

The last 14 days have been exhausting and thankfully an agreeement has been reached.

Ultimately GSTF didn’t have the focus and business drive for it to succeed in justifying any further investment of my mentors time, money or patience with my incessant emails and scattered direction.

I’m going to have a serious think regarding the respective futures of coffee  / flowers – niether, either or both – for business or for pleasure? Really – I tried to do both – one hand ‘just for fun’ and the other hand ‘while you send someone flowers online’. A business based site is a very different focus than a water cooler, community led and sometimes ‘fun’ site.

I realise that my attention to detail on the tech issues has been poor, rarley taking the time to get into the detail and understand what does what:

Either way my passion behind building a community  has consumed me – but for what?

I don’t feel there was a winner and I’m working on  the lessons I have learned and will clarify my intentions in due course.  Recent posts and comments related to the domain issues here at coffee are password protected and I appeal to all visitors to respect this as they are in the process of  being removed.

We wipe the slate clean, we move on and we learn with new writers preparing to get on board and some not returning.

I ask you, the community and recent visitors - what you feel the future holds for flowers / coffee and how we can harness this energy and passion for a more positive online experience.

All are welcome – thank you – I’m off to the gym.

It is time to move on  – it is time to smell the coffee!

I have no access to GO! Smell the flowers anymore, blocked about an hour ago as the master password I started the blog with has been changed.

Thanks to the email advice I got yesterday (published in the thread below) I can pursue the case through the appropriate channels.

Thanks to back up and tech support 3 years of content and comments are safe as our work is not lost: I take full responsibility for this : 100%.

To all coffee contributors: your username & passwords remain the same -  via this link. Your final designed badges will be up shortly having received valuable feedback from you on the first drafts that were designed in rapid fashion! your work and intellectual copyright is safe!

I’ll be announcing a couple of new contributors here GO! Smell the coffee in due course and in the meantime, are you a fan of coffee, if so what type?

Do tell, cinamon powder is optional!

HELP me fellow internet goers! I’m in a spot of bother…..

A $60,000 demand for my domain name www.gosmellthelfowers.com has given me the biggest wake up call of my life! The domain is being held hostage – flattering, frustrating and annoying rolled into one and I’m at a loss of what to do next but am determined to brush myself down and get back in the race.

It was taken from me by someone who I thought was a friend and a flower-friendly one at that who claims to ‘turns frowns upside down’. Someone I brought on board at GO! Smell the flowers 12 months after the site had been up through an affiliate relationship.

His demand is I pay him $50,000 (that increase by $10,000 per month starting July 1st 2009) to have my domain transfered back to me. I’m hoping with the viral power of the internet I can stop this happening to other people and possbily get the flowers domain back as I consider all my options. Luckily our contributors are up for smelling the coffee with me as the community continues.

Despite buying the domain gosmelltheflowers in early 2006 and launching the website soon after followed by the trademark, the ISBN book number for the book I have lost access to the .com. Thanks to a quick thinking tech friend we’ve saved all the previous work and re-hosted safely back at 1&1 and start our quest to get flowers back. Three years of tip-tapping away everyday leading to new friends all over the world and media coverage thankfully hasn’t been lost.

At the time of writing GO! Smell the flowers has enjoyed 2,421 posts (articles) from 35 writers that led to 48,302 comments being made at the site as we started to blossom into the online community we’d hoped we’d be. With 4,500 following ‘flowersmeller’ at blogcatalog, a facebook group, almost 1,800 twitter followers picking up on my tweets , 18 brand based videos on http://www.youtube.com/user/GoSmelltheflowers and an active presence at smelltheflowers on stumbleupon. 

Isn’t this proof enough who the rightful owner is? Our writers think so and have agreed to carry on writing here as the community continues so a big THANKS to them! Aside from this the tip-tapping passion I’ve had for the site with various web designers, tech teams, affiliates and countless over the top conversations about the online community with a difference.  I’ll be spending the next week re-writing the content of the other pages as the transition from flowers to coffee is born.

We’ve had lots of ups and downs over the years but I didn’t see my domain name being held to ransom.

On June 22nd 2009 I was told that  www.gosmellthelfowers.com was no longer mine, bye-bye and as I’d transfered my domain from www.1and1.co.uk to www.godaddy.com the password was then changed. It feels like having the car keys but no being able to access the garage.

I truly hope your domain names are safe and will spend the next couple of weeks raising awareness, building the coffee community and really appreciate your initial thoughts on what I should do next. I’ll post every other day detailing the history, the ups and the down of the last 3 years.

At least our content and community spirit is intact  – thanks to an unsung tech hero who has saved 3 years work and hosted it all here! That’s life, right? As Frank Sinatra once said as some people get their kicks stomping on a dream:

So welcome to GO! Smell the coffee! I’m trying to leave my emotions out of my next step but welcome your thoughts and measured opinions on what you think of the situation and what I should about it.

Share your comments right here and please do forward this post on to everyone you know as we try to harness the viral power of the internet! I’d hate it to happen to anyone else, blog, business or otherwise! Cheers and grab yourself a quick brew as people tell people and get this story out!

Thank you for your support and please spread the word by sending this post to others!

Life has it’s knocks that we often get back up from ready to get back in the race.

Or back on the catwalk:

Anyone else notice the flower logo on the back walk or did the laughing presenter put you off!

Comments welcomed on when you last got back in the race having been knocked down….

This post is an experiment :  A site has asked me to post the following code:

87iyxs3kpr

Can you guess why? Make your guess here in comments….