My List of 10 Most Amazing Things

To compile this list, I thought about anything that has ever made an impression on me in one way or another, and then I wrote down the first 10 things that came to mind. Some are more serious than the rest, but they’re all things that made me stop and think or inspired creative ideas of my own.

It’s been a fun exercise. You should try it! To make it more meaningful, think about why something impressed you and what you learned from it. If you want to share your most amazing things, please leave a comment below!

Most Amazing No Limit Texas Hold'em Player

In No Limit Texas Hold'em poker, it's undoubtedly more important to "play the player" than it is to play the board (the cards). Sitting at a table playing this game to win takes some pretty intense concentration. To become a champion it takes an amazing ability to read the other players. Daniel Negreanu is one of my favorite players because of his skill at reading people.

Some quick history if you're thinking, "who is this guy?": Negreanu is one of the best all around players, was the youngest World Series of Poker winner in history, is a two-time World Poker Tour winner, has three World Series bracelets, has authored a poker strategy book and has been named player of the year twice.

Negreanu has said that the most important skill he employs is observing what hands his opponents play and how capable they are of playing them. Here are some examples of him doing exactly that...and the reason why he is my Most Amazing No Limit Texas Hold'em poker player.

Many times he actually calls out what the other players have before seeing their hands. Here he calls a set of threes in Doyle Brunson’s hand during a cash game:



If you want to see more amazing reads, here's Negreanu against Matt Traudt in a World Series game, playing Traudt’s tendencies well. And here he calls Ryan McClean's pocket aces.

Most Amazing Golf Shot

Playing the game of golf can be one of the most enjoyable or frustrating experiences; I know from experience. The effort involved in choosing just the right club with just the right amount of power and technique, and doing that consistently over time, while maintaining a level of concentration whereby nothing distracts you, is something that nobody has mastered better than Tiger Woods.

The game takes a lot of skill and practice, but to reach the top, you need to have the technique of a champion and a little luck every once in awhile. And that's what happened on the 16th green during the 2005 Masters at Augusta. It was one moment worth the $20 million a year Nike pays Tiger Woods, and a moment that makes it my Most Amazing Golf Shot.



Most Amazing iPhone App

Ocarina is certainly one of the most innovative iPhone apps. It’s a musical instrument created for the iPhone. Ocarina is sensitive to your breath, touch and movements. And it's a social application. Tap on the globe icon and you will see and hear other Ocarina players throughout the world. It enables beautiful music to be created, appreciated and shared…utilizing the iPhone technology. And I think that's really neat, which is why it’s my Most Amazing iPhone App. This particular video is showing the Ocarina being played to the tune of the infamous Nintendo game Zelda.



Most Amazing Film

This is an experience that I'll never forget. The Greatest Places is a large-format film that takes you on an educational journey to seven of the most geographically dynamic locations on Earth. It’s a 45-minute film I saw when I was a kid at the Science Museum of Minnesota. The screen size is almost 7,200 square feet. The film takes you on a journey through these Greatest Places:

• The Chang Tang plateau, in Tibet, with an average height of 15,000 feet
• Madagascar, which is home to a rich diversity of wildlife, including lemurs, chameleons, spiny globefish, and up to 10,000 species of flora, 80 percent of which are found nowhere else on Earth!
• The Okavango Delta in Botswana, which is a 6,000-square-mile maze of lagoons, channels, and islands
• The Namib Desert, which stretches 1,200 miles in length, but averaging a width of only 70 miles, and is home to the highest sand dunes in the world
• Greenland, the world's largest island, where sled dogs are the major mode of transportation
• Iguazu Falls, a crescent-shaped cliff about 2.5 miles long, in between Brazil and Argentina, with 275 individual cascades and waterfalls that plummet up to 269 feet into the gorge below
• The Amazon River, which forms a network of water channels that permeates nearly half of South America

The inspiring nature of this film makes your imagination go wild. It showed me for the first time how diverse the Earth is and how exciting these places are. It also taught me that the forces of geography and nature on Earth’s ecosystem can be a way to better understand forces in other ecosystems, like our society and world economy.

Geography gives us a framework to understand the world. Seeing this film, for me, had a profound impact on the way I look at everyday problems and that every little element of life is connected to a vastly greater force and system. And that’s why it is my Most Amazing Film.

If you're a parent or teacher, teach your kids about geography. Here's a good place to start.

Most Amazing Book about Advertising

According to the American Association of Advertising Agencies, the average American is exposed to over 500 commercial messages in a day. Most of that is just noise. So how does great advertising cut through the clutter?

“Hey Whipple, Squeeze This” is a reference to one of the most memorable ad campaigns of all time. It’s also the title of Luke Sullivan’s masterpiece guide to creating great advertising. It’s honestly one of the few books I’ve read word for word from front to back, and then again.

I can’t possible explain how enjoyable and resourceful this book is in just a few sentences. One reviewer on Amazon.com sums it up nicely: “It's intelligent, witty, thought-provoking, and informative, but without being preachy. It's not a text book. No. It's better than that: it's a goldmine.”

Most Amazing Invention to Help Save Lives

I first heard about the Play Pump on Guy Kawasaki’s blog, How to Change the World. I think I remember his post simply saying it was one of the most ingenious and revolutionary ideas he’d ever come across. And that’s coming from a successful venture capitalist who invests in ideas. Check this thing out:



Most Amazing Spanish Town

When I studied abroad in Spain during college, I decided to travel a bit by myself so I left a couple weeks early, before classes started. After a stop in Madrid for a few days, I took a couple trains and a bus south to the Costa del Sol and wound up staying right off the beach in a city named Marbella (“beautiful sea” in Spanish).

Like many European cities that also happen to be favorite tourist destinations, there are new developments and hotels and there’s and old part of the town. I stayed exclusively in the old town of Marbella. It was one of the most memorable travel experiences I’ve had. It was just a few blocks from the beach, a five minute walk from my hostel through the narrow streets and sidewalk cafes and the people there were very hospitable. I discovered some amazing restaurants and quaint parts of the city and wound up taking about 10 of my classmates back a month later.

Most Amazing Classic Radio Comedy

In 1938, Abbott and Costello began performing the Who’s On First comedy routine on a radio program. The bit is one of the funniest I’ve ever heard. Although some of their performances of the routine were filmed, and subsequently uploaded to YouTube, the best way to enjoy it is to listen to the audio only, just like the original radio experience. If you're using Internet Explorer, download it here. If using Firefox, just click the play button below. Enjoy.



Most Amazing Way to Download Free Music

Here's something I just discovered over the weekend. Follow these simple steps to download songs for free, without the use of file sharing applications, which are not healthy for your computer. The process is so quick and easy once you’re set up (just make sure whatever you download is a “backup” mp3 of a song you’ve already purchased.)

Step 1: Make sure you have the Firefox web browser, and you’re using it.

Step 2: Get DownloadHelper, a free Firefox extension for downloading media from websites. Install it and re-open your Firefox browser. Don't worry, it's clean.


Step 3: Visit Seeqpod, a website that allows you to search for and listen to music for free that it finds across the Internet. Search for a song that you like. I'm going to search for Coldplay's Viva la Vida in this example.


Step 4: When you start to see a list of songs that match, click on the arrow to move it over to the "play" area.


Step 5: Wait until the song loads and you hear your song playing.


Step 6: Using the DownloadHelper extension in your Firefox browser, download the song from the Seeqpod site by clicking on that down arrow and selecting the file. It will download it in mpeg format, not mp3 format, so you’ll need to convert the file. It will most likely download to your desktop.


Step 7: To convert the mpeg into an mp3, download a free media converter called QuickMediaConverter. Don't worry, it's clean. You’ll have to unzip the file and then double-click the Install.EXE file. Now that you've installed this program, open it.


Step 8: Using QuickMediaConverter, convert the mpeg you downloaded to an mp3 file and you’re done. It's a confusing interface, so make sure you look closely. You can simply drag the file to be converted into the center of the QuickMediaConverter screen and then select mp3. Then click the Convert icon at the bottom.


You'll notice it has been converted to a file on your desktop in .mp3 format. I suggest re-naming to either the artist or name of the song.


That's it. You're done downloading a "backup" copy of a song you have already purchased either online or on CD. :) Amazing, isn't it?!

Most Amazing Presentation

Randy Pausch (Oct. 23, 1960 - July 25, 2008) was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, where he was invited to give a presentation as part of their “Last Lecture” series. This series was supposed to be about what you’d lecture on if you knew you were going to die and only had one speech to deliver. For Randy Pausch, it was real. He was dying of cancer and gave his last lecture at the university on September 18, 2007. In his presentation, "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams," Pausch talked about his lessons learned and gave advice to students on how to achieve their own career and personal goals.

The presentation was so moving that Oprah Winfrey asked him to reprise his presentation (and shorten it from over an hour to just around 10 minutes. It was truly one of the Most Amazing Presentations I’ve ever seen:



What Amazing Thing would you add? Please leave a comment and tell me about it! It could be an amazing city, moment, food, actor, story, product, song, book…anything you can think of!