Introducing TuiLand, Chat without Registration

Do you ever feel like chatting online but don't feel like signing up for another social website? TuiLand is a web-based chat tool that doesn't require registration. You just go to http://tuiland.com/en/, choose an avatar from a limited selection of cute, cartoony images, and then you can chat. You don't even use your real name--you use the name assigned to the avatar.

TuiLand was created with an idea in mind of the groups that form outside of the internet (classmates, work colleagues, etc). In other words, sometimes circumstances put you together with people, rather than choices based on common interests--or even geography. As anyone who has made online friends before can attest, you never know when you might meet someone with whom you end up building a lifelong friendship.

When visiting TuiLand, participants enter a social network made up of a fixed number of 32 people, equal parts men and women. The rest is totally casual. Because in TuiLand you don't use photos and real names, only avatars, you have the safety of guarding your own identity, and the freedom of chatting freely. The creators of TuiLand hope that in this new space, you can be yourself, starting from zero.

You can download the TuiLand app from Google Play, which is a fun and easy way to try chatting at different times of day when you have your phone with you and a free moment or two to try something new. Learn more about TuiLand and connect with other users in a less anonymous way on TuiLand's Facebook page.

Meet Alexey, Entrepreneur and CEO of Townhang.com

Alexey, age 26, is a the founder and CEO of Townhang.com, a new website that allows groups of friends to meet new interesting people for fun hangouts. Alexey was born in Russia and grew up in the tiny European country of Luxembourg where he had a very successful corporate services business, but more importantly, he had a big dream. To pursue this dream, Alexey left his life and moved to California to make Townhang.com a reality.

Alexey loves spending time around fun and interesting people, good food, and wine. He traveled the world, is passionate about India, and has strange addictions like powered paragliding--and he's going everywhere with his Hippopotamus (not a joke!).

1. How did you come up with the idea for Townhang?

I came up with the idea for Townhang when I tried to spend a few days after a business trip to Seattle to meet some locals to hang out with. Aside from dating sites and special interest groups, frankly, the options were very limited! Finding myself alone in a city of millions of interesting people felt like being marooned on a boat at sea: surrounded by water but nothing to drink. I am sure that lots of people feel similar to how I feel, because one of the most pressing symptoms of modern life is that millions of us live in big cities but find it increasing hard to make new friends or meet a partner.

Returning home and knowing I'd spotted an opportunity, I thought: wait a minute--something needs to be done here... And I started getting the team together right away!

2. Do you think the internet makes it harder in some ways and easier in other ways to make new friends?

Of course there is an ongoing debate around social networks and whether they made us more lonely and have replaced to some extent the real life interaction. It is a difficult question and certainly a very interesting one.

However, we are specifically interested in the impact internet has on our ability to meet new interesting people, and in this particular space we do not think that internet has been that helpful. Most of the social networks out there today are trying to duplicate your real-life connections (Facebook, LinkedIn), or trying to connect you in some shape or form to people you wish you knew personally (twitter).

But when it concerns actually meeting new people, we have spotted a genuine problem: it's not very easy for busy and affluent people to meet new people and make new friends. Towns are full of new, interesting people--if only there was an easy and natural way to connect with them! Current online space doesn't answer that need because most online outlets either connect people for dating, or they try to lock people in a particular group around a specific hobby or interest.

Meanwhile, there are millions of busy people living in crowded cities who still find it difficult, intimidating or just boring trying to meet interesting new people or even that special someone. You generally have to "go it alone," and that's neither fun nor very natural.

We believe that the only good way of meeting new people and making new friends is the natural way. The way it happens in real life. When you are out with your friends!

That's why we have designed Townhang.com in a way that recreates this real life environment and allows your group(s) of friends to connect with new interesting groups of people over something you all enjoy doing in real life. Lighthearted, fun, pressure-free and everything but awkward!

3. How is Townhang similar--and different--from other social networks?

Many online sites offer SOME elements of what Townhang.com offers. NOBODY does the same thing. The closest it gets to Townhang.com is Meetup.com.

However, there are quite a few fundamental differences:

1) Meetup.com invites you (alone) to join a big fixed group with a specific purpose e.g. dance tango at 7:00PM every Saturday. Townhang is much more spontaneous--your group of friends meets a small, like-minded group of people, over something you all want to do. Maybe you'll meet for a brunch and then tennis session, and end up going to an art gallery instead because your stomachs are too full and you can't be bothered to jump around. No pressure and no boring commitments.

2) On Meetup.com you have no control over who you will meet. If you like a certain activity, you just have to go along with an existing group that has been fixed long ago. On Townhang.com you decide weather you want certain people to join you or not. You can message in groups and individually, and you can see profiles of people you will meet and the feedback they have received and make a decision on the spot on whether you want to hang out with this person or not.

3) Townhang.com is more spontaneous overall: it's more about spontaneous things, rather than about an organized, recurrent activity of interest like Meetup.com.

4) Townhang.com is totally free :)

4. What happens on Townhang that allows people to make new local friends?

In a nutshell, Townhang.com is about rekindling the joy of making new friends while discovering all the exciting things your city has to offer. The site invites you and your group(s) of friends to connect with new interesting people and to hang out over a multitude of real-life happenings in a given city, that we call "Townhangs." Townhangs are in essence all sorts of things that different groups of people want to do, and when you go on Townhang.com the multitude of these happenings are visible on a page fpr your city. You can filter Townhangs by date or interest category to find things that you'd love to do in real life more easily. If nothing corresponds to what you looking for, you have good excuse to create your own Townhang with your buddies that your future friends can find and join in order to meet you for real!

We take our users' privacy very seriously, though, which means that we have developed a flexible system which allows each user to limit the visibility of their Townhang and protect some of the private information on it. This means we are ensuring that you will hang out with exactly who you want and share private information only with those who need to see it.

5. Are you planning to expand to other cities--and can people contact you if they are interested in seeing a community for their area?

Yes, of course--we are planning to be active in major cities of California within a few months, and then continue an aggressive expansion all over the United States and abroad.

The magic is that you can already create and join Townhangs from custom locations, which means Townhang.com is already everywhere, technically! The rest will depend on how quickly the word will spread and how active our users are. We believe that our earliest adopters will be ultra-social people living in big cities, holiday-makers and business travelers who are coming to a new city and want to experience it like a local, students (oh yes), young creatives, foodies, art-lovers, party animals, and everyone else looking to find like-minded people for fun hangouts!

To your question on whether its possible to contact us--what we do speaks for itself! We love meeting new, passionate, and interesting people with fresh ideas, and our email doors are always open for anyone that has one!

Thanks, Alexey!

Meet Digger Cartwright, Author

Digger Cartwright is the author of several mystery stories, teleplays, and novels including The Versailles Conspiracy, a modern-day political thriller; Murder at the Ocean Forest, a traditional mystery novel set in the 1940s; The House of Dark Shadows, a psychological thriller; and The Maynwarings: A Game of Chance, a mystery set in the Old West. His latest book, Conversations on the Bench, is an inspirational/motivational novel and is scheduled for release in May 2013. His books are available in hardback, paperback, and e-book format through his website, www.DiggerCartwright.com, online booksellers, and bookstores.

Mr. Cartwright has contributed to a number of articles on a wide range of financial, strategic planning, and policy topics. He frequently contributes articles, commentaries, and editorials focusing on current economic and political topics for the private think tank, Thinking Outside the Boxe. He is also an enthusiastic supporter of local no-kill animal shelters and humane societies, the Wounded Warrior Project, and local Meals on Wheels programs. He enjoys golf, participating in charity golf tournaments, falconry, and attending WWE events. He divides his time between Washington, D.C., South Carolina, and Florida.

1. As an author of several mystery novels, what motivated you to shift gears with your latest project and write an inspirational book?

Actually, it wasn't my idea to write my latest book, Conversations on the Bench. I was asked if I would be interested in writing a book about Sebastian, the central figure of this novel. What really motivated me to undertake the project was Sebastian himself and the story he had to tell. I only met him in person at a symposium hosted by the think tank that he had been instrumental in establishing. Over the next couple days I got to know him and his colleague, and I realized that he had a very fascinating perspective on life that was really the result of his own unique set of life experiences. The more I learned from my few conversations with Sebastian at that symposium and the more I subsequently learned from Robbie, the founder of the think tank, the more motivated I got about writing this inspirational book. It was clear to me that Sebastian's story needed to be told. He had such a huge personality that you couldn't help but like the guy, and I think everyone did. Everyone that I talked to had something good to say about Sebastian or had some story to tell about him and how he had impacted their life. He was always very positive and encouraging, and he was always there for his friends. He was just a remarkable individual and the more I got to hear his story, the more inspired I was. And ultimately, this entire project, Sebastian's story, has really had a very big impact on my life, just as Sebastian himself had a big impact on the lives of people who knew him.

2. Could you tell us a little bit about the real life friendship that inspired Conversations on the Bench?

Robbie was a young college student when he met Sebastian in the mid-1990s. They met while both working at a hotel in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Robbie was a full-time student studying finance, business, economics, etc. and worked full time. Sebastian had an educational background in economics and worked two jobs--tax investigator by day and hotel reservationist by night. They would spend hours talking about everything going on in their worlds and the world at large. And thus began a lifelong friendship. After Robbie graduated from college, Sebastian had some very poignant words of wisdom and anecdotes to share to help the young college grad get through some tough times. Robbie ended up starting his own successful business at about the same time that Sebastian was forced to retire due to health issues. That gave them the opportunity to spend a lot of time together, Sebastian mentoring Robbie and giving him encouragement, and Robbie integrating Sebastian in the business as much as possible.

They ended up starting a think tank, Thinking Outside the Boxe, to share their writings about any topic they could debate as well as their economic commentaries and research. As Sebastian's health declined, Robbie was there to offer support and encouragement, just as Sebastian had been there for him. These two guys had this great brotherly relationship. Robbie even referred to Sebastian on many occasions as the brother he never had. And I think Sebastian liked that and really thought of Robbie as his little brother. He was there for Robbie to give him advice on women, relationships, business, whatever, and all the advice came from Sebastian's own experiences. It's the type of friendship that very few people are lucky enough to find in this life. It's really just a heartwarming and truly inspirational friendship that I have recounted in Conversations on the Bench.

3. What are the unique challenges of writing nonfiction compared with writing fiction?

With fiction you can do just about anything. You can suspend reality, and the bigger the lie is, the more believable it is to some extent. With fiction, the writer is bound only by the bounds of his own imagination. It's like an artist with a blank canvas. You start with nothing and slowly but deliberately fill the canvas and bring the picture to life.

Nonfiction is a little more restrictive. Nonfiction is sort of like paint-by-number. You've got a pre-established set of lines and you just have to paint inside the lines. You might get away with changing up the colors a little bit, but you've got to stay in the lines. Nonfiction is reality. You're just re-telling what has already happened. Now, as an author you can take certain liberties and change up the scenery. Maybe you make it raining in a scene where it was a sunny day. Maybe the people involved don't remember where a certain conversation that is being recounted took place, so you have to create a scene where there was not one. With a work of fiction, you get to create the people and everything about them. With nonfiction, you have to get to know the people you're writing about and try to convey a factual representation of them as best you can.

With Conversations on the Bench, I was able to obtain the crux of the lessons and the conversations through interviews with one of the characters in the book. There may not have been a record of exactly when the conversation took place or who else may have been there or in what circumstance the conversation came up or exactly what was said in the conversation. So, as the author, going back to the artist example, I had a paint-by-number that had some missing lines. I had to create those missing lines, then fill in inside the lines with the right color and the right amount of that color. It was certainly a challenge for me going from fiction to a factually-based storyline. You've got to know the people you're writing about pretty well. It took me time and a lot of telephone conversations to get the story from Robbie and get to the point where I felt comfortable that I knew him and Sebastian.

4. How have you balanced your career in business with your interests in writing and publishing?

It's been difficult to balance the two. When I started writing, I did it as a hobby primarily. I did it because I just enjoyed it and wanted to tell some stories. It wasn't really a priority for me. When I could find time, I sat down and wrote a little bit. But the more I wrote, the more I wanted to write even more. I wasn't satisfied with having a book sitting incomplete, so I started to schedule more of my time for writing. I had to keep in mind that business was what made money. In the early days, writing only cost me money in terms of time, and writing at that point didn't have much financial return. As I wrote more, I started to dedicate a little more time each day to writing until I finished a particular project. That's really how I still do it. I don't write full time. I still have business to tend to, but I really try to manage my time well. There's always going to be sleepless nights when I'm working on a project or missed meetings or cancelled lunches, but I've come to accept that.

In the past few years, however, I've really started to focus more and more on writing as a business unto itself. I've chosen to go the independent, self-published route for a number of reasons that are neither here nor there, and that has really gotten me to examine and get deeply involved in the business aspect of being an independent, self-published author. I've really integrated the entire process from writing to marketing into my overall business structure and found some synergies there. I've adopted the perspective that as a writer I'm creating a product and it's my company's job to sell copies of my book. It's been a very entrepreneurial endeavor in writing a book and bringing it to market. That's one of the primary reasons that I'm working on setting up the National Federation of Self-Published Author Entrepreneurs as an outlet and resource for other self-published authors who are serious enough about writing to undertake it as an entrepreneurial business venture. If you're a writer who is serious about your work, you can turn your writing endeavors into a business. Just like any entrepreneurial venture, it's not necessarily easy, and it takes a lot of dedication and hard work. But if you dedicate yourself to it and have a passion for it, you can make self-publishing a successful enterprise.

5. What advice would you give to other authors who have ideas for writing an inspirational book but aren't sure how/where to start?

The first thing you have to do is identify someone or something, maybe an event in someone's life, that has been inspirational for you or others. It's really not hard to find something inspirational to write about. Unfortunately, most people aren't really looking for inspiration. Most people are too wrapped up in their daily lives to see the inspiration in the world around them. Maybe you write about someone who has overcome some great adversity in life. Maybe they fought and beat cancer or some other life-threatening or debilitating disease. Maybe they defied the odds of growing up in a socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhood only to go on to great success. Probably the most likely source of inspiration is an older person who can share their life story. If you ever sit and listen to someone like my grandmother, it's fascinating to hear her recount her childhood, growing up during the Great Depression, World War II and the greatest generation, and so on. The world is full of inspirational people if we just take the time to listen to them, and I venture to say that if you just keep your eyes and ears open, you may find inspiration in the most unlikely of places. But don't just limit your search for inspiration to people. We're surrounded by a wonderful world of nature and animals of all kinds that can offer inspiration just from the sheer miracle of life and survival. Ultimately, as a writer, you have to be aware of the people and the world around you all the time.

Thanks, Digger!