by Willy Franzen on February 12, 2009

It’s not big surprise that jobs are constantly in the news these days. That’s part of the reason Jason Seiden and I launched our course. People need help finding and landing jobs. People in the news have picked up on the need, and now it’s newsworthy if a company is hiring. Take this article from mlive.com’s Michigan Business Innovation Blog – it’s about who’s hiring in Ann Arbor. That’s obviously of interest to me, since so many of you are at both University of Michigan and Michigan State (as well as other great Michigan schools). There were some pretty interesting names on that list, and one that stood out to me was Compendia Bioscience. They’re Biotech meets Software, and they’re also part of the future of Michigan.
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by Willy Franzen on February 10, 2009

How much energy do you use every day? I’m not talking about Calories, although I’d be surprised if you knew that, I’d be shocked if you could tell me how much energy you consume on a given day. You might know how much you spend (and that might be more important), but as energy becomes a bigger and bigger issue, you need to be an informed “consumer.” Everybody needs a little Positive Energy, right? Well Positive Energy is an Arlington, VA based company that is working to “engage the 300 million Americans who are in the dark about their energy use through a combination of cutting edge technology, analytic direct marketing, behavioral science and world-class design.” Sounds pretty cool to me.
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by Willy Franzen on February 5, 2009

Since we’ve already covered Gawker Media on One Day, One Internship, we’re going to recycle some of that post for today’s post. Unfortunately, some of the information has changed because Gawker’s owner, Nick Denton, is full of doom and gloom and has made some serious changes to his company. In case you’re not familiar with Gawker, it’s a network of 12 10 blogs that consists of Defamer (L.A. Gossip), io9 (Science Fiction), Valleywag (Silicon Valley Gossip), Deadspin (Sports), Jezebel (Celebrity, Sex, Fashion), The Consumerist (Consumer’s Rights) (sold off to Consumer Reports), Jalopnik (Cars), Gawker (Manhattan Gossip), Kotaku (Video Games), Lifehacker (Productivity), Gizmodo (Gadgets), Fleshbot (Adult, no link – you can find that one on your own) (also sold off). It’s an impressive network of sites, some trashy, and some insanely useful. Gawker Media’s network has been identified as being the most valuable blog with some estimates of a $150 million valuation. Still Denton has been so concerned with the economy that he has been cutting blogs that aren’t profitable and laying off staff. Maybe his tune has finally changed, because it looks like Gawker is hiring again.
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by Willy Franzen on January 29, 2009

Maybe it’ll sound sad to you, but web analytics are a big part of my life. When your job is running websites, it’s often the best feed back that you can get. I have to admit that it makes me feel better about myself when I get more visitors, more subscribers, and more comments. And I really like it when people sign up to learn more about a job search training course that I’m releasing in the next few days. I’d imagine that employees at large corporations aren’t nearly as emotionally tied to web analytics as I am, but maybe they are – they often hold titles like Web Analytics Manager. While I’m happy with the information that Google Analytics provides me, many companies have much greater needs when it comes to tracking users on their websites. That’s why the big boys like Apple, Adobe, NBC, Chevrolet, Gap, Neiman Marcus, The New York Times, PayPal and Target use Omniture, a Utah based web analytics company. If those names trust Omniture for analytics, then you can be pretty sure that Omniture is the best out there.
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by Willy Franzen on January 9, 2009

Although we now know that the premise behind alchemy (turning common metals into precious metals like gold or silver) is impossible, the scientific endeavors of alchemists from centuries past are responsible for much of our understanding of inorganic chemistry today. Adchemy is a Redwood City, CA based startup that has taken a page out of the alchemists’ books. They think that with a lot of scientific research, they can turn online advertising into gold. Some may say that Google has already done that, but Adchemy wants to do it better. They say that they’re “the first company to truly combine data on the Web with advanced scientific algorithms to give marketers powerful products designed to increase qualified users and reduce acquisition costs.” It’s hard to say whether their research has generated any gold yet, but their potential certainly has – they’ve raised $27 million in venture capital funding. Hopefully there’s more to Adchemy than that, which is why we think that you might want to check out their jobs.
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by Willy Franzen on December 25, 2008

Somehow the Coca-Cola brand has been indelibly tied to the image of Santa Claus. In fact, there’s even an urban legend that the modern image of Santa Claus was created by The Coca-Cola Company. It’s not true, but the fact that many people believe it to be true speaks volumes about Coca-Cola’s branding prowess (dating all the way back to the 1930s). We considered a lot of Christmas themed companies to feature today, but we keep coming back to the image of St. Nick sipping on a glass bottle of Coke. Let’s see how you can find a job with Coke.
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by Willy Franzen on December 18, 2008

I’m not quite overloaded yet, but I’m getting to the point where I have too many ways that people can communicate with me. Everything important flows through e-mail, but with notifications from LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, and many more, it’s a lot to manage. I haven’t bitten the bullet and joined Plaxo yet, but it looks like a pretty cool way to manage contacts and centralize all of my online social accounts. Not only can you link accounts from all over and access them all through Plaxo Pulse, but you can also integrate all of this information with your address book and calendar. It’s a pretty cool implementation of technology, which is why Plaxo might be a startup that you want to consider working for. Even if you don’t consider working for Plaxo, you may want to consider signing up to use their (free) product to manage your contacts for networking purposes.
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by Willy Franzen on December 16, 2008

Yesterday I was reading an article about how one third of hedge funds might be going out of business in the not so distant future. I usually try to stay optimistic, so I avoid news sources that rely on hyperbole like this to draw attention to their articles, but what caught my eye was a statistic that was attributed to a Chicago-based company called Hedge Fund Research. The stat wasn’t all that interesting, but I instantly wondered whether the company ever hires new college grads. This is the “always looking” approach that I’ve been advocating over the past year, and which will play a major role in our soon to be released job search training course. Instead of being in the business of managing money like hedge funds are, Hedge Fund Research is all about collecting and disseminating information about hedge funds. They may have an ugly logo and a not so pretty website, but they’re on top of everything going on in the hedge fund industry.
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by Willy Franzen on December 13, 2008

I was just browsing the news this morning when I came across the story of how Bernard Madoff, a prominent Wall Street trader, allegedly admitted to defrauding investors in his hedge fund of $50 billion. It is an unbelievable amount of money, and it’s hard to believe that anyone would go through the effort and risk to steal that much money – I can’t even fathom what you would do with $50 billion in illegally acquired money. The most outrageous part of the story might be that Madoff has been released on $10 million bail. That’s peanuts for him. It’s .02% of what he allegedly stole. After reading this story I started browsing non-profits for today’s post, and I came across the Vera Institute of Justice. It’s a New York City based organization with locations in Washington, DC and New Orleans, and it was founded when “philanthropist Louis Schweitzer and magazine editor Herb Sturz recognized the injustice of a bail system in New York City that granted liberty based on income.” Today’s story about Madoff is a perfect example of this injustice.
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by Willy Franzen on December 12, 2008

Social media. Social media. Social media. If you’ve been spending much time on the web lately (or listening to me), then you probably keep hearing how social media is the next big thing. The only hitch is that social media isn’t new. The Internet has been social almost from its beginning – we just have new tools to make the interactions happen more easily. A lot of people will say that the next step in the growth of social media is corporate adoption. That’s why we see cutting edge companies hiring for positions like “Community Manager.” Well, what if I told you that there’s a company called Lithium that has been helping companies adopt social media for more than 10 years? You might be surprised by that, but when you start to think of social media as more than blogs, Twitter, and Facebook and start to include chat rooms, forums, and other “Web 1.0″ technology, it’s not hard to imagine that the principled behind corporate adoption of social media have actually had some time to mature. Lithium is based out of Emeryville, CA, and they build “successful communities on-demand.”
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by Willy Franzen on November 27, 2008

Happy Thanksgiving! Thank you for reading and helping to make the first year of One Day, One Job a great success. Last year we told you about jobs at Plimoth Plantation and Colonial Williamsburg, which are still a great option if you want to be reminded of Thanksgiving every day when you’re at work, but this year we’re going to take the easy way out and talk about turkey. I was first introduced to Jennie-O when I tried some of their turkey bacon. It’s good, if you haven’t had real bacon in a while. Since my Thanksgiving cooking philosophy is that bacon makes everything better (especially when it’s put on top of the turkey and doused in maple syrup, seriously, try it), I’ll let Jennie-O provide the turkey, but I’m getting the bacon somewhere else. In the three or four years that I’ve been familiar with the Jennie-O brand, I’ve noticed that they’ve revved up their branding efforts. You’ve probably seen some of their tv commercials, which are pretty funny, but you may have overlooked the fact that they’re working hard to expand recognition of their employment brand with college students.
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by Willy Franzen on November 26, 2008

Since Thanksgiving is tomorrow, I have cooking on my mind. I’m trying to make sure that I have everything that I need, because Thanksgiving Day always comes with some essential ingredient or cooking implement missing. A run to the store for an ingredient usually isn’t a problem, but a meat thermometer or baster can be a little tougher to find. That’s why you might want to make a day before Thanksgiving stop by Williams-Sonoma, and while you’re at it, you might want to think about what kind of jobs they offer. In case you’re not familiar with Williams-Sonoma, they’re “the premier specialty retailer of home furnishings in the United States.” Their brands include Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, Pottery Barn Kids, PB Teen, Williams-Sonoma Home, and West Elm, and they “cover every room in the house: from the kitchen to the living room, bedroom, home office, and even the hall closet.” Williams-Sonoma, the brand, is best known for kitchen wares, which is why I associate them with Thanksgiving.
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by Willy Franzen on November 23, 2008

Do you look at the labels on all of the food that you buy? Not only the nutritional facts but also the ingredients? If you answered yes, then you’re probably a health conscious consumer, or maybe you have a specific food allergy. Well what about the stuff that’s in your food that isn’t on the ingredients label? No mater what kind of drugs they pump into the cow that your hamburger is coming from, it’s always just going to be labeled beef. How about that bottle of water that you’re drinking from right now? It’s just water, or is it? A salmon from Lake Ontario is still just salmon, even if it’s full of PCBs (at least you can’t buy those in the grocery store). There’s a lot of stuff in our food and water that we don’t know about, which is why Washington, DC based Food & Water Watch exists. They’re “a nonprofit consumer organization that works to ensure clean water and safe food.”
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by Willy Franzen on November 14, 2008

Maybe your demographic characteristics get targeted more often than mine, but it’s a rare occasion that I see advertisements from employers on Facebook. As I’ve already demonstrated, Facebook advertising is an extremely effective way to reach a targeted audience at a low cost. That’s why it caught my attention when I saw that Alpha 411 Yext was targeting me with some Facebook recruitment advertising. I clicked their ad and took a look at what they have to offer, and I have to say that their Recruiting page is pretty compelling. Alpha 411 is a local advertising company that says that they are “rapidly becoming the world’s greatest.” I think that’s a bit of an overstatement considering that Google has a pretty strong presence in local advertising. With that said, Alpha 411 is taking a different approach by building niche industry sites like GymTicket.com and LocalVets.com to help people find local providers in specific industries. It looks like a strong business model, but I doubt that they’ll ever unseat Google; in fact, I’d wager that most of their traffic comes from the big G.
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by Willy Franzen on November 8, 2008

When you hear “pew,” you usually expect something to stink. That’s not the case with the Pew Research Center, which is a non-profit “fact tank” (not thinktank) that provides nonpartisan “information on the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world.” If you know anything about thinktanks, you may be rolling your eyes at the word nonpartisan, but it’s true. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. Still skeptical? Read their Code of Ethics. They’re all about the numbers, and they don’t care so much about making sure the numbers say what they want them to. The Pew Research Center has seven ongoing projects that focus on some fascinating subject matter. They are: Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, Project for Excellence in Journalism, Pew Internet & American Life Project, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, Pew Hispanic Center, Pew Global Attitudes Project, and Social & Demographic Trends. If you’re still not straight on what Pew Research Center is all about, take a look at their home page – PewResearch.org – it’s full of the kind of information that the Center compiles.
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by Willy Franzen on October 30, 2008

If you’ve been paying attention to what we’ve preaching here every day, you know that we think that in-depth employer research is the key to finding and landing great jobs. You also may have noticed that we routinely feature tech startups, and when we do, we usually encourage you to check out what TechCrunch has to say about them. TechCrunch is the blog when it comes to news and information about Internet products and companies. They’ve been around since 2005, and they’ve rapidly built themselves to be one of the top 3 blogs in the world according to Technorati. They also happen to have an RSS subscriber base of close to 1.3 million. That is an insane number. Despite all their success, or maybe because of it, TechCrunch has continued to break news stories and deliver quality content. They’re not resting on their laurels.
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by Willy Franzen on October 29, 2008

One of my favorite movies is Trading Places
. I was introduced to the movie by my Econ 101 professor when he played a clip in class, and it still amazes me how much fun it is to learn about the world of high finance and commodities markets from Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd. These days it seems that entire markets are as volatile as the concentrated frozen orange juice market was in the movie, but that just makes things more interesting. Trying to play the markets right now might be fun, but there aren’t a ton of companies in the financial industry hiring right now, and you don’t need that stress anyway. If you’d still like a front row view of the daily excitement that is capitalism, then you should consider a job with the CME Group, “a combined entity formed by the 2007 merger of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) and the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT).” Instead of playing the market, you can be the market.
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by Willy Franzen on October 28, 2008

Trust is important in online interactions. When someone e-mails you and tells you that they have $7.4 million dollars in a foreign bank account and that they will give you half if you help them transfer it, you hopefully don’t trust him or her. When I tell you about a really cool company that is hiring lots of new college grads, I hope that you trust my word and give the company a look (but I also hope that continue to do more research on your own). And when you give a company personal information, you want to be able to trust that they’ll keep it private. TRUSTe is a company that verifies and certifies that companies adhere to specific best practices when it comes to online privacy. TRUSTe was founded as a non-profit and remained as such for 11 years, but this summer they made the decision to take investment and become a for-profit. It’s an interesting choice that was probably necessary for TRUSTe to grow its reach.
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by Willy Franzen on October 25, 2008

Did your Kindergarten class have a special name? Something beyond the teacher’s name? If it did, you probably don’t remember it, but kids at Harlem Success Academy are going to remember the names of their classes for a long time. Not only are their classes named by the colleges that their teachers went to, but the classes are identified by the year that they will be graduating from college (if my math is right, then this year’s Kindergarteners are the Class of 2025). I think that’s pretty inspirational, and that’s the point. Harlem Success Academy is a charter elementary school that is exactly what its name says it is.
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by Willy Franzen on October 19, 2008

Just because you’re graduating college doesn’t mean that you have to be done with educational development. Even if you haven’t studied education for a second, you must have picked up something with 17 years in the educational system. At the very least you’ve lived in a thriving society, and you understand how education, health, civil society and economic development are the keys to a better life. Maybe you take these things for granted, but once you see what the non-profit Academy for Educational Development is doing, you’ll get a better understanding for how innovative solutions can help solve critical social and economic problems. AED has programs that focus on 7 specific areas – Education, Enterprise & Economic Development, Environment & Energy, Health, HIV/AIDS, Leadership & Democracy, and Youth – and they also take 7 different approaches – Behavior Changes, Gender, Partnerships, Research & Evaluation, Social Marketing, Technology Applications, and Training. It may sound like they have their hands full, and they do. AED is running “more than 250 programs serving people in all 50 U.S. states and more than 150 countries.”
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by Willy Franzen on October 15, 2008

Just by looking at their name, you can tell that Red Ventures was founded after the Cold War ended. Their name may sound like a secret name for the Communist party, but their 3 year revenue growth of almost 6,000% is anything but Marxist. They’re taking advantage of the free market as one of the 25 fastest growing privately held companies in the country according to Inc. Magazine. They’re in the business of Customer Acquisition Marketing, and they work specifically in the areas of Home Services, Consumer Services, Business Services, Automotive, Home Remodeling, Financial Services, Education, and International (help us with reader acquisition, and enter to win an iPod Touch from us). With their rapid growth they seem to keep adding employees, and their benefits look way better than Socialism could ever offer.
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by Willy Franzen on September 24, 2008

A lot of you probably started college with a strong interest in real estate. It’s understandable if much of that interest has evaporated as a result of the direction that the real estate market has taken over the last two years. New York real estate seemed to be the last bastion of hope, but with the fall of some major investment banks and a lot of fear on Wall Street, even that seemingly unstoppable market is starting to slow down. Still, if anyone can weather this storm, it’s hopefully the firm that did the biggest real estate deal in US history (the purchase of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village for $5.4 billion). The firm behind that deal is Tishman Speyer, and even they seem to be struggling a bit as of late. Still, they make moves with the long-term in mind, and they’re prepared (both mentally and financially) to take a short term hit. Real estate isn’t the hot place for careers right now, but it’s still a field that is loaded with opportunity. There will always be people making money off of real estate deals, and there’s no better place to learn how to do that than Tishman Speyer.
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by Willy Franzen on September 10, 2008

Shopping is supposed to be social. When you were a teenager, you probably liked to hit the mall with friends. Now, you probably lie in bed late at night surfing web sites looking for cool stuff to buy. It’s just not the same. You need social proof to back up your buying decisions. You want to hear what other people think. You want reviews, stories, and answers to questions that you may have about a product or service. Bazaarvoice is a software as a service provider that promotes social commerce by connecting customers to each other. They get their name from the word “bazaar, ” which “symbolizes the beginning of commerce – the initial marketplaces… lively centers of town, buzzing with neighbors, friends and merchants all sharing opinions and building a vibrant community.” That’s what Bazaarvoice is trying to recreate online for their clients.
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by Willy Franzen on September 8, 2008

Carbon is everywhere – in trees, air, diamonds, your body, yet it typically seems pretty harmless. For the most part carbon isn’t something that you lock up under the kitchen sink to keep away from the baby, although breathing carbon monoxide will kill you, and there is the fear that we may be using carbon monoxide to cook ourselves. No matter what you think about “global climate change,” you have to recognize that attempts to limit carbon emissions are quickly becoming a major business concern. That means that businesses of all sizes are either going to have to invest significant resources in trading in carbon markets, or they’re going to have to outsource. If they’re going to outsource, Point Carbon is the place to go. They provide “independent news, analysis and consulting services for European and global power, gas and carbon markets” based on the information they get from their “experts in international and regional climate policy, mathematical and economic modelling, forecasting methodologies, risk management and market reporting.” If you’re interested in energy policy or markets, there couldn’t be a better place to work than Point Carbon.
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by Willy Franzen on August 31, 2008

I bet that you have some friends whom you can listen to for hours – friends who can straight up tell a story. Whenever they speak, people listen. I bet that you also have friends (or quite possibly had professors) who can make any story boring, no matter how good the facts of the story actually are. Storytelling is an art, but it’s also a skill that can be learned. It’s essential to making friends, getting jobs, and persuading people. Everybody loves a good storyteller, and that’s why StoryCorps, an independent non-profit, is focused on honoring and celebrating people’s lives through listening. Here’s the story on StoryCorps and their entry-level job opportunities.
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by Willy Franzen on August 14, 2008

A company’s home page should make it instantly clear what the company is about. For many companies this is not the case. There’s all kinds of fluff that fails to give potential customers a proper brand introduction. Menlo Innovations doesn’t make this mistake. Their home page introduces a problem: “In 2004, the U.S. wasted over $55 billion on failed and poorly run software projects.” Then it identifies the cause: “These failures can be traced to a lack of understanding of the business issues being addressed and the wrong implementation methodologies being used.” Finally the home page poses their solution:
Menlo Innovations applies High-Tech Anthropology® to help our clients fully understand their business problems and opportunities. If the solution requires software, Menlo either develops the software within our Menlo Software Factory or The Menlo Institute trains your staff to use proven methodologies to develop the software themselves.
It’s clear. It’s concise, and it gets to the point. There’s no misunderstanding about what The Menlo Institute does.
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by Willy Franzen on July 28, 2008

Once when I was in college, my roommates and I got together and decided to ship a mini donkey to our next door neighbors whom we didn’t get along with. We thought that it would be the prank of the century. Then we asked ourselves, how the heck do you ship a donkey? Ok, that wasn’t a true story, but it’s still presents an important question. How do you ship a miniature donkey? As far as we know, UPS, the USPS, DHL, and Fedex don’t ship donkeys. uShip, on the other hand, provides a shipping market place where anyone can find a way to ship a mini donkey. With uShip, anyone can sign up, list an item to ship, receive bids, select a winning bid, and ship nearly anything nearly anywhere. You can even sleep easy knowing that the guy who is transporting your prized donkey has been moving livestock across the country and getting great feedback on uShip for years. uShip calls themselves “the online shipping marketplace,” and their raving fans seem to agree.
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by Willy Franzen on July 27, 2008

A child’s first sign of teenage (pre-teenage?) rebellion often begins at the radio dial. The parent’s up-to-this-point unchallenged decision of what to listen to while in the car is called into question, and all hell breaks loose. If there are multiple kids in the family (or even just in the car), the negotiation can quickly becom more heated than a multi-lateral peace process in a war-torn nation. The parent will fight hard to maintain his or her right to National Public Radio, but the kid will persist in his or her challenge to hear something that feeds a suddenly “eclectic” taste in music. Often the parents cede this battle in hopes of winning in the future (bad idea!), which results in the parent’s driving the kids around the mini-van listening to rap music that would be a lot more offensive if the parent knew what some of the words meant. Eventually the rebellious tykes will grow up and realize that they too want to be more cultured, and they slowly, but surely come around to listening to NPR. Or maybe some kids just never speak up. They like NPR from the start. Maybe those are the ones who end up taking entry-level jobs at NPR.
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by Willy Franzen on July 18, 2008

Sometimes I give people a hard time for buying Fiji Water, but I shouldn’t, considering that I occasionally drink it myself. I drink a lot of water, and Fiji Water is some of the best, but it seems crazy to have water shipped half way around the world when we have some of the world’s best drinking water sitting in our toilets (and coming out of our faucets too). Still, there’s something to be said for enjoying the luxury of sipping water that comes from an artesian well at the edge of a primitive rain forest. If you’re going to drink bottled water, it might as well come from somewhere that you could only dream of vacationing.
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