The Espresso: Edition 146

The Australian Institute of Sport have said that even 1% of dehydration in your system affects your performance. I wonder how many corporate executives are suffering from poor performance in and out of the workplace because they are dehydrated? Everybody says to drink 2 litres of water a day and I have to say even the thought of that makes me run to the toilet. However this note is just to give you a couple of simple things to think about when it comes to rehydrating.

As soon as you get up in the morning, have a glass of water ready to go on the kitchen bench, then as you walk past to get cereal, drink your glass of water. One down. When you get to work put a glass of water on your desk and sip from it all day long. Another one down. If you spend your day on the move, get a decent water bottle, fill it up and put it in the cup holder in your car or bag. Every time you have a meeting with somebody throughout the day, make sure that you have a glass of water. Whenever I go to a meeting I'm always offered a cup of coffee or tea, I always take water. There's another one down. Don't eat too much at night for dinner so that prior to going to bed you can have a glass of water or a cup of herbal tea, that's another one down. It's not hard to have five or six glasses of water through the day…. In fact it's quite easy. You would be surprised how quickly it adds up to around 2 litres. I'm not saying you have to down 2 litres every day but I do think that a good five or six glasses of water will make a massive difference to how you feel, your productivity, your performance, your mood and  the complexion of your skin. The body is 70% water and that's exactly what it needs. It shows in your eyes, your face, your skin, your moods, your performance and your energy levels, so drink up.

Having just returned from Italy, I saw that the conductors on Italian trains still stamp tickets with a hole puncher. News has arrived that Amtrak, the government owned American railroad company, have adopted the iPhone as a ticket scanner for its conductors. The Amtrak phones will be in a case equipped with a barcode scanner that you see the staff in an Apple store using or similar to Square. The phones will scan barcodes on paper tickets or the digital barcode on a smart phone. You apparently download your ticket onto your iPhone and when the conductor comes along with their iPhone, they simply scan your screen and you're on your way. It's amazing the influence that Apple and the iPhone are having on the world.

AT&T are planning to begin trials for what they call the Digital Life Suite during summer. The AT&T Digital Life Suite promises to allow customers to control aspects of their home or business like the temperature, locks on the doors, garage doors, windows and lighting from their iPhone or iPad. What makes it unique is that they also have a water detection system that allows you to detect water in your home via your phone or iPad and then be able to take action to have the water turned off and halt the leak. Apparently it's going to be available on any carrier which opens up this great technology to everyone. It's being tested in Dallas and Atlanta but it is certainly something I am sure we would all like to have in the palm of our hand to control our home environment.

We love this idea. We have written before about 'try before you buy' or how retailers are going the extra mile to get the full experience of their product or service into the hands of their customers, but this one is just plain cool. Eco furniture company Coco Mat in New York have set up a hotel room style space where you can get some sleep whilst testing out one of their beds. The Greece based Coco Mat are asking you to come in and take up to a couple of hours in their mock hotel suite in one of their beautiful, colourful king sized beds, enjoy their fresh linen, soothing music and even a complimentary glass of juice. The private hotel style bedroom is available to customers for free. But it gets even better. Each Coco Mat store serves not only fresh juice but also espresso coffee and Greek food to customers at lunch time. Good on Coco Mat for going above and beyond and lets hope it translates into sales.