It’s not often we get to sit on the floor, barefoot and in lotus position while interviewing a spiritual author whose journey and teachings have positively influenced the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.

Timber Hawkeye, author of the best-selling spiritual guide ‘Buddhist Boot Camp’ offers a non-sectarian approach to being at peace with the world, both within and around us. His intention in ‘Buddhist Boot Camp’ and life is to awaken, enlighten, enrich and inspire.

Timber was kind enough to give us his time on his worldwide book tour to answer some of the questions not many get to ask him but all want to know.

Make yourself a cup of tea, light a few candles and enjoy!

1. What is the message behind Buddhist Boot Camp?

“If I was to incapsulate it, the message would be simple – be grateful and be kind. It’s important to understand that we create a lot of our own suffering – by becoming aware that we hold the responsibility to create our own happiness, we empower ourselves to live a more relaxed, compassionate and positive life.”

2. How did the book come to be?

“I never had the intention to sit down and write a book. When I moved to Hawaii, I didn’t have a place to live, I didn’t have a job lined up and I didn’t know what I was going to do – I just knew that I wanted to live a more relaxed and free life. Every month I would send a letter to my friends and family, updating them on how my simplistic and non materialistic life was turning out.

After about 8 years of continual updates, thoughts and teachings, my friend who was moved by what I wrote about, suggested that I take all those emails and letters and make them public. So that’s what ‘Buddhist Boot Camp’ is – a collection of all my journal entires, emails and letters to friends compiled into a book. That’s why every chapter is only a page long and can be read in any order.”

3. Is there a difference between being religious and being spiritual?

“Absolutely! Organized religion provides answers for us to follow while spirituality keeps us in a place of questioning and inquiry. With spirituality we make peace with not knowing, with not having all the answers and not having only one truth. Truth within spirituality has a small ’T’ while in religion, it’s capitalized on being the universal truth above all else.

That’s why there is so much hostility between different religions – they believe their truth is the only truth and most superior to any other explanation. While spirituality leaves us in a place of searching, wonder, open mindfulness and open heartfulness to not be so quick to judge or label.”

4. You quote the Dalai Lama saying, “Don’t try to use what you learn from Buddhism to be a Buddhist; use it to be a better whatever-you-already-are.” Can you elaborate on that?

“I don’t think a label is important at all. I am a lot of things – not only one (label) defines me. Meaning it’s not about being a buddhist, it’s about being ‘Buddha-like’ or not being Christian but being ‘Christ-like’ and that’s a really important invitation to not focus so much on the label but on the actual teachings. Living this way makes you ask yourself ‘how can my actions be inline with my values?’ because your beliefs don’t make you a better person, your behavior does. So it does matter who you are or what you want to be just be really good at it.”

4. You say to focus on the teachings not the teachers. What do you mean and why?

“We tend to put the ‘teachers’ of faith up on a pedestal and look up to them. Shunryū Suzuki wrote about how there are no enlightened beings, only enlightened activity and that was very empowering for me. The people we perceive to be enlightened i.e. the Dalai Lama, Jesus, Buddha, they’re people like you and I however they just made enlightened activity apart of their everyday lives.

And so by bringing ourselves up to eye level with those figures, you become empowered and confident in your abilities to become enlightened.”

5. Do you believe success and spirituality coexist? Typically society tells us we can only develop one or the other.

“Most definitely! You need to understand that ‘typically’ the opinion of success in society is skewed. Success to me is being happy. To me spirituality is a means to happiness and so success and spirituality can very much coexist. I don’t have a lot of money however I feel like the richest man in the world because I am happy – and spirituality brings that to me. I think there would be nothing worse than being super wealthy but feeling unfulfilled and unhappy internally.”

6. Meditation seems to be a buzz word lately, what is it, how do you do it and can someone with no previous experience with meditation still benefit?

“Of course! You’re right, meditation is a buzz word at the moment which is a shame because with that brings assumptions – assumptions of how it should be done, what it is and who should do it. People seek out to be ‘taught’ meditation however I shy away from giving instruction because the moment you do, you’re implying there is a wrong way to meditate. I have a lot of individuals come up to me and voice that they are meditating wrong or they don’t know how to do it but in-fact there is no ‘wrong way’ of meditating. As long as the intention is there, your attempts are successful.

The whole point of meditation is to learn how to control your mind. So if you find that there is something you do which relaxes you and in which your mind doesn’t wonder – it could be jogging, hiking, gardening, doing puzzles, painting and if while you’re doing that your mind stays focused – you’re meditating. Its that simple. There’s no need to sit in full lotus position or burn incense or chant chakras – mediation is just the practice of focusing your mind.”

7. What’s one exercise or activity you would recommend we do starting today to lead a more positive, happy and fulfilled life?

“Keep a gratitude journal. Every single morning, make it the first thing you do – take out your journal and just start listing anything and everything you’re grateful for.  It can be as simple as “I am so grateful to be alive today” or “I am so grateful for all my friends and family” or “I am so grateful for all the opportunities I attract into my life”.

You can even download a gratitude app to your smart phone if journaling isn’t for you. What’s cool about the app is you can also document photos, videos and voice memos as well as text.

When you live and come from a place of complete gratitude, everything changes and you have no choice but to become a happier person.”

We recently caught up with the multi-millionaire entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk for an exclusive, one of a kind interview. Gary is an entrepreneurial wizard, with unforgettable advice for all with a humble yet electric personality and charm.

Gary was able to build his family wine business from 3 Million to 60 Million in a matter of years using creative and innovative marketing techniques, on and offline. His company “VaynerMedia” are the brains and promotional orchestrators behind some of America’s largest companies and personalities.

Gary Vaynerchuk is a world-renowned expert in Social Media and is the author of a number of New York Times best-selling books including “Crush It!“, and “The Thank You Economy“. He and is set for a third book on the way with his soon to be released, and highly anticipated “Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World“.

Gary Vaynerchuk’s Unforgettable Advice For Achieving Success

Great Gary Vaynerchuk Quotes

“We’re not really good at knowing what we want, and we are very quick to say “this sucks”. That’s where the opportunity lies.” – Gary Vaynerchuk

“You didn’t grow up driving…you figured it out.” – Gary Vaynerchuk

Embrace what you’re good at. Lebron didn’t try to become a professor. – Gary Vaynerchuk

“Legacy is greater than currency.” – Gary Vaynerchuk

“If you live for weekends or vacations, your shit is broken.” – Gary Vaynerchuk

“We only get to play this game one time…one life.” – Gary Vaynerchuk

“In 2006, the Blockbuster board got together and said, ‘Do you know anyone using Netflix.’ …Look how that worked out. That is what happens when you put ten 80-year-old guys in a room…Be on record. Be on the right side of history. You don’t want to be the person that supported the Blockbuster decision.” – Gary Vaynerchuk

“There’s no reason in 2013, to do shit you hate. NONE.” – Gary Vaynerchuk

“A penguin cannot become a giraffe, so just be the best penguin you can be.” – Gary Vaynerchuk

Chris Evans, the actor of Captain America recently appeared on Spreecast for a live Q&A with his fans and had an awesome amount of positive energy and inspirational advice to share with his followers.

We transcribed Chis Evans great answers and advice just for you.

Chris Evans Inspirational Answers To Living A Successful Life

What’s it like being part of something so big like “The Avengers”?

Intimidating, a little overwhelming but you are overwhelmed with gratitude. When you are making it, you don’t really know it’s going to be that big, even when it comes out you forget what’s really happening.

I try to think about what I would have thought when I was 18 before I started this career and I think it would be radically different, but overtime, the more movies you make you just get used to the routine of the movies coming out, you’re in the mall, you’re in the press, you’re trying to get another job and it all becomes this piece in the puzzle of work.

I think you become a little de-sensitized; you’re like “Great! That did well, Good Job!”. You are still grateful but you’re not just sitting there like “WOW!, Look at this!, Look what I was a part of”, it doesn’t always feel that way, which is a shame, because it should and I think that’s part of what I try to remind myself of, to be appreciative.

Gratitude is the key to happiness, if you have a healthy understanding of gratitude, you can’t lose. – Chris Evans

What’s your favorite part of being Captain America?

I really like playing a good super hero. Not that the other super heroes are bad, but a lot of other super heroes are tortured souls, they have demons that they’re fighting. Caps just a really good guy, apart from being a super hero and having super powers, he’s just a really good man.

Any role that you play, if you are in a head space for an extended period of time, you really have to think a certain type of way and get inside the head of a character and sometimes I play dark characters or frustrated characters and it’s negative because you are trying to tap into the parts of you that can connect to that, the parts of you from your own personal history and experience that you can identify and relate to, you have to find pieces of you that are in common.

So while playing Captain America on a daily basis, you are trying to tap into the best part of yourself, and it’s Inspiring, you want to do better, you want to do good, it’s a healthy head space to be in and I think it’s rewarding playing someone with such a good heart.

How do you stay true to your self without letting the fame get to your head?

I go home a lot, back to Boston. LA is a tricky place to be, and it’s not just fame that’s the thing. Whether you are famous or not you are in a business of rejection, competition, comparison and you live in your own head quite a bit, which is not a good place for anyone to be for an extended period of time.

When you are back at home, you remember your youth, you are surrounded by friends and family who don’t care if you are successful in this industry or not and your priorities shift and all of a sudden the things that truly matter, start to come back to life.

Do you have a quote song lyric or saying that inspires you?

I really like Eckhart Tolle, he wrote the book “The Power of Now”. I am a big fan of Buddhism, Eastern Philosophy, the notion of trying to be present in the moment, turning the third eye off and detaching from ego

Eckhart has a quote from his book called “Stillness Speaks” that just really resonated with me, enough to permanently ink my body, and it says:

“When you lose touch with your inner stillness, you lose touch with yourself, when you lose touch with yourself, you lose yourself in the world.”

And it just made so much sense to me, still does, always will. It’s something that always brings me back to being centered.

What book are you currently reading?

It’s a book called “The Honeymoon Effect”, by an author called Bruce Lipton, who wrote a book called “The Biology of Belief” and it’s a really clever book. It’s about how for the longest time scientists thought that your DNA was determined by your genetics and how this one guy is proving that your DNA can be affected by your thought, your emotions, your daily choices, how you interact with the world through your thinking and that it can actually change your chemistry.

So this guy wrote a book called “The Honeymoon Effect” and it’s about how we can sustain healthy relationships in our life. Not just with men and women but with all of our relations and all of our interactions throughout our life. I just love his writing.

Did anyone influence you to get into acting?

My older sister.

When I was younger I didn’t act in my first play until I was in 6^th or 7^th grade. I saw my older sister doing it and she was having a ball. We would go and see her after her plays and my parents would give her candy, and I was like “Well I want candy”. She does plays, everyone’s having a good time, she’s staying out school nights and it all sounded great. So I did a couple of plays with her at a place where she did theatre and that was it, I was hooked!

Are you still nervous when going up for auditions? If yes, how do you get over the nerves and perform the best you can?

Yes, I’m still nervous in auditions, but it’s a little bit easier now because with age you are able to recognize that “this isn’t everything”, “this isn’t the end of the world”, I think when you’re young you put so much importance on everything.

As you get older you realize that you will be fine and that this will not somehow stop you from being happy and that’s the goal in life, I think that everyone’s goal is to be happy. – Chris Evans

Top three movies you would recommend anyone watch and why?

Legends of the Fall – It’s a beautiful sweeping epic about brothers, honor, war and responsibility. It’s just a fantastic movie.

I Heart Huckabees – It’s a little bit of a confusing film but I think it’s really brilliant. It’s so intelligent and so well done. There is a documentary called “What The Bleep Do We Know”, and it’s all about your chemical make up and how you can manifest your own day, and I almost feel like “I Heart Huckabees” is the fiction version of that film.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – I like the message, I love the film making, and the actors are phenomenal. It’s one of those movies that is constantly entertaining.

While studying at his parents house in London, Nick D’Aloisio came up with a brilliant idea to create a revolutionary app by the name of Summly which changes the way that you read your favorite websites and social media feeds. This idea scored this 16 year-old genius a flight to New York and some serious money in the bank as a result of an official partnership with the eleventh wealthiest billionaire in the world, Li Ka-Shing who will be overlooking the production and release of this app.

Read on to see how Nick D’Aloisio was able to achieve such a great feat at the fresh young age of 16.

Many young entrepreneurs say they want to create the next Facebook, 16-year-old Nick D’Aloisio wants to solve the problem social networks have created in the first place.

The teenager built an iPhone app called Summly, which automatically generates summaries in the form of bullet points to help you filter through all that information.

With more than $250,000 in seed funding from Hong Kong billionaire businessman Li Ka-shing, D’Aloisio spent the last six months in his parents’ London house building Summly.

It was Sunday at 4 a.m. London time when D’Aloisio enthusiastically IMed me over AOL Messenger to make sure the news of his app made it to my Twitter stream. He was excited that 23,000 people have downloaded the app since it launched last week.

D’Aloisio was inspired to build the app after he signed up for Twitter, and got a flood of information from AP, Reuters, and other people’s Twitter handles.

Interested in finding out more about D’Aloisio, we called him to ask him about this machine learning technology and how he balances his startup with school work. We could hear his faint Australian accent — he’s originally from Perth, Western Australia, (wow, this is where Joel Brown from Addicted2Success.com is from 😉

Nick D’Aloisio – The Boy Genius Of Summly

Interview With Nick D’Aloisio

Boonsri Dickinson: How do you see the future of search and the Internet?

Nick D’Aloisio:  Consumers want information instantaneously and the search interface needs to accommodate this.

We don’t need more social networks. The new wave of technology will now stop encouraging content creation. Twitter and Facebook is enough…we have too much information. We need to try to filter the content and make it more digestible. Zite and Flipboard attempt to provide the user with the content.

We want people to use Summly once they have found content they are interested in or know what they are searching for.

BD: So how did the app evolve into what it is today?

Nick: Six months ago, we released something called Trimit. It was about content creation. It was a more gimmicky app, where you’d input an article and summarize to 140 characters for Twitter or other restrictions for Tumblr, Facebook, and email. But I found that people were using for consuming content.

Trimit taught me people want content consumption tools not content creation. Now with Summly, you can have a computer to aid that process.

BD: What’s the market for it?

Nick: It’s Cliff Notes for a mobile device. It takes a second to return any search result.

It’s a bit magical. People don’t believe what it can do, then they have a “wow” moment. You can share the summary. You can quickly evaluate the content now.

In the future, it can be applied to email. It’s easy to train it for colloquial language used in email. And eventually it can be used in other areas such as enterprise, consumer markets, and education. We will probably license the technology though monthly fees.

BD: How did you learn to program at age 12?

Nick: Books. C For Dummies. Online Tutorials. Trial and Error.

The first app I built was called Facemood when I was 14. It automatically deduced the mood of a Facebook friend using their latest Facebook status.

Even now, I’m not that confident. As I said I prefer the graphical/product aspect.

BD: What do your classmates think of you?

ND: I’m in year 11 here. I just turned 16 in November.  I hope they just think I’m a nice guy. You wouldn’t know I do this stuff. I’m really happy with the response I’ve been getting. People are amazed.

With all that, I don’t feel like I need to change my life in any way. I play sport — rugby and cricket. And I go out.

I work on the app when I can from like 9-11 pm. And on Sundays. Between school work. It’s pretty hectic.

BD: Who inspires you?

ND: Anyone who is crazy enough to create what’s in their mind. Steve Jobs for his obsession with attention to detail and his advice on failure and success. I’m inspired by designers and typography designers. And innovators like Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the founders of Google, and Jack Dorsey and the other founders of Twitter.

BD: What’s next for you?

ND: I still have three years left of schooling and plan to continue with my education into university, where I hope to study a combination of philosophy and economics, and perhaps continue learning Mandarin. I learn Mandarin because I’m interested in Chinese culture and enjoy languages.

Now, check out more about the app in this video:

Introduction Of Summly

Interview By Boonsri Dickinson from BusinessInsider.com

It’s not often we get to sit on the floor, barefoot and in lotus position while interviewing a spiritual author whose journey and teachings have positively influenced the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.

Timber Hawkeye, author of the best-selling spiritual guide ‘Buddhist Boot Camp’ offers a non-sectarian approach to being at peace with the world, both within and around us. His intention in ‘Buddhist Boot Camp’ and life is to awaken, enlighten, enrich and inspire.

Timber was kind enough to give us his time on his worldwide book tour to answer some of the questions not many get to ask him but all want to know.

Make yourself a cup of tea, light a few candles and enjoy!

1. What is the message behind Buddhist Boot Camp?

“If I was to incapsulate it, the message would be simple – be grateful and be kind. It’s important to understand that we create a lot of our own suffering – by becoming aware that we hold the responsibility to create our own happiness, we empower ourselves to live a more relaxed, compassionate and positive life.”

2. How did the book come to be?

“I never had the intention to sit down and write a book. When I moved to Hawaii, I didn’t have a place to live, I didn’t have a job lined up and I didn’t know what I was going to do – I just knew that I wanted to live a more relaxed and free life. Every month I would send a letter to my friends and family, updating them on how my simplistic and non materialistic life was turning out.

After about 8 years of continual updates, thoughts and teachings, my friend who was moved by what I wrote about, suggested that I take all those emails and letters and make them public. So that’s what ‘Buddhist Boot Camp’ is – a collection of all my journal entires, emails and letters to friends compiled into a book. That’s why every chapter is only a page long and can be read in any order.”

3. Is there a difference between being religious and being spiritual?

“Absolutely! Organized religion provides answers for us to follow while spirituality keeps us in a place of questioning and inquiry. With spirituality we make peace with not knowing, with not having all the answers and not having only one truth. Truth within spirituality has a small ’T’ while in religion, it’s capitalized on being the universal truth above all else.

That’s why there is so much hostility between different religions – they believe their truth is the only truth and most superior to any other explanation. While spirituality leaves us in a place of searching, wonder, open mindfulness and open heartfulness to not be so quick to judge or label.”

4. You quote the Dalai Lama saying, “Don’t try to use what you learn from Buddhism to be a Buddhist; use it to be a better whatever-you-already-are.” Can you elaborate on that?

“I don’t think a label is important at all. I am a lot of things – not only one (label) defines me. Meaning it’s not about being a buddhist, it’s about being ‘Buddha-like’ or not being Christian but being ‘Christ-like’ and that’s a really important invitation to not focus so much on the label but on the actual teachings. Living this way makes you ask yourself ‘how can my actions be inline with my values?’ because your beliefs don’t make you a better person, your behavior does. So it does matter who you are or what you want to be just be really good at it.”

4. You say to focus on the teachings not the teachers. What do you mean and why?

“We tend to put the ‘teachers’ of faith up on a pedestal and look up to them. Shunryū Suzuki wrote about how there are no enlightened beings, only enlightened activity and that was very empowering for me. The people we perceive to be enlightened i.e. the Dalai Lama, Jesus, Buddha, they’re people like you and I however they just made enlightened activity apart of their everyday lives.

And so by bringing ourselves up to eye level with those figures, you become empowered and confident in your abilities to become enlightened.”

5. Do you believe success and spirituality coexist? Typically society tells us we can only develop one or the other.

“Most definitely! You need to understand that ‘typically’ the opinion of success in society is skewed. Success to me is being happy. To me spirituality is a means to happiness and so success and spirituality can very much coexist. I don’t have a lot of money however I feel like the richest man in the world because I am happy – and spirituality brings that to me. I think there would be nothing worse than being super wealthy but feeling unfulfilled and unhappy internally.”

6. Meditation seems to be a buzz word lately, what is it, how do you do it and can someone with no previous experience with meditation still benefit?

“Of course! You’re right, meditation is a buzz word at the moment which is a shame because with that brings assumptions – assumptions of how it should be done, what it is and who should do it. People seek out to be ‘taught’ meditation however I shy away from giving instruction because the moment you do, you’re implying there is a wrong way to meditate. I have a lot of individuals come up to me and voice that they are meditating wrong or they don’t know how to do it but in-fact there is no ‘wrong way’ of meditating. As long as the intention is there, your attempts are successful.

The whole point of meditation is to learn how to control your mind. So if you find that there is something you do which relaxes you and in which your mind doesn’t wonder – it could be jogging, hiking, gardening, doing puzzles, painting and if while you’re doing that your mind stays focused – you’re meditating. Its that simple. There’s no need to sit in full lotus position or burn incense or chant chakras – mediation is just the practice of focusing your mind.”

7. What’s one exercise or activity you would recommend we do starting today to lead a more positive, happy and fulfilled life?

“Keep a gratitude journal. Every single morning, make it the first thing you do – take out your journal and just start listing anything and everything you’re grateful for.  It can be as simple as “I am so grateful to be alive today” or “I am so grateful for all my friends and family” or “I am so grateful for all the opportunities I attract into my life”.

You can even download a gratitude app to your smart phone if journaling isn’t for you. What’s cool about the app is you can also document photos, videos and voice memos as well as text.

When you live and come from a place of complete gratitude, everything changes and you have no choice but to become a happier person.”

We recently caught up with the multi-millionaire entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk for an exclusive, one of a kind interview. Gary is an entrepreneurial wizard, with unforgettable advice for all with a humble yet electric personality and charm.

Gary was able to build his family wine business from 3 Million to 60 Million in a matter of years using creative and innovative marketing techniques, on and offline. His company “VaynerMedia” are the brains and promotional orchestrators behind some of America’s largest companies and personalities.

Gary Vaynerchuk is a world-renowned expert in Social Media and is the author of a number of New York Times best-selling books including “Crush It!“, and “The Thank You Economy“. He and is set for a third book on the way with his soon to be released, and highly anticipated “Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World“.

Gary Vaynerchuk’s Unforgettable Advice For Achieving Success

Great Gary Vaynerchuk Quotes

“We’re not really good at knowing what we want, and we are very quick to say “this sucks”. That’s where the opportunity lies.” – Gary Vaynerchuk

“You didn’t grow up driving…you figured it out.” – Gary Vaynerchuk

Embrace what you’re good at. Lebron didn’t try to become a professor. – Gary Vaynerchuk

“Legacy is greater than currency.” – Gary Vaynerchuk

“If you live for weekends or vacations, your shit is broken.” – Gary Vaynerchuk

“We only get to play this game one time…one life.” – Gary Vaynerchuk

“In 2006, the Blockbuster board got together and said, ‘Do you know anyone using Netflix.’ …Look how that worked out. That is what happens when you put ten 80-year-old guys in a room…Be on record. Be on the right side of history. You don’t want to be the person that supported the Blockbuster decision.” – Gary Vaynerchuk

“There’s no reason in 2013, to do shit you hate. NONE.” – Gary Vaynerchuk

“A penguin cannot become a giraffe, so just be the best penguin you can be.” – Gary Vaynerchuk

Chris Evans, the actor of Captain America recently appeared on Spreecast for a live Q&A with his fans and had an awesome amount of positive energy and inspirational advice to share with his followers.

We transcribed Chis Evans great answers and advice just for you.

Chris Evans Inspirational Answers To Living A Successful Life

What’s it like being part of something so big like “The Avengers”?

Intimidating, a little overwhelming but you are overwhelmed with gratitude. When you are making it, you don’t really know it’s going to be that big, even when it comes out you forget what’s really happening.

I try to think about what I would have thought when I was 18 before I started this career and I think it would be radically different, but overtime, the more movies you make you just get used to the routine of the movies coming out, you’re in the mall, you’re in the press, you’re trying to get another job and it all becomes this piece in the puzzle of work.

I think you become a little de-sensitized; you’re like “Great! That did well, Good Job!”. You are still grateful but you’re not just sitting there like “WOW!, Look at this!, Look what I was a part of”, it doesn’t always feel that way, which is a shame, because it should and I think that’s part of what I try to remind myself of, to be appreciative.

Gratitude is the key to happiness, if you have a healthy understanding of gratitude, you can’t lose. – Chris Evans

What’s your favorite part of being Captain America?

I really like playing a good super hero. Not that the other super heroes are bad, but a lot of other super heroes are tortured souls, they have demons that they’re fighting. Caps just a really good guy, apart from being a super hero and having super powers, he’s just a really good man.

Any role that you play, if you are in a head space for an extended period of time, you really have to think a certain type of way and get inside the head of a character and sometimes I play dark characters or frustrated characters and it’s negative because you are trying to tap into the parts of you that can connect to that, the parts of you from your own personal history and experience that you can identify and relate to, you have to find pieces of you that are in common.

So while playing Captain America on a daily basis, you are trying to tap into the best part of yourself, and it’s Inspiring, you want to do better, you want to do good, it’s a healthy head space to be in and I think it’s rewarding playing someone with such a good heart.

How do you stay true to your self without letting the fame get to your head?

I go home a lot, back to Boston. LA is a tricky place to be, and it’s not just fame that’s the thing. Whether you are famous or not you are in a business of rejection, competition, comparison and you live in your own head quite a bit, which is not a good place for anyone to be for an extended period of time.

When you are back at home, you remember your youth, you are surrounded by friends and family who don’t care if you are successful in this industry or not and your priorities shift and all of a sudden the things that truly matter, start to come back to life.

Do you have a quote song lyric or saying that inspires you?

I really like Eckhart Tolle, he wrote the book “The Power of Now”. I am a big fan of Buddhism, Eastern Philosophy, the notion of trying to be present in the moment, turning the third eye off and detaching from ego

Eckhart has a quote from his book called “Stillness Speaks” that just really resonated with me, enough to permanently ink my body, and it says:

“When you lose touch with your inner stillness, you lose touch with yourself, when you lose touch with yourself, you lose yourself in the world.”

And it just made so much sense to me, still does, always will. It’s something that always brings me back to being centered.

What book are you currently reading?

It’s a book called “The Honeymoon Effect”, by an author called Bruce Lipton, who wrote a book called “The Biology of Belief” and it’s a really clever book. It’s about how for the longest time scientists thought that your DNA was determined by your genetics and how this one guy is proving that your DNA can be affected by your thought, your emotions, your daily choices, how you interact with the world through your thinking and that it can actually change your chemistry.

So this guy wrote a book called “The Honeymoon Effect” and it’s about how we can sustain healthy relationships in our life. Not just with men and women but with all of our relations and all of our interactions throughout our life. I just love his writing.

Did anyone influence you to get into acting?

My older sister.

When I was younger I didn’t act in my first play until I was in 6^th or 7^th grade. I saw my older sister doing it and she was having a ball. We would go and see her after her plays and my parents would give her candy, and I was like “Well I want candy”. She does plays, everyone’s having a good time, she’s staying out school nights and it all sounded great. So I did a couple of plays with her at a place where she did theatre and that was it, I was hooked!

Are you still nervous when going up for auditions? If yes, how do you get over the nerves and perform the best you can?

Yes, I’m still nervous in auditions, but it’s a little bit easier now because with age you are able to recognize that “this isn’t everything”, “this isn’t the end of the world”, I think when you’re young you put so much importance on everything.

As you get older you realize that you will be fine and that this will not somehow stop you from being happy and that’s the goal in life, I think that everyone’s goal is to be happy. – Chris Evans

Top three movies you would recommend anyone watch and why?

Legends of the Fall – It’s a beautiful sweeping epic about brothers, honor, war and responsibility. It’s just a fantastic movie.

I Heart Huckabees – It’s a little bit of a confusing film but I think it’s really brilliant. It’s so intelligent and so well done. There is a documentary called “What The Bleep Do We Know”, and it’s all about your chemical make up and how you can manifest your own day, and I almost feel like “I Heart Huckabees” is the fiction version of that film.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – I like the message, I love the film making, and the actors are phenomenal. It’s one of those movies that is constantly entertaining.

While studying at his parents house in London, Nick D’Aloisio came up with a brilliant idea to create a revolutionary app by the name of Summly which changes the way that you read your favorite websites and social media feeds. This idea scored this 16 year-old genius a flight to New York and some serious money in the bank as a result of an official partnership with the eleventh wealthiest billionaire in the world, Li Ka-Shing who will be overlooking the production and release of this app.

Read on to see how Nick D’Aloisio was able to achieve such a great feat at the fresh young age of 16.

Many young entrepreneurs say they want to create the next Facebook, 16-year-old Nick D’Aloisio wants to solve the problem social networks have created in the first place.

The teenager built an iPhone app called Summly, which automatically generates summaries in the form of bullet points to help you filter through all that information.

With more than $250,000 in seed funding from Hong Kong billionaire businessman Li Ka-shing, D’Aloisio spent the last six months in his parents’ London house building Summly.

It was Sunday at 4 a.m. London time when D’Aloisio enthusiastically IMed me over AOL Messenger to make sure the news of his app made it to my Twitter stream. He was excited that 23,000 people have downloaded the app since it launched last week.

D’Aloisio was inspired to build the app after he signed up for Twitter, and got a flood of information from AP, Reuters, and other people’s Twitter handles.

Interested in finding out more about D’Aloisio, we called him to ask him about this machine learning technology and how he balances his startup with school work. We could hear his faint Australian accent — he’s originally from Perth, Western Australia, (wow, this is where Joel Brown from Addicted2Success.com is from 😉

Nick D’Aloisio – The Boy Genius Of Summly

Interview With Nick D’Aloisio

Boonsri Dickinson: How do you see the future of search and the Internet?

Nick D’Aloisio:  Consumers want information instantaneously and the search interface needs to accommodate this.

We don’t need more social networks. The new wave of technology will now stop encouraging content creation. Twitter and Facebook is enough…we have too much information. We need to try to filter the content and make it more digestible. Zite and Flipboard attempt to provide the user with the content.

We want people to use Summly once they have found content they are interested in or know what they are searching for.

BD: So how did the app evolve into what it is today?

Nick: Six months ago, we released something called Trimit. It was about content creation. It was a more gimmicky app, where you’d input an article and summarize to 140 characters for Twitter or other restrictions for Tumblr, Facebook, and email. But I found that people were using for consuming content.

Trimit taught me people want content consumption tools not content creation. Now with Summly, you can have a computer to aid that process.

BD: What’s the market for it?

Nick: It’s Cliff Notes for a mobile device. It takes a second to return any search result.

It’s a bit magical. People don’t believe what it can do, then they have a “wow” moment. You can share the summary. You can quickly evaluate the content now.

In the future, it can be applied to email. It’s easy to train it for colloquial language used in email. And eventually it can be used in other areas such as enterprise, consumer markets, and education. We will probably license the technology though monthly fees.

BD: How did you learn to program at age 12?

Nick: Books. C For Dummies. Online Tutorials. Trial and Error.

The first app I built was called Facemood when I was 14. It automatically deduced the mood of a Facebook friend using their latest Facebook status.

Even now, I’m not that confident. As I said I prefer the graphical/product aspect.

BD: What do your classmates think of you?

ND: I’m in year 11 here. I just turned 16 in November.  I hope they just think I’m a nice guy. You wouldn’t know I do this stuff. I’m really happy with the response I’ve been getting. People are amazed.

With all that, I don’t feel like I need to change my life in any way. I play sport — rugby and cricket. And I go out.

I work on the app when I can from like 9-11 pm. And on Sundays. Between school work. It’s pretty hectic.

BD: Who inspires you?

ND: Anyone who is crazy enough to create what’s in their mind. Steve Jobs for his obsession with attention to detail and his advice on failure and success. I’m inspired by designers and typography designers. And innovators like Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the founders of Google, and Jack Dorsey and the other founders of Twitter.

BD: What’s next for you?

ND: I still have three years left of schooling and plan to continue with my education into university, where I hope to study a combination of philosophy and economics, and perhaps continue learning Mandarin. I learn Mandarin because I’m interested in Chinese culture and enjoy languages.

Now, check out more about the app in this video:

Introduction Of Summly

Interview By Boonsri Dickinson from BusinessInsider.com