Profile Notes and Postal Items added to freelender.org

Today we've added two new features to freelender.org.

Firstly, as a member, you can add profile notes, up to 4000 characters (I'm not sure that will be enough for Paul though!). This will make it easier for you to give general guidance on what you would expect from other people who want to borrow from you, and to find out what others require when they are lending things to you.

Secondly, postal items have been introduced. This means that you can mark anything which you are willing to post out to others and it will turn up in the search results when people search in any area of the country. The borrower and lender can arrange how to share the costs of postage etc. between them. Similarly, your searches will start to show postal items from places which aren't so local to you.

Other new features are on their way, though if there's anything you'd particularly like to see on the site, contact us or add a comment to this blog to let us know what it is.

Freelender on a bicycle blog is taking shape

I'd love feedback on the leaflet I intend to take on my first freelender on a bicycle journey next week.
See the new 'freelender on a bicycle' blog.

Letting go

I divide my stuff into these categories:

1. A few things that are of most value to me (12 books, A bicycle, Panniers, Lights, Battery recharger, Some Clothes, Bedding, A computer, iPhone, A Buddha Rupa)
2. Things to which I'm less attached, but am not ready to let go permanently.
3. Things of which I would be glad to let go, so long as the letting go is done in a way that is as 'responsible' as I can presently be in how I let these things go.
4. Things which letting go of is more important than how I do it. 

I think that most of my items are in category 3.
Please help me test this, by putting WANTED notices on freelender.org for anything which you want and think that I might have.

MagicHarry borrowing my iPhone plug til May

Freelending, Renting and Fractional Ownership -your choice

As of today, all the money goes to my favourite charity, the Karuna Trust whenever I:

• sell an item
• find someone offering to buy a share (fractional ownership) of what I own on freelender.org
• rent out an item on letsallshare.com

I'm really interested to see if anyone wants to buy or rent anything from me when "Anything I own can be borrowed for free." What do you reckon?

If you want to buy (or fractionally own) what I'm willing to lend for free, the money goes to the karuna trust

http://www.karuna.org/

freelender.org - ahead of it's time?

Does this quote from Forum for the Future imply that the freelender.org website is ahead of its time, or simply that the social structure more able to support a post-carbon future for the UK is happening more quickly than anticipated?

"Local sharing schemes like Landshare, Hospitality Club and Freelender.org  mean you don't need to own your allotment, car or drill, and you can sofa-surf your way around the world without ever having to book a hotel. Such schemes were predicted only two years ago in Forum for the Future's project 'Low Carbon Living 2022; but are already proliferating on the web."

(Editorial from Forum for the Future;  probably the leading UK environmental think-tank).

More freelender activity

My facebook updates are another source of information and pictures of the joy I get from getting out there freelending. Jaws drop when I say 'You can borrow anything I own' to someone I've never met before. One youth then came back with 'Can I borrow all your money then?"; to which my reply was: "Of course, though for money I usually take a deposit in cash of equal value."
Anyhow leafleting in a Vue multiplex cinema in Plymouth after an Avatar viewing (my third) was an experience of note, as was Totnes leafleting /phone boxes. Today -Bristol bookshops etc.

The photo is of Karen in Totnes; borrowing the Age of Stupid 'Bonus Disc'.
Meanwhile ....setting up a new toy-library; which will be offered in one of the St Andrews Park neighbours freelender newsletters I'm producing. I was going to do this in Routh, Cardiff on Friday with a freelender-friendly parents group, then decided to keep it more local.

Additional Blog about the future of cities -Hi-Tech Shanty Towns

Inspired by Kevin McCloud's 'Slumming It', I'd like to work with others on developing the concept of Hi-Tech Shanty Towns . Hi-Tech Shanty Towns is now a new spin-off blog arising from my initiatives with neighbours and reflections on beginning work with The Karuna Trust.

Tom Butler's Thought for the Day was remarkable today

I hope the BBC puts up the link to the 2nd Feb thought for the day soon; I was both a little annoyed at an apparent series of 'climate change denial' statements; then in turn in awe of the skill used in getting across the key message; that the only response worthy of humanity today to its current predicament is to develop new ways of being generous. This methodology of empathising with the cynics then slowly showing that we are all but 'groundhogs' on one level and that we can be bold with our sharing to rise above the 'groundhog' of denial or despair -masterful. (If you prefer to listen to any of Tom Butler's Thoughts for the Day, including the 2nd February one (text below)- they are all here).

"In the Church's calendar this day, February 2nd is Candlemas: the day when we recall the parents of Jesus Christ bringing their new baby to the Temple in thanksgiving. The birth of any child is a cause for thanksgiving but all Christians join in the thanksgiving for this particular child because of the man he became, in the words of the old man who held him that day in the temple, he will be a light to enlighten the nations and be the glory of God's people. And that theme of light, illumination, new hope is taken up in worship with an abundance of candles - so Candle-mas.
It's intriguing that February 2nd Candlemas is also a day of hope in nature in the Northern hemisphere, for it's halfway between winter and spring. Some parts of the United States have adopted the traditional German name Groundhog day, for the story goes that the groundhog on this day peeps out of its winter quarters and, if he sees his shadow, he pops back again for another six weeks. If it's cloudy outside, he remains out believing that the weather ahead will be moderate and spring is on its way.
Well the groundhog might make a better fist at predicting the weather than we do. Certainly on this groundhog day 2010 its difficult to know what to believe about climate change. It had become common place to believe that global warming was the major threat to life on earth - then the disappointing outcome to the Climate Conference in Copenhagen in December was followed by the coldest winter for a generation, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change admitted that it had made exaggerated claims about the melting of the Himalayan glaciers, and climate scientists at a British university are accused of attempting to suppress experimental results that don't fit their theory. Like the groundhog, having sniffed all of this, it's not at all surprising if we're tempted to bolt back underground and sleep through it all.
I suspect that this would be a mistake. Of course it's in our short term interests to be sceptical about all this talk of climate change. Then we don't have to take unpopular decisions to curb carbon emissions, or see higher energy bills, but in the long term this might well spell disaster for future generations. If we in our generation on this Candlemas day are to be a light to enlighten the nations we'd better stay alert, keep sniffing the evidence for climate change and then be prepared to live generously or even sacrificially for others. But that takes us back to the baby in the temple and the example of the life of the man he became."

Kevin McCloud's Channel 4 slumming it exposes how consumerism impacts on community

This programme I rate as the unmissable TV of the year 2010 so far;
it has prompted me to realise some of the implications of a statement like "shanty towns are the cities of the future" and start reflecting on 'High Tech Shanty towns' in this embryonic blog.

What can we learn from 'gift economies'?

I'm encouraged by the clarity in this article about some of the consequences of misunderstanding the relationship between (inefficient) barter and efficient gifting. I hope to make time to reply to some of the points in more detail soon: http://campfire.theoildrum.com/node/6160
Some of the comments I'll be making on gift economics will be on this twitterstream: http://twitter.com/gifteconomics

Responding to a freeconomy request for mountain bike tyres

Hi Cai
I'm gradually putting all I own on the freelender.org website; though it's many thousand items (each worth over THE MINIMUM VALUE OF £1) so it may take me some time. When I see requests on the freeconomy site, I sometimes put the requested item up next; so I have now listed a load of tyres. If your friend needs other things feel free to ask me. I will insist on operating through the freelender.org site (as I preparing a national publicity campaign and need to have more experience of the new freelender site in operation). If you are up for getting stuff in this way that's great; if not then that's really interesting to me too. I giveaway a limit of three items per visit to my place off the Gloucester Road (St Andrews Park); when I did this with Mark Boyle (the 'no money man')

 and others at Buddhafield Festival last year, the results far exceeded what I've seen from freecycling.

LetsAllShare.com live -and working great for me already!

I'm loving the look and feel of the Lets All Share site; as I collect presents for a dear 5 year old who comes to stay at mine most half-terms, who particularly loves trains, I plan to hope to collect a giveaway trainset on offer in London tomorrow.