Got to give it to these guys, they have a way with words.

And the chops to back them up. method is a non-toxic, plant-based cleaning supply company that also seems to be against capitalization. Their humanifesto argues cleaning products need not be chemical weapons. Instead, method harnesses the power of the natural world in a fight most easily described as People Against Dirty.

And their packaging is pretty darn cute, too.

Now, being “green” or “sustainable” isn’t quite as edgy as it used to be, but consider this — after saying that no cleaning formula should be ingested (obviously), here’s method’s treatment suggestion: “If swallowed, simply dilute with a glass of milk or water.”

Maybe it’s just us, but words like “biodegradable” and “compostable” are cheap. But if a glass of milk is the only remedy you need after swallowing tile and grout scrubber, then we’re sold. No need to even go into all the doomsday compounds method won’t use — EGBE, phosphates, triclosan, bleach, parabens, casein. Not to mention that their palm oil doesn’t harm orangutan habitat, they’re doing away with honey products to be totally vegan, they don’t test on animals, they’re gluten-free and they use 100% recycled plastic bottles.

In fact, method is so damn squeaky clean you might be inclined to spite them for it. And maybe it’s here that their easy-going copy, tidy look and grassroots origins do them justice.

Started in 2000 by two young dudes (Eric and Adam), method went nationwide with Target in just two years. Then Inc 500 ranked them as the 7th fastest growing private company in America and PETA deemed Eric and Adam its Men of the Year in 2006. Next year will be their tenth and they’re already in Canada, the UK, Australia, France and Japan.

Best of all, method doesn’t have to preach. It’s not about saving the world or some subspecies of marmot. It’s about choosing cleaning supplies that don’t make your eyes water and your skin crack. And they’re cheaper than other organic/sustainable/blah-blah cleaners. And they’re at Target.

Because who wouldn’t choose pink grapefruit over poison?

Bleach is dead. Long live method.

To you and me, that doesn’t mean much. If anything, it ranks among the things we don’t need to know. But for a guy in the pet food business, those words are honey-dipped.

You see, firm stool tells RedMoon Custom Pet Food founder Jason Bailey two things. One, his product is working. And two, the fact that someone would sit down and write an email conveying such information means people care. Therefore, Bailey knows that his all-online, supplement-infused pet food is not only changing the lives of cats and dogs, but also the lives of the people who love them.

The pet food industry is a curious marketplace. Some companies would have us believe that dogs should be eating Banana Nut Muffins or that cats require a White Meat Chicken and Cheddar Cheese Soufflé with Garden Greens. Consumers must choose between purchasing food laden with unhealthy fillers and feeding their animals better than their children.

Many pets are even developing serious allergies to the ingredients that make up a large percentage of mass-market food. Gluten, corn, wheat, rice and soy are the main culprits.

So, Bailey started by cutting all of those out completely. Then he developed local ingredient lists that include fresh produce and high-quality meat – and lots of it. On average, you can feed your pet 30-40% less food because it contains more meat. In one example, Bailey talks about a 170 lb mountain dog eating just under two cups of food a day.

But the real game-changer here is that you can completely customize your pet’s food in order to meet specific diets or treat certain health problems. A user-friendly webpage makes it as easy as buying shoes. And every order comes with two free supplements allowing customers to target everything from bad breath and dull coats to immunity and joint health. They even have supplements for digestive, kidney and urinary health.

And it’s delivered to your doorstep. And there’s a 110% money-back guarantee.

If you need yet another vote of confidence, in the six months since they’ve launched, RedMoon has doubled its business every month and only had one bag of cat food returned.

Now that’s a stat every finicky kitty owner can get behind.

The Sorrento Hotel hosts a series of nontraditional entertainment and education events called Night School. For example, during a session called Chamber vs. Chamber, attendees are treated to a performance and dialogue that explore the dichotomy between classical music and modern indie-rock.

So what does that mean? Well, they recently paired a French-lyricist and classically trained marimba player with the former lead singer of Harvey Danger. (Lyrics from Harvey Danger’s one and only song: “They cut off my legs now I’m an amputee, goddamn you!”)

So it, uh, gets interesting.

And then there’s the Midnight Symposium. Held in the 7^th floor penthouse, this program brings leading intellectuals, artists and writers to the Sorrento for an intimate conversation of their choosing. Last year, $50 got you a hearty stew, a big ol’ bottle of whiskey, some wine and a copy of the book under discussion.

Actually, the Sorrento Hotel has been a community gathering place since it was established in 1909. Townsfolk used to come through its doors just to have tea and shoot the scuttlebutt. Maybe even listen to a little poetry.

So now that they’re putting on events like Drinking Lessons – a two hour how-to and history of three different cocktails – even the locals are checking back in.

And this is what illustrates the fundamental shift occurring at the Sorrento. When was the last time you stopped by a Super 8 just to hang out? Heck, make that a Hilton. You’re still not dropping in for tea.

This translated into a 25% uptick in food and beverage sales at the Sorrento. And more room bookings.

And for those of you who think hotels are for holing-up, the Night School attitude extends to the Room Service menu. Order from an assortment of 12 books written in or about the Northwest and enjoy them at your leisure.

But we’re sticking with the stew and whiskey.

Frankly, it’s about time someone took a swing at those little pink paper cups. And Butch Bakery is the contender.

With a ferocious array of ingredients – many of them alcoholic – owner David Arrick set out to create a cupcakery where “Butch Meets Buttercream.” In other words, he wanted to make a cupcake that guys wouldn’t mind eating in public.

If non-Butch cupcakes are easy to peg, Arrick is not. He graduated cum laude at NYU, then worked as a personal trainer for Conan O’Brien in order to support his dream of acting. Then law school, a gig as an asset-backed securities attorney on Wall Street and a few flights to Dubai to interview with real-estate companies. But then, all of that fell through.  

So whether it was the rampant masculinity of Wall Street or the retina-searing memory of Conan doing lunges, Arrick decided to embrace his inner machismo and start making tiny, delicious cakes.

As evidence of his brilliance, there’s the Beer Run – chocolate beer cake with beer-infused buttercream topped with crushed pretzels – and the B-52 – Kahlua-soaked Madagascar vanilla cake with Bailey’s Bavarian filling. Keep the spirits flowing with the Old-Fashioned, a delightful orange-soaked whiskey cake with lemon curd filling. (Other alcoholic flavors include the Mojito, Rum & Coke and brandy-addled Sidecar.)

But it’s not just booze. It’s bacon, too. The Home Run features peanut butter cake with banana Bavarian cream and crumbled bacon. Some bawdy innuendo – “More fun than getting to third base!” – rounds out the booze/bacon/bravado trifecta.

Butch Bakery offers 12 manly flavors in all. Each is topped with a decorated disc of chocolate. Designs include Camouflage, Wood Grain, Plaid and Houndstooth. Currently, all ordering is online and limited to Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn, but a storefront and distance delivery are on the way.

For us, one question remains. Given the history with America’s favorite funnyman, where’s the Coco-nut Cream Puff flavor?

The gals at Snapology are taking that fact and turning it into a curriculum that fosters genuine enthusiasm for the hard sciences. Through teamwork, problem-solving skills and LEGO® blocks.

This is the beauty of Snapology – when kids are presented with lessons that aren’t boring as hell, they engage. It’s like magic or something.

“Our goal is to create an environment where kids are having fun and they don’t realize they’re learning while they’re doing it,” Lisa Coe said.

Her sister and co-creator, Laura Barrows, takes it one step further and instructs teachers not to even mention the word “educational” to their students. They just don’t need to know.

So how does it work? Laura and Lisa design entire lesson plans around LEGO® construction kits, the complexity of which rise with the age of the kids. (Some of their kits involve moving parts, electronics and motion sensors. Solar panels and windmills to be introduced this fall.) To build the kits, kids follow instructions on specialized laptops. Variations like sound effects and other retrofitting options encourage creativity, while working with partners allows for problem solving and conflict resolution.

And when they’re done, the kids have built a LEGO® soccer goalie that can block shots on net. We’re adults and we’re impressed with that. 

In other words, Snapology is a portable powerhouse of education. They accommodate camps, clubs, home school classes, in-school field trips, birthday parties, play dates and girl/boy scout troops.

You might say, they’re just piggybacking off LEGO® products. Au contraire. The brilliance of Snapology is in the design, the lesson plans, the total restructuring of education. Laura and Lisa are honing this method over the next year with the cooperation of teachers and students. Then, franchising and expansion.

And Hollywood. Or, more likely, YouTube.

Their SnapAnimation class allows kids to make their own 2-minute films, frame by frame. Better throw narrative, filmmaking and Internet skills on the already long list.

Just, for heaven’s sake, don’t tell the little rascals. It’d be a shame to ruin such a beautiful thing. 

Like identifying objects in a photo, describing the events of a short video or matching emotions to corresponding words.

Thousands of tiny jobs like these are necessary in order for companies to perform their daily functions. For example, street-view mapping applications gather many images of each locale – imagine how many images make up your block, let alone your state – but a computer can’t figure out which one best represents that location. And if the machines can’t do it, companies have to hire temps, sapping time, resources and productivity.

Thanks to Mechanical Turk (MTurk) by Amazon, employers can now assign such work – called HITs, or Human Intelligence Tasks – on a job-by-job basis. Workers can then pick and choose which HITs interest them or seem to be worth the time for the reward.

Because many of these tasks are mundane, simple or extremely quick, the reward could be as little as a penny. But some jobs require expertise, so you might get $30 for beta testing CA ARCserve D2D software on Windows XP.

Companies can also customize their workforce by satisfaction ratings, qualifications and country – though the rupee talk on the website nods toward one of MTurk’s major contributors. 

So what is a Mechanical Turk? Around the time of the American Revolution, this brilliant Hungarian named Wolfgang von Kempelen made an automatic chess-playing machine, and then he rigged up a black-bearded, turban and Turkish robe-wearing mannequin. Pretty much what everyone thought of when they imagined an oriental sorcerer.

The Turk was so good at chess he went on world tour, besting Napoleon Bonaparte and Ben Franklin. What was most amazing, however, was how long Kempelen was able to conceal the real, live chess wiz hidden in the automaton’s compartments.

Thus the hoax of the Mechanical Turk and the modern company’s fitting tagline: Artificial Artificial Intelligence.

So move over Johnny 5. This job’s for Joe 6-Pack.

But if you had an account with Venmo, all you’d have to do is text 646.863.9557 with a message saying “Who” and “How Much.” The money is then charged from your credit card or bank account. (But what if your friend doesn’t have a Venmo account? She gets a simple text with info on how to withdraw her mula.) All very PayPal-ish, only more mobile, casual and customizable.

About a year ago, Andrew Kortina, co-creator of Venmo, was hosting his freshman year roomy from UPenn (and soon-to-be Venmo co-creator) Iqram Magdon-Ismail. Except Iqram forgot his wallet in Philly. So Andrew covered him all weekend, no sweat. Iqram, of course, sent a check when he got home, but Andrew never remembered to cash it. And the light bulbs went off.

Who can you use this service with? Anyone you “Trust” (share your account with) on Venmo. “Trust is kind of like opening a tab at a restaurant or giving your sister your credit card to buy something,” Andrew said. “Once you Trust someone, you never have to worry about owing them money again, because whenever they need money from you, they can just take it.”

That’s right, they can take your money. So it’s best to think of Trust with a capital “T”. 

But it’s not Trust exclusive. You can use Venmo with any merchant or vender who has a text-messaging cell, thereby avoiding that awkward checkout counter moment where you realize they don’t accept plastic.

But with vendors and the like, the transaction has to be verified by you before it will go through. Likewise, Venmo allows you to turn your phone into a portable invoicing machine, making it great for small businesses.

Eventually, the goal is for Venmo to be accepted everywhere as a convenient alternative to things like MasterCard and Visa. And Iqram and Andrew have a little experience with the big rival thang – right after college, they created WeMusicStore, a web-based iTunes competitor.

So, revolutionizing the way human beings distribute resources was the next logical move.

Much of the water industry operates this way. Blow the bottles at one factory, then truck them to be filled and capped at another. Not only is it environmentally irresponsible, but it’s also just plain stupid. Anyone with a healthy love for supply chains would have agreed.

Now, Benjamin Gott had zero experience in the H₂O industry. But he did spend the last nine years in fairly large, web-based supply chain start-ups. And anyone could tell you that water was a racket. To the tune of something like $16 billion in 2008. And nearly all of it in inefficient, unsustainable, perpetual plastic.

But what else is there?

Boxes. Easy to make, ship, build up, break down and recycle. In just two pallets, or 5% of a truck’s hold, Boxed Water Is Better does the duty of 5 truckloads of empty plastic or glass bottles.

Over 75% of the packaging is made from a renewable resource, Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified trees. And, Boxed Water is Better gives 10% of their profits to world water relief, as well as another 10% to reforestation foundations.

Visually, they’re a breath of fresh air. There’s a Warhol-ian quality to the way they sit in a refrigerated row, the simplistic black-and-white look a deliberate juxtaposition to twenty years worth of waterfall, mountain and glacier iconography.

The one thing they make no bones about – check out the website – is that their product isn’t perfect. It’s still using fossil fuels for manufacturing and transportation. It’s still a commodity, not a necessity. But with 20% donations, containers from a renewable resource and every box taking a bite out of the big guys, the name still holds true.

Boxed Water Is Better.

And it’s not just you. It’s your friends and family and coworkers. It’s the whole blasted system, man.

But wait. Instead of pitting the smelling of roses against the buying of green bananas, perhaps we should all just start using Doodle.

Doodle is an online scheduling system. It synchs with calendars you already have on Gmail, Outlook and Lotus Notes. But it also allows you to propose appointments – from half-hour meetings to potluck dinners to weeks of vacation – and have the interested parties vote on which slots are best for them.

 That means no more dithering. No more consolidation.

 Halle-Doodle-jah.

Of course, there are other companies that do scheduling. There’s Tungle, TimeBridge and Jiffle to name a few.

Not to mention that such a system competes, in a way, with the monsters it manages. Ahem… Google, Microsoft and Lotus. So how did little ol’ Doodle do it?

Well, “It just works.”

That’s what a lot of people say. And you couldn’t ask for a bigger compliment in the tech sector. Functionality, reliability and ease of use go a long, long way with the masses.

But it’s also about realizing the limits of those big guys. As the PR and Communications arm of Doodle, Tilman Eberle describes those companies and their size in interstellar terms. 

“Big systems are confined to their universe, and that’s not what we’re about,” Eberle says. “We fill gaps between universes.”

So even Gmail snobs and iCal devotees can meet up for a picnic.

Plus, because Doodle is democratic and allows comments on your events, you can figure out everything you need on the same page. You know, the really crucial things.

“Who’s bringing the chicken?” Eberle offers. And more importantly, “Who’s bringing the beer?”

Not so with CustomShow.

CustomShow, by Sales Graphics, is the next evolution of sales presentation technology. Literally. CustomShow is faster, stronger, smarter and, to be honest, a whole lot prettier than the market leader, Microsoft PowerPoint.

And in the jungle of sales presentations, sexier is better.

Watching a CustomShow presentation is like viewing informational fireworks. Video, graphics, text and effects synthesize to create an integrated presentation that is decidedly more MTV than Microsoft. Actually, MTV uses CustomShow.

As a Challenger Brand, Sales Graphics – “The Presentation Agency” – is up against the Goliath of Goliaths, but it has managed to carve out an amazing share of forward-thinking corporate America.

As Mike Lingle, SVP of Sales and Strategy, put it, “If you look at our client list, you’ll see a bunch of big companies who seem to feel that PowerPoint is not giving them everything they need.”

So, like hungry (hungry) hippos, CustomShow just keeps gobbling them up: DIRECTV, CNN, Bravo, The New Yorker, A&E, ELLE, The Wall Street Journal and Dior. And that’s just the short list.

• Sales Graphics has been in the presentations business for over 50 years, since the days when they made high-end, hand-lettered presentations and sales boards.
• Sales Graphics is a third generation family business offering its sixth version of CustomShow.

Beyond being dazzling, CustomShow sports a number of boons. On the one hand, it allows control over the information being presented in a way that ensures that the company’s brand guidelines are consistent. But on the other, it allows quick and easy customization of presentations to permit flexibility.

More than anything, CustomShow is a presentation program for a world with a short attention span and high visual expectations.

MindApps is a product that challenges both other apps and psychiatry, delivering a professionally-validated approach to some common psychological problems. It enables people to take an active role in their own healthcare, either by providing a therapeutic intervention or by supplementing the services of a therapist.

The applications that have been created are based on the principles of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which theorizes that “the things that we think influence our moods and our behaviors…this painful web of thoughts, feelings and behaviors is what CBT seeks to help untangle.”

MindApps, based in Pittsburgh, PA, was launched in 2009 in more than 30 countries. The company currently offers three products:

•  eCBT Mood is designed for people who are feeling down or depressed. Through questions and useful information, the tool helps users identify and challenge the distorted thinking that leads to depression, breaking the cycle of negative thoughts. Features include a “feelings and thoughts log,” a mechanism to identify and challenge negative thoughts and a daily/weekly mood assessment and report. 
• eCBT Calm targets the many overstressed members of society, focusing on learning new coping and relaxation skills. This app includes a stress assessment, training in several effective relaxation tools and links to online content focusing on stress reduction, support groups and finding a therapist if needed.
• eCBT Trauma is geared toward those living with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. It provides users with a trauma symptom assessment tool, relaxation training, means to identify and challenge negative beliefs and exercises to help neutralize the impact of traumatic memories. It also links users to online content and resources.

New products in development address dieting, anxiety, pain, binge eating and alcohol problems. Although it’s difficult to place a price tag on well-being, the company boasts that the products cost less than a large premium coffee. MindApps is hoping to provide a grande boost to the mental health of its users.

The creator and president of SizeWize.com explains her inspiration: “I felt like every woman I know complains about the same thing – shopping for clothes online is supposed to make your life easier, but in reality we waste more time and money returning or exchanging items because we basically have to guess at what size to buy.”

The process of using the site is simple. First, accurate measurements of the bust, waist and hips are needed. Then they are entered onto the website. Several apparel types are listed: dresses, jeans, outerwear, pants, skirts and tops. The site will convert your measurements into the size that most closely matches your figure in a number of brands, from Aeropostale to Victoria’s Secret, with dozens of popular brands in between. Clicking on the “retailers” column displays a list of those that carry that brand, helping the online shopper locate perfectly fitting items.

• SizeWize was launched in December 2009, in time for holiday shopping
• The addition of children’s sizes and brands is planned
• Currently, over 150 brands and 40 retailers are represented on the site

Have a pair of jeans or shirt in your wardrobe that fit perfectly? The second feature of the site is the “closet search.” Simply enter the brand, size and item of apparel, and the site will convert that information into equivalent sizes in a number of alternate brands. This feature also allows significant others to peek in the closet and find the correct size rather than risk an insulting choice or ill-fitted gift.

Registration on the site allows visitors to save size and brand information, making the process even more streamlined. Remember Cinderella and her glass slipper? SizeWize is in business to eliminate the need to travel all across the cyber-kingdom to find a perfect fit.