Several times in the past weeks I’ve had the pleasure of touring the produce department of the Zupan’s store on the corner of West Burnside and 23rd in Portland.

The Zupan’s stores seem to pride themselves on opulent sensory overloaded experience. I’m reminded of Gelson’s Market in Pacific Palisades, California. Lots of beautiful food stacked on very tall shelves.

In a store with such an abundance of amazing food and experiences, I was more than a little miffed today when I found NO raw foods section. How can such a high end brand be so behind the times?

When I asked the very friendly grocery clerk about the raw food section, she grimaced and said, “We don’t have one of those, yet,” and that I should try New Seasons or Whole Foods. The thing is, I’m on foot/transit, and I’m not going to trek across town for lunch.

The old standby for a raw foodist is the produce section, which she recommended. I made my way over there and found a pint of very yummy ripe figs and a creamy ripe haas avocado. A perfect lunch for me today.

In addition to getting into the raw food groove, it looks like Zupan’s could use some serious social media expertise on their marketing team. Such a great store should be known and loved by all!

Have you heard of Venmo yet? Most people haven’t.

I was a customer of PayPal’s rival, X.Com back in 1998, and was happy when they merged with PayPal. Since PayPal’s acquisition by eBay, at least from my point of view, everything’s gone down hill.

As someone who markets products and services via web sites, PayPal is a necessary evil. As more and more customers refuse to use PayPal, however, the need for a real challenger grows.

I was recently exposed to Venmo, and have been pleased with what I’ve seen so far. The interface is simpler than PayPal’s and seems to be simpler to use. Venmo has added a social trust dimension to exchanges, as well as the ability to pay each other using handheld devices (PayPal’s original business).

Using SMS text messaging, people can send money to each other’s Venmo accounts. It’s very cool! You can also embed payment widgets into your WordPress, or other web / blog site:

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Recently, I’ve been paying a great deal of attention to introducing my social media strategy services, primarily TwicheYourself.com. My blogs have suffered some, but I’ve been doing my best to keep things updated.

I recently discovered a WordPress theme called Thesis, which will change how I create and update my blogs. Thesis is more of a canvas than a theme, at least given how themes are usually used.

If you’re a blogger, or you want to add a blog to your web site (or even convert your current web site over to a WordPress blog), I especially recommend Thesis.

I will be repurposing thubten.info to focus on social media strategy. I have separated my personal posts and moving them over here to thubten.me, which is still being put together.

These are very exciting times. The economy is on its way back, and using social media to maximize on the opportunities that are surely coming our way makes a whole lot of sense.