Interesting Reading: 6/23
JibJab: He’s Barack Obama
http://sendables.jibjab.com/originals/hes_barack_obama
This is the funniest JibJab political cartoon yet. A must watch
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Google Launches a Community Service Search Engine
http://mashable.com/2009/06/22/all-for-good/
"We expected that President Obama might use the enormous social media influence he accumulated during his campaign to encourage community service. And earlier this year, Serve.gov was launched as part of this direction.
Today, however, Google (Google) has gotten in on the project, launching All For Good, a website that aggregates volunteer opportunities from around the US from a number of charities and other websites. All For Good is also now being used to power the search portion of Serve.gov"
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Learning from How Designers Think and Work
http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/maeda/2009/06/learning-from-how-designers-th.html
"When I was in business school, Stanford's d.school was just a glimmer of a thing living in a trailer across campus, barely known to most of us business students. Five years later, there is much discussion in the business world about design's evolution from producing of objects to producing a broad framework for ideas and solutions, including recent thought-provoking commentary from both Paola Antonelli and Bruce Nussbaum. Before coming to RISD, I loosely understood "design" and "design thinking" as a methodology focused on ethnographic research, rapid prototyping, and iterative process, already married closely to business innovation. To me, a designer's tools felt like the combination of social science and business that had attracted me to product marketing: conducting user research, defining a product, testing it and revising. I remember going to a design strategy conference at IIT and being struck at how similar it felt to market research conferences...
..I see now that designers are people who can make information emotional and visceral, who can make a bigger impact by thoughtfully marrying form and content. They are "experience perfectionists," the ones who always ask about the space a meeting will occur in so they can arrange the room and have music or images playing when people walk in. They are obsessed with materials; they can have a completely literate and thoughtful conversation about the width of a rubber band being used as a book binding, and how it will change the way the book is perceived."
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Webware 100 Winners!
http://www.webware.com/100/
"Welcome to the 2009 Webware 100! Below you'll find 100 Web apps in 10 categories voted to be the best of the best by Webware readers and users of the apps themselves.
Be sure to also see the new 11th category, Editors Choice, for a list of 12 products that we feel merit inclusion in this year's awards program, even if they weren't big enough to win the popular vote.
Congratulations to the winners of the Webware 100!"
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Why the Microgrid Could Be the Answer to Our Energy Crisis
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/137/beyond-the-grid.html
"Why small-scale, local power -- the microgrid -- could be the answer to our energy crisis. And why the big utilities are fighting it with all they've got."
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Picture Show: A Quiet Heaven in Vrindavan, India
http://www.good.is/post/picture-show-a-quiet-heaven-in-vrindavan-india/
"The Indian village of Vrindavan is believed by many Hindus to be the physical manifestation of ‘heaven’ as well as the place in which the deity Krishna assumed human form thousands of years ago and lived a single life as a man. The Hindi word vrinda translates to “a devotion to spiritual purity.” To Krishna devotees, the village and the miles of hills surrounding it are extremely sacred."
THis is a nice collection of photographs. I went to Vrindavan years ago - kind of an odd, sleepy very spread out town. Home to the Hari Krishnas. Morning is the most peaceful and atmospheric time in any Indian town.
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25+ Useful Infographics for Web Designers
http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/06/25-useful-infographics-for-web-designers/
"Infographics can be a great way to quickly reference information.
Instead of pouring over figures and long reports to decipher data, an infographic can immediately make apparent exactly what a dataset actually means.
Below are more than 25 infographics that can be useful to web designers."
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Foot-Pumped power for phones at summer festival
http://springwise.com/eco_sustainability/powerpump/
"For the hordes of people camping out at music festivals this summer, recharging their mobile phones no longer has to be an issue. If they have access to an Orange Power Pump, a minute of physical exercise is all it takes to juice up their phone.
Mobile network operator Orange has teamed up with renewable energy experts GotWind, who have created a tiny wind turbine that can be hooked up to a standard airbed footpump, enabling users to pump juice back into their phones. The turbine is no bigger than a pack of wet wipes, and can generate enough energy to power 5 minutes of call time in about 60 seconds of foot pumping."
