Google’s Project 10 to 100 is an open call for ideas that will change the world by helping as many people as possible. On the site, you can submit an idea and vote on other people’s ideas. Final idea selections will be made by an advisory board, and Google has committed to funding the winners. The deadline is October 20, 2008.
Everyone has an opinion and everyone has their own experience of the ever-swirling, ever-changing, available-at-a-moment’s-notice technologies. I find that current trends in mobile media are fed by actual pros, benefits that I am able to make work with my lifestyle.
I am all about keeping my personal and professional life as organized as possible. Is this doable? Can I actually stay “with the program” and keep my wits about me? In the end, the buck stops here, with me.
Isn’t that the most important point here, me?
I work full time and am a mother of two growing boys. Business deadlines, sports practices, classes, birthday reminders and bills all need to be dealt with … before they come due. Therefore, my most prized possession is my mobile handheld unit.
The handheld is an all-knowing one-stop-shop where I can monitor all of the developments, schedules and activities in my life. It is a necessity. Franklin Covey watch out! If planning-on-the-go is the wave of the future, you may be going out of business!
Tomorrow is PARK(ing) Day, a worldwide event that claims parking spots and turns them into temporary public parks. Paul Schmelzer with Walker’s “Off Center”:
I got in touch with Shanai Matteson, who’s organizing the event locally. She says she’s asked people to look for (or ask the city to put hoods on meters, for a fee) parking spaces in downtown Minneapolis. She’ll be greening up a pavement swath on Nicollet Mall and another one outside the Community Design Group on 3rd Avenue. While it all sounds so guerrilla, each team will be responsible for plugging the meters the entire time they’re there. For maximum exposure of the parking/parks idea, most participants are keeping their spots at least through the lunch hour.
Twin Cities Streets For People has more:
From 5-8pm you are welcome to stop by the new office of Community Design Group at 212 3rd Avenue North, Suite 515. A Park(ing) Spot will be up for folks to enjoy, as well as drinks and a slide show of images from Park(ing) Days past.
Solutions Twin Cities and Community Design Group are co-sponsoring this get together, which will be a chance to learn more about Park(ing) Day and to talk with other folks who are interested in reclaiming streets for people.
Recently seen in Time Magazine: “Excess consumption is practically an American religion. But as anyone with a filled-to-the-gills closet knows, the things we accumulate can become oppressive. With all this stuff piling up and never quite getting put away, we’re no longer huddled masses yearning to breathe free; we’re huddled masses yearning to free up space on a countertop. Which is why people are so intrigued by the 100 Thing Challenge, a grass-roots movement in which otherwise seemingly normal folks are pledging to whittle down their possessions to a mere 100 items.” Read More
I love simple elegant web pages. This site is a one-trick pony: Do you need an umbrella today? Enter your zip code for a Yes or No answer. Of course, one could always look out the window, but where’s the fun in that?
An insurgency has been brewing for a few years now, made up of the inventive, the curious and the technologically restless. It’s called the Maker Movement, and it has brought the pre-1970s world of basement workshops and amateur tinkering into the digital age.
Through two magazines, Make and Craft, and an array of blogs and events called Maker Faires, participants share ideas for previously unimagined tools, toys and forms of locomotion. Their goal is to reassert creative control over technology, which is now so sophisticated and magically opaque that we are its loving hostages. Lots of people are content to lay back and let iPhone and Google tell them where and who they are — Makers are not those people.
…(the) mission is taking the Maker mentality to manufacturers, urging them to make products that consumers can easily maintain, repair, repurpose or even reinvent. Instead of churning out disposables, they end up making collector’s items, and legendary brands. They turn customers into fierce advocates.
“I really want companies to start thinking about shared innovation,” Mr. Jalopy said, “to realize that they’re not selling to customers, but to collaborators.
(Read the Excerpted from the New York Times. Read the Full Article!)
