A look at three inspired examples of innovation on the most rudimentary gateway to language and literature: the alphabet book. For extra delightfulness, make sure you follow @brainpicker (aka Maria Popova) on Twitter!
Perspective is a very powerful thing. Perspectives can change. Perspectives can be altered. From my perspective, we live on a fragile island of life, in a universe of possibilities. For many millenia, humans have been on a journey to find answers, answers to questions about naturalism and transcendence, about who we are and why we are, and of course, who else might be out there. Is it really just us? Are we alone in this vast universe of energy and matter and chemistry and physics? Well, if we are, it's an awful waste of space. But, what if we're not?
In fact, I believe that if we want to survive the next century on this planet, we need to increase that total dramatically. I've calculated the total we need at 21 billion hours of game play every week. So, that's probably a bit of a counterintuitive idea, so, I'll say it again, let it sink in. If we want to solve problems like hunger, poverty, climate change, global conflict, obesity, I believe that we need to aspire to play games online for at least 21 billion hours a week, by the end of the next decade.
Canopy-dwellers are not just insignificant bits of green up high in the canopy that Tarzan and Jane were interested in but rather that they foster biodiversity contribute to ecosystem nutrient cycles, and they also help to keep our global climate stable. Up in the canopy, if you were sitting next to me, if you turned around from those primary forest ecosystems, you would also see scenes like this. Scenes of forest destruction, forest harvesting and forest fragmentation, thereby making that intact tapestry of the canopy unable to function in the marvelous ways that it has when it is not disturbed by humans.
I haven't blogged about clients lately. Well, ok, about anything lately. But there have been a few developments on the client front that I wanted to share.
FarmCity.ca
We just launched a redesign of FarmCity.ca. FarmCity specializes in backyard and balcony organic gardening for Vancouver and the Lower Mainland. Seaton and her team will inspect your proposed garden plot or garden, help you figure out what to grow, build the necessary structures and get you started on your path to urban gardening. I'm particularly thrilled with their strawberry condos - the ability to grow strawberries in small places on a balcony: super cool!
Also, Seaton is an amazing photographer. We've got her started on Flickr, sharing photos of the fruits of her and her clients' labour. (Psst .. if you're getting this in the email or the feed, there is an embedded slideshow above you may not be seeing - please click through for amazing veggie photography!!)
Pellé Hair Salon
Another local business that we completed a new site for recently is Pellé Hair Salon. Marie was an independent hair stylist, but recently purchased her own hair salon in downtown Vancouver. In addition to setting her up with a new site, we've started her on Yelp and Google Local - essential elements for the marketing plan of any local business with a storefront. Our next step is to experiment with tools like Foursquare or Gowalla - to see if we can find a way to engage users of those tools.
Oh, we also partnered with BBN3/Vancouver - a video platform that lets businesses engage video journalists, documentary makers and other experienced video producers to create fun narrative documentary-style business videos (as opposed to old-skool corporate talking heads vids). See the video below.
Petro-Canada
And finally, our client, Petro-Canada, launched an iPhone app called PetroFinder. We didn't build it (it was created by Thrillworks), but we like it and are excited that our client is getting into mobile apps. Using PetroFinder, you can (predictably) find a Petro-Canada station near you - it will also give you the current price of gas there as well as directions and any of the services/amenities they have on site.
This case study (make sure you read part 1 and 2 (part 2 is in a separate post linked to in this one) is a really great example of what one smart person can accomplish. For small or medium businesses, or local govt offices with no money, this shows how to do smart PR.
These are some of the images, videos & quotes that resonate with me, but I don't feel like writing a full post about. So I publish them on my tumblr. And there is a feed for these if you're keen ...