Participating in an online campaign for Earth Day 40 that was observed on 22nd April, I have met quite a few people who are doing some great work in underprevileged communities for their betterment. One such mother-son duo is Barbara and Sunny Forsyth. Sunny has started Abundant Water, a sustainable project to create water filters in Laos. The project involves training the locals, the Lao people, to manufacture simple ceramic water filters to help them provide themselves potable water. After getting to know their work, I felt compelled to interview Sunny and share the brilliant project with my readers. Please click on the link below to listen to the interview.
Babs Forsyth, Sunny's mother, looks after the social media aspect of this project and she's someone who has effectively used various social media platforms to spread the word about Abundant Water. I asked Babs, how has social media helped AW get the word out?
Her answer to my question was:
1 year ago I started tweeting for Abundant Water. I had no idea what I was doing or really even why but I kept at it posting updates from Sunny's work In Lao, having conversations with people I only 'knew' through Twitter and spreading the word about AW.
We have participated in a few Twitter Events:
1. Hugh Jackman's Twitter Challenge for Charity with the most votes - didn't win
2. Top10Causes Twitter Challenge for Charity with the most votes - got 3rd
3. Shorty Awards for best in many categories, in our case it was Health, AW was about 13th out of several 100.
It was in this challenge that I 'met' Michael Q Todd and decided to participate in the 40 Day Social Media Entrepreneurship Training Course he was organizing.
The AW network grew, people from every continent have offered help and this has certainly been accelerated by participating in the 40 Day Course. Sunny has been able to meet Radiance and be interviewed by her. He has also been interviewed on Blog Talk Radio and all of these events have helped to spread the word about Abundant Water. I think there is great potential here that we have only just started to explore.
It is also through social media that Sunny has been invited to talk at TEDxCanberra in October this year.
We are also looking to get involved with Buy1Give1 or a similar organization to help spread the word and generate fund for the work in Lao.
Parallel to Twitter we are also running AW Facebook Page which helps to keep our friends informed about events both in Canberra and Lao.
Thank you for this opportunity to talk about Abundant Water.
Nick Veasey shows outsized X-ray images that reveal the otherworldly inner workings of familiar objects -- from the geometry of a wildflower to the anatomy of a Boeing 747. Producing these photos is dangerous and painstaking, but the reward is a superpower: looking at what the human eye can't see.
MIT grad student David Merrill demos Siftables -- cookie-sized, computerized tiles you can stack and shuffle in your hands. These future-toys can do math, play music, and talk to their friends, too. Is this the next thing in hands-on learning?
It is a brand new year of brand new possibilities. And I am writing my first post of the year about a community that helps make brand new possibilities into reality. If we are ready to accept the reality with open heart, all of us have a potential to help someone else lead a better life. We can chose to keep complaining about our own and not do anything about it. Or we can be grateful for what we’ve got and try to make a difference for someone else. If you are the one of the latter kind, Kiva.org is the place for you to go to. I came across Kiva.org some time back but didn’t register as a lender until recently. I am yet to give my first loan but I am really glad to be participating in UPrinting.com’s Kiva Blogathon.
As Kiva’s own website describes, “Kiva's mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty. Kiva is the world's first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend to unique entrepreneurs around the globe.” What I find unique about Kiva is that they provide “loans” and not charity or donation to people who want to be entrepreneurs. This is very empowering for the individual who receives the money as there comes a responsibility with it. It makes the person confident of their self-worth and doesn’t make them resent for living on charity. It boosts the entrepreneur’s self-esteem to know they’ve been shown confidence in by their lender. They are expected to put in an effort to set up and run a business profitably so the money can be returned to the lender. I feel this is a very powerful way of touching someone’s life and improving it.
Also reassuring is Kiva’s effort to maintain transparency throughout the whole process. Usually when one gives a donation or charity, there is an underlying resignation that the money may or may not reach the proposed cause. But we give it away anyway for our mental and moral satisfaction. Kiva helps you “give” the money to someone in need but not “give away”. There is accountability in the whole process. There is a basic assumption that the entrepreneur may fail and you will never see your money back. But at least there is an expectation that the entrepreneur should put in some effort to make the business work. It may or may not. But what is important is the intention of the giver and the taker. Kiva has set up a great network of fellows and volunteers worldwide who make sure the feedback loop is constantly fed and the lenders are updated with the status of the “project”. And on a given lender’s profile you can see the history and success of the loans they’ve given to the date. I was pleasantly surprised to see almost 95% of the loans being repaid and hence being reused over and over to change so many lives.
Kiva community is made up of various levels and teams that contribute to the whole process in their won capacity. The core team looks after the management and administration at the highest level. But the supporters (corporate and institutional partners), field partners (micro-finance institutions), fellows (individuals who get to visit and experience Kiva’s working on the field) and volunteers are the people that make Kiva a grass-root level organisation. I am also impressed with the ‘apps gallery’ that Kiva has developed. These various applications help those interested setup alerts to watch the progress of and get notified of the loan requirements that they’re interested in. For example, I wish to give a loan in India to an entrepreneur in the field of education and computing. Kiva’s Facebook and Twitter alerts let me set up an alert with these criteria. So when a request from a field partner or an entrepreneur gets entered into Kiva’s database, I get an alert that I might want to consider this opportunity for making my contribution. Isn’t that just wonderful!
So if you think you are ready to touch someone’s life and make a difference, head to Kiva.org, register yourself as a lender and make that contribution. You will literally see it keep coming back at you over the course of your life. Happy 2010 and happy loaning!!!
This is a real quick post about a simple but valuable campaign/message that I came across called 'I do 30'. The ‘I do 30’ campaign was started in Denmark by the bio-innovation company Novozymes, who creates the enzymes that makes it possible to wash your clothes at low temperatures. ‘I do 30’ is about those small climate friendly choices you can make in your everyday life to make a bigger change. Almost all of us wash clothes in hot water of temperature around 60 degrees C.
An environmental social media campaign called ‘I do 30’encourages people across the world to turn down the temperature on their laundry to 30 degrees C in order to save CO2. If you are at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (COP15) you will see them move around the streets of Copenhagen with speech bubbles, hoping the ‘I do 30’ statements will reach the leaders of the world. These bubbles have statements from the campaign supporters from around the world saying why "they do 30".
This weekend, the Danish Prime Minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, was presented with more than 15,000 supporters of the campaign. And the Danish Crown Prince was also handed over a ‘I do 30’ washing machine. Check out the video and photos. If you want to know more about this campaign and participate, check out their website, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Once of the few environmentally conscious groups that are making good use of the immense power of social media to reach out to people.
Eric Giler wants to untangle our wired lives with cable-free electric power. Here, he covers what this sci-fi tech offers, and demos MIT’s breakthrough version, WiTricity — a near-to-market invention that may soon recharge your cell phone, car, pacemaker.
JoAnn Kuchera-Morin demos the AlloSphere, a new way to see, hear and interpret scientific data. Dive into the brain, feel electron spin, hear the music of the elements ... and detect previously unseen patterns that could lead to new discoveries.
Evan Grant demonstrates the science and art of cymatics, a process for making soundwaves visible. Useful for analyzing complex sounds (like dolphin calls), it also makes complex and beautiful designs.
Who would have thought that a nickel and titanium "memory metal" known as Nitinol, recently popular for use in dental braces, would have been originally developed by NASA for aerospace uses! This new alloy does not crimp when bent and returns to its original shape as teeth shift! But that's not the only invention that fascinates you with the fact that it was originally invented for space travel. A few days back I came across this article from Radaronline.com that shares with its readers 13 such items that we use in our daily lives which were originally invented for space travel. They range from handheld video cameras to Zen perfume. Check it out!
This time the Sunday Spotlight is focused on a very different kind of subject. If you’re a regular reader of my blog you will know that I usually focus on science or ecological topics. However, this blog itself and the ease with which I can use it to spread science and eco awareness are products of the social media revolution. Hence I thought of dedicating a blog post to this whole affair that has come to be known as Web2.0.
Media for a long time has been a one way bridge. Various people used the media, TV, radio, cinema, theatre, newspapers, pamphlets and other printed material, as a means of putting forth their ideas, issues, solutions, news etc. However the proportion of “givers” of information has been far less than the “receivers”. And that was probably the power of conventional media. The advent of internet and the social media changed this to a large extent. People are interacting on one-to-one bases and anyone can be the “giver” and the “receiver” of information. Of course, this boon of freedom of expression in true sense comes with a bane of misuse to spread information detrimental to the human race in mere seconds all over the world. So, IMHO, one should take the whole Web2.0 explosion with a pinch of salt.
I am one of those people who try their best to keep abreast of the new developments and trends in social media. Albeit I don’t require doing that professionally I do understand that it is for my own benefit. After starting my blog about a year ago, I’ve especially taken interest in Web2.0 as I could clearly see its wonderful potential in promoting my blog and hence my ideas and passions with millions of people who are internet savvy. Among many other social media platforms, Twitter helped me get my blog posts out there and also make new connections with people from my niche. However, I realised very soon that tweeting and RTing can become a job in itself if not automated. A bit of Google search brought me in contact with a fabulous service called SocialOomph (then known as TweetLater). This service (free version) lets you set a date and time in future for your tweets so you don’t have to be online at some ghastly hour, trying to keep feeding your Twitter. The RSS feed lets you feed your tweets into RSS feed readers of all sorts and lets others subscribe to it. However, the Pro version is the real showstopper (or rather show-runner). This paid service lets you do much more with your tweets and your network. Besides all features of free version, it lets you setup criteria for automatically following and unfollowing fellow tweeters. You can vet this feature if you like or set it in autopilot with SocialOomph. When someone follows you, you can have SocialOomph send them a DM (with your Twitter ID of course) with a welcome message. But what I like best are, bulk upload, recurring tweets and spinning of tweet text. The first one, as name suggests, lets you upload as many tweets as you want in one go. The second lets you set a recurrence frequency for any number of tweets and forget about them for as long as you wish. Spinning tweet text involves you giving as many different versions of a given tweet you like and SocialOomph will randomly chose a version to tweet when you’ve told it to. This is really a great feature because let’s face it, it get boring to see same old tweets recurring every so many days on the same account. People are going to ignore you! So all in all, if you haven’t already done so, I will definitely suggest you try out the Pro SocialOomph for their trial period. I’m sure you’ll want to upgrade for the cheap value that offers so much more freedom to do your real work.
Twitter started as a simple idea of sharing 140 character updates with your friends and family. Of course the end users themselves have evolved it to something much more. It is now a leading platform on web2.0 to stay updated with latest news (e.g.: Iran elections), to promote your product (e.g.: Amazon Kindle), spread the word about your campaign (e.g.: climate change) or even make some money out of your tweets (e.g.: Magpie). Monetisation using web2.0 and social media has become a big obsession with a lot of bloggers or anyone involved in the cyberspace in any capacity. And a lot of services like Chitika, Sponsored tweets, Nuffnang (currently only for Asia-Pacific) have sprung up like mushrooms to provide you ways to make some dough out of your cyber-investment.
Affiliate marketing is another big avenue that many bloggers, including yours truly, have taken in order to make their blogging profitable. Writing was once upon a time considered a talent that came naturally. However, now a lot of cyber-gurus have taken upon themselves to teach others how to write a blog, promote it and monetise it. One such person I myself learn from is Problogger Darren Rowse. I participated in Darren’s 31 days to build a better blog (31DBBB) workshop online and gained tremendously from it. Darren’s own insights on various topics related to blogs, which stem from his own experience of past 5-6 years as a blogger, were definitely the highlight of this workshop. And I loved the little tasks that we were assigned everyday to complete and improve pur blog in the process. These insights and assignments, along with other useful material are now on sale as a book (Click here to view more details). Even though I participated in the workshop I felt this book was worth buying (especially for the price its being offered) as a reference for future. If you’re getting serious about blogging and pursuing it as more than a hobby, I suggest you buy this book.
There have been millions of items written on the topics of social media, web2.0, monetising, affiliate marketing and the likes. This was my little take on the same. I’m still a newbie in this world of web2.0 and I sometimes feel like a kid in a candy shop. There are too many things that I want. But lately I’ve learnt to focus on what my goal is and then trying to look for tools that I’d need. Because it is very easy for the web2.0 to take control and lead you astray if you don’t keep strong hold on the virtual steering wheel.
Insects and animals have evolved some amazing skills -- but, as Robert Full notes, many animals are actually over-engineered. The trick is to copy only what's necessary. He shows how human engineers can learn from animals' tricks.
A guest post generously contributed by Bob Williamson, Founder and Chair, Greenhouse Neutral Foundation. Contact details and details of book 'ZERO Greenhouse Emissions - The Day The Lights Went Out - Our Future World' authored by Bob are given at the end of this post.
When going about busy daily lives for most of us in the developed nations, we rarely give much thought to the externalities either upstream, or downstream of our consumer society. Upstream from our individual consumption, we can site the resources used by manufactures; the raw materials, the water they consume, the energy and all the emissions associated with these activities. Downstream we can site not only the costs of collection, but the loss forever of these original consumed resources (all that energy and water) when recycling for reuse doesn’t happen. Downstream are also the environmental time bombs of toxic waste and landfill methane emissions we are leaving for future generations to deal with. The mounting piles of rubbish arriving daily at landfill sites around the world are testament to the profligate ways of our own current consumption and of the desire for ever rising profits by industry and commerce.
Finite resources are used in making and supplying all these goods to us and then almost instantly in the case of packaging, they are discarded to landfill. They take with them vast amounts of externalised consumed resources that are mostly hidden from our view ‘out of site and out of mind’. (example – an aluminium can in the smelting process alone will consume 25.75 litres of water!) See the PPI white paper which reports 37% of greenhouse emissions in the US are attributed to non-food products - “Opportunities to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions through Materials and Land Management Practices,” this report offers new insight into the impact of products and packaging on climate change.
I have lobbied long and hard for these consumed resources in products and disposable packaging to be brought to the foreground with the hope that we will change our habits with knowledge, to a future that is more in balance with the laws of nature. If we don’t, very soon we will need to live our lives with finite resource extinction. In the book I take a tongue in cheek look at packaging waste and suggest the ‘Unpackaged Movement’.
Here is an excerpt: Now what about that plasma TV, the fridge, or even the electric drill bought at the corner superstore? What exactly are we buying, the product or the packaging? Are we buying the TV, the electric drill or other consumer products, or the cardboard box and cardboard packing, the bubble wrap and the polystyrene foam? I have an idea here. We could start a movement, the Unpackaged Movement! One of my favourite songs from the 1960s got me thinking, Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant.” Quite appropriate I think, as Arlo got busted for dumping garbage. I downloaded the lyrics off the Web and was going to put them in, but they would have been longer than the book so far, so here’s the gist of what happened and how it might be incorporated into present-day real life. As mentioned, Arlo got busted for dumping Alice and Ray’s (Alice’s husband) garbage, paid the fine of $50, and had to pick up the garbage in the snow. When called up for the draft, they wouldn’t take him because he had a criminal record. He suggested at the end of the song that if you wanted to get out of going to Vietnam, for your psychological evaluation you could walk in and sing a bar of “Alice’s –Restaurant” and walk out. He said if one person did it they would think he was a nut and wouldn’t take him. If two people did it they would think they were both crazy and they wouldn’t take either of them. If three people did it they would think it was an organization. And if fifty people did it they would think it was a movement.
So, here’s the plan: we all unpack our purchases at the store and leave them with the cardboard box and cardboard packing, the bubble wrap, and the polystyrene foam. “Here you go, you can have this, I just want what I came here to buy!” Now if just I did it they would think I was a nut. But if we could get a movement going, The Unpackaged Movement, all the packaging could stay where it belongs, with the person/company who is making the profit and make them responsible for waste that would normally fill our bins. (There is a P.S. here—I’ve put my money where my mouth is on this idea. The look on the guy’s face at the hardware superstore when I dropped in to deliver all their cardboard packaging and plastic back was a picture. “I bought this product at your store last week. But I don’t want the packaging. So you can have it back. Thank you.” I found the whole experience strangely exhilarating. I have some more in the trunk of the car for my next trip out.) End excerpt
The unpackaged daily life of our family has become very personal.
On one particular occasion we needed a replacement kettle to the one that was designed to last a month outside the warranty period of 12 months. I returned to where we had bought the other Breville stainless steel electric kettle and bought the same model. When unpacked at home on the kitchen counter, my daughter dutifully packed the old one in the box that the new one came in; writing on it ‘PLEASE RECYCLE’ and on my next trip out I called back to the mega electrical store, walked up to the salesman I had seen the day before and said, “Hi.”
He replied “Can I help you sir?” looking at the box in my hand.
I said ‘Yes, I bought a kettle yesterday from you, the very same model I bought 13 months ago from this store. Here is the old one back, packaged up in order for you to send it back to Breville for recycling along with their box and polystyrene packaging. Thank you.”
Handing him the box, I savoured the look on his face, knowing full well of course, that its long journey of return to China would stop at the dumpster at the rear of the store. Still as I said in the book, if we all did it, then we would see a movement and eventually become extended producer responsibility and as it should be; ‘ZERO Waste’ to landfill.
Robert Lang is a pioneer of the newest kind of origami -- using math and engineering principles to fold mind-blowingly intricate designs that are beautiful and, sometimes, very useful.
“'The Age of Stupid' is the new cinema documentary from the Director of 'McLibel' and the Producer of the Oscar-winning 'One Day in September'. This enormously ambitious drama-documentary-animation hybrid stars Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite as an old man living in the devastated world of 2055, watching 'archive' footage from 2008 and asking: why didn't we stop climate change while we had the chance?”, says the synopsis of the film on its official website.
“The Age of Stupid is a 90-minute film about climate change, set in the future, which had its world premiere in London on March 15th 2009 and was released in UK cinemas on March 20th 2009. The film will be released in Australia & New Zealand on August 19th, the global premiere will be live from New York to 45 countries on September 21st 2009. Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite (In The Name of the Father, Brassed Off) stars as a man living alone in the devasted world of 2055, looking back at archive footage from 2007 and asking: why didnt we stop climate change when we had the chance?”, says the YouTube channel of Spanner Films that is responsible for making of this documentary.
As you would have read above, the documentary is being premiered globally on the 21st (in US) and 22nd (in rest of the world) September, 2009. That’s next Monday/Tuesday. Hence I thought this was an appropriate time for me to focus the spotlight on it. Even though the documentary has been premiered in Australia in August, I haven’t yet gotten a chance to see it. I’m hoping to catch the live online broadcast from NY during the global premier. However, from the trailers I’ve watched and reviews I’ve read it seems like a very different take on the climate change issue. It weaves together 6 stories recorded in present day to make a fabric of human psyche. These are real people and not actors posing as someone. Fernand Pareau, 82-year old French mountain guide; Jeh Wadia, starting a low-cost airline in India; Alvin DuVernay, Shell oil man who rescued 100 people after Hurricane Katrina; Layefa Malemi, living in Shell’s most profitable oil region in Nigeria; Jamila and Adnan Bayyoud, two Iraqi refugee kids trying to find their brother and Piers Guy, a windfarm developer fighting the anti windfarm lobby in England ... all show us different aspects of human mentality. The documentary does not set out to show us what we’ve already done to the planet because the assumption is we already know that. It, however, gives us a peak into the future that will be if we continue on our merry (?) way.
Another difference of this documentary from many others is that £450,000 of its budget was raised by “crowd-funding” - selling shares to individuals and groups. Film is therefore completely independent. The people’s contribution does not stop here. Even for the global premier people from various participating countries have organised their own “Indie screenings” to make it truly global. So for me this documentary also serves as a great example of how one can make a difference on a shoestring budget with support of other people who’re probably living on a shoestring budget themselves. I would strongly recommend all my readers to spread the word about The age of stupid and try to get as many people as you can to watch it. You can do your bit in many ways, organising your own screening, spread the word on social media, write a blog or at least watch it yourself.
Janine Benyus has a message for inventors: When solving a design problem, look to nature first. There you'll find inspired designs for making things waterproof, aerodynamic, solar-powered and more. Here she reveals dozens of new products that take their cue from nature with spectacular results.
We love the Passivhaus, or Passive House as it is known in America, where houses are designed to be so well insulated and sited that they need no energy other than passive solar gain to keep warm. [...] Now we learn from Jetson Green about the Aktivhaus, set up to not only heat and power itself but to have some left over.
The first Aktivhaus has been deployed in Denmark and is predicted to produce enough energy in 30 years to neutralise the energy costs of building it. Eventhough 30 years sounds like a long time, it is definitely better than NEVER neutralising the energy cost gone into building the house. Read more about both these fabulous environmentally friendly house designs on the Treehugger and Jetson Green websites.
CPAK (Conference on Precession and Ancient Knowledge) began in 2004 as a means of bringing together scientists from various disciplines together; scientists who were truly open-minded and were ready to think unconventionally; scientists who didn’t believe all of what the text books tell us and wanted to consider what the so called legends and myths of cultures worldwide say; scientists who wanted to know what really happened on this planet in the past. According to CPAK website, “Over the last five years CPAK has become the premiere gathering place for those interested in ancient cultures, lost knowledge and the cycle of the ages. Leading explorers, authors, professors and scientists make presentations and examine the latest archaeological finds, astronomical research and new interpretations of structures, myth and folklore that shed light on the true history of mankind. The result is an epiphany of awareness as we collectively begin to understand where we came from and where we are going in this ascending age.”
I thought of sharing this event with my readers as I feel at least some of you will find it interesting like I do. This year’s conference is on October 10th at the University of California’s Irvine campus in CA, USA. If you are truly interested, I’ll leave it up to you to visit the website, read, watch and listen more. There are some samples of past presentations at the conference to whet your appetite. Happy “knowledging”!
[Image source: New Scientist, Caption reads: The "Cygnus Bubble" nebula may actually be a cylinder that is being seen from one of its ends. This image was taken with the Kitt Peak Mayall 4-metre telescope in Arizona (Image: Travis A. Rector/U of Alaska Anchorage/Heidi Schweiker/NOAO)]
IT LOOKS like a soap bubble or perhaps even a camera fault, but the image at right is a newly discovered planetary nebula. [...] The bubble, which was officially named PN G75.5+1.7 last week, has been there a while. [...] "It's a beautiful example," says Adam Frank of the University of Rochester, New York. "Spherical ones are very rare." One explanation is that the image is looking down the throat of a typical cylindrical nebula. However, it is still remarkably symmetrical, Frank says.
A few days back I got an invite to join a group on LinkedIn. It was called The Virtual Telescope Project, a name that interested me enough to go ahead and check out what was this all about. And once I was on the website, I knew I had to write a Sunday Spotlight on this particular service provided by the Bellatrix Astronomical Observatory.
The homepage beckons you to enter the website with the message, "Enjoy the real Universe from your desktop, live!". It is available in English and Italian. This project/telescope is a participant in the IYA2009 activities. The website is created and directed by Gianluca Masi. Here you will find out what makes Virtual Telescope a unique case in the world. The Virtual Telescope offers live shows and astronomical Labs, in real-time or with archived material (the latter being free).
I am very much looking forward to participate in their next live show on Monday 3rd August, which is in Italian. But ... the fascinating beauty of the deep space is beyond spoken word.
aign for Earth Day 40 that was observed on 22nd April, I have met quite a few people who are doing some great work in underprevileged communities for their betterment. One such mother-son duo is Barbara and Sunny Forsyth. Sunny has started 
We are also looking to get involved with Buy1Give1 or a similar organization to help spread the word and generate fund for the work in Lao.
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The "Cygnus Bubble" nebula may actually be a cylinder that is being seen from one of its ends. This image was taken with the ![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_sHFb03OmHYotvIUYZ7nVxesvTO11e-pLfhRfZ_j2Ss3LX2dAXf9UZJpBRzzd2EH7YgpUNy1AKDBw12Z57HgHJwioDaQOCUKPODOl-SzrmO2-_ARwH96B38g1XWw-i4lbF_-kPR67Y8mk8JAWu18maX=s0-d)
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