Brokekid.net

(via maxgladwell.com)

From Obama Art

I missed four.

Question #5
Question #13
Question #18
Question #33

Take the US Civics quiz.

Did you know?

Ok, I lied in my last post, but this is really cool. I’ll write about Google Reader on Monday (unless something cooler comes out). You can now theme your Gmail with a number of different skins.

In your settings (if you have access, not everyone does yet) you can change the them setting.

Check it out.

Did you know?

I subscribe to almost 500 feeds in Google Reader, which helps me to keep on top of the latest news on a number of topics. Reading through that many feeds can be incredibly time consuming, but I’ve resorted to using a few different approaches to help me sift through the noise. First I organize all my feeds into categories, like those seen to the right. This helps me figure out where to start for the day. I also have a file for feeds that aren’t very important. If my feed reader inbox is completely full, I usually start by marking as read all the feeds in not important folder. Next I start with the topics I’m interested in for the day and are relevant to my work. You can easily navigate up and down through the posts by using the "j" and "k" keys. "Expanded view" will show the full post and "list view" will show only the heading. PostRank has a handy FireFox plug-in that helps you quickly navigate though your feeds by ranking posts in regards to their newsworthy-ness. You can find more about the plug-in here. For the next post I’ll talk about how I use Google Reader to remember and share notable posts.

Race called for Mark Begich.

Did you know? There are a number of great websites that you can’t read unless have happen to be fluent in Mandarin or Swedish. Now you can read them by subscribing to Google Reader, which can auto-translate posts. Google Reader isn’t a supported business app yet, but if you have a regular Gmail account, it’s an incredibly useful tool. I write more on it soon.

(via vi.sualize.us)

From Obama Art

“The system doesn’t know what to do with a movement.”

This remark reminded me of Hannah’s earlier post about GoodGuide, a service that provides “the world’s largest and most reliable source of information on the health, environmental, and social impacts of the products in your home.”

When you walk into a store to buy whatever it is you came in for, you give your implicit approval of that product but also of the practices that go into its production. If your new shirt comes from a factory that practices child labor or has a history of illegally dumping industrial waste into neighboring rivers or a record of shameful human rights violations, every one of your dollars counts as a “vote” to continue those practices. Redirecting your money toward purchases that meet your personal standards sends a message to companies with unethical behavior.

Information is power and offering consumers a broader context to the products we purchase allows us to make better informed choices. GoodGuide gives you instant access to the data you need to make decisions based not only on price but on the ethical conduct of a company (whose true values aren’t usually stated on the side of the packaging.)

Tools such as GoodGuide and AccountAbility allow consumers to begin holding companies to higher ethical standards but ultimately we will need to better organize to move change along. Consumers need to start exploring other tools and actions required to motivate disinterested and unengaged companies into changing their behavior.

An innovative approach to promoting change is the Carrotmob, with the idea of “organiz[ing] consumers to make purchases that give financial rewards to those businesses who agree to make socially beneficial choices.” For example, hundreds of people showed up for a day of grocery shopping at K & D Market in San Francisco. K & D promised 22% of the day’s revenue to make their store more environmentally-friendly and energy-efficient. With the huge turnout, K & D was able to meet their goal.

ThePoint and PledgeBank are services that offer a different approach. They enable like-minded people to take action toward a specific goal. If X number of people promise to do A then B will happen. An example from ThePoint -

Objective
To get a major US cola company (Coke, Pepsi, RC) to switch their sweetener from high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) back to cane or beet sugar

Terms
If this objective is met, then we agree to buy soda from the first company that stops using HFCS and switches back to cane or beet sugar

These sites and services are the first steps needed for consumers to organize themselves. Now imagine if we were able to seamlessly integrate these technologies across browsers, social networks, mobile phones, email and instant messaging. And imagine if every purchase option, real-life or online, provided us with the information needed to make informed choices, the chance to join a carrotmob or a group on ThePoint and then allow us to invite our friends from across all of our social networks, we could persuade millions of people into spending billions of dollars, “voting” on issues that we care about with our hard earned money.