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blogging causes

2 Reasons to Blog today – Blog Action Day and Creative Commons Awareness Day

Today, October 15th, is a do-something day online. Blog Action Day, supported by everyone from the UN to Friendster, is generating awareness of what everyday people can do to fight poverty, worldwide.

Creative Commons awareness is about letting people know they have a choice when they share their words, pictures, and images in public- they can limit how those media are used, or they can allow people to re-use them in specific ways that benefit everyone. (This article is (cc)2008 attribute-share alike).
Read more about these 2 great causes:

Blog Action Day 08

On October 15th bloggers everywhere will publish posts that discuss poverty in some way. By all posting on the same day we aim to change the conversation that day, to raise awareness, start a global discussion and add momentum to an important cause.

Be Common on October 15, 2008 | Social Media Club

October 15, 2008 represents the first opportunity to evangelize the importance of standards and move this mission forward in partnership with Creative Commons.

So what can YOU do to help create more awareness around the important service Creative Commons provides? There are 3 ideas which certainly would help which have been bantered around, but I suspect the community can come up with more by October 15th. The key theme is just to identify a way to let folks know about the best practices around the sharing/creating of creative works leveraging a Creative Commons License.

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Categories
causes LinkedIn social capital exchange social media socialmedia

Chuck Hester and the Pay it Forward Chronicles

I profiled Chuck Hester of iContact in this piece about using Live Connections to Leverage Virtual Connections back in February. Now Chuck is taking his experiences with LinkedIn and writing a book on  “Linking In to Pay it Forward: Changing the Value Proposition in Social Media.”  His blog has one neat idea today:

THE PAY IT FORWARD CHRONICLES: The Small Good, A New Book and A Busy Fall

First the Small Good. A concept that I first ran across earlier this year as I listened to a podcast. Here’s the basic premise:

Someone has a need, an issue, a problem. They come to you for help. From your prospective it takes little effort to help this person – maybe a referral to a tax attorney you know or a tip on how to get better publicity for your company.

To the person your helping, it’s HUGE! You have saved them time, money, worry – whatever that may be.

My Small Good for the day is letting you know about this. I hope it provides you good value and something to think about.

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Uncategorized

Question I’d love to see asked at the Presidential Debate

“Senator McCain, Senator Obama, your campaigns are both running ads that call the other a liar. Are either of you ready, on this stage tonight, to outright call the other person a liar and explain it? And if not, are you ready to stop that ad and take a more civil road to the White House?”

But it will never happen.

Categories
economy

The Financial Crisis of 1873

From Scott Reynolds Nelson, a professor of history at the College of William and Mary, comes a thought piece on the similarities of the current financial crisis and the 1873 worldwide banking crisis.
The Real Great Depression – ChronicleReview.com

As in 1873, a complex financial pyramid rested on a pinhead. Banks are hoarding cash. Banks that hoard cash do not make short-term loans. Businesses large and small now face a potential dearth of short-term credit to buy raw materials, ship their products, and keep goods on shelves.

Sounds familiar, no? Worth the read.

Categories
causes Entreprenurship not-for-profit

Project 10 to the 100th – A Google idea

Check out the video about project 10 to the 100th (10 to the 100th is a Google in math for those following along). There are no words, but the pictures tell the story really well

helping government become more open, transparent and effective through better use of published information.” Show Us a Better Way asks “Do you think that better use of public information could improve health, education, justice or society at large?”  The task force put up 20,000GBP for the winner of that competition to develop the best idea. (I noticed the Google prize via Tom’s blog).

All these prizes to improve the world, plus X-prizes for 100 mile-per gallon cars, space travel, and more.

I hope that these contests and market forces can help us improve the world in some significant way, and I’m glad some big companies are asking for solutions with their hands on their wallets. Now, about that idea for a jet pack I had…