Dry July – Day 5

doing ‘extreme hibernation’ during Dry July
this involves a range of nerdy horizontal solo activities that only the most accomplished hibernators should attempt.
Day 5 – bedroom adminstration

http://www.twitpic.com/9dbzm

pls help me raise money for a great cause:
https://www.dryjuly.com/profiles/marissacooke
thankyou

Dry July – Day 2

What better way to spend a cold rainy winter evening than curled up in bed with a DVD and a glass of…water:

http://twitpic.com/91b0k

Help me stay Dry in July and raise money for adults living with Cancer:

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Any sponsorship donations to support this good cause much appreciated!

Sponsor me >

US Starbucks Cross-Promo

I’d not been into a Starbucks for about 6 years til last week in the United States and as much as I dislike this soul-destroying blight on (caffeine) culture, I noticed this interesting x-media promo, loyalty reward.

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Pick of the Week offers a new free music pick every Tuesday at Starbucks via a download code printed on the reverse of a Pick of the Week card that’s redeemable online at itunes for the free featured track.

Fox crowd-sources animation series

The Fox Network in the US is looking to the ‘crowd cloud’ for the next Matt Groening, launching a crowd-sourced competition in partnership with online animation network, Aniboom.
Fan votes will decide finalists with the overall winner selected by Fox.

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I love crowd-sourced funding II !

Another interesting example of crowd-sourced funding.

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spot.us is a not for profit community funded reporting initiative in which funds are pledged towards research, investigation and writing of journalistic pieces that may otherwise not be reported in mainstream news channels.

Donations are tax deductible and reimbursed if a news organisation acquires the rights to the finished piece/content.

Excellent! Thanks to Tim at between0and1.org for the reference.

Mad Pride Movement

madpride

I have a mentally ill Uncle – I know that he’s been tortured by his condition for more than 25 years, and would do anything to be ‘normal’ again, but I have always been amazed by his ‘crazy wisdom’ – his incredibly unique insights and lateral/creative gifts…and I wonder, if mental illness were not so stigmatised by western society and those who have these conditions, so undervalued, whether he and others in similar circumstances may have happier, more productive lives, based on an acceptance and value of their ‘conditions’ …let’s face it, in other times and cultures, my Uncle would have been worshipped as a spiritual savante main-lining messages from the divine world …

That’s why the emerging ‘mad pride’ movement is so interesting, bec. it challenges the pathologisation (hey, that’s not a word) of ‘mental illness’, choosing to see ‘mental disorders’ as “dangerous gifts” rather than illnesses. This is a really interesting article:

Newsweek Article: Mad Pride

Thanks to Kelly Chapman for the great reference.

Super heroes fight crime on Cincinnati streets

What a great opportunity to put spandex back on the streets!

Masked Superheroes patrol cinncinati streets
I bags being Anpanman! the Japanese super-hero whose head is made from jam-filled bread…that’ll show em.

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I love crowdsourced finance and fundraising!

Another win for creative democracy…Hell yes! Cut out the middle-man solo creatives, collectives and minipreneurs!

Any thing that facilitates and empowers people to finance, create, produce, distribute without relying on corporate middlemen and gatekeepers (read banks, record labels, production companies, publishing houses…) is always a great thing in my opinion.

Kickstarter does just that – a brilliant crowdsourced fundraising platform that enables creatives to list creative projects and funds required and allows ‘pledgers’ to donate funds towards realising the project in return for rewards or other incentives offered by the ‘creator’.

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Other favourites are:

Catwalk Genius – an Irish online fashion portal that enables you to ‘invest’ in the collections of emerging fashion designers as well as buy their designs online.

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Sellaband – Aspiring musicians/bands can raise $50,000 to fund a professionally produced album. ‘Believers’ who contribute funds towards the album receive a limited edition of the CD and a pro rata share of 50% of any revenue derived from the release.

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The relative success of Zopa, another peer to peer lending service (for amounts up to around 75,000 pounds)  has also proven the possibility of a ‘life after banks’…

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Cup-o-Soup Online Video Promotion Goes Live

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The Free Cup interactive video promotion I worked on for Sydney Digital agency Deepend has gone live:

Website Builder

SnapPages is a kinda cool, basic website builder that actually looks good and really useful tool for creating basic proofs of concept and dynamic wireframing…

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Tech crunch article