Great Lake Swimmers – River’s Edge from Nir Ben Jacob on Vimeo.

River’s Edge
Great Lake Swimmers
Nettwerk / (weewerk)

The Information Blanket is a baby blanket imprinted with information about how to care for a newborn, including a growth chart with average ranges for one, three and six months, feeding and vaccination frequency, high temperature alert, doctors appointment reminders and a list of illness warning signs.

The blanket is made from eco-friendly 100% double knit North Carolina cotton. Soft and durable, it meets the strictest U.S. environmental standards on dyes and finishing. The fabric is pre-shrunk and shipped to New York City where local craftsmen cut it to swaddling size and double lock stitch the edges. The informational graphics are then screen-printed using non-toxic water-based inks.

The blanket is being distributed in Uganda with future hopes to continue the program in other under-developed areas all over the world. BMB NY selected Uganda as the first location for distribution because the East African nation has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world due to minimal pre-and-post natal education and limited health care access. The first 1,000 blankets will be handed delivered by BMB NY during their visit on May 21st – 29th. In addition, an English version is available for purchase via the campaign’s website.

Visit: http://theinformationblanket.org/

A worth watching documentary film with a social message. “The Economics of Happiness” makes us think how we suppose to act against modern social problems. Film director Helena Norberg-Hodge the author of Ancient Futures – Learning from Ladakh and co-author of Bringing the Food Economy Home. She describes economic globalization has a lot to do with unemployment, gap between rich and poor, ethnic conflict, and environment issues. She believes “Localization” is the key to answer theses problems and it leads us better way of living. The film is about 70 mins and it’s way too short to explain the depth and details of projects – there are many activists and projects introduced in the film – but it’s a good guidance for sure.

Visit http://www.theeconomicsofhappiness.org/

“This seminal volume on the indigenous African Dinka group is a landmark documentation of a vanishing people in war-torn Sudan. World-renowned photographers Angela Fisher and Carol Beckwith have devoted their lives to documenting the rapidly disappearing ceremonies and cultures of the indigenous people of Africa. In breathtakingly poignant images, they present a story that started with their first visit to the Dinka thirty years ago. Living in harmony with their cattle, the Dinka have survived years of war only to find their culture on the brink of vanishing forever. Where the White Nile River reaches Dinka country, it spills over 11,000 square miles of flood plain to form the Sudd, the largest swamp in the world. In the dry season, it provides abundant pasture for cattle, and this is where the Dinka set up their camps. The men dust their bodies and faces with gray ash—protection against flies and lethal malarial mosquitoes, but also considered a mark of beauty. Covered with this ash and up to 7’ 6″ tall, the Dinka were referred to as “gentle” or “ghostly” giants by the early explorers. The Dinka call themselves “jieng” and “mony-jang,” which means “men of men.”"

Visit Modernbook Gallery
Buy Amazon

“A year ago, a massive oil spill began in the Gulf. The entire country was glued to the news until the well was capped, and then we forgot about it.
As the year anniversary was fast approaching I became curious, just how much oil was that exactly? Where would it have gone? What I found was shocking.
So in an effort to further our discussion on oil dependency I created this short animation. I’ve spent all of my free time in the last month putting this together to help illustrate just how dependent we truly are on oil.”

Designed, animated and written by Chris Harmon
Voice Talent: Kim Estes
Music: Billy Perez & Todd Stambaugh
Special Thanks to Daye Rogers and Christy Kurtz

this is one of the most famous and definitely my favorite tune from The Cinematic Orchestra.

Directed by Godfrey Reggio
Music composed by Philip Glass
Cinematography by Ron Fricke

Check this film on Amazon

“A documentary about a journey to “The Edge of the Earth”. The Gates of the Arctic National Park is the northernmost national park in the U.S. (the entirety of the park lies north of the Arctic Circle).There are no established roads, trails, visitor facilities, or campgrounds in the park.”

Filmed using Solar Power for Two Weeks = 10,000 combined shutter releases and video clips.

Author: Kazuo Ishiguro

Voice of Haiti is a daily photo essay by Jeremy Cowart.

“When you make a purchase from VoicesOfHaiti.com, you are helping to provide an immediate home for nearly 700,000 Haitian men and women desperately in need.

Jeremy Cowart Photography is donating 100% of net proceeds minus printing and mailing cost from your purchase to Safewater Nexus, a non-profit organization aligned under the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. All printing and mailing costs will be accounted for by Jeremy Cowart Photography. As all proceeds are restricted solely for the purchase of tents for the Home in Haiti project, Safewater Nexus will purchase tents directly from the “A Home in Haiti” program and deliver them to the sites most in need. Exact funding for all the tents will be disclosed on www.ahomeinhaiti.org. For financial integrity and accountability, Safewater Nexus is aligned under their parent company, Go International, a 501(c)(3) “Not-For-Profit” organization based in Wilmore, KY and Bristol, TN.

Your photo purchase is valued beyond the purchase price you are paying to benefit the Home in Haiti project. As a result, your purchase is not tax-deductable, since the goods you are receiving are worth at least the amound you have paid.

Take a moment to browse these powerful messages delivered from Hiaiti. Support this special immediate need for tents.”

Visit: http://voicesofhaiti.com/

4 Cities / 294 Walls / 2930 km Road : One Animation
in Turkey Streets against the terror and war !

Thanks for all the support in 2010.
I love you all and hope you have a great christmas.

Hikaru

“The WWF format is a PDF that cannot be printed out. It’s a simple way to avoid unnecessary printing. So here’s your chance to save trees and help the environment. Decide for yourself which documents don’t need printing out – then simply save them as WWF.”

Visit: http://www.saveaswwf.com/en/

Green School in Bali, Indonesia is giving its students a relevant, holistic and green education in one of the most amazing environments on the planet.

Visit: http://www.greenschool.org/

http://blogs.reuters.com/fullfocus/2010/11/15/best-of-the-year/

The map shows that ranks the nations of the world by their peacefulness according to peace index rating. The first is New Zealand and Japan in third.. How lucky I am to have permanent residency in both countries!

Visit: http://www.visionofhumanity.org/

“William Kamkwamba, from Malawi, is a born inventor. When he was 14, he built an electricity-producing windmill from spare parts and scrap, working from rough plans he found in a library book called Using Energy and modifying them to fit his needs. The windmill he built powers four lights and two radios in his family home.”

Via TED

While children have fun spinning on the PlayPump merry-go-round, clean water is pumped from underground into a 2,500-liter tank, standing seven meters above the ground.

A simple tap makes it easy for adults and children to draw water. Excess water is diverted from the storage tank back down into the borehole.

The water storage tank provides a rare opportunity to advertise in outlaying communities. All four sides of the tank are leased as billboards, with two sides for consumer advertising and the other two sides for health and educational messages. The revenue generated by this unique model pays for pump maintenance.

The design of the PlayPump water system makes it highly effective, easy to operate and very economical, keeping costs and maintenance to an absolute minimum.

Capable of producing up to 1,400 liters of water per hour at 16 rpm from a depth of 40 meters, it is effective up to a depth of 100 meters.

As part of Water For People’s integration of PlayPumps technology into its portfolio of community water options, we will modify the system and its operation to fit the needs of local communities and improve sustainability. This includes investing resources in catalyzing local entrepreneurs to service the systems, as well as reducing tank height, keeping potential advertising revenue in the community, etc.

Visit: Water For People

The lake that never freezes because of its depth. Lake Tazawa is the deepest lake in Japan. I highly recommend this site simply because of its “stillness”. There are many beautiful places in Tohoku Area… this is one of ‘em.

Akita, Japan

“Provide hope and support for the lives of children! Why not become involved in global medical and food issues through isave?

Through reports and photos, the isave application aims to inform you about serious problems happening around the world as part of such global efforts as medical services, support for children and the removal of mines.

The isave iPhone application allows you to participate in the solution to global problems via well-established Japanese NGOs/NPOs.”

visit: http://itunes.apple.com/app/isave/id365499029?mt=8#

In a place like Nairobi, You will probably need this type of solution when the lights went out. Deforestation and environmental degradation leading to frequent blackouts. One street vendor has cashed in on the crisis with this wonderful gadget called “Juakali Lamp”.

Via AfriGadget

“THIS YEAR I WILL TRY NOT TO was born out of frustration, complacency and laziness. Most designers are seduced by design trends. They’re easy to appropriate, and even easier to imitate. The challenge is to innovate. To be new. We decided the best (and most enjoyable) approach was to identify and document the most common trends we felt we had to avoid. Before long we found ourselves with a checklist of DON’Ts and a new aim: to try to be new. We may fail, but we will try.”

Visit: http://trynotto.com.au/

“Happy Planet Index (2006 data) – Green is Highest Rating, Brown is Lowest.

How should we evaluate the success of our economy? The primary method now is GDP, or Gross Domestic Product, but that measures wealth creation not real well-being. In fact it assumes that creating wealth creates well-being without any regard to who is getting wealthy and who’s not.”

Via Good

Kyoto, Japan

charity: water 2010 September Campaign: Clean Water for the Bayaka from charity: water on Vimeo.

Breathing Earth is a real-time simulation displays the CO2 emissions of every country in the world, as well as their birth and death rates.

Visit: http://breathingearth.net/

“It’s not just our country that’s a little over-crowded – our whole solar system is too. A fascinating colour-coded video illustrates how we have become increasingly aware of the number of asteroids flying close to Earth as telescopes improve. The footage shows the discovery of every new asteroid over the past three decades and charts it on an increasingly congested map of the solar system.”

“Created by British astronomer Scott Manley, the three-minute clip – which is the equivalent of two months per second – starts with a sprinkling of white ‘dust’ around the edge of the planets.”

Via. Mail Online

Living Wall by High-Low Tech will display at the Fuller Craft Museum. This project experiments with interactive wallpaper that can be programmed to monitor its environment, control lighting and sound, and generally serve as a beautiful and unobtrusive way to enrich environments with computation.

Visit: Fuller Craft Museum

Bicycle Portraits – everyday South Africans and their bicycles. from Bicycle Portraits on Vimeo.

South Africans Stan Engelbrecht and Nic Grobler are currently spending as much of their time as possible traveling through South Africa by bicycle to meet and photograph as many fellow cyclists out there as they can find. They are looking at who rides bicycles, why they ride them, and if they love using bicycles as a primary method of transport. Visit their constantly growing, frequently updated site –

www.bicycleportraits.co.za

The Bicycle Portraits project has raised over $15,000 though the pledge-for-reward social-network Kickstarter during their first successful fundraising effort.

For Bicycle Portraits / Part II they are raising an additional $7,500 to get them closer to realizing their goal of printing 3000 copies of the Bicycle Portraits photographic book. To find out more please visit -

www.bicycleportraits.co.za/kickstarter

Help them bring Bicycle Portraits to life and promote cycling as a means of independence for all.

Music : ‘Utata Uyadlala’ (Papa was a Rolling Stone) by African Noise Foundation

www.myspace.com/africannoisefoundation

This is one of the best minimal hand made radio I’ve ever seen. You can find a lot of sustainable inventions in Africa at Afrigadget. The site was selected “50 Best Websites in 2008″ by Time Magazine.

Visit Afrigadget

A project called “This is What Matters to Me”, a cause-inspired collaboration
between 9 designers from around the globe, each supporting a cause/organization personally significant to them. The aim of the project was to bring focus to a few lesser known causes via limited edition prints.

Visit: KHARMA

Found this cool looking tipi shelter at an outdoor event near Tokyo Midtown last month.

Roz Savage is an environmental campaigner known for her inspirational solo row across the Atlantic Ocean. She will now row solo across the Pacific Ocean and walk from London to Copenhagen armed with an environmental mission called Pull Together. This initiative aims to inspire people to take action on CO2 levels by walking more and driving less. Calling upon her supporters around the world to Pull Together, Roz will challenge them to match her 10,000 oar strokes each day with 10,000 steps. All the steps logged by participants around the world on the site will be aggregated and expressed by a number of laps around the earth completed during the challenge. For every 53 people that complete 1,000,000 steps, an earth lap will be added. Just before her 24 May launch, she will provide the opening remarks to attendees of Al Gore’s Climate Project Summit and become a Climate Change Ambassador.

Via UNEP
Visit http://rozsavage.com/

CGI Image: A historical total solar eclipse over the ancient Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza.

Visit: National Geographic

“Live in less space but have more room to enjoy it. Does that sound like a contradiction? Smart readers will discover that, on the contrary, living small can free up your mind, your wallet, and your soul. With the cost of living rising, and the environment suffering from excessive building, now is the time to scale back. Join the movement.
Little House on a Small Planet is a guidebook and an invitation. With floor plans, photographs, advice, and anecdotes, this unique book asks and answers, “What fills a home when the excess is cut away, and how do we get there from here?”

peliCAN by Frederik Wepener and Ross Zietz
Threadless is a community-based tee shirt company with an ongoing, open call for design submissions. Buy this peliCAN tee, You help Gulf oil spill. Threadless is donating all proceeds from the sale of this peliCAN T-shirt to the Gulf Restoration Network.

“Seven films for the satellite operator Astra, covering everything you need to know about the operation of a satellite. The films will be used for education and marketing.”

Visit: This is Real Art

“UNHCR has created three posters available to view and download to support this year’s World Refugee Day. Millions of refugees around the world are unable to go home. These posters celebrate the strength and resolve that forcibly displaced people have to overcome adversity and make the best of their future lives.”

“Justice is one of the most popular courses in Harvard’s history. Nearly one thousand students pack Harvard’s historic Sanders Theatre to hear Professor Sandel talk about justice, equality, democracy, and citizenship. Now it’s your turn to take the same journey in moral reflection that has captivated more than 14,000 students, as Harvard opens its classroom to the world.”

Visit: http://www.justiceharvard.org/

“Project H Design connects the power of design to the people who need it most, and the places where it can make a real and lasting difference.”

Visit: Project H Design

Sun Come Up Trailer from Sun Come Up on Vimeo.

Sun Come Up follows the relocation of some of the world’s first environmental refugees, the Carteret Islanders – a community living on a remote island chain in the South Pacific Ocean. When rising seas threaten their survival, the islanders face a painful decision: they must leave their beloved land in search of a new place to call home. The film follows the Carteret’s relocation leader, Ursula Rakova, and a group of young islanders led by Nick Hakata as they search for land in Bougainville, an autonomous region of Papua New Guinea 50 miles across the open ocean. The move will not be easy as Bougainville is recovering from a 10-year civil war. Many Bougainvilleans remain traumatized by the “Crisis” as the civil war is known locally. Yet, Sun Come Up isn’t a familiar third world narrative. Out of this tragedy comes a story of hope, strength, and profound generosity. San Kamap (Sun Come Up) means sunrise in pidgin and reflects this sentiment – the resilience of the community, and the hope that’s present at the start of a new day.

” Traveling Denim ” Recording color fade for two years from Takayuki Akachi on Vimeo.

“Crowdrise is about volunteering, raising money for Charity and having the most fun in the world while doing it. Crowdrise is way more fun than anything else aside from being all nervous about trying to kiss a girl for the first time and her not saying something like ‘you’ve got to be kidding me.’”