Yes, that is correct. Today is National Gorilla Suit Day. It was created by Don Martin, a well known artist of MAD Magazine. The basic idea is to go get your gorilla suit out of the closet, put it on, and go door to door with it on.
Learn more at the Gorilla Suit Day website.
One day, will all the game shows that are based around questions that test your knowledge will eventually become irrelevant do to the mass amount of information that can be accessed instantly on the internet? Why will people have any need to know such random facts?
Andy Goldsworthy is the man. You should really check out his work. He creates art using nature. Visual stunning.
A little while ago I walked down to the small local movie theater in town to see “The Queen” with some friends. It was a brilliant movie to say the least. The whole thing was beautifully shot and the character development was astounding. The actors and actress did a wonderful job and fit their roles very well. Especially Helen Mirren, who played the queen. She won best actress in a drama at the Golden Globes.
The movie is about when Princess Diana and Tony Blair had just become the Prime Minister. It highlighted the conflict between the queen’s opnions of the way her death should be handled and the prime ministers opnion. One of my favorite parts was when the Queen was driving down a hunting road in the middle of the forest and got stuck in a river. She jumped out, checked what was wrong with the Land Rover (she was a mechanic in the war) and called for help. This is the Queen of England we are talking about, alone in the woods.
I highly recomend that you see it.
I started a sketchbook a month ago and have been drawing in it quite alot lately. It is also part of a class at my school called “Artist Sketchbook” where we have more independence then other art classes to do work in our books. I photographed what I got so far and put them online in a flickr set. Go check it out.
I have been thinking about the way organizations can use the internet to spread their stories and get people to help with their missions. I have been recording my thoughts for the past several months and figured that it was about time to share them with you.
Participation and Online Communities
Organizations need to give the people that visit their website ways to participate and communicate with each other. This can be done through forums, wikis, and blogging. By giving people the power to do this people cancommunicate with other people that have the same interests. It also allows for new ideas to be shared with the community.
Creative Expression of Ideas
The internet is wonderful in that it allows anybody to share what they have created with anybody else in the area. Organizations can benefit from this by having people design t-shirts, make art, take pictures, make videos, record music, write prayers and anything else imaginable. These creation will be based around the theme of the organizations purpose and mission.
Spreading the Word
All organizations want to get their message out their and have people here their stories. Organizations can do this through email newsletters, tell a friend buttons, banner and buttons for people to put on the websites, social recommendation service buttons (digg us, add to delicious, ect.), ecards, downloadable desktop wallpapers, and more. Another avenue that can be used is txt messaging marketing campaigns. Give people video clips or audiosnippets to add to the end of their personal videos and podcasts that they upload to YouTube and other sites.
Contribute
Many organizations goal is to aquire financial contributions. I think that organizations should tell their stories and get the word out there. Allow people to express themselves creatively and participate in online communities, then politly ask for money. Maybe give them something for their contribution such as a self published book.
Make sure that you embrace online communities that have already been formed such as Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, and many other sites.
Other ideas that have have thought include the following.
-Starting a blog network based around you organization’s mission and purpose.
-Start an online ad network (such as The Deck) and have the profits go towards your mission/purpose.
-Start a job board for jobs that
I hope that I dont need to tell you to blog. Having a blog for you organization allows you to chare your ideas and stories with anyone. Furthermore, tell stories and have a strong prescence offline as well. I wish you and your organization the best of luck.
The big news today is of course that Apple has come out with the iPhone. It does pretty mich everything. It plays music and videos. You can look at pictures and take pictures. Browse the internet, email, maps, and there are widgets. Oh and you can make phone calls with it, text message, and all that good stuff. It has a huge touch screen. They also released Apple TV which we already knew about. Go check it out at apple.com.
Basically, best day ever!
On another note, exams at school have arrived and I am going to be focusing on that alot. So there should be a little slow here until they are over. After that, I have a bunch of ideas and stories that I want to share with you. Alright, peace.
Ebay sent my dad a very nice holiday card thanking him for using ebay. I thought it was very nice of them to send an actual card in the mail. Check out pictures of the card.
What if Yahoo did buy Facebook? There were reported offers from Yahoo to buy Facebook, as I am sure some of you know. If this did happen my life would be more connected. When I say my life, I am reffering to the web applications I use. Instead of having to upload photos to Flickr and Facebook, I could upload them once and they would be in both places. Instead of having to post an item to Del.icio.us and then share it on Facebook, I could do it once.
However, there are some negatives to this. Yahoo becomes more powerful and in ways that can be bad. I am somewhat against major companies aquiring start ups because then these small, awesome companies are changed by the world of major corporations.
It would make life easier and make for several fewer clicks.
I have just started a new project developing and designing a website. I was telling my grandparents who were up from Florida about the website and my grandfather said something that I wanted to share with you.
“Do you get a royalty everytime some one goes to it?”
I answered no. Just something for you to think about. What if web designers did recieve a royalty everytime someone went to their website? Or everytime someone watched your video on YouTube? Or anything else that you created in which people can interact online.
Copyright 2008 Ethan Bodnar. All Rights Reserved.
Happily Creative. Since 1990. Have a nice day.
Return to the front.
