Tag: Birmingham

Green iPod

Number 2 on the netsquared, squidoo, getactive list of the 59 smartest online organisations was Greenpeace. It has gradually been chipping away at Apple with classic guerilla tactics – using their opponents weight to their own advantage. Greenpeace is encouraging supporters to use the creative power of their macs to imagine, produce and share new images and ideas which may compel the company to change it’s policies.

So Greenpeace started a campaign for environmentally friendly macs with a friendly spoof site GreenMyApple and have just added this to youtube.
[youtube]2Uo_4kyrkDc[/youtube]

When is a window broken? Reverse Graffiti and Social Rules

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I was in Barcelona recently and found myself puzzling over something. Almost all of the graffiti was on the shutters of shops – not the stone or brickwork. It appears as though the ‘taggers” (also see this on Birmingham tagging and youtube) have decided not to spray the buildings themselves. If this is a correct observation (and please tell me if it’s way off the mark) what’s going on here? …

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The Smartest Online Organisations

Just a quick pointer to the 59 smartest online organisations. Great for inspiration for charities looking to make better use of a range of internet tools.

Celeste over at studio 501c tells us to encourage just this sort of list making in our own organisations.

If you’re interested in using the web more effectively, ask different staffers or volunteers to each review a few sites and to report back to the group on their findings. Make sure to examine the sites of those with missions that are close to yours as well as a few that aren’t. If you have a narrow goal, e.g., improving your online donation capacity, concentrate on what the different nonprofits are doing in that area.

A civil spat – the Youtube way.

I have masses of blogging to catch up on, but thought I would start with one of our local councillors here in Birmingham who is using youtube to tackle graffiti. In the process Martin Mullaney appears to have sparked an intergenerational brushfire.

On January 5th 2007 this Liberal Democrat Councillor for Moseley and Kings Heath popped up a video in which he talks about specific tags and taggers and tells us that many of these young people are from ‘good homes’ and good schools. 10 days later it has provoked more than 170 (often vociferous) comments, essentially a conversation between the taggers concerned and the councillor.

[youtube]hVf1AP6EBW4[/youtube]
As Pete Ashton points out the councillor is clearly determined to confront the taggers. On his own blog we also find out that this particular politician gave police evidence which he says led to the arrest of 3 taggers before Christmas.

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