Ten Thousand Cents

I'm not sure why, but I'm totally enthralled by Amazon's Mechanical Turk. I just can't get enough information about it. I'm particularly fascinated by Aaron Koblin's artistic take on the the Turk (see previous post - The Sheep Market). His latest project is Ten Thousand Cents, created in collaboration with Takashi Kawashima. Thousands of Mechanical Turk workers were asked to paint a small section of a $100 bill using a custom drawing tool. They were paid one cent for their work. None of the workers were aware of the final image they were contributing to. You can click on any image in the bill to watch how it was drawn. Very cool.

Takes All Types

Takes All Types is leveraging the power of Facebook to help with blood donations. It's a Facebook application with a purpose. Users register their blood type with Takes All Types and then notifications are sent to them when blood is needed in their areas. This is one of the smartest Facebook apps I've seen. It's raising awareness and building a blood donation network by using the enormous force of a social network. If you are not a Facebook member, you can still register with Takes All Types to receive phone, text, email or fax alerts of blood shortages in your area.

Nokia Nseries Urbanista Diaries

The Nokia Nseries has created an interesting website where they tell a tale of 4 bloggers traveling around the globe and taking pictures, to help sell the Nokia 5 megapixel, GPS enabled phones. The advertising story goes like this... "Once upon a time, 4 travelers began a global quest. They beat a path through our urban jungles to seek out untold stories - to capture time, only to release it back into the world. And they laid out a trail so we cannot lose them". You can track the bloggers' travels and view their geo-tagged photos as the post them. It's a cool, overly dramatized take on selling a phone - I like it. (Found through Comuptuerlove).

Free Rice

I love the thinking behind Free Rice. The idea is very simple, they use advertising profits generated by visitors to donate money to the UN World Food Program in an effort to help end hunger. People are invited to come to the site and play a multiple choice word game. For each correct answer, 20 grains of rice are donated. The game strengthens your vocabulary and keeps your attention long enough to make the advertising money needed to pay for the rice donations. It's super simple, super smart, and by the look of the stats, super effective. (Found through notcot.org).