To raise awareness of the dependency on rainwater for drinking in the dry region of Northwest China, the Lotus Light Charity Society together with Grey Hong Kong designed an umbrella bag that (as it fills with water) illustrates how much water is needed to fill a single, small cup.

Three different messages were printed on the bags to emphasis the effect of the cup filling up on the bottom:

• It takes half a day for people in China’s arid regions to get this amount of clean water.
• People living in China’s arid regions call this pure water.
• In China’s arid regions, a child gets less water than this a day.

hilarious! and awesome :)

103 years old today! Eva Zeisel's work here: http://www.evazeiseloriginals.com/

The International Centre for Design in Saint-Etienne, France is a series of public arts spaces, which now link a bunch of old buildings on the site of a former arms factory. The idea was to create a geodesic frame, comprising 14,000 equilateral triangles--the cross bracing creates an interior unbroken by structural supports, which can be reconfigured for various uses. Moreover, since the facade is modular, it can serve lots of functions.

Some of the triangles have PV arrays in them; some of them have glass; and some are solid metal. So without any additional detailing, the facade creates zones of light and shade, suited to the areas inside--which include a movie theater and exhibition halls--while also seamlessly integrating a green-energy program. Clever stuff.

Way to make a purely functional object (solar panel) into something vibrant and exciting! Design = function + beauty.

Here’s my social media consumption in summary – I blog an average of five times a week, I check my tweets periodically every hour with at least 5 tweets written daily. I log on to Facebook twice in a day. I read about 300 or so RSS feeds on my Google Reader each night. I also make it a point to reply anyone who has written to me, be it via my blog, email*, Twitter or Facebook, within 24 hours. And I attend about 4 blogger events each month.

And here’s another summary of what I do as a Digital Strategist for a leading communications agency that has close to 400 employees in Singapore alone – at any one time, I have at least 2 campaigns to supervise. If I were lucky, I’d have only a couple of meetings to attend to in a day. I produce about 3 proposals (with the Big Idea included) a week. I’ve been involved in over 20 pitches in the last 11 months. I conduct a regional Webex training once every couple of months across more than 15 offices in Asia. I make it a point to conduct social media workshops and presentations every other month as well for the local community. I make sure to always write personal emails when I’m reaching out to bloggers for any of my events. I don’t do auto-generated eDM blasts. Ever. I always follow-up with personal phone calls thereafter. I have an average of 1 event to organise per month. Modesty speaking.

Albeit my life as a social media junkie, I have never missed a single deadline in my role as a Digital Strategist to date. I balance both roles better than Jean-François Gravelet on a tightrope. How do I do it? Well, here are a few tips you may find useful.

Work comes first
I wish I could say I tweet for a living but I don’t. I’m not Mashable. I’m a salaried employee who receives a fixed amount of income in exchange for my service for a fixed amount of time per day, from 0900h – 1830h, 20 working days a month. My job pays for foie gras, Pradas and first-class tickets to the Bahamas. My blog doesn’t. Simply put, before I start tweeting away or playing Mafia Wars on Facebook, I’d be sure I’m done cracking the Big Idea for a client first.

And if I may be blatant to my fellow cubicle citizens – if you have time to tweet, you have time to fucking reply your client’s email.

Set a daily schedule
Allocate time for every activity that happens in a typical day of your life. Even for emails. As a rule of thumb, I don’t blog at work, and I don’t work at home (save for instances where I’m done with the flu and have to work from home). Broadly speaking, my daily schedule goes like this:

0800h: Log on to Twitter. Read tweets. Respond to mentions and direct messages. Have a cigarette. Review Facebook newsfeed too.

0900h: Clear emails upon reaching the office. Jot down today’s list of to-dos.

1030h: Take a 5-minute break. Tweet something funny. RT someone interesting. Decline Friend Request from some sleazeball on Facebook. Get back to work.

1200h: Clear second round of emails before heading out for lunch with Mrs Law.  Read tweets and respond to mentions and direct messages whilst queuing up for chicken rice.

1400h: Clear third round of emails and resume work. Must strike off all items on today’s list of to-dos by 1800h.

1530h: Take a 5-minute break. Tweet something funny. RT someone interesting. Decline yet another Friend Request from some sleazeball on Facebook. Get back to work.

1800h: Clear final round of emails and review items left on today’s list of to-dos.  If it can be helped, do not leave the office until they’re all done.

1830h: Drop a couple of tweets before leaving the office. Grab dinner with wife.

2200h: Log on to Google Reader. Read and absorb. Decide what’s interesting to blog about. Select up to 3 items worthy of blogging. Blog. Approve blog comments collected from the day. Respond to blog comments.

2330h: Log on to Friendfeed. Approve Friend Request. Reply emails. Log on to Twitter. Read tweets. Respond to mentions and direct messages.

0200h: Hit the sack.

Draw a line
Particularly for my case, granted the nature of my job, it is crucial for me to draw a line between my online world and offline world. At risk of sounding cold, I make it a deliberate effort not to get too close to anyone I meet online, be it bloggers or readers of my blog. It is not to say that I don’t appreciate them – as those who’ve called me at 2 in the morning can ascertain, but I don’t want to run into a case where someone might feel I’m practicing favourism on an individual when I’m running my campaigns or blog contests. Emotional attachment to anyone I meet online, quite naturally, may reduce my level of objectivity.

I hope you’d find the tips useful. Anyone has anymore to add?

*If I don’t reply you, that usually mean your email was so badly written, it would have been beneath me to respond to your stupidity.

Front page image courtesy of Normal Watches

I need to prioritize.

John Nese owns Galco’s Soda Pop Stop in Los Angeles. Some highlights from the 13 min video:
- This guy turned down Pepsi.
- He buys full run of some small mom and pop soda producers, you can only find them at Galco's.
- Give American choices and they'll try it! "Freedom of Choice"
- Plastic bottles only hold carbonation for 4 months, glass is the way to go.
- Cane sugar is much better than corn syrup.
- Reinforces the fact that big businesses want complete control.

WOW, talk about niche market. www.sodapopstop.com

via SethGodin

“Guangzhou Supports You!” is a new crowdsourced, hyper-local online photography activity in Guangzhou, China. The original premise of the activity was to recruit Guangzhou residents who support Chen Yang, a popular outspoken Guangzhou CCTV news anchor who was not afraid to say what was on his mind even if on live Chinese television – he swiftly lost his job. However, the activity has since evolved into a collective community-wide expression of love and affection toward the city. “Guangzhou Supports You!” is getting attention and praise from just about everyone in China, but especially from Chinese netizens who are very actively supporting it on their blogs, in discussion forums, and on local social networking sites.

“Guangzhou Supports You!” works like this: the organizers supply a “Guangzhou Supports You!” graphic via download from the official website. This graphic is the centerpiece of the entire activity. Participants simply need to choose their favorite place in Guangzhou – any corner, alley, place, space, etc. will do – take a photo with the graphic appearing somewhere in the resulting photograph, and then upload the photograph to the “Guangzhou Supports You!” website where it’s aggregated with other participants’ submissions and shared with everyone.

Alyce Santoro remembers those days too. And using the actual magnetic tape from old cassettes, mixed with equal parts colored thread, she creates Sonic Fabric. Along with Julio Cesar, she's created a Recycled Cassette Tape necktie. Since the tape itself is still magnetized, it actually emits audio when run under a tape-head. Granted, it's doubtful that you ever will. But you can hear the effect here.