blog

Admit it, you’ve always wanted answers to burning questions like:

• How does temperature affect the sound of a flute?
• If a truck full of parrots hits a bump in the road and all the parrots begin flying around inside the truck, does the truck’s weight stay the same or not?
• Why is it easy to stay on a bike while moving, but impossible once it stops?

With the launch of APS Physics Central (http://www.physicscentral.org/), you can ask the experts as well as get information on a wide variety of topics in physics. This is a site geared towards middle and high school students to get them excited and engaged in the world of physics as well as learn about how physics relates to their everyday life (but the curious grown up will fit in too!)

Find experiments to try at home, view photo galleries of physics images, and read the “buzz blog”.

Beaconfire has been working with IUE-CWA to redesign their Web site over the past few months, and the site went live last week. Built on the GetActive CMS/CRM platform, it includes several new and innovative features, a completely new aesthetic, and substantially more content than the previous site.

One interesting addition to the site is a Recommended Reading area tied to specific pages through the site. The content of this area, which is links to external Web sites and resources, is managed through a Del.icio.us tagging system. This enables IUE-CWA to have any number of people within the organization easily flag relevant links as they are browsing the Web and push them out to their Web site (via a Del.icio.us RSS feed) within an appropriate context.

Another area of the site uses a Spry-based widget combined with Yahoo Pipes to automatically populate relevant news from a number of sources, and allows the user to browse through the news via a simple back/forward/pause mechanism. The feed itself will be an ever-evolving creature – as time goes by, sources will be added and removed, and new filters will be applied, leading to a more relevant and powerful tool iteratively over time.

As part of the redesign process, we worked with IUE-CWA to take a substantial amount of their print materials and convert them for use on the Web. This should greatly improve the availability and distribution of key information to their various audiences.

To take a look at the new site, visit http://www.iue-cwa.org.

National Parks Conservation Association just launched an innovative campaign to expand America’s parklands called “FOR SALE: America’s Heritage.” The focus for the campaign is the recent report by NPCA - “America’s Heritage for Sale” - which identifies substantial tracks of land within national park boundaries that could fall prey to real estate developers if the governments does not approve the funds to purchase the land.

The Beaconfire team’s created a Google mashup using data from NPCA on park boundaries and the land within those boundaries that is vulnerable to development. The map lets constituents visualize the land at risk which heightens the understanding of the dangers to our parks. You can zoom around the map to see the parks across the country, zoom in on a park and area of the land threatened. If you’re not into panning and zooming, just pick a park from the drop down to go directly to it.

If you click on a pin or region, you can learn about the affected area and how cheap it would be for the government to buy the land — to buy the land in the top 10 parks is a mere $50 million.

After checking out the map to see some parks in peril, you can sign the petition to tell Congress to approve the cash the National Park service needs. The Google Map displays in a native Convio advocacy campaign page. You can tell your friends about the map or become an NPCA member, since the more members they have, the more Congress will listen. You can also Digg the map and petition (http://digg.com/environment/McMansions_in_National_Parks or share it with your friends on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http://ga1.org/campaign/lwcf).

Congrats to the NPCA team for their great work on their report and to the Beaconfire team for an innovative representation of what’s at stake in America’s parks!

I’m very pleased to announce that Beaconfire has been chosen by Ocean Conservancy to design and develop an online tool for their International Coastal Cleanup program. In the Fall, hundreds of thousands of volunteers all over the world will gather to clean up the shores of their lakes, rivers, streams, and oceans. Ocean Conservancy collects data about the trash that’s picked up and produces reports that are leveraged in education and research programs. You can learn more about the program (and hey, how about volunteering even?) at www.oceanconservancy.org/icc

Beaconfire welcomes its latest association client - InfoComm International. InfoComm has asked Beaconfire to help improve their web site to better serve their members. Among the challenges facing InfoComm is the breadth of their membership: they represent a broad spectrum of the audiovisual industry including the manufacturers, distributors, dealers, design consultants, and installers and system integrators, among others. These companies and firms work with audio systems, projectors, screens, networking equipment and control systems.

Any organization that has as many audience and member types in as many industries as InfoComm is bound to have challenges with the information architecture of their site and with the limited screen real estate on their home page. We’ll start by exploring these audiences and their content needs to better organize the information in a way that best meets the organization’s goals. What we learn in this first step will guide the rest of our engagement.

Lights, (Sound), Cameras, Action!

Two Beaconfire clients recently opened the doors to their own Facebook pages: the National Parks Conservation Association and Conservation International. We hope you join us in declaring yourself a fan. NPCA’s page includes a list of upcoming events, videos that include Presidential Candidate Teddy Mather’s latest ads, and their latest podcast. CI’s page features videos of their work in Foja and photos from their "Stop the Clock on Species Extinction" campaign.

We also hope that if you’re a fan of Beaconfire’s work, you’ll declare yourself our fan as well. You’ll be the first to hear of cool things we’re doing (okay, simultaneous to blog readers) and all your friends will envy you. Become a fan today!

We’ve been honored to work with the ACLU on a variety of technology and planning projects over the years. We’re now thrilled to be expanding our relationships to helping them achieve even greater success in their online marketing program. Today, we kicked off a series of initiatives with the ACLU’s membership team. While we’re avid supporters of free speech and think cloak and dagger programs like FISA and extraordinary rendition have to go, we’re keeping “top secret” what we’re up to with the ACLU team. Thanks to the ACLU for their trust in us and their excitement to get going!

Last week, we kicked off a new project with Academy Health. We’re redesigning their main Web site.  Over the next several months, we’ll be defining a more intuitive information architecture, designing a fresh look and feel, developing the site in a new content management system, and integrating it with their member management system.

Yesterday, we kicked off our newest relationship with IUE-CWA, the International Union of Electronic, Electrical, Salaried, Machine and Furniture Workers-Communications Workers of America. As the Industrial Division of CWA, IUE-CWA represents a force of 150,000 active and retired men and women united collectively to seek dignity on the job and a secure future for ourselves, our children and all future generations.

Over the next few months, we’ll be working with IUE-CWA on developing their new Web site and online communications program. This is an important initiative for the organization’s ability to improve how it serves its members. IUE-CWA has tapped Beaconfire to launch the new site and as an ongoing partner to create new content, roll out new site features like online training, and manage their online presence. We’re looking forward to helping the IUE-CWA team and it’s members get more from their online program!

Three of Beaconfire’s online campaigns and marketing clients are coming together this holiday season to change the way people think about giving. Conservation International, Heifer International and Share our Strength are asking people to take the Better Present Pledge to make at  least one alternative gift this year instead of a material present. A gift to end hunger, save the environment, and lift a community out of poverty will make you feel great and look great at the same time.

Beaconfire is managing the groups’ partnership, built the Better Present Pledge microsite (http://www.betterpresent.org/), and is producing the email communications stream that introduces new donors to the three organizations, then asks them to give. We’re also working with exciting media partners, like MSN Shopping, to promote the Pledge to entirely new donors.

The microsite includes cool features like a widget that automatically updates with a count of pledgers and how much they’ve pledged in alternative gifts.

We also built an Alternative Gift Calculator that lets people tabulate their total holiday spending, and suggests a possible alternative gift in their price range from each of the three partner organizations. Try it out on the Better Present Pledge homepage.

Conservation International also put together a fantastic overview video about what the Better Present Pledge is all about - you can check it out on YouTube.

We’re really thrilled to be working on such an exciting campaign for the holidays - in addition to our work with the Better Present Pledge campaign, we’re also working on a lot of other exciting holiday marketing with Heifer International, Conservation International and Share our Strength. Be sure to sign up for email with all three groups if you haven’t already.