There is a lot of talk these days about "Serious Games". What are they anyway and how are they different from typical video games? Serious Games is a term used to describe a movement in gaming where games are created and used for education, training, health, and public policy.
Darfur is Dying (http://www.darfurisdying.com/) is probably the most well known game created to raise awareness about a specific topic, in this case the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. A contest entry by MTVU and the Reebok Human Rights Foundation, the game puts the player in Darfur as a villager who must perform real-life tasks like foraging for water without being captured by the Janjaweed. The game ties in actual statistics about the life of people in Darfur and how you can make a difference.
Planet Green Game (http://www.planetgreengame.com), produced by Starbucks in collaboration with GlobalGreen USA, allows a player to pick a mode of transportation and travel through a city, finding ways to decrease the CO2 emissions. In addition to learning more about global warming, the game provides the ability for users to take action and pass along the game to a friend.
Do you know what edict means? At Free Rice (http://www.freerice.com), they’re turning your vocabulary knowledge into rice to end world hunger. The World Food Program’s internet game, Free Rice (http://www.freerice.com/), is simple in its execution and has two primary goals; providing English vocabulary to everyone and helping end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people. For each correct click to a vocabulary question, the website donates money to buy 10 grains of rice. Since its launch in October 2007 it has already raised over 1.7 billion grains of rice to feed the hungry - not bad for a little over a month.
Even main-stream games like SimCity are jumping on the Serious Gaming train by highlighting the impact of electricity generation on carbon dioxide emissions and climate change within the interface of the next release of SimCity Societies.
Serious games take learning to a new level. They target a generation raised on the net who eagerly spread engaging games virally through sites like MySpace and Facebook. The games attempt to teach people about the world in which we live in an interesting and engaging way. Would you rather learn about Global Warming as your cruise a virtual city on your skateboard? Or read page after page of text on a traditional website (with celebrity quotes, of course)? The answer seems almost too easy.
Do you think there is a place for a serious game to raise awareness around your nonprofit’s mission? Have you launched a serious game you are having success with?
Small towns hardly make big news in the world of online marketing technology; small islands even less so. While most of us have gotten over Google putting small town America on the map??in the most literal of ways, the Caribbean is just getting around to celebrating their inclusion. Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti and Trinidad are just a few Caribbean islands that can be Googled down to 110 ft scaled maps in both satellite and hybrid.
Although, Google??s Street View has not made it there yet??that??s still only available for select neighborhoods in a few big U.S. cities such as NYC, Miami and Denver; the Caribbean maps provide the same detailed view of towns and infrastructure (and yes, beaches too) that it does for cities across the U.S. The only difference is that directions are not offered.
Still, if you??ve got a project in the Caribbean you can finally use Google Maps for a more dynamic presentation of your work. So far real estate agents and sporting fans (cricket, fishing, sailing etc.) seem to be the only folks that have been using the maps in mashups to reach their audience. Hopefully organizations such as Heifer International, Madre, Amnesty International and the many others doing great work in the region will jump on this opportunity to connect donors and volunteers to their work.
I do not own a Blackberry or an iPhone, but I still dish out a fair sum of money every month for my cell phone service and I would not say the device itself was too cheap either. So, is it too much to ask for a decent interface on my phone? The Open Handset Alliance does not think so.
According to them, it is estimated that there are close to 1.5 billion televisions in this world, and 1 billion people using the internet. Still the most successful consumer product is clearly the mobile phone with around 3 billion users [Source]. So why aren??t cell phones easier to navigate and customize to our needs, the way our computer operating systems are?
Google and others have come up with a way to change all this. Follow me below the fold for more?
We’ve been talking a lot about Facebook lately (well, actually John Brian has been talking a lot about Facebook lately), and now YouTube seems to have noticed that it’s system may provide some unique possitilities for Nonprofits.
Available only to 501(3)(c) Organizations YouTube - Broadcast Your Cause is a new offering allowing you to create your own “Nonprofit Channel” with:
Premium branding capabilities and increased uploading capacity
Rotation of your videos in the ‘Promoted Videos’ areas throughout the site
The option to embed a Google Checkout “Donate” button, and fundraising without transaction costs.
Sounds pretty good up front. There’s not a whole lot of information available on the site right now, but it’s probably something worth keeping an eye on.
“Fifty-seven percent of online adults have used the internet to watch or download video, and 19% do so on a typical day,” according to the Pew Internet and American Life project, which published its first major report on the subject this week.
You read numbers like that and it’s no wonder why so many nonprofit organizations are venturing into the wild world of YouTube. Here at Beaconfire we’ve helped a number of clients create new video for the web, or adapt their TV-oriented videos to display on the web.
Here are three quick tips for understanding the difference between TV and web video.
YouTube videos should be short. Producers should aim for about three minutes. One minute is even better. If you have a longer piece that was originally prepared for TV, give serious thought to having a videographer edit it down into short, self-contained pieces.
YouTube videos have a long shelf life. Some of the videos we’ve helped clients post continue to rack up impressive numbers of views and build the brand long after the campaign in question has wound down. Check back on your YouTube video every few weeks and make sure you update your reports on views.
YouTube offers a tradeoff. If you host the video yourself, you may be able to insert clickable links into the video, so viewers can move straight from the video to your donation form, petition, etc… That’s good. But if you host the video yourself, you won’t be able to tap into YouTube’s huge built-in audience. That’s bad.
I’ve been seeing demos of this technology posted around the ‘net for a while now, but Microsoft’s announcement of their new “Surface” technology brings it a lot closer to a consumer market. I initially wanted to post this simply because I thought this technology was really cool, but in thinking about it more I couldn’t help thinking about how this may affect web site designs in the future.
The technology, in a nutshell (see the videos below for a larger bowl of nuts), is a way to allow people to interact directly with “objects” on a table-top computer screen. The new advancement that makes this exciting is “multi-touch” (the ability to touch an object in several places at once, or to touch and interact with multiple objects at once.
As I watch the demos of purchasing and paying for meals at restaurants, sorting and arranging photos, and using maps, I start thinking about how on-line shopping carts, community networking sites, and even the concept of a web site itself could be affected by this kind of technology.
We have already had to adjust how we think about planning and building websites to use newer, dynamic, web technologies. How much further will this re-tooling have to go when users are demanding the ability to remix an entire website to their liking. OK, so that’s pretty extreme and arguably not something that will necessarily result in a friendly user experience, but what about this:
Take a search result of action alerts, draw a circle with your finger around several of the results to group them together by keyword or tag, and then drag them all to where your Wi-Fi phone is sitting on the table-top. The results are automatically cused to create a “related” RSS feed to your phone based on those results. Go to another site and do the same thing. Then call up your contact list on the table-top (pulled from your phone, still just sitting there on the table, not even plugged in to anything) and send your new RSS feed (or selected items from it) to selected people from your contact list.
We’re probably talking about at least 5 years before this stuff is priced for even first-adopter users; currently pricing of around $10,000, and functionality is geared toward businesses like Hotels, Restaurants, and Casinos. I’ve no doubt, though, that some form of this will be in general use in homes as soon as it’s affordable.
Take a look at the videos — Especially the third video on the Microsoft Surface site about paying for meals at a restaurant — and you’ll see what I mean. In this paradigm, devices like phones, PDAs, laptops, credit cards, and even web pages, become simple buckets to move things to and from. The ability to do this simply by placing the objects on the table is what makes it all so amazing.
I guess a big question is, will people want to browse the web on a table-top, or is the vertical screen we all use already going to stay with us? And don’t let’s even start with accessibility issues with these devices! A lot of cool potential, but a lot of potential pitfalls as well. Isn’t that how it usually is?
There was a nice feature story in the Washington Post metro section on neighborhood listservs — Offering Both the Nice and the Nasty, E-Mail Lists Surge in Usage. The reporter cited Pew studies which have found that more than half of all Internet users are subscribed to one or more lists, up from just about a third in 2001. The reporter also noted that listservs were displacing traditional communications vehicles such as the home owner association newsletter and the community center bulletin board.
These findings didn’t surprise us here at Beaconfire, we play close attention to how nonprofit professionals use listservs. What did catch our eye was the size of some of the neighborhood lists. More than 2,000 subscribed to the Chevy Chase listserv, more than 5,000 subscribed to the Cleveland Park listserv. Those are big numbers!
OK, these are affluent neighborhoods in the nation’s capital — but you can bet that similar lists have popped up all across the country.
The thing about listservs is that they attract the outspoken and engaged residents of the neighborhood. For any nonprofit sufficiently local to legitimately participate in the lists, they offer rich opportunities to engage the community in the organization’s work, dispel rumors, and promote events and services. They also offer an opportunity for an overzealous staffer to make a pest out of themselves or inadvertanly brand a good cause as an unwelcome spammer in the eyes of the community.
Local homeless shelters, foodbanks, thrift stores, and park watchdogs should sign up immediately!
Blogs have long been great advocacy tools, but thanks to widgets they are the hot new fundraisers. So far we (at Beaconfire) have worked on two widget campaigns and have been keeping track of a few others; here are a few things we??ve learned:
Bloggers read blogs so if your organization does not have a blog, it may be worth it to set one up. There is no quick and easy way to reach bloggers and gain their trust. We found that the earlier you initiate a ??Blogger Relations? outreach, the better. There may also be bloggers laying dormant on your listserve, don??t be afraid to ask if they are there!
If you are not sure where to find bloggers that care about your issues, your site stats can yield some leads. Review the list of search engines and sites that refer visitors to your site; chances are they are coming from blogs or news source that bloggers use. If your site stats are too cumbersome, Technorati is also good place to start.
As flattering as it is to have BlogRaisers as far away as England, to keep them happy you will need to be able to process donations in multiple currencies. If you can??t, state that clearly on the campaign??s landing page.
Keep in mind that MySpace and some other sites restrict the use of some widgets, so try to create an alternative to your widget. Looking for widgets? Six Degrees, ChipIn, Kintera, Convio, GetActive and SpringWidgets are good starts. Happy BlogRaising!
Step right up! Place your bids on this fine movie poster, 90% of the proceeds go to Beaconfire client and (generally fine folks) the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric Aids Foundation! No need to click over to eBay and navigate through their system, you can place your bid right here on Beaconfire’s blog!
That’s right — online auction powerhouse eBay has jumped into the widget game, making it possible for anyone with a blog or website page to run eBay transactions right off their website. That’s a fundraising opportunity for nonprofits, many of which have struggled to alert their supporters to their auctions. It’s also a PR opportunity for the clever ones. Offer something provocative for sale and see if the blogosphere buzzes about it!
Of course, this new service debuted today, so it’s all potential and no track record. But, it’s another piece of evidence that regular folks with websites can do a lot more for the nonprofit organizations they support than click yes on canned action alert language or punch their credit card into a donation form.
Hat tip to Techcrunch for breaking this interesting news.
blog
Small towns hardly make big news in the world of online marketing technology; small islands even less so. While most of us have gotten over Google putting small town America on the map??in the most literal of ways, the Caribbean is just getting around to celebrating their inclusion. Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti and Trinidad are just a few 
I do not own a Blackberry or an iPhone, but I still dish out a fair sum of money every month for my
