What if an injury or disease prevented you from doing the things you love? Sadly, for legendary LA graffiti and street artist Tony Quan this unfortunate circumstance had become a reality. In 2003, Quan was suddenly diagnosed with a severe case of ALS, which left him physically paralyzed except for his eyes.

An initiative involving members of Free Art & Technology, OpenFrameworks, the Graffiti Research Lab has brought new hope to artists who have been struck with disease or injury. The team is working on developing a low-cost eye-tracking device and software to allow graffiti creators and other artists to continue pursuing their passion while only using their eyes.

Similar technologies have been developed in the past, but with a 5-figure price tag, they are often too difficult to afford. The project, known as the EyeWriter Initiative, has worked to construct a product made of simple parts with a cost of roughly $50. The EyeWriter works by tracking movements of the pupil, translating these movements to points, and calibrating these coordinates on a computer screen. Drawn images can then be colored and shaded by following eye movements as well.

For Tony, being able to graffiti again was a dream come true which he described as feeling “like you are taking your first breath after being under water for 5 minutes”. In the initial demonstration, the EyeWriter team set up the device for Tony to use. As Tony painted on the screen, the graffiti tags were projected onto LA buildings outside his room. The crew ran a live video feed back to his room so he could witness his art going up on buildings in real time.

The EyeWriter Initiative is the result of creative collaboration from several intelligent people with great hearts. The team is continuing to work on enhancing the device and coding the program in order to benefit all artists suffering from ALS.  The EyeWriter programs are open source and free to download from their website, which also includes instructions to make the glasses necessary yourself. Watch a video of Tony and the EyeWriter in action below:

A new study from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism revealed that social media sites were the real winners among 18-24 year olds during the latest UK Election. A survey showed “extremely high” levels of activity online with 94% using Facebook during the election campaign and 1 in 4 using other social media. The study also cites a second nationwide survey in the UK that showed a quarter of 18-24 year olds commented on social networks related to the election and 81% expressed an interest online in a campaign (which I presume means they liked it). According to the study, this is due to the fact that the majority of 18-24 year olds, “receive most of their political information online and rarely read a printed newspaper or listened to radio for information.”

Clearly, politicians in the UK have gotten the message, especially where Twitter is concerned. 600 MP candidates were using Twitter during the election, and 200 members of the newly minted parliament spend time tweeting to their constituents. Despite our vague spelling differences and dislike of Marmite, I believe these results can be accurately applied to the United States and shouldn’t be ignored by either politicians or brands attempting to align their adverting with any social cause.

An excellent example of successful social media cause marketing comes from TOMS Shoes: the brand that gives one pair of shoes away for every pair purchased. TOMS uses social media to get the word out about their yearly One Day Without Shoes event. The event raises awareness about how difficult it is to live without shoes, but it also sells the TOMS brand. Wired has the scoop on how they’ve been using social media to grow the event from 16,000 people in 2008 to 250,000 people in 2010 thanks to scads of digitally organized local events around the world and the help of MSN. In other words, just as political action is much more than voting, cause marketing can also be much more than clicking the like button.

If you’ve been watching or reading the news you have no doubt been inundated with information about the Oil Leak in the Gulf of Mexico that was caused when an explosion of an offshore oil rig, operated by BP, sank in the Gulf following an explosion on April 20th.  The environmental impact is clearly going to be damaging for the region it will surely have a much larger long term reach. Many are reporting that this will have greater impact than the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989. In an article posted by Fast Company, Ariel Schwartz writes:

“We could go on and on–the number of migratory animals from around the world that pass through the Gulf is mind-boggling. West Indian manatees, sperm whales, loggerhead turtles, and sharks are just some of the species that could be affected by the BP spill.”

Beyond the birds & marine life, there are coastal animals that will be impacted. Economically there is tourism in the area to think about, as well as seafood costs, just to name a few. Ramifications for future oil drilling in the Gulf could also be expected.

As I combed through my RSS feed I found several topics outside of the environmental or economic impact that were very interesting:

Creative ways to clean up or contain the spill

The methods for cleaning up an oil spill haven’t changed very much since the time of Exxon Valdez. Since the oil floats on top of the water they are able to attempt to skim it from the surface, or burn it to try to reduce impact to marine life. I found these following two ways to be inventive:

1. Did you know that hair (human or from your pets) can be used in the cleanup efforts? If you’ve had a bad hair day just think about the amount of oil that your hair sucks up. The public charity organization Matter of Trust is organizing efforts to create hair booms to be used in the cleanup efforts.
2. BP is also attempting to build a large cap to place over the leak, the goal of this is to collect the oil as it leaks from the well and then pump it up to the surface into waiting tankers. At 5,000 feet below the surface of the water, this has never been attempted before but it has been successful in shallow conditions. The dailywh.at posted a video that explains how this would work.

Crowdsourcing a solution

In an effort to find solutions to complex problems I’ve seen examples where InnoCentive and the Environmental Protection Agency are asking for the public to submit ideas for cleanup efforts or ways to contain the spill. Something like the hair boom is a perfect example of an idea that came from a regular person that is being put to good use. This further supports the thought that anyone can be an innovator in the age of technology. All they need is a functional idea and someone who will listen or implement it.

Damage to BP’s corporate image

BP has had a long standing image a ‘greener’ energy company. One that was focused not only on providing energy solutions to the world, but also the environmental impact of these efforts. From the BP corporate website:

“We take concrete actions to push traditional boundaries and meet the challenges of our time in a sustainable way. ‘Beyond petroleum’ is shorthand for what we do.”

The damaging impact of this oil leak are a PR nightmare for the company which will surely have lasting effects for the brand as a whole. The New York Times has reported about the company’s response:

“The company considered a broad advertising campaign, but top BP executives rejected the idea before planning even started. “In our view, the big glossy expressions of regret don’t have a lot of credibility,” said Andrew Gowers, a BP spokesman.

Instead, the company has dispatched executives to hold town meetings in the affected region, and it has turned to lower-profile social media outlets to trumpet its cleanup efforts and moves to organize volunteers.”

Both a Twitter account and a Facebook page have been created to provide up to the minute information on the accident & response.

As with Toyota’s problems earlier this year, one has to wonder how the BP brand will be able to recover from the disaster.

Other information

As I said, I’ve read a lot of articles on this topic, (I tend to become obsessed with disaster stories like this) so I thought I would include some of the more interesting and impactful ones that I’ve looked at.

• NASA aerial photos of the spill from Mashable
• Oil spill infographic
• Impact map from the Washington Post
• A good list of ways that you can help
• The Big Picture from Boston.com

If you’ve found anything interesting that you’d like to share please post a link in the comments.

Scott Stratten–marketing consultant, General Zod look-alike, and author of the book UNmarketing–outlines some best practices for developing a social media strategy and building an engaged audience. His presentation is couched in the context of the non-profit sector, but any organization would do well to heed Scott’s advice.

Okay, maybe not the world, but how about saving 8,500 tons of paper, 1 million liters of water, 10 tons of carbon emissions, and 20 million megajoules of electricity? That’s what Puma is doing with their Clever Little Bag.

Cool sneakers, cleaner planet. Sounds like a win-win to me.

Don’t you wish your old concert t-shirts could live forever? Forever is tall order, but thanks to Hello Rewind, those old Motley Crue tees get the chance to embark on a nostalgia infused farewell tour. Hello Rewind recycles old t-shirts and makes them into cozy laptop sleeves. You send them your old t-shirt; they send you back a custom laptop sleeve.

The best part is not just that Hello Rewind takes something old and makes something new, but they also work with Restore NYC to teach job skills to survivors of the sex trafficking trade, many of whom emerge with no marketable skills. In fact, many of the laptop sleeves made by Hello Rewind are hand-crafted by sex trafficking survivors.

Looks like it’s time to go through the t-shirt drawer. I’m sure there’s an old Def Leppard t-shirt in there somewhere.

Find more videos like this on AdGabber

No blood. No gore. No dismemberment. A convincing example that beauty can communicate just as effectively as shock value.

Nice work coming out of the UK from the Sussex Safer Roads Partnership.

Reddit.com co-founder Alexis Ohanian talks about how Greenpeace losing control of an online promotion was the best possible thing that could have happened.

In the latest performance from Improv Everywhere, a bell-ringing Salvation Army worker gets an unsolicited helping hand.

It would be brilliant to see The Salvation Army incorporate something like this into some of its major markets. Notice how the smiles (and the donations) multiplied once the bell chorus started?

The difference between one bell and the bell chours is worth noting. One guy constantly ringing a bell is borderline annoying, as it simply adds to the everyday noise we have learned to filter out. The multi-bell chorus creates something beautiful that makes people stop, listen, and feel something.

Never underestimate the power of emotion as a motivational force.

The Society for Design Administration holds a yearly event called Canstruction in Australia and the United States that sees students, architects, engineers and artists try to outdo each other with wild sculptures made entirely from cans of food. Recently 30 teams in New York City competed and the beneficiary of the event was City Harvest, a food bank that received over 100,000 cans of food because of the event. Very cool.