Pandora on IPhone

I am testing the Kool-Aid by trying a new iPhone. The jury is out on some of the features and functionality, but there is one application that is fabulous: Pandora.

If you have not tried Pandora, which allows you to create your own custom radio stations on the web, you should. You can download the iPhone app here.

Pandora is a great company, run by great folks. And best of all, Pandora and GlobalGiving have teamed up to connect Pandora's huge audience of music lovers with GlobalGiving projects that use music to improve the lives of people around the world.

[GlobalGiving]

Innovators Dilemma

In 1995 Clayton Christensen coined the terms “disruptive technology” and “disruptive innovations” to describe technological innovations, products or services that use a “disruptive” strategy rather than “revolutionary” or “sustaining” strategies to overturn dominant or status quo products in a market.

“Disruptive innovations” can occasionally come to dominate an existing market, either by filling a role that the older technologies couldn’t — as cheaper, smaller sized flash memory is doing in the personal data storage area. Or by successfully moving up-market through performance improvements until finally displacing the market leaders and incumbents — as digital photography replaced film photography as the front-runner.

At the heart of the Innovator’s Dilemma for the larger, older, most historically successful nonprofits is the bind of general or unrestricted funds philosophy and the need to find ways to ‘earmark’ and connect donors and recipients in a better way. It’s less about one OR the other, and more about borrowing ideas from each, and mutually benefiting from the unique selling points of the third party fundraisers and embedding them in the all-too-staid conventional groups.

That is from a very good post by Roger Craver, over at The Agitator.

[GlobalGiving]

Filmanthropy

Check out Snag Films, a new site from Ted Leonsis.  Snag Film's own blurb describes it well:

At SnagFilms.com, you can watch full-length documentary films for free, but we also make it easy for you to take our films with you and put them anywhere on the web. When you embed a widget on your web site, you open a virtual movie theater and become a “Filmanthropist.” Donate your pixels and support independent film! And click on “info” on any widget to learn more about that film and a related charity you can also support.

Donations to the related charities are processed by us at GlobalGiving.  Walt Mossberg did a nice piece about Snag Films in the Wall Street Journal.



[GlobalGiving]

Reinventing Aid

I am happy to announce that Reinventing Aid has been published by MIT Press.  Edited by Bill Easterly, it is a collection of essays (including one by Mari and me) that point the way toward a new approach to foreign aid.  

The introduction by Bill is by itself worth the price of the book.  I will use it the next time I teach a class on international development.  

Many of the individual chapters are also outstanding and are highly recommended for more advanced readers.  (Send me an email for recommendations.)

[GlobalGiving]

A New Shade of Cool

Today we launched GlobalGiving Green - a new part of the site that highlights projects that BOTH fight global warming AND improve local economic, social, or environmental conditions.

Stephanie Strom did a very nice piece about it in today's New York Times.

It's only a first step, but an exciting one that could potentially have far reaching effects, as you can read in the Times article. Mari is in the process of writing a longer piece about why it is critical to help get developing countries on a sustainble carbon path.

Two big shout outs on this one - first to the Packard Foundation, which encouraged and helped fund this. And second to Joan Ochi, Stephanie Fischer, Georg Apitz, and other colleagues here at GlobalGiving who worked so hard to create this.


[GlobalGiving]

Sweet Sixteen

My grandmother ("Mood") turned 99 this past week, and Mari and I went to visit her at the nursing home in Manchester, NH.  For several years, Mood has suffered from dementia, and she doesn't recognize her family members.  

We've gotten used to it, though at the beginning it was wrenching.  As with many elderly people, she has stronger recall from the distant past, and until last year she was able to remember stories and songs from her youth in the 1910s and 1920s.  She would also respond to questions in Finnish, her parents' native tongue. But for the most part, she had a distant look in her eyes when we visited her.

Early this year, Mood took a sharp turn for the worse, and stopped eating or responding to any verbal interactions.  She lost a lot of weight and became extremely gaunt.  On our previous visit a couple of months ago, I was shocked to see her wasting away in bed. The nursing home staff told my mom that the end was near, and we decided to commence hospice care.  

Over the next couple of months, the caring hospice people came several times a week to spend time with Mood - talking to her and stroking her arm - notwithstanding her lack of apparent response.  My mom called to say that Mood was improving, and even sitting up in a chair.

Mari and I sat opposite Mood on our visit last week, and I searched in vain for a connection with her.  Nothing worked.  I could remember only one word of Finnish.  So finally I just decided to ask her:  "Mood, do you know how old you are?"  No response.  My mom told me that I would have to shout, since her hearing was bad.  

"MOOD, DO YOU KNOW HOW OLD YOU ARE?" I practically yelled.

Mood cocked her head suddenly, and her eyes cleared.  

"Sixteen," she responded impishly, with a slight smile.

Then she was gone again.  So we sat there some more, and I rubbed her arm, and my sister called from Seattle and sang some songs to her, and Mood's head nodded slightly with the beat as she stared into the distance.

--

In honor of Mood's birthday, my mother and uncle made a donation through GlobalGiving to Help Feed 200 Neglected Elderly in Guatemala.  I was happy to see that they joined 58 other donors who together have provided enough money to feed over fifty women for a year.

[GlobalGiving]

Mari does CNN...

[GlobalGiving]

If Homer can give...

If Homer can give, we all can give.

That is from a post over at What Gives by Katie Taylor, one of our fabulous summer interns.



[GlobalGiving]

Not what I used to want to be, I hope.

Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.

That is William Feather, quoted in The Week. It reflects my own experience. But James Richardson, also quoted in The Week, adds the following:

The man who sticks to his plan will become what he used to want to be.

[GlobalGiving]

All together now...

Next week a group of us are going to spend an afternoon volunteering at the N Street Village here in Washington, DC. I never fail to marvel how much I enjoy doing these things, though I started later in life.

Here is a nice post from Alison Schrager on her own recent experience volunteering:

The economist in me always saw beauty in the discerning market.... But successful community-building thrives on inclusion rather than exclusivity.... Economies and communities thrive together, which means even an economist can (and in this case will) achieve a sense of community.

[GlobalGiving]