You’re stranded in a Pennsyltucky snow storm. The power’s out and your phone’s dead — though using its dying breath to upload that picture of your dog with a dryer sheet stuck to its paw was totally worth it.

But now it’s time to think about survival. Unfortunately, your phone is also your flashlight, compass, radio and library of YouTube videos about how to start a fire. And without your White Noise App, you’re surrounded by a deafening silence last heard sometime before the Industrial Revolution.

But thanks to the Eton Corporation, you never have to die alone again!

Eton is an electronics developer and manufacturer that aims to harness nature’s energy to power innovative products. They make everything from crank-powered emergency radios and flashlights to solar-powered, Bluetooth®-enabled boomboxes. So the next time you find yourself in a pickle, you’ll be able to check the weather advisory, charge your iPhone and cue up some tunes while waiting for the cavalry to arrive.

Camping, Natural Disasters & Zombie Apocalypses

Eton also has a line of products that partner with the American Red Cross ranging from roadside assistance lamps and radios to indoor blackout flashlights and solar-powered cellphone chargers and sirens. Not only are the products beautiful, the co-branding is a brilliant pairing of purpose. (It’s also a perfect counter-example to the great NWF/Scott’s MiracleGro blunder.)

Best of all, Eton’s products are built to last — without having to plug in. Take the Rukus, a lightweight stereo that streams music from your smart phone or tablet. Its photovoltaic panels pump out an hour of rock per hour of sunlight and are capable of transferring energy to an internal battery for later. (You can charge it up with an AC adapter, too.)

All things considered, solar is still very much a Challenger, and Eton’s attempt to fold it into high-quality music and emergency technology is a keen move. And should a zombie apocalypse take out the grid, we have no doubt he who holds the Rukus will be king.

At the beginning of the 80s, video games started to become available to the average American household. Around the same time, the average American teenager started replying to the average American career question with a new answer. Kids no longer dreamed of becoming firemen and police detectives. “I want to build video games,” they said.

At which point the average American parent/teacher/guidance counselor laughed their heads off.

World of Warcraft University

But why the visceral reaction against games? In 2009, the video game industry contributed almost $5B to the U.S. GDP. It employed 120,000 people in 34 states, at an average compensation of $90,000. Video games require programming, writing, history, design, mathematics, art direction, physics and linguistics. They cannot exist without collaboration, creativity, dedication and technical ingenuity.

Sensing the turning of the tide, online learning company Zulama partnered with Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) to create a visionary curriculum for high schoolers called The Video Game Academy. Through the Academy, Zulama and the ETC provide kids with an opportunity to apply themselves in the many facets of game-making, from 3D Video Game Programming and iPhone Game Development to Modern Storytelling.

“Our kids are being rewired. They’re learning by playing World of Warcraft and communicating with their friends through online media,” says Nikki Navta, President of Zulama.

The Zulama Curriculum

It’s not just video games. Zulama offers a plethora of rich courses ranging from “Horror: Read it, Write It” and “The Vietnam War: An Inquiry Investigation” to “Geometry and Architecture” and “English for International Business.” Schools can purchase content for their own teachers to administer or pipe it into their computer labs for a low-cost, high-value alternative to electives. Home-schoolers and international students can also pick up classes a la carte.

Even more fascinating are some of the ideas Zulama has about the future of online learning. By offering an easy-to-use authoring tool, the company has recruited teachers and experts across industries to create their courses. In the future however, they hope to encourage the growth of an online education ecosystem – one where classes don’t so much begin or end, but where students continue to “level up.”

Strand-based Learning (& Dragons)

There’s no arguing what Navta calls “strand-based learning” is a huge boon to teenagers. For one, successful completion of the Academy earns students certificates that may help them get into college, obtain internships or even jobs. Two, in addition to the hard skills learned in each course, both the classroom and online settings are designed to reinforce soft skills – teamwork, conflict resolution, delegation, brainstorming.

Finally, the experience may actually aid some of those skeptical parents by exposing students to realities of the field. Because in addition to inspiring wonder and enabling discovery, the Game Academy teaches just how much math it takes to slay a dragon.

Now that we’ve emerged through the other end of the holidays, most people are looking for ways to scale back. And rightly so. But rather than feeling guilty about the occasional night out or skipped kickboxing lesson, why not attach a charitable donation to everyday extravagances?

Let us introduce you to Snoball, a new, event-based online donation platform. With more than two million charities in its database, Snoball lets you contribute an amount of your choosing every time a certain thing happens. For instance, every time you go out to the bar, you can send $5 to Last Call Designated Driving Services Inc. Or every time you check into the mall on Foursquare, how about a $1 donation to Toys for Tots?

The possibilities are endless. What’s more, they’re interesting. By incorporating social media, Snoball lets you schedule donations for every re-tweet you get on Twitter or for each time someone “likes” your fan page on Facebook. And if your Snoball should go viral, the website will measure your accrued impact with the Snoball Effect.

Here’s the best part: Snoball syncs with all the major sports leagues. So every time Evgeni Malkin scores a goal, it’s money in the bank for the English Skills Learning Center. In another brilliant stroke, Snoball also makes it possible to donate when a team loses. So if you were feeling saucy, you might pledge to donate $1 to the food bank every time the Philadelphia Flyers lose a game. (You know, just a suggestion.)

Check Out This Cool Way To Give

$1

When the Philadelphia Flyers lose, Westmoreland County Food Bank Inc gets $1

Join My Snoball

Powered by

Now, Snoball itself is not a charity. The internet start-up merely enables these transactions and takes a small sliver for the trouble, much like another of our featured Challenger Brands, Crowdrise.

“Because we use the ‘Internet-scale,’ 95 percent of donations get to the charities,” said co-founder and CEO Jeremy Kelley in an interview with the Huffington Post. “For the charities that don’t have a big IT staff…we can act as their internet fundraising arm.”

Use it as a motivator for your brand – “Like us on Facebook and we’ll donate to Squirrel Sanctuary Inc!” – or to assuage the guilt of buying yet another pair of shoes. Either way, it’s hard not to love Snoball’s ingenious marriage of social media and event-based giving. Not to mention it proves what we have suspected for a long while – when the Flyers lose, it’s good for everybody.

Here are the rules:

1. There will be 10 members, each responsible for donating $100 a month.
2. The 10 will review applications for diverse projects, the only requirement of which is Awesomeness.
3. After a vote, one applicant each month will be awarded a micro-grant of $1,000.
4. The 10 can only quit their awesome quest in two manners:
   1. By finding a worthy successor
   2. Awesome death

OK, that’s probably overly dramatic, but there’s just something about the simplicity of the Awesome Foundation that borders on mysterious. The money is given with no strings attached and no profit in mind. Ideas range from hilarious to visionary.

Puppets to Pop-ups

Originally started in Boston, Awesome Chapters have sprouted across the U.S. and even as far away as Hamburg, Germany and Zurich, Switzerland. “The Awesome Foundation for the Arts and Sciences is an ever-growing, worldwide network of people devoted to forwarding the interest of awesomeness in the universe,” according to the mother foundation’s website.

For example, Awesome Pittsburgh — our local chapter — recently awarded a micro-grant for a “Pop-up Co-op” — a revitalization project that repurposes an empty storefront as a locally run “incubator for small businesses.” The project is forward-thinking, ambitious and strategic.

Awesome Pittsburgh’s range can also be seen in the “Puppet Photo Booth.” To be installed in Pittsburgh’s Market Square, this Awesome-funded idea is equal parts performance art and Candid Camera. Basically, people will pull back the curtain thinking it’s a regular old photo booth, but will be surprised instead with a seven-minute, under-the-sea themed puppet show. And at some point during the performance, a picture will be secretly taken so you can take home a souvenir.

“We try to strike a balance between finding many forms of creativity and something that will engage and contribute to the city,” says Leah Lizarondo, trustee.

You could argue this is the coolest aspect of Awesome Pittsburgh, its freedom. Name a cause or a disease or an agenda and there is sure to already be a fully-functioning foundation dedicated to it. And though they have all the proper paperwork, they’ve got to show receipts and answer to a board and communicate with the government. But since Awesome Pittsburgh is only giving out a thousand bucks, they can pick a project that helps feed the homeless or the ducks in Frick Park and no one can say boo.

The Future of Awesome

The ideas keep rolling in. Awesome Pittsburgh has received over 70 applications in just a few months. Since they’re confidential, Leah couldn’t reveal the content of what’s coming, though you can bet it will be awesome.

Do you have a great idea that needs but a small injection of cold, hard cash to become a reality? Fill out this form and these crazy coots might award you with an easy, awesome G.

Somewhere in the heart of America, a whole shipment of Lazy Susan circles had been ruined by a guy named Dale*. Maybe he was hungover or disgruntled. We don’t know the details. But suffice it to say that somehow a whole lot of holes got drilled in a whole lot of wrong places. And now the equivalent of a grove of trees was about to be jettisoned to a landfill without even once making it easier for hard-working American families to pass the taco toppings.

Nice going, Dale.

Upcycling For Dummies

But wait. “That wood is still good!” cries Hipcycle, seller of repurposed junk. All you have to do is cut the sides off the circles and nail them to the wall. Voila – floating shelves!

Upcycling, finding new uses for old things, has been around for hundreds of years — out of necessity. But Walmart and Amazon.com have all but killed the instinct to re-use in most Americans. When we’re done with something, we throw it away. If we need something, we buy it.

Tires, glass bottles, bike parts, flip flops, railroad ties — these are all things you might find at the dump. Heck, you might have thrown them away yourself. But Hipcycle rescues these materials from landfills by artistically retooling them for function and decoration around the home.

That’s how 50 chopsticks become a folding basket and a few old farmhouse beams become a coffee table. Wait, are those the handlebars of an old bicycle or a high-end candelabra?

Being Green is Not a Unique Selling Proposition

Andrew Sell, Chief Hipcycler, believes upcycled wares can do more than save landfill space. “We provide high quality, durable products that are inherently interesting,” Andrew told us. This is an important note of distinction for the Hipcycle model. Sell cool stuff because it’s cool, not because it’s eco-friendly or green — though that’s obviously cool, too.

“We want to appeal to the hardcore dark green consumer who will seek out green products, but also the light green consumer who cares about the environment, but who may not have the means or interest to seek out those products or pay more for them,” Andrew explained. “We also want to show the world ‘green’ doesn’t have to mean ‘ugly’ or ‘cheap.’”

Best of all, Hipcycle stuff doesn’t just look good — it starts conversations. Oh, this display bowl made out of welded metal? Well, there’s this woman who scours Wisconsin landfills for discarded washers…

Thank you, Hipcycle, for helping to reduce waste, proliferate beauty and make all of us sound exponentially cooler than we have any right to be.

*Dale’s name has been changed to protect his family from further shame.