Today, a new online game, Evoke, begins that hopes to solve some of the worlds major issues.

Watch the trailer of the game below:

EVOKE trailer (a new online game) from Alchemy on Vimeo.

Listen to the game creator give an explanation of the project here:

EVOKE is free to play and open to anyone, anywhere.

The game begins on March 3, 2010. Players can join the game at any time.

Players who successfully complete ten game challenges in ten weeks will be able to claim their honors: Certified World Bank Institute Social Innovator – Class of 2010.

Top players will also earn online mentorships with experienced social innovators and business leaders from around the world, and scholarships to share their vision for the future at the EVOKE Summit in Washington DC.

EVOKE was developed by the World Bank Institute, the learning and knowledge arm of the World Bank Group, and directed by alternate reality game master Jane McGonigal.

[via UrgentEvoke]

So join us in seeing if we can have some fun while making the world a better place.

According to MercyCorps.org

Mercy Corps is a team of 3700 professionals helping turn crisis into opportunity for millions around the world. By trade, we are engineers, financial analysts, drivers, community organizers, project managers, public health experts, administrators, social entrepreneurs and logisticians. In spirit, we are activists, optimists, innovators and proud partners of the people we serve.

What I like about Mercy Corps is what they are calling Action Centers. These are actual storefronts in major cities where people can donate their time to help the world. Weather its a minute or a lifetime, all are welcome. They also have a very impressive site at actioncenter.org. The site ranges from telling heart felt current life stories, to actual causes you can get involved in right away.

The next group I want to touch on is DesigNYC.

Design impacts our daily lives in smart, ingenious and often unexpected ways — from the structures we live in, to the public spaces we convene in, to the graphic systems that inform us, and the interactive experiences that connect us.

We created desigNYC with the mission of improving life in NYC by connecting nonprofits and community groups in need of design services with professional, pro bono design resources.

Their site is easy to use, and has a clean layout (it was made for designers ). DesigNYC creates a great outlet for creatives who want to do some good for the world.

Lastly, their is the Center for Urban Pedagogy. I was actually on CUPs site earlier that day, and had no idea that they were speaking at Design and the City. They create teaching tools about land use and urban development in New York City. This cute video explains it really well-

What Is Affordable Housing? from the Center for Urban Pedagogy on Vimeo.

A stop-action animation on the technical definitions of affordable housing — by Rosten Woo and John Mangin of CUP, animator/designer Jeff Lai, and Glen Cummings of MTWTF. Narrated by Lisa Burriss. Sound by Rosten Woo.

What MTFY really likes is the Who Lives Here online map. Check it out for yourself here. We are a sucker for great information aesthetics, and this delivers. Look at the Lower East Side for a surprising comparison of low to high income housing and affordability. This stuff was previously not easily accessible  to the general public. Now, you can print or save a PDF of a particular area for future reference- nice.

There is a part 2 to Design and the City on December 3rd. Go to the Nau site for more info. And buy some amazing sustainable fashion while you are on the site, or at the store.

How did you get your start in the baked goods industry?

In the kitchen, of course! I grew up baking with my mom, and when I got to NYC I found that some of my favorite days were spent cooking and baking in my small apartment. Friends and coworkers were always excited when I brought them baked goods, so I had a lot of positive reinforcement.

How did the idea for Baking for Good come about?

There were really two inspirations for it. First, my mom received a gift of baked goods from a friend when my grandmother got sick. I thought it was such a thoughtful gesture, and one that was more personal than flowers. I also started thinking about the way my schools did fundraising when I was growing up – lots of door-to-door sales of things people probably didn’t want. I put two and two together and created this online bakery based on the idea of a local bake sale.

How has the response been so far?

It’s been really wonderful! We’ve seen orders come in from across the country, and people have been sending the products for a variety of reasons, both happy and sad. We’ve also seen a wide range of causes that people are choosing to donate to, and we’ve received a lot of requests for new causes to add.

What is your ultimate goal for the company and charities you plan to help (monetarily and otherwise)?

I hope our baked goods become a favorite gift to give and receive, both because they are sweet and delicious, and because they help support great causes. I also hope that we can truly make a difference for organizations large and small by bringing them much-deserved attention and funding.

What has been your favorite thing so far about putting together the business?

It’s hard to resist saying that my favorite thing has been sampling all of the baked goods. That’s definitely one of them. But I’ve also truly enjoyed and appreciated learning about the causes on our site and speaking with the amazing people who run them.

Any other thoughts etc you would like to share out there?

Read about our causes, then check out our baked goods and think of someone special in your life who might like to receive them.

Thanks Emily, and we look forward to trying your gourmet brownies.

Go to Baking for Good now.

What is Baking for Good you ask? Well, so did we – and we got an answer : ) In short, imagine an online version of the bake sale you used to have when you were a kid.
In the future we’ll hear more about what makes them tick, but in the mean time we’ve got their press release to explain who they are, what they are setting out to do and links to their website below. We’ve also gone through their site and highlighted some of the items that we can’t wait to try out for ourselves.

A Little Sugar Goes a Long Way: Baking for Good Launches

Baking for Good will sell made-to-order, all-natural, gourmet baked goods and give 15% of every purchase to a cause the customer chooses.

New York, NY (September 1, 2009) – BakingforGood.com launches today, offering customers nationwide a selection of handmade brownies, cookies, and other baked goods with a social conscience: 15% of every purchase goes to a cause the customer chooses. “We want to bring the bake sale online and into the 21st century,” says CEO and founder Emily Dubner. “Our goal is to give people and organizations around the country a new way to raise and donate money, bit by bit and batch by batch.”

Baking for Good sells all-natural, baked-to-order treats, allowing customers to personalize their orders. Dubner, a 25-year-old former management consultant, says that this customer control makes Baking for Good’s treats perfect as gifts or as favors for weddings, showers, and other events. “Our products are great for any occasion or for no occasion at all. They make a wonderful alternative to flowers, because they’re thoughtful, original, and sweet, and they let you give back to the community.”

Fifteen percent of every purchase at Baking for Good’s website goes to a cause the customer chooses, and customers can add to their automatic donation at checkout. Causes include nonprofits such as the ASPCA and the Fresh Air Fund and community fundraisers such as school groups, children’s sports teams, and marathon efforts.

For more information, to start shopping at the online bakery, or to get your favorite charity on board, visit www.BakingforGood.com.

Some of our favorites listed on the site include their Gluten-Free Mint Choc Chip, Toffee Crispy Rice Squares and the Coconut Chocolate Chunk Blondies.

We’ve also heard that they are nominated for the Shine a Light small business grant competition – check out more information below:

Businessweek To Intel: How does your company do internal/external green?
Intel: Intel is the largest purchaser of green energy in the world. We just don’t market it.
Treehugger: where do components fit into larger lifespan of product?
Metrics: a carbon footprint is not standardized today- not trackable.

Dell: We have an EP Certification. Which is becoming a standard for electronics.
Intel: EP and Energy Star are ignored by fed.
Intel: We (everyone) should put a “price of carbon” label on goods.
Businessweek: Changing liquid products to powder is a huge game changer. Gives props to Samuel Griffith.
Intel: Discusses how intel had to go lead free. Spent 200 million to do so.
Businessweek: TESCO did a full carbon count on products in store.

If you google EP certification, you don’t get anything concrete to click on. After further research, you get organizations like IPEP, NAEP, ABCEP, and E2. These all offer their own version of certification and information. The problem here is that nothing is standardized across the board; so it means zero to the average consumer. Dell is actually taking the right steps towards sustainability in the company (more info here), but unless the industry standardizes the carbon footprint, it becomes more about corporate marketing and greenwashing. Products obviously need a standard like LEED is becoming for architects. But even LEED seems like another expensive certification.

MTFY Q: What steps do we need to take to standardize a Carbon Footprint on a global level? Should the government get involved? Is paying for a certification helping or hindering this process?

Dell: working with 1000+ components is a huge challenge.
Intel: making changes is not going to bankrupt a company. Engineers are by nature problem solvers. Marketing and competition will help in making a change.
Dell: we offer free recycling. We take stuff back and refurb first.
Treehugger: products do need a really long life cycle; especially with current economic climate.
Dell: their computers use less energy now, then ever before.

MTFY Q: Is it more energy efficient to do an upgrade, or keep using the same product for a long period of time?

Co-Creators Jill Fehrenbacher and Marc Alt kicked off the conference by talking about how/why they started Greener Gadgets. This was followed by a short introduction from Parker Brugge, the VP of environmental affairs and industry sustainability at the CEA.

The keynote was delivered by Saul Griffith. Saul Griffith is a well known inventor, entrepreneur, and all around genius. He began by going through a series of well designed charts that described the world’s ridiculous energy consumption statistics. We noted that the US uses a ridiculously large amount of the worlds resources compared to the rest of the world.

Next Saul began discussing how he is obsessively documenting his life in terms of energy consumption. He characterized this in terms of everything from physical objects he owns, food usage, travel, and the current society.  His final outcome was that his energy footprint is 18,000 watts!

I was surprised to find out that I am a planet fucker…. and I have bad news for you…. You are all planet fuckers too!

What environment do we want to live in? It is a design decision.

“Pick your horror level of atmospheric degree change- what temperature do we want to live at?” Saul states next.  In other words, at the current rate of carbon release, the earth’s temperature will increase at 2 degrees Celsius per year. Most people in the room know this already; but what we don’t know is how to fix this on a massive level.

The key Saul states, is responsibly mobilizing current large manufactures and industries into renewable energy producers. He shows a chart that portray the maximum wattage that every renewable resource outputs. It indicates by a long shot, that solar and wind is the best option. We have gone from producing 5TW to 15 TW of wasted energy the past 40 years; and this is good news for a new responsible energy production. For example, coca-cola can retool to achieve global energy needs. They can package their product as a powder, and make all the machines and resources they currently use into a large scale solar sources. This is not out of realm Saul states. We did the same thing during WWII. We produced 300,000 bomber planes out of refrigerator factories in a five year period; think what we can do now.

Now it seems we are getting into stuff not stated by Saul in his speech at CompostModern in San Francisco.

We also need to have a cultural shift of focus away from a Throwaway Society.

We need to create a culture of Heirloom Products—Where 1/10 of stuff we own, last 10 times as long, and is highly cherished. When you get a pen at birth, that is your pen for life- so it better be a really well designed pen; with a laser pointer.

We need shift from an economy of throwaway consumption, to an economy of maintenance and repair. WE should look at many third world/tribal societies for study.

Saul states that the very nature of current consumer goods will be the hardest field to change; since its entire existence is based off of the upgrade. Saul states

Designers need to design for the ‘age of consequence’. There is no ‘away’ anymore. No more garbage… that ‘away’ is your backyard.

In response to the new culture of designing Heirloom products, he shows his final slide proposing a new name for the conference- ‘Greener Object d’ Arts’.

Wattzon.com was stated as a great free online resource to track and understand your energy footprint.

While we don’t have video from his Greener Gadgets presentation yet, we do have video of the presentation from the POP!Tech Conference that you can watch below:

Griffith: [laughs] It is about quality of life- they are creating another throwaway product. This is pure greenwashing. Only 10% of the product is actually recycled; the inside is not.

Person 2: How do you explain bringing any new products into existence, if all you are doing is throwing its predecessor away? Example- if you make priuses, what happens to the other cars?

Griffith: If you start doing something towards environmental change, you accidentally solve the other problems too.

Take Away:
As designers we fabricate ideas to make a difference. Everything that we do creates change, but we need to make sure that we make positive changes. We all have the power to contribute in some way and make a difference to the overall outcome of what our future will actually be. Design needs to encompass not only the visual aesthetics of the product, but also it’s impact on the world. Small design decisions can have a tremendous impact.

We also need to put things in perspective. Wattzon is a great resource to put things in perspective on a personal level. It allows users to visually realize what type of impact they actually have. By applying social media practices and having users post how much of an impact they are having on the environment, people will be held accountable for their actions through public competitiveness and social awareness.
Our Wattzon ranking is:

What’s yours? Post yours. Get the word out. Let others know where you stand, what your goals are, and how long it’s going to take you to get there— then challenge them to meet or beat you.

Our goal is to lower our overall power consumption by 200W within 6 months.

We also need to expand this toolset. Not only should people be able to measure their power consumption, but we should have open standards for measuring various types of consumption— opening up the potential for data mashups with any type of information.

Let’s keep this conversation going, use this knowledge, and pass it on; so that we can make informed decisions at all levels of the creative process.

Atlanta Expanding Architecture Conversations on Design as Activism Part III from Metropolis magazine on Vimeo.

Designers! You have the potential to benefit many more people than you currently reach. No, this is not a call for pro-bono work. Instead, we challenge you to play a direct role in solving critical social and environmental problems–and to incorporate this outreach into your practice to serve an ever-growing client base with real needs.

On January 22nd Metropolis magazine’s editor in chief Susan S. Szenasy, featured writers from the new Metropolis Books title Expanding Architecture: Design Activism, and designers developers, educators, manufactures, and policy makers took the conversation to Atlanta.

Panelists included Bryan Bell, Founder and Executive Director of Design Corps;David Green, AIA, Associate Partner, Perkins+Will; Faset J. (Bill) Seay, AIA, architect and planner; Steve Badanes, Assoc. AIA, founder of Jersey Devil and teacher; Brett Kincaid, director of design, Steelcase North America, and Erik Mehlman, AIA Principle, STUDIO B Architecture, PC.

Respondents included Valencia Coar, Ryan Gravel, and Chris Sciarrone.

Sponsored By Steelcase

MTFY attended the Atlanta leg of the Expanding Architecture: Conversations on Design as Activism tour hosted by Metropolis Magazine and Steelcase.

The panel included local and nationally recognized industry professionals; specifically Steve Badanes, Bryan Bell, Brett Kincaid, Bill Seay, Erik Van Mehlman. The panelists profiles their full bios on the Metropolis Magazine’s website here. The audience included local professional architects, industrial designers, interior designers, builders, students and local activists alike. The variety attendents and contributors brought forth discussion not only on the broader problems that face the world at large, but also the issue that are right outside our front door.

Bryan Bell, the editor of the newly released book ,  Expanding Architecture: Design as Activism, starts the discussion with his introduction of the topics and over view of the case studies presented in the book. His examples include

The concept of [Design as Activism] is expanding all design professions. It is to move from our current limited role and realize our greater potential. We need to change our vision of ourselves first, and in the goals we set for ourselves. Then, we can change the public perception of what we can contribute to the greater good.

Creating opportunities for expansion of contribution to the community through the new administration.

Using the new economy to  use unused development cycles to enhance community through design efforts.

Modernism – reaching out to a larger group of people and understanding the people that you are designing for as opposed to the ’star’ architects that develop today.
Full video coverage of the conversation can be seen below or on the Metropolis Magazine website or directly on their vimeo page

Let’s go ahead and continue this conversation on Design as Activism right here on MTFY.

The person who contributes the most to the dialog in the comments below and demonstrates how they are making a difference everyday will get a copy of the new book Expanding Architecture: Design as Activism.

Also, be sure to check out the rest of the panel tour:

The person who is able to demonstrate how they are making a difference everyday will get a copy of the new book Expanding Architecture: Design as Activism. Please leave a comment below to let us know what you are doing to make a difference.

… innovators, entrepreneurs, visionaries, and eco-designers will return to New York City to discuss the future of sustainability for the consumer electronics industry.

This year’s conference will feature engaging discussion on:

• Emerging energy technology
• Real solutions for e-waste recycling
• New inventions in energy generation and efficiency
• Future forward recyclable gadgetry
• The business case for going green

Here are some photos from the 2008 conference via the Inhabitat Greener Gadgets flickr page

We want to gather questions/ideas from our readers, to ask or research at the conference. So leave us your thoughts as a comment on this article. thanks!

Hi everyone, Ira Glass here. It’s a sad fact of life that our free podcast and streaming aren’t really free. They cost the public radio station we work at $108,000 a year. That’s just for bandwidth. That’s not the cost of servers, or people to update the website, or anything else.

If you’re someone who listens here all the time, or who gets the free weekly podcast, your listening is paid for by all the people who contribute to Chicago Public Radio. They’re carrying you and everyone else who listens online.

Might you consider chipping in? A $5 or $10 contribution would cover all the listening you could possibly do in a year, plus a bunch of freeloaders who’ll never pitch in. If you’re feeling generous—and love merch—$50 will get you a poster from our last tour; $75 will get you a This American Life kite; $100 will get you the Chris Ware Lost Buildings DVD; $500 will get you all of those, plus our love. Okay, that last part’s a lie. You have our love already. Expressed in the form of a documentary radio show.

First off, I whole heartily support This American Life. If you listen to this show, DONATE HERE. If you haven’t heard the show, check it out here. It has been sad recently, to see some of my friends lose their jobs around me. But, I have been through that before during the .com era. I have never seen this sort of widespread job loss though. It is now truly heartbreaking to see public institutions like PRI suffering from this shitty economy.

I do think there is a better way for PRI’s This American Life to stay afloat. By licensing their content as creative commons, and allowing users to distribute it themselves through various social web techniques (peer-to-peer, mirrored sites, blog posts embedding the content, etc) , TAL would reduce their bandwidth costs to almost $0.00. This would allow donations from the public to support the people actually producing the content for the show. Evan Prodromou, the co-founder of WikiTravel, also brings to light this point in a comment on their site [read more from Evan here].

TAL already has a good hand in new media; distributing it’s content through podcasts and on their website archive. My hope is that the tough times that we are experiencing, will help bring to light other possibilities that new media has to offer. I don’t think I would listen to them weekly, if it weren’t for my ability to listen to them when I please. I hope these financial constraints that we are seeing, will help bring about change in business models that people may have been apprehensive about before.

With TAL being a well respected show with a large following, that is partially supported by the public, making these changes shouldn’t affect their bottom line as much. Supporters of TAL will help see them through with their donations. While reducing overhead costs should be able to help them retain staff in these tough times and keep the podcasts free for the users. I for one would give them twice as much as my initial donation, if I knew that they were taking the steps necessary to reduce overhead, and focus on what matters- the programming.

TAL’s wikipedia page even brings the podcast funding issue to light. It mentions how another popular show, Democracy Now, is able to distribute it’s podcast without incurring the added bandwidth cost.

For now, I’m hoping that this will only be the start to an ongoing dialog. I’ve written TAL and asked them for a comment on this matter; and I’m hoping that they will respond.

In the mean time, we wish This American Life all the best of luck. We heart you, and you have our support.

UPDATE: This article has been edited as originally we thought TAL was distributed through NPR.

UPDATE: There is also a discussion on this matter on their Facebook page here.

Lawrence Lessig on the Colbert Report, 1/8/09:

“Artists have gotten no more money, businesses have not gotten more profit, and our kids have been turned into criminals.” – Lawrence Lessig

I agree with Lessig. Remixes and mashups aren’t going away. It’s time that Congress developed ways to address the new medium, rather than fight it. Artists including Yo Yo Ma have warmed to the idea, and encourage remixes of their work. Great collabs crop up daily on the music blogs and beyond. See last week’s Jaydiohead; a Jay-Z and Radiohead mashup by Minty Fresh Beats that, despite what Pitchfork had to say, had people including the likes of Carson Daly talking it up.

I enjoyed hearing Lessig briefly explain his “hybrid economy” theory. Hybrid economies are seemingly more prevalent than we think. This blog is a hybrid. Particularly if we chose to sell ad space on it. So we feature content from other places like Comedy Central on this blog which is built off of Wordpress – a platform that I did not partake in the creation of. When the copyrighted content is fused with the editorial I write, it creates a new piece of work with additional opportunities for revenue.

I believe that artists should get paid for their work and all derivatives thereof. Just as Comedy Central tracks the embed of the above video, and Wordpress created the backbone of this blog, each creator deserves a fair share of what is rightfully theirs. If Congress could learn to move forward with that idea instead of fighting the very idea of a collabration, remix, mashup, or hybrid project…well…that would be good.