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Slacktivism and China

April 11, 2009, 5:32 am
Filed under: Cool, Flavor of the Day, Innovation, Marketing, Must Reads, Uncategorized | Tags: Shuangjing Fulicheng Beijing China The best way Educational Marketing 3.0 Halfpat Expat

Slacktivism

slacktivism: easy and painless acts that allow us to feel we are doing our part to make the world a better place with the least possible mental, physical, or financial exertion. While it’s encouraging to see so much creativity being put toward the myriad ways we can change the world without getting up off the couch, I strongly encourage everyone using “click to give” to remember China’s own Chairmen Mao’s quote: “It is necessary for intellectuals, students, soldiers and the average peasant to pay attention and involve themselves with political work. This is particularly true in wartime.” No place is this clearer than the Fulicheng area in Shuangjing.

The below definitions are taken directly from urbandictionary.com

1. slacktivism 1701 up, 280 down

The act of participating in obviously pointless activities as an expedient alternative to actually expending effort to fix a problem.

Signing an email petition to stop rampant crime is slacktivism. Want to really make your community safer? Get off your ass and start a neighborhood watch!

by 1Spectre4U Oct 21, 2003 share this

2. slacktivism 172 up, 24 down

The search for the ultimate feel-good that derives from having come to society’s rescue without having had to actually gets one’s hands dirty or open one’s wallet.

It’s slacktivism that prompts us to want a join a boycott of designated gas companies or eschew buying gasoline on a particular day rather than reduce our personal consumption of fossil fuels by driving less.

slacktivist
slactavism
activism
glurge
petition

by Dave — via snopes.com Feb 21, 2007 share this

3. slacktivism 10 up, 157 down

sing your little political song
buy your thought on a political bumper sticker
buy your thoughts on a political tshirt
state your political ideas on film
write a political related term on urban dictionary
rant politics in people’s ears
predict the future and speculate about political decisions
sit on the couch and watch the news to get pissed
sit on the internet ranting political statements
argue safely from your computer
spray paint some political propaganda on public restroom walls
go to weekly events to reinforce your beliefs
rant some more….
email political/religious propaganda to all your friends and tell them to forward it
write a political poem
don’t use money for any cause
hide your ideas in the metaphorical world
preach to your choir
curse at your enemies from your computer
make judgement and negative assumption about every group that is different
without having all the facts..
reinforce your thoughts in a small group of people whining about the opposition
tell everyone to vote for who your voting for
pass out political flyers in public
….bitch and whine, bitch and whine
….the odd shape of the land
spoon feeding pigeons
protest in the street with signs
nag and heckle in a crowd
heckle racist comments on youtube
don’t take any real action….
be passive aggressive

slacktivism is fun, easy, and builds self esteem in a cheap way.

politics
religion
propaganda
easy
lazy

by eazy-X Apr 25, 2008 share this

Zhengyuan Fu, Autocratic Tradition and Chinese Politics, source for total number printed.
Quotations from Mao Tse Tung, an English translation at Marxists.org.
Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung, an English translation at Art-bin.com.
(The Little Red Book), an English translation at terebess.hu.
Chairman Mao’s World
Shuangjing
Fulicheng
Beijing
China

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G-Mail Functions

April 11, 2009, 5:29 am
Filed under: Cool, Flavor of the Day, Innovation, Marketing, Must Reads, Uncategorized | Tags: Shuangjing Fulicheng Beijing China The best way, Shuangjing Fulicheng Beijing China The best way Educational Marketing 3.0 Halfpat Expat

5 Great G-Mail function’s that you may not have heard about

We’ve all been through the agony of forgetting to attach a resume or cover letter to a job application and having to write the emberassing follow up e-mail that just starts you off on the wrong foot. Finally there is an “Undo” function to quickly revoke that e-mail. Check out my post on it here.
Alright old timer it’s time you embrace the glory which is hotkey’s you can trust them I promise. Give it a try here is a list of some common time savers to keep you from juggling a keyboard a mouse and that witty comment you’ve been working on all morning. Remember to turn on your hotkeys in settings get it done now. Try printing a copy of these hotkeys and keep them by your desk until you’ve memorized them.
You’ve been using Gmail for years it’s time you give up and move in with a nice theme that reflects your inner geek, jock, nerd, dork, hippy, and/or office hero. You can get a bit more perspective on it by checking out the unofficial google blog over here. Gmail’s team points out an interesting side note about their themes “In some cases, you can also customize by location. Some themes change during the day, and we use the location information you provide to correctly time these changes with your local sunrise, sunset, and/or weather. If you select one of these themes, you’ll see a Country/Region drop-down menu appear.”

G-Mail offline 0.2 when your stuck at the airport or starbucks and too poor/ concerned about the economy/cheap to pay the grotesquely expensive fee or you just need to get some work done on the bus here’s your chance.

Quite possibly the savior of any interns day, Old Snakey. Just enable the keyboard shortcuts and hit “&” and old snakey boots up for a glorious thrill ride of danger and excitement.

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Slaktivism and Rice= Click Donations

April 11, 2009, 5:19 am
Filed under: Blog 2 read, Cool, Flavor of the Day, Flavor of the Week, Innovation, Marketing, Must Reads, Uncategorized | Tags: Shuangjing Fulicheng Beijing China The best way, Shuangjing Fulicheng Beijing China The best way Educational Marketing 3.0 Halfpat Expat

You’ve probably heard of freerice.com a site where donation and education come together to deliver food to people in Africa. Due to my financial constraints working in Sihua, Beijing while trying to live in Shuangjing on a local budget I’ve been looking through these slaktivism sites recently were you can donate by click through. No grueling volunteer work, no credit card transactions, nothing but pure unadulterated clicking. Trying to understand if these sites really work; is that money really being generated and donated to the right people?

I started looking more into places like Hunger Site, which donated more than 290 tons of food in one month about 5,000,000 clicks. This early success led to several copy cat sites, some good like the Breast Cancer Site, which led to 203.9 free mammograms in one month about 8,000,000 clicks.

I finally found my answer over at slate.com where they did the research to recommend some great sites doing great things. “Even though each click may amount to only a few pennies, I would make the most of them by using CharityUSA’s sites (five in total, including both the Hunger Site and the Breast Cancer Site), which donate 100 percent of the corporate sponsor’s money to respected charities such as Feeding America (formerly America’s Second Harvest) and Mercy Corps. If you have more time to kill, or rusty vocabulary skills, try FreeRice, an educational game site run by the U.N.
World Food Program and Harvard’s Berkman Center that gives 10 grains of rice to the UNWFP for every question you answer correctly. They’ve donated more than 62 billion grains of rice in less than two years. Procrastination has never felt so worthwhile.”

Please donate a click to the U.N.
World Food Program.

Links used for research in this handforged post:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120846184908923785.html

http://www.mercycorps.org/

http://freerice.com/index.php

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/

http://www.slate.com/id/2215452/?from=rss

http://www.wfp.org/

http://feedingamerica.org/

http://www.slate.com/id/2209494/

http://www.one.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mao_book.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotations_from_Chairman_Mao_Zedong

http://bamboosong.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/freericedotcom.jpg

http://moderntypewriter.wordpress.com/2008/06/26/free-rice-game/

http://adsimple.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/free-rice.jpg

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G-Mail Hotkeys

March 29, 2009, 12:23 pm
Filed under: Cool, Flavor of the Day, Hack, Innovation, Marketing, Must Reads, Uncategorized | Tags: Shuangjing Fulicheng Beijing China The best way, Shuangjing Fulicheng Beijing China The best way Educational Marketing 3.0 Halfpat Expat

*This table taken from the G-Mail Support Page and distilled down to the essentials here.

Shortcut Key	Definition	Action
c	Compose	Allows you to compose a new message. <Shift> + c allows you to compose a message in a new window.
/	Search	Puts your cursor in the search box.
k	Move to newer conversation	Opens or moves your cursor to a more recent conversation. You can hit <Enter> to expand a conversation.
j	Move to older conversation	Opens or moves your cursor to the next oldest conversation. You can hit <Enter> to expand a conversation.
o or <Enter>	Open	Opens your conversation. Also expands or collapses a message if you are in ‘Conversation View.’
u	Return to conversation list	Refreshes your page and returns you to the inbox, or list of conversations.
e	Archive	Archive your conversation from any view.
s	Star a message or conversation	Adds or removes a star to a message or conversation. Stars allow you to give a message or conversation a special status.
r	Reply	Replies to the message sender. <Shift> + r allows you to reply to a message in a new window. (Only applicable in ‘Conversation View.’)
a	Reply all	Replies to all message recipients. <Shift> +a allows you to reply to all message recipients in a new window. (Only applicable in ‘Conversation View.’)
f	Forward	Forwards a message. <Shift> + f allows you to forward a message in a new window. (Only applicable in ‘Conversation View.’)
<Ctrl> + s	Save draft	Saves the current text as a draft when composing a message. Hold the <Ctrl> key while pressing s and make sure your cursor is in one of the text fields — either the composition pane, or any of the To, CC, BCC, or Subject fields — when using this shortcut.
#	Delete	Moves the conversation to Trash.
[	Archive and previous	Archives your conversation and moves to the previous one.
]	Archive and next	Archives your conversation and moves to the next one.
z	Undo	Undoes your previous action, if possible (works for actions with an ‘undo’ link).
	Update current conversation	Updates your current conversation when there are new messages.
?	Show keyboard shortcuts help	Displays the keyboard shortcuts help menu within any page you’re on.

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The Google of Gadgets!

January 8, 2008, 6:49 am
Filed under: Cool, Flavor of the Day, Innovation, Marketing, Must Reads, Uncategorized | Tags: Shuangjing Fulicheng Beijing China The best way Educational Marketing 3.0 Halfpat Expat

BUG is a collection of easy-to-use electronic modules that snap together to build any gadget you can imagine. Each BUGmodule represents a specific gadget function (ex: a camera, a keyboard, a video output, etc). You decide which functions to include and BUG takes care of the rest letting you try out different combinations quickly and easily. With BUG and the integrated programming environment/web community (BUGnet), anyone can build, program and share innovative devices and applications. We don’t define the final products – you do.