Video Explaining the Subprime Mortgage Time-Bomb

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

A short animation explaining the system of borrowing and lending that led to the current financial meltdown:

The goal of giving form to a complex situation like the credit crisis is to quickly supply the essence of the situation to those unfamiliar and uninitiated.

Created by Jonathan Jarvis.

Narration by John Levoff.

Music by Brandon Au - a.k.a - DJ Skwint

Update: Useful links for the global economic meltdown.

 A Great Recession Guide - a mini-guide to the lighter side of the current, prolonged recession.

Google Tip Jar - a collection of money saving tips submitted and ranked by the web community.

Copyright Crunch Leads to Pirates Prisons Project

A radical new project designed to punish and reform illegal downloaders of copyrighted music could prove to be a huge money spinner for tech savvy investors. The Pirates Prisons Project aims to capitalize on the current copyright crunch by building 100s of 1000s of new prisons to house the unlimited supply of illegal internet users. If proposed legislation to criminalise billions of music fans goes ahead, the high probability of re-offending represents a once-in-a-lifetime investment  opportunity to secure real financial gains for PPP shareholders.

The ingenious shares scheme relies on the music industry's desire for economic dominance. However critics of doom and bust policies believe the music industry's strategy of using a failed business model is enevitably doomed to failure (See links below). Only (prison) time will tell.

Prison/Copyright Reform Related
Two articles I wrote in 2006 warning of the impending copyright crunch:

What if The Beatles had used Creative Commons Licenses?
British Record Industry Loses Fight to Extend Copyright

Avatars Poll for Personal Photos Vs Abstract Designs

Do you feel more of a connection when you see a face on someone's avatar or don't you care what their avatar is? You can see what other people think and cast you own vote at this ask500people poll.

Perspctv - Real-Time Search Comparisons

Perspctv is a dashboard for comparing and monitoring search queries in real-time. The service also provides data comparison widgets of your search results to put on your webpages. The widget shown here compares today's Google search volume, news and blog mentions for the keywords Google, Microsoft, Yahoo.

Sprint: Plug into Now

A futuristic talking dashboard and web mashup for what's happening in the world right now. Full of real-time widgets providing facts and measurements on a range of data. This is a fun promotion for Sprint's mobile Internet service. To see the full interface visit Sprint: Plug into Now

Revolution X - Political Video Mashup

The trailer for an upcoming documentary about the 2008 presidential campaign. More political video mashups available at ThePartyParty.com and here's the YouTube Channel.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Animation created by Seth Brau. Produced by Amy Poncher. Music by Rumspringa courtesy Cantora Records. www.humanrightsactioncenter.org

Overrated Vs Underrated Technology Products

The 10 most overrated products and their comparative underrated alternatives as noted by Darren Gladstone for PC World.

Includes mobile interfaces, gaming platforms, portable computers, online music services, social networks, media players, productivity suites, image editors, Windows OS, and video distribution.

The World Wants Obama for President

BetaVote 2008 is an experimental online polling site that lets people from any country submit their vote for a candidate in the 2008 US Presidential Election. At the time of writing the first several thousand votes place Obama well in the lead with 80.87% of the vote count, McCain has 10.88% and Other 8.25%.

It's a small but interesting sample bearing in mind the consequences of this election will affect the rest of the world. Consider the first Betavote poll in 2004 which finished Kerry 421,770 (88%), Bush 55,242 (11%).

My SpyPoint lens currently features some real-time tracking tools for the 2008 presidential election. You can also share and view sites with auto-updating crowdstreams for other types of social data.

Photo by pixarman
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License

  

Print The Truth - Distributed Political Poster System

PRINT THE TRUTH is a blog offering poster designs about the 2008 US presidential election. The satirical designs have a pro Democrat Party spin designed to make you think about the election candidates, their opinions, facts and follies.

PRINT THE TRUTH is the first distributed political poster system in history. Every day until the election, we give you a free poster. Print as many as you can, paste em up. Put them on the office fridge, the cars in the lot, on your vacuum cleaner, wherever you can."

With 100,000 people printing 10 posters a day, we can hang 60 million important messages between now and election day. Power to the printer, power to the people.

You can track election developments and other real-time crowdstreaming data at SpyPoint

Wikipedia: Political parties in the United States