Just a very short post.

5050box was on siiimple — a minimalist design gallery for simple lover’s of design. Nice. And thanks! I will change the site a bit to make it clearer and more search engine-friendly. But it will stay simple… siiimple.

And:

I got 121 hands now on http://5050box.com/hands. The hands really come from all over the world already. Until now most of them are from Germany (of course) and Europe but there are also quite a few from the US, Australia, India, Venezuela, etc. I love that!

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1. Flickr, 144 hands and virtual-world-shouts
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3. The first 25 hands

On April 14th the actor Hugh Jackman announced on Twitter:

“I will donate 100K to one individual’s favorite non profit organization.Of course,you must convince me why by using 140 characters or less.”

He got thousands of tweets (messages on Twitter) with suggestions for charities. On April 24th he wrote:

“Thank you for all of your passionate responses. I have chosen www.charitywater and www.operationofhope. Keep your generous spirit flowing!”

Hugh Jackman decided to split the $100.000. Both charity: water and Operation of Hope got $50.000 each. Brilliant! I think this act of generosity just made Hugh Jackman even better looking, sexier, a great father and husband and simply shows that he is a good guy standing on the right side of life. Thanks, Hugh! There is also a radio interview with him about his donation. Please visit Mashable to listen to it.

Reader of this blog may have seen some videos of charity: water. Today I added new videos of Operation of Hope on http://5050box.com, video on  box #10 and box #11. Operation of Hope is a non-profit medical foundation that donates surgical procedures to children in developing countries born with facial deformities. More about Operation of Hope on Oprah.com.

Video on box #10 on 5050box from Operation of Hope about a boy named Beloved:

Video on box #11 on 5050box from Mari Mora, a real ANGEL for Operation of Hope:

If you know of other charity videos on YouTube that I can integrate into 5050box to raise awareness for their cause, please send me a message or twitter me @5050box (Twitter.com/5050box)!

Via Twitter I got to know about 5Multiplied, a charity that is going to drill the first well in Mozambique to provide people with clean and safe drinking water. In 11 days they are leaving for Mozambique. Send them some love via Twitter @5Multiplied (Twitter.com/5Multiplied). I embedded their video on box  #9!

Video on box #9 on 5050box from 5Multiplied:

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1. charity: water, Twestival, iJustine and a lot of people that do care
2. YouTube NonProfit raises $10.000 for charity: water – in one day
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During the last two weekends I have built another (micro-)site:
The 5050box // hands project.

It is just a fun project. On this site I want to collect 5050 hands to create a huge mosaic. As soon as 5050 pictures of hands are uploaded a limited edition of the finished mosaic will be sold. 100% of the profit will be donated to support charities.

I came up with the idea a while ago and thought it might be nice to visualize hands working together creating something big. Hand in hand. Just like I have mentioned in the video intro on 5050box that “5050box is also in your hands” it is the same with this project. I need helping hands: Your hands!

Just take a picture of your hands and upload it to http://5050box.com/hands. Thank you!

Behind the site is a tiny CMS that enables me to sort out strange pictures and create the mosaic dynamically. It is easy to handle and can be done quickly. So you can watch the mosaic grow every day!

There is also a facebook group for the 5050box // hands project so you can invite your friends to upload their hands too. For more information please visit the hands project information page.

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2. The first 25 hands
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5050box recently joined Twitter. Many others have done that too and quite a few thought it would be nice to organise 202 Twestivals, festivals around the world, “bringing together Twitter community for an evening of fun and to raise money and awareness for charity: water”.

“Charity: water is a non profit organization bringing clean, safe drinking water to people in developing nations. They give 100% of the money raised to direct project costs, funding sustainable clean water solutions in areas of greatest need. Just $20 can give one person in a developing nation clean water for 20 years.”

iJustine helped organising the Twestival in LA. She has a blog, is on Twitter and has a YouTube-Channel, of course. And: She made a video telling her users (the world) that she cares and posted it on her blog. This is her video:

In her video she asked others to created videos for charity: water too. And they did she got more than 180 video responses. Videos like these:

Video by killert00thbrush.

Video by KnileExclusive.

Video by mandajayne017.

Video by nsstv.

Video by mathcristo.

I love it. These are videos about something important. Videos by people that do care — from all over the planet. This is what 5050box should be about. Thank you all!

I have have embedded some videos to 5050box.com. iJustine’s video is on 5050box #176, a few responses to that video can be found starting with #177. Check them out and consider donating to charity: water if you like a video! If you have a YouTube account just click on the YouTube logo and comment on their videos.

The organizers of the Twestivals wanted to raise at least $1.000.000 for charity: water. I hope they got $2.000.000. If you have not donated to charity: water already you can go to their site on charitywater.org or donate directly from 5050box.

If you want to submit a video for another charity just go to suggest and become a 5050box ANGEL. It is easy and feels good. ;)

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Related posts:

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3. charity: water. The Budde family well

Subscribing RSS-feeds is a nice and comfortable way to get the latest news of a web page. RSS is often used with blogs but not only blogs can handle RSS to inform users via a comfortable feedreader update. 5050box.com has RSS built in too.

You will find the link in the lower left corner of your browser. Click on it, subscribe and your feedreader will inform you about 5050box updates. This means you will never miss an update of bright and shiny 5050box videos. 5050box RSS-feed.

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Related posts:

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I have just added OpenStreetMap.org on 5050box.com.

This video from ItoWorld illustrates the intense growth of OpenStreetMap in 2008. Make sure you watch it full-screen.

Gaza

Until a few days ago I did not think that OpenStreetMaps.org could be a good alternative to other map providers like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo or any other commerical provider. Some areas on OpenStreetMaps are simply not mapped well enough. But some certainly are:  I stumbled across a blog entry on aidworkerdaily.com in which Jon Thompson compared Gaza maps of Google Maps, Microsoft Virtual Earth and OpenStreetMaps. The maps are used to provide better data sets for humanitarian groups in this area.

Google Maps seemed to be the “clear winner”. But the first comment pointed out that the map of OpenStreetMap has been updated in the last 48 hours and more was on the way! If you want to compare it yourself, Frank Sauter has an excellent site to compare Google Maps with OpenStreetMap. Drag the slider in the upper right corner and you will see that OpenStreetMap seems to be the winner now. In case you can or want to help please go to:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Palestine_Gaza

Laafi

Another great example to use OpenStreetMap to help can be found here on Helge Fahrnberger’s blog (in German). He asks his readers to help him mapping Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, Africa. Helge supports an austrian non-profit organisation called Laafi that finances projects to improve healthcare in Burkina Fasa. He also made a video about how to help (in German):

OpenStreetMap Ouagadougou

Again, you can compare the area with Frank Sauters site: Gaza map comparison Google Maps vs. Openstreetmap. Impressive, isn’t it?

I got a gps-logger as a present last week… I am hooked.

This is how OpenStreetMaps can be displayed on 5050box.com:

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Related posts:

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5050box is now on Facebook, too. If you want to support an organisation you can post your YouTube URL there as well. The link to the facebook group is:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=52395138016.

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In November I sent an email to Robert Basic, a German blogger writing ALSO (among many other topics) about start-ups to get some feedback on my idea – 5050box.com. It seems that he liked the intro of my site very much and wrote about it on his (German) blog.

The reactions were… well, different. Some liked the idea but most of them disliked the high prices. Prices from moon. They were right!

The reason for this was quite simple. I actually DO plan to set up a company that gives away 50%. It is not a joke or a nifty marketing gag. So ending up with maybe 10.000€ would not take this idea anywhere.

And there is another thing that both you and I did not like. It is the fact that 5050box would take all the money. You might say “It is not transparent” and a friend of mine said “It is stupid”. And I say “It is not transparent and stupid”.
“Not transparent” is clear – it may seem like 5050box takes it all. “Stupid” is easily explained, as well. The friend I mentioned above is a tax counsellor and pointed out that the tax burden would be extremely high considering the actual profit. I knew that and raised the price… Imagine 5050box sold one of the 5050boxes and let’s say the box costs €1000.  €500 go to a charity organisation and €500 go to 5050box. Tax has to be paid for the taxable income of €1000 – not €500. The money goes to a nonprofit organisation and 5050box can deduct 10% so it would be €900 5050box has to pay tax – not €500 (German Wikipedia 01/09). An additional tax on €400 (40%). Stupid.

Anyway.

I have changed that. When buying a 5050box you simply agree to donate the same amount of money to a charity organisation. So the price for a 5050box was cut, of course. That’s it. It IS transparent and NOT stupid.

And there is something else. I have integrated YouTube. 5050box ANGEL videos to introduce charity organisations are now hosted on YouTube to cut bandwidth traffic costs drastically. So even if 5050box does not sell any 5050box the site will be fully functional to hopefully help charities all over the world.

5050box ANGEL? Yes, there are two different types of videos on 5050box. 5050box ANGEL videos introduce charities and 5050box SPONSOR videos to support introduced charities and 5050box.

This is what “5050box ANGEL”-boxes look like now:

1. The black part of the 5050box shows you the 5050box ANGEL video and general information.

2. The white part of the 5050box enables you to interact. You can

• get further information about the charity,
• locate it (it is always nice to see where your money goes!) or
• buy a 5050box to support both the organisation and 5050box.com.
• And of course, you can click on the YouTube logo to go to the YouTube-page of the video and leave a comment.

I am still thinking about an easy(!) way to directly donate to introduced charities. If you have an idea, please leave a comment or send me a message!

Robert. Thank you for your feedback!

Until now I only added some “professional” videos from charities. If you want to see your video on 5050box just send me a message.

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5050box has been launched.

This is the very first post on 5050box.com and I do hope that many will follow.
You might wonder if you find more information about me. This is not about me. It is about us. About you, me and them. Because together… We can.

We need your help. Rockn roll.
Daniel

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