Idea Lab is a group blog by innovators who are reinventing community news for the Digital Age.
Follow us on Twitter »Each Idea Lab blogger is a winner of the Knight News Challenge grant to reshape community news.
Learn more about the Knight News Challenge »
Got a new way to talk green? Go digital.
Weekly, the Beanstockd team peruses the online world for websites that share a unique perspective on environmentalism. Weekly, we are consistently surprised with the variety we find. The world of traditional media provides a limited scope on the voice of the green generation - digital broadens that view, significantly.
more »
Online, multiplayer games open the door to a new form of group collaboration that can create value. Take, for example, the Google Image Labeler, originally the brainchild of MacArthur Grant-winner Luis von Ahn. The game pits two players against each other in an image-labeling challenge, as images are displayed on the screen in succession (for example a naval orange, or a pregnant MIA) players enter the name of the image, "naval orange", and every time both players enter the same word they are both awarded points. Players engage for the entertainment value innate to the game, yet little do they...
more »
Beanstockd Players Give Feedback on Beta Test
Happy 2009! Here at Beanstockd we're kicking off the new year with a bigger and better Beanstockd Game. 2008 ended with a cliffhanger: We'd just wrapped up our first beta test and were preparing to survey players on their gaming experience.This week the results are in, and we've got answers to questions that will determine the updates we make for version 2. When we started developing the Beanstockd concept, one of the first questions we asked ourselves was: What will incentivize an individual to daily log and track his lifestyle habits? We considered several forms of incentive such as social...
more »
Beanstockd Application Internal Beta test
This week we're running a private beta test of the Beanstockd application internally; members of the Beanstockd editorial, business development and tech teams will be competing against each other as they take the game for a test drive.
more »
Tough Economic Times Put New Spin on Beanstockd Game
It's official: the US economy is in recession. The reality of our current economic crisis has hit corporations hard and is now starting to affect the American consumer. Reports on this year's Black Friday show that the annual post-Thanksgiving shopper has a new attitude, one that is cautious about what and how much is bought. According to an article in the New York Times friday&st=cse, "this year there were more shoppers than shopping bags. Even many die-hard Black Friday shoppers -- the ones who camp out on sidewalks overnight to be first through the doors -- said they were cutting...
more »
Beanstockd Is a We Media Game Changers Award Finalist
We are happy to announce that Beanstockd has been named one of 35 finalists for the We Media Game Changers Award, which recognizes people, projects, ideas and organizations leading change and inspiring a better world through media. We're honored to share the finalist list with major digital influencers such as Twitter, Digg, Huffington Post and of course the Knight Foundation. We Media defines Game Changers as individuals and projects which "inspire involvement and action through media" and we think that Beanstockd fits the bill. If you agree (or disagree!) we'd love to have your support and feedback; cast your vote...
more »
Beanstockd was initially tailored to a very specific population, and as we built out the game and shared the idea with fellow entrepreneurs we received some interesting ideas and feedback that led us to consider other verticals.
more »
Social Issue Games Get Older People Playing
Yesterday during my bi-weekly "sarah palin" "snl" google search, I stumbled upon The Political Machine Express, a downloadable version of the popular PC game The Political Machine 2008 in which, "players take on the role of campaign manager for a US Presidential candidate." Having closely followed this year's presidential campaign melodrama, I was itching to play. The Political Machine leads the surge of educational, social issue games targeted toward anyone older than young adult. Its particular appeal lies in its focus on one of the most prominent, interesting and hot social issues now: the US presidential campaign. I (the target...
more »
How Can a Game Make You Go Green?
We believe that entertainment, immersion and competition, as embodied by games in general are powerful qualities that can be harnessed to drive an individual or group of individuals to change the way they perceive social issues, to change the way they live their own lives, and to change the world itself. To give you a sense of the power of gaming, Alternate Reality Gaming celeb (yeah those exist!) Prof Jane McGonigal writes "I'm trying to make sure that a game developer wins a Nobel Prize by the year 2032." We're clearly not alone in our thinking.
more »Featured Comment
The problem is that the remedies proposed would undermine the characteristics of the Internet that have made it such a fantastic engine of innovation -- primarily the right to innovate without permission from an incumbent who may be threatened by your innovation.— bradburnham
#DontBreakTheInternet: How the Web Became a Political Force vs. SOPA
Topics
Monthly Archives
Copyright 2009, Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is
licensed under a 
Creative Commons Attribution NC SA 3.0 License.
