Lemonade happening and park

Via Cool Hunting a 2:08 min. clip showing the world's largest lemonade stand, an incredible park built on an elevated railroad track, sharing the story of a traditional workshop based in NYC.

Direct link to the clip on YouTube

Transcript:

"The tank goes on the top of the building and the water is fed down through gravity to provide the people of New York ... to wash and shower with, to fight fires, and tack life and property.

Today we are erecting the world's largest lemonade stand, which will serve for the grand opening of the High Line.

The High Line is the City's newest park, an incredible park built on an elevated railroad track, that had been abandoned for many years and it stretches the west side of Manhattan.

We were opening the High Line just a few weeks ago, and this is sort of the first big public celebration. We have all kinds of stuff in this happening, this is just puppet festival. Behind me you'll see, a construction of what will be the world's largest lemonade stand. A lemonade tank containing 15 hundred gallons of natural lemonade

When we had this idea of a lemonade stand and when we took it a step further and started thinking about the water tanks there was really only one person to call, which is Rosenwach. They are the company, they've been doing this for generations.

We've been in business for over a 100 years ... I'm the fourth generation and my son is the fifth generation, and we started in the late 1890's here. Our buildings are over 20 stories and they really require an artisian well top with scrubby fed down and best we have in wooden tank.

But the tanks that we make on the roof obviously hold water, and the tank here will hold lemonade, and it goes together like a traditional barrel.

The water tank after the walls is an icon of New York, and what better than to provide the lemonade for the grand opening than a traditional New York water tank."

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Learn more about the High Line Park Project: according to wikipedia this started as a project in 2004 with the New York City committing $ 50MM to establish the proposed park, which was inaugurated and opened to the public in the summer of 2009. (June 8)

Customer Creative Complaint

Via YouTube: link to the video

It seems they finally got the company's attention... See: Link to Dave Carroll's "statement" thanking the supporters and United ...

Of course you need the talent and the creativity, not to mention the production resources of these guys... read Dave Carroll sharing the whole story. Way to go to respond to customer service lousy service and lack of attention.

A mere discount offer not made effective, can't even begin to compare with the above story... still, the lousy service frames are similar: can someone please think of a creative way to educate Vodafone that it's NOT cool to have to spend 1 hour & circa 8 calls throughout the day -their service went down as informed by their call center- talking to different people (did I say talking? think tough negotiation...) to "make them aware" that they did offer a 6 months 30% discount effective "immediately". It's now July, and my invoice has reflected the discount only one month after many calls. Yesterday once more they "confirmed" they'll do something about it... subject "to approval by the finance department! Achievement: finally got a claim ref. number.

Students report most teleco's locally play this game and other tricks "normally". It's easy to verify that it takes at least 3 calls resulting in a catch 22 situation if you want to report this to the authorities:

The Telecommunications Customer Service Office, www.usuariosteleco.es (or call 901 336 699 which is a paid call via Teleco's) won't speak to you unless you give them a written proof by the teleco (which they know you won't get because it's all done via call centers...) They inform you should go to the Oficina Municipal de Consumo, or call @ 012 and pay the teleco's again to learn that Consumer's Official Rep. for the County wont speak to you if it's about teleco's..., they say you "can go" to the Dirección General de Telecomunicación... in person, 9.00 - 12.00 hrs. This a Gila joke?(*) You need an electronic signature to do any on-line... for which you need to get in touch with the local council... here we go again: no good if you're not using windows...etc.

From a customer's perspective, the so called protocol via numberless call center transfers keeps you "entertained" by operators who will ask for same data again and again during the same call, ID, address in full and you name it... me guesses: betting you'll eventually give up the discount. What have they gained? You stay hooked maybe for another 3-4 months... eventually confirming your desire to cancel the contract. That smart? Not for Telefonica de España (is it's true they want to improve customer loyalty?), lost me as a customer after numberless "calls" to report lousy service regarding my associated domain name and related mail ops., which was hosted via one of their companies. I did achieve several claim ref. nbrs. ... to no avail.

(*) Link to video clip of the artist.

Note: Observing Gila in the social & historical context it belongs... many years have gone past and still, we find some of those cultural trait's alive and kicking today, many years later. (social semiosis informing). If you want to learn more, there's an entry in Wikipedia but in Spanish only. What's even better it the debate on given information reflected here.

(!) edited to include updates: July 14, seems the story now has landed in CNN, Huffingtonpost, boingboing, nbcchicago, wikipedia.org, Fox News, amongst others... and last but not least for they published first on July 8th, (clip went up on the 6th) CBCnews.ca

(!) the count on YouTube today July 14th: 2,716,092 views and some nice replies via Twitter.com/UnitedAirlines

The Computer HIstory Museum

Amazing trip through time and evolving "Thinking Tools" visiting The Computer History Museum, courtesy of Rocktboom: daily internet culture Blog and YouTube Channel.

Ellie Roundtree from Rocketboom visits the Computer History Museum.

What a wonderful museum... See the Exhibit:

Internet History to learn more about the transformation and timeline of what we now know as "the internet", which became part of the infrastructure we can't go without. So much so, that we now take the internet and access to web content, to be a human right. Author Nicholas Carr explored a historical analogy with electrical utilities replacing in-house generators in his book: The Big Switch. Rewiring the world, from Edison to Google. (We read excerpts of it in class with adult English students and they loved the stories it brings forth).

Pity that Carr prefers to support Encyclopaedia Britannica, by hitting on Wikipedia and cricizing the quality of volunteer Web 2.0 information, and the blogosphere... Reading the Wikipedia page on Nicholas Carr, it informs that Carr became a member of the Editorial Board of Advisors of Encycloaedia Britannica in 2008. In any case, his critique was dealt with constructively by Wikipedia's leaders, and has therefore contributed to some quality improvements. Proof that: debating different perspectives in civilized ways can pave the way to new findings and improvements.

Wikipedia also leads us to another interesting debate, that of Nicholas Carr and author Yochai Benkler: well... more like a bet really. So far blogging has proved not to be "a fad", quoting The Guardian: "So the wager is half-on. Bookmark Carr's site for 2011. If, of course, blogging proves not just to be a fad." 2011 is not too far away. What do you think about this: will peer production processes or will price-incentivized systems... lead the majority of the contents on the web? in any case... "does it matter"?

Letting it Shine Behind the Scene...

Honda Insight - Let It Shine from Honda on Vimeo.

*Edited on April 30 to add link to transcript*

Really nice work... watch the making of it. Awesome, amazingly inspiring...

"The Insight is sort of Honda's latest hybrid, it's really good looking, it's fun to drive..."
"it's going to be the most affordable hybrid on the market"
"they invest in the belief that people are fundamentally good"

Furthermore... I love the way Vimeo has facilitated embedding options, and .. well... it just rocks!

Honda Insight - The Making of "Let it Shine”