By Lyndsay Kapurch
Assistant Account Executive

What happens when a band, a director and Google collaborate to create a modern music experience? Arcade Fire’s “The Wilderness Downtown,” a project by Chris Milk that uses HTML5 and Google Maps to create a music video customized to each viewer’s childhood.

Best viewed in Google Chrome, the site prompts users to enter the address of the home in which they were raised and images of their neighborhood appear in front of them played to the band’s The Suburbs single “We Used to Wait.”

The multi-browser movie ends with the opportunity to draft a letter to your childhood self. To begin the hyper-personal and somewhat creepy experience, visit thewildernessdowntown.com.

By Nicole Burguess
Interactive Account Manager

Today is Youth Literacy Day -- a celebration of reading, writing, and self-expression, and of all the organizations, professionals, volunteers and teachers who help children learn and love to read. To celebrate this day, 826Michigan, a non-profit organization several of us at MS&L volunteer for, is partnering with its affiliates across the U.S. for a really cool fund-raising effort -- www.826on826.org.

With mounting pressure on school systems and parents, 826 writing centers help bridge the gap for students and families by providing free, one-on-one attention and writing help to all young people ages 6 through 18.

826 chapters are asking everyone to donate $8.26 on 8/26 to support youth literacy in their city. They’ve developed a multi-pronged online strategy to get people mobilized. Here are all the ways they’ve set up for folks to donate:

• Donate via SMS with a mobile device – users can text "WRITE" to 20222 to make a one-time donation of $10 on August 26th.
  
• PayPal integration at 826on826.org that lets users donate $8.26


• Facebook Donation Application – download the app and enter your cell number to dontate $8.26

826 National is also using Facebook and Twitter channels across all regional 826 operations to get the word out. Participants can like or follow 826Michigan on:

• Facebook


• Twitter

Check out the campaign today and donate if you can. This is a great example of how regional and national non-profits are using social media to secure donations and spread the word about a cause.

To learn more about 826 National and its chapters across the US, click here.

By Kai Blum
Director, Search Engine Optimization

Is it possible for a new search engine to stand out against giant Google? Ecosia, founded a few months ago, is attempting just that by marketing itself as a green search engine. Ecosia servers run on green electricity and 80 percent of the search engine's income will be donated to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). Yahoo and Bing are providing Ecosia with search results and sponsored links. On average, each search on Ecosia saves 21.5 square feet of rain forest. The WWF said in a press release that the average Internet user could protect about 21,500 square feet of rain forest every year by using Ecosia, which is about the size of an ice hockey rink.