The Story of Bottled Water

The Story of Bottled Water, releasing March 22, 2010 on storyofbottledwater.org, employs the Story of Stuff style to tell the story of manufactured demand—how you get Americans to buy more than half a billion bottles of water every week when it already flows from the tap. Over seven minutes, the film explores the bottled water industry’s attacks on tap water and its use of seductive, environmental-themed advertising to cover up the mountains of plastic waste it produces. The film concludes with a call to ‘take back the tap,’ not only by making a personal commitment to avoid bottled water, but by supporting investments in clean, available tap water for all.

Graph Your Inbox

Graph Your Inbox is a Google Chrome extension that allows you to graph Gmail activity over time. You can use it to visualize your communication with friends, your Facebook activity, when you purchased items on Amazon or how often you use certain words or phrases. We provide the same search functionality used by Gmail, but instead of a list of messages we show you a graph of your email trends over time.

Download it here.

Note: Graph Your Inbox is in no way associated with Gmail. Gmail is a registered trademark of Google, Inc. This extension does not save any personal information and does not send any personal information to any server. It does not request or record your email password. This extension does not modify the Gmail website or your email in any way.

via flowingdata.com

How Much Do You Know About Video Games?

Computer and video games have come a long way since the days of Pac-Man and Frogger, and so have those who play them. Today's video games are enjoyed by players all ages and backgrounds and parents are increasingly involved in making sure that the ones their children play are age-appropriate. Here's a list of some key statistics related to the video game industry, some of which might really surprise you!

via www.esrb.org

Is Information Overload Over-Hyped?

Have we become a society of whiners when it comes to information overload? The problem is that people don't have tools to filter information down to the most useful bits with minimal effort. The only choices we have right now are to take everything through our various media sources or shut ourselves off from potential opportunities. Of course that's a false choice because when we let ourselves be inundated by information we miss things anyway--time is the ultimate arbiter of attention.

via www.fastcompany.com