identity

Yes, yes we all know that times are tough. And as of late, philanthropies have found themselves in the hot seat. The Wall Street Journal recently published an article lambasting foundations for tightening their belts too much:

“An increase in the payout rate to 6%, all in grants, would eventually add about $10 billion a year to the coffers of nonprofit organizations to the approximately $40 billion that it is estimated that foundations now give. Foundations have claimed that such an increase would jeopardize the perpetuity of their assets, yet a number of studies argue that their assets could be maintained with a payout of 7% or 8%.”

Is the Information Age at an end? With a new decade nearly upon us, some have been saying that we are now entering the Network Age– a time when men will mine for data, not oil. Ranking and figuring out how people share their sentiments will become the driving force of community management and business growth.

In the book Authenticity, the authors describe “rendering experiences” for customers as the foundation of this new emerging economy. Digital Anthropology jobs and community management tools will drive the 21st-century economy. Eventually, we’ll all climb aboard the Cluetrain and ride off into brighter, more lucrative future.

It seems like everyone these days is talking about the future. Will people still read books? Can global catastrophe be averted by not eating meat?

According to the CEO of Google, in five years we’ll be surfing through mostly Chinese content online. According to a former muckity-muck at Facebook, the future is not information, but networks. While architectural students in London envision a future made up of, “car-crash spaces that occasionally come into focus as giant mechanised spindly crustacea.”

In a recent post on GigaOm, Eric Ries asks a very simple question that relates to us here at JPS Interactive:

“So why become an entrepreneur instead of developing technology in an R&D lab? Three reasons: change the world, make customers’ lives better and create an organization of lasting value. If you only want to do one of these things, there are better options. But only start-ups combine all three.”

Yeah!!! An ideal organizational partner has just jumped on the map! Check out MediaMidrash an educational site that organizes online video content with Jewish educational curricula. They even have a section called Tanakh! Gee, I wonder whose version they plan on using…FYI Mechon Mamre is based off of the JPS 1917 public domain version.

Ours is much more au courant.

I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to receive an email requesting user testers for an online interactive Jewish educational platform. It’s like suddenly finding someone else who enjoys playing the same obscure video game. Compare our mission statements, they are strikingly similar. Ah zeitgeist!

I commend the folks behind the project for producing a succinct case for support and clear timeline. But there seems to be no mention of the technology under the hood. And for me, multimedia is more than just video, so where are the games, visualizations, and podcasts?

As some of you know, the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are known as the Days of Awe or Days of Repentance. It’s a time of introspection when you do what’s called a cheshbon nefesh or “check of your soul.”

The folks over at Reboot have used their wily branding savvy and media connections to promote this idea to a wider audience. Like a mash-up between Chabad and PostSecret, they invite users at 10Q to share online their responses to big questions raised over the last year. And they even have snappy branding:

Just in time for the New Year! At long last, we can share with the world a taste of the Tagged Tanakh (TT) prototype!

The JPS Technical Advisory Board and our Tech Team developed the Tagged Tanakh prototype from January-June of 2009. Core functionality like viewing the English version of the Jewish Bible, adding and viewing tags and remarks, as well as basic moderation and content aggregation are now operational.