Rebuilding Rawand - Brick (Itafari) by Brick (Itafari)

Leave it to HARO founder Peter Shankman to be involved with a really wonderful foundation working to help Rawanda recover from years of genocide.

There will be an online fundraiser September 25-27 by the Itafari Foundation to help build the Kigali Parents Secondary School. You can sign up here to receive updates. You can buy a brick for $75 and help build the school. You can help others see that this isn't just Africa's problem. You can watch a moving video here.

Ok, no more fundraising for at least a whole week. Back to design stuff.

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Say it with Animoto

Animoto is a new, totally affordable service that allows regular non-nerds make videos easily.

Animoto, winner of a prestigious Webby Award this year, has zillions of applications. As the Guys at Animoto (that's really what they like to be called) put it:

The heart of Animoto is its newly developed Cinematic Artificial Intelligence technology that thinks like an actual director and editor. It analyzes and combines user-selected images and music with the same sophisticated post-production skills and techniques that are used in television & film.

Imagine. You're opening a luxury hotel outside of Florence and you want to impress the press. Create an Animoto video. I heard a great story about an Animoto guy proposing to his girlfriend via an Animoto video. Non-profits are encouraged to contact Animoto to make videos and there is a section on the site for making videos for educational purposes.

I'm not too smitten by these guys am I? I created a farewell video with pictures of our local Twitter group for friends moving to Austin. Speaking of Austin, Animoto won an award at SXSW. How to do it? Upload photos and choose a song. Could it be easier than that? While the video is being created, look to the right and there is a list of things to do called "distractions". A little something to busy yourself with while you wait.

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