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    Tuesday, February 3, 2009

    Can the greatest thing about 2008 help support E+Co?

    In 2007 I got a new puppy. He is so awesome that I declared him the best thing about 2007. I am ashamed to admit, but the best thing about 2008 was...

    the iPhone. I love my iPhone. And I don't even like technology. Everyone I know loves their iPhone. This morning a friend's facebook status read "I am going to attribute everything good that happens to me this year to my iPhone." It's silly, I know, but I can verbally ask my iPhone questions, my iPhone can give me a view from space of the place I am at that very moment, obviously I can make phone calls (starting to seem rather outdated ((the phone calls, not the iPhone)), surf the internet, listen to music, take pictures and probably a ton of stuff I don't even know about yet. I could really go on and on, but that is not the point here.

    The point is I read a blog post on the Inspired Economist this morning that talks about using the iPhone as a fundraising and advocacy tool:

    So, why wouldn't our love affair with the iPhone help us make the world a better place? Why wouldn't our obsessive usage create perfect opportunities for capturing micro-donation portals to make contributions to the micro-finance or giving sites of Kiva or Global Giving? What about a carbon calculator that lets you immediately link to an offset purchase equivalent to the inquiry? It would seem that millions of tiny donations could add up to lots of impact. It seems possible, and even more so fun.

    The author had lots of great ideas of how it might be possible to raise money using the iPhone, and I have one more:

    What about an application that allows you to use solar power to charge your iPhone (it already looks like a little solar panel, doesn't it?). Every time the application is downloaded, something like 20 cents would go to E+Co to support clean energy in developing countries. I know it seems crazy, but the iPhone can do everything else, why can't it be clean? iPhone users would be using less energy to use their toy and would also be contributing to clean energy in some of the world's poorest places.

    Is Steve Jobs back on duty yet? If so, we need to tell him about my big idea.

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