Nevada City, CA – Velocity7, Nevada City’s leading marketing communications agency, has launched joidesresolution.org, a major new educational initiative of the Washington, D.C.-based Consortium for Ocean Leadership. The website tells the story of the JOIDES Resolution, a former oil exploration ship now in use as one of the world’s premier tools for scientific climate research. The JOIDES Resolution—or JR, as it is known on board—drills core samples from the ocean floor. Scientists use these cores to study the history of Earth’s climate.

The new website is deeply interactive and integrated with top social networking tools. The site provides teachers with a plethora of classroom resources and activities, and appeals to kids with videos and games. Users can communicate with scientists on board and read frequent updates from scientist and crew member bloggers. Visitors can sign up to receive blog feeds in their RSS reader, or for a monthly email newsletter also designed by Velocity7. In the fall, the Consortium for Ocean Leadership will sponsor two national contests for students through the website. The contests were designed and planned by Velocity7.

“We think we took this site to a whole other level with the integration of social networking tools.” states Velocity7 CEO, Robert Trent. “A teacher might read an interesting blog entry with an embedded YouTube video, and then share that video directly with her teaching buddies on Facebook and Twitter. All that functionality is just a couple of clicks away”

The launch of the website coincides with the relaunch of the ship itself. The JR went to sea on March 5, 2009, after over two years of retrofits to the ship and its science facilities. The ship is operated by the Consortium for Ocean Leadership, a nonprofit organization representing 95 public and private ocean research education institutions, aquaria and industry. Acting of behalf of these leading institutions, Ocean Leadership works to advance research, education and sound ocean policy.

More productive

Trent, 42, has been in the building on Broad Street for five years. Sheldon, 30, who owns No Problem IT consulting, has been in the building two and a half months; and Smith, 39, who owns Green Smith Consulting, has been in the building one month.

“I didn’t need an office, technically, but it helps to have human beings around you,” Smith said.

Smith and Sheldon use sleek laptops; Trent and his associate use desktops.

The office has a kitchen and a bathroom around the corner, but no copy machine — that’s done down the street, in an effort to keep waste at a minimum.

The “solopreneurs” are working to save some green — both money and otherwise — by using one office.

“We all need to make a living,” Trent said. “We’re all businesses with local, national and international clients, and we all want a quality of life, and this adds to it.”

Sheldon, who does troubleshooting, network administration and installation, and Web design and development, used to work at home.

“I think it’s fair to say that my productivity has increased 250 percent. I get so distracted at home.

“It feels very good to say ‘I have an office,’” Sheldon added.

The setup is not unusual in larger cities — nor in Nevada City, which has several examples of similar work arrangements.

Smith joked that the office is so user-friendly that all one needed to work there is a roll of toilet paper and an Internet connection.

But they really need intangibles, too.

“There’s a culture that has to be a part of it,” Trent said. “If you have a party and you have crackers and Cheez Whiz, it doesn’t mean it’s going to be a big, good party. It has to be a symbiotic relationship.”

So far, so good.

There is something really cool happening in Nevada County.  Its call Nevada County Solopreneurs,  We have a Google Group going and I think you should join if the description below fits your fancy.

Freelancers, consultants, “solopreneurs”, and small business owners of all kinds in Nevada County. If you’re not a solopreneur, but you’re interested in what we’re doing, you’re welcome to join in too. The mailing list will contain information on future meetings, presentations, and events.

I’m tired of paying Verizon $1 every time I need directory assistance.  My sister passed me a link and phone number for Google’s Free Service.

Try calling 1-800-466-4411

Or going to www.google.com/goog411

The Simply Shiny blog featured an interview with Sadie about Lollishops yesterday, as part of their series on the best online artisan venues.

This is just an example of the great exposure Sadie has been skillfully drawing to her online marketplace (Lollishops) and its participants through her savvy use of social networking and blogs.

Check out the interview here.

Lollishops, in beta and soon to go live, is a big part of our time and focus this pre-Thanksgiving week at Velocity7—and we’re excited that it’s turning out so well. What’s so great about Lollishops? Besides its conceptual mastermind, frou-frou artist and social networking whiz Sadie Lou (check out her blog too)?

What’s exciting is that we’ve built, from scratch, a functional, expandable portal for individual artists to sell their own work online. Incorporating PayPal, we found a mechanism for e-commerce transactions to take place. Then we built a system where individuals can develop and promote their own brand entirely within the Lollishops framework—building community and generating buzz in the process. And with Sadie’s expert social networking skills already proven, Lollishops is sure to be a hit.

Lollishops is in beta now. Stay tuned for the launch. Happy Thanksgiving!

Alliteration is fun, no?

Lollishops is set to launch!

We’re all pretty excited over here about Lollishops going beta. Lollishops is a “frou frou” friendly site born from the desire for a more shopper friendly, easy to use, community-oriented place for vendors to sell their handmade wares and vintage items. Lets go shopping!

Visit the Lollishops blog here.

On NPR yesterday,Talk of the Nation featured guest Don Tapscott, author of Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World. Tapscott believes that Gen Y’s highly-developed collaboration and information-sharing skills are revolutionary. During the TOTN broadcast, Tapscott argues that people who’ve grown up with the internet’s information glut have far better “BS detectors” than previous generations do. The need to generate practical info from a source that’s not inherently credible has forced the development of our processing and synthesizing skills.

Further, Tapscott says that this information processing capacity makes negative and misleading political advertising dramatically less effective in swaying the opinions of those under 30.

I found this argument interesting in relation to the misleading Yes on 8 banner ads that are all over MySpace. These ads suggest that Sens. Obama and Biden support Prop 8, the constitutional amendment that would eliminate the right to same-sex marriage. I’m sure they’ll succeed in confusing some voters, but it’s widely known that Obama and Biden are opponents of Prop 8–and a big reason that this fact is so well known is the widespread dissemination of No on 8 banners featuring Obama on blogs and social networking sites.

I think if we see Prop 8 lose by a close margin tonight we might want to thank the Yes on 8 campaign for deciding to unleash obviously misleading banners on MySpace, one of the epicenters of the BS awareness revolution.

And why do you keep inviting me to yours?

Seems like every day I get three new Facebook requests from acquaintances and friends offering me some kind of animated plant or Pokemon-meets-Lego character if I will only join this (lil) Green Patch application. 

So, apparently, it’s an extremely viral RPG-style web game that brings its users back for so many repeat page-views, it makes buckets of bucks in ad revenues both for its two creators and their charity of choice, The Nature Conservancy. The game is designed to cultivate its own popularity, because users have to earn GreenBucks to play by sending gifts to other Facebook users–often to those who haven’t started playing yet. Hence the incessant invitations annoying me.

The environmental charity aspect of the game is as much of an appeal of it as the addictive role-playing quality. It’s the same appeal made by The Rainforest Site, plus it’s a game.

Normally I avoid Facebook apps like the plague. I’ve always thought Facebook looks way better than MySpace, and big graphical applications like Superheroes and Superpoke! tend to be really ugly. I guess the lesson of (lil) Green Patch is that people don’t care about aesthetics like I do if they have a couple substantive reasons–gameplay + environment–to keep coming back.