With “Going Green” being such a hot topic the last couple of years, we were excited to be contacted by a company that has made it their specialty, Butterfly Energy Works.

We were happy to lend our hand to Butterfly with quite a few deliverables, including a new identity system, trade show graphics, yard signs, door hangers, print collateral, and a brand new website with a Joomla based content management system.

To learn more about Butterfly Energy Works and how they can help your residential or commercial property save money and become more energy efficient, check out their website at www.ButterflyEnergyWorks.com.

In this age of information, documenting one’s life experience has become part of daily habit. Most popularly this comes in the form of social media, where people can share every detail of their experience, from tweeting about your annoying neighbor or posting a cool link on Facebook, to blogging about government reform or personal philosophies . For those left-brainers who enjoy balancing their checkbooks and comparing spreadsheets more than waxing poetic on Facebook status updates, there are a handful of web sites around now where you can input the numbers of your life and receive back the graphic analysis of your existence.

Mint.com : Okay, so Mint.com isn’t all that new, and personal finance software isn’t all that new, but Mint.com is free and is accessible from anywhere via the web. There’s no need to sit at home with your spreadsheets and checkbooks and input your data into some stodgy banking software, because Mint does it all for you by tracking your expenditures through your online bank accounts. It categorizes the data and outputs it into pretty charts and graphs, and will also email you monthly reports as well as notify you when you’ve blown your budget.

Tweet What You Eat : Tweeting can help you lose weight! TWYE uses the concept of a food diary combined with the accessibility of twitter to let you ‘post’ your food/calorie consumption from your phone throughout the day. Unfortunately, it’s up to the user to estimate the amount of calories in a given item, making the margin of error pretty big. Still, the results can be insightful.

openeco.org : Geared mainly toward small and large organizations, OpenEco lets you input and track your energy use so that you can monitor progress over time, and also compare and share with other similar organizations. You can then use the data to report to the EPA, or get a strategy from companies like Butterfly Energy Works for reducing your carbon footprint and lowering costs!

daytum.com : Daytum is really The One To Rule Them All. You can input any sort of numerical data that you want, to track and graph in a variety of ways. This could be as useful or useless as you want it to be. A useful idea could be a community service organization garnering trust and support by tracking how many flowers planted, funds raised, food donated, etc. A less useful data set seen recently was ‘Star Wars Songs Listened To’.

Admittedly unrelated to branding and digital media, I can’t help but pass along this link to some of the craziest skateboarding tricks I have ever seen in my life. Pay attention to the amount of stairs these kids are jumping down.

Look MOM! No HANDS! (or helmets)

Are you looking for a fun cruiser this summer? Electra makes some of the coolest looking cruiser bikes out there. Whether you want something retro or just unique, they have something for everyone.

The picture above is my 2 year old Electra Straight 8, snapped by the train trestle on Grant’s Trail in St. Louis, Missouri.

Check out Electra bikes for yourself at electrabike.com.

I’d like to share with you the Social Marketing Playbook. A worthwhile read.

From the Forward…

The goal of this playbook is to help marketers:

• Provide a framework for establishing a set of clear objectives for their social marketing strategy
• Move beyond the checklist approach and provide a filter for evaluating the myriad of opportunities and platforms
• Think of social marketing as an opportunity to have a continuous, valuable exchange with their customers
• Think about extensions to amplify offline campaigns

This year during the Tour de France, Nike will chalk up to 100,000 messages of inspiration, hope and action on the same course the cyclists will ride. Part of Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong campaign, these messages will not only be seen by the cyclists, but the millions of spectators that are and will be watching the most grueling sports event in the world.

You can share your messages three different ways. Tweet @chalkbot, text ‘LIVESTRONG’ followed by your chalk message to 36453 or submit your message to Nike. If your message is approved, the Chalkbot will put it on pavement then send you a picture of it.

I was recently introduced to the charitable organization, “Pathways to Independence,” a few months ago by the Executive Director, Craig Strohbeck. After a few casual conversations with him, I was quickly reminded that there truly are a few good eggs out there that really feel passionate about helping our community. Pathways to Independence certainly falls into this category and their work with adults with learning disabilities has been helping those that need it since 1987.

After a quick review of their previous site, it was easy to get the Big Wheel team on board with lending our hand to Pathways to Independence to freshen up their web presence. The newly launched site is simple to navigate, features a WordPress content management system allowing Pathways to manage content easily, a prominent Donate / Support Us section, and an Upcoming Events section to keep the public up to speed on new activities.

Check out the new site at www.pathways2independence.com to learn more.