Thank you Stephen Colbert.

This month I’ve seen two videos of political leaders go viral in my Facebook newsfeed. One from Australia, and one from the USA.

The content of each gives you a feel of the split between the cultures:

Barry Obama (POTUS 2008 – ) sings in Harlem:

Bob Hawke (Prime Minister of Australia 1983-1991) skulls a beer at the cricket:

Humblebrag (urban dictionary): Subtly letting others now about how fantastic your life is while undercutting it with a bit of self-effacing humor or “woe is me” gloss.

Somehow winded up in the Wall St Journal twice today.

First was for work, quoted in an article on the new trends in online philanthropy. 18 words made the quote, 2 of them “Justin” and “Bieber”.

Read the whole article here, here is the section on charity: water

Like some other nonprofits, charity: water, a New York-based organization dedicated to providing clean drinking water to people in developing nations, uses traditional and nontraditional fund-raising methods for separate purposes. Big gifts from private and corporate donors fund the charity’s operations, from staff salaries to ink for the printers. That allows 100% of donations from alternative channels, such as social media and the organization’s various websites, to directly fund water projects—an assurance meant to appeal to potential small donors concerned about where their money will go.

Seventy percent of donations to charity:water come from digital channels, mainly from individuals donating on its main website, by pressing the “donate” button, or going to mycharitywater.org, where anyone can set up a fund-raising campaign and ask friends to donate.

Mycharitywater.org has raised $11.5 million since August 2009. Individual fund-raisers have done everything from running marathons to setting up lemonade stands. The average campaign has raised $1,000, says Paull Young, director of digital engagement at charity: water. “Justin Bieber had people donate for his birthday,” he says. “Little girls have friends donate $7 for their seventh birthday.”

charity: water is experimenting with a new site, waterforward.org, that also relies on people’s social connections to expand the charity’s reach, but in a different way. The site maintains what it calls a “book”—a compilation of photos of people who have had a $10 donation to the site made in their name by someone they know. Once a person is in the book, he or she can bring in any number of other people by making a $10 contribution for each of them. Those people can then do the same, and so on. In effect, every donor becomes a fund-raiser.

The site is designed to make donating fun and engaging, and to allow donors to see that their contribution goes beyond the amount they can give, since each donation can lead to so many more donations, says Michael Birch, a major fund-raiser and contributor to charity: water who has helped the organization build its websites.

The second was more amusing. For 4th of July this year I embarked on a Texas trip with a bunch of rugby mates. For the occasion, I was in search of a stars’n'stripes Speedo… a surprisingly difficult item to acquire.

I turned to Zaarly, an awesome iPhone app turning commerce on its head, and a few hours and $50 was delivered a US flag speedo by a very confused personal shopper.

That same confused personal shopper appeared in a WSJ video today talking about his experience with Zaarly… his most awkward moment (you guessed it), my speedo.

Watch from 1.40:

I was walking down my street the other day and noticed this lost cat poster 2.0 lining Avenue B – a QR code on a home made poster!

(apologies for double entendre in the headline… couldn’t resist)

Take 5 minutes in your lunch break today to check out Bnter – a new social site created to curate and share interesting conversations.

It looks a little something like this:

Sign up. Follow some people (follow me!). Have a laugh. Add your own.

I’m an early user, and a fan, of the site. Founded by Lauren Leto here in NYC it has some serious brains behind it, and a small but loyal (and growing) following. Bnter right now reminds me of Twitter back when having 100 followers was a HUGE deal.

Last year I posted a couple of videos of my rugby team, the mighty Village Lions, in action – both on the field, and trying our hand at Portugese Bullfighting while over there on tour.

Not only has that video gone viral on Deadspin, we also just found out it was featured on TV in Colombia:

Surreal. But I’m glad I can check ’15 minutes of fame for wrestling livestock’ off my bucket list.

My boss Scott just took a handful of big charity: water donors to Africa.

There’s nothing like being able to say thank you to our supporters – so check out the video we made for Chris Sacca, featuring the hilarious Kristen Bell.

Update for Chris Sacca from northern Ethiopia. from charity: water (special donors) on Vimeo.

Via the awesome Azita Ardakani, check out this 1994 video of Katie Couric and her fellow news anchors grappling with the @ symbol and Internet concept.

And Stephen Davies adds another pearler via the comment section:

There are two golden rules that underpin my approach to all things digital:

1. People are inherently good, and will do good if you let them
2. People are inherently lazy, and will be lazy if you let them