This is an extract from the draft John Grant’s new book Co-opportunity, contracted for publication with John Wiley & Sons Limited, January 2010. This extract is section 5. – Abundance.

Over a month ago in the UK, the Daily Telegraph spurred public furor after the broadsheet newspaper released details of parliamentary official’s botched expenses. MPs had apparently submitted expenses for off-limit items including the cleaning of one Member’s moat. The backlash got so intense that the Speaker of the House was forced to resign – the first to resign in over 300 years.
After this and a number of MPs promising to stand down at the next general election, it looked like everything calmed down but it looks like another British paper is not finished with its hunt. The Guardian [...]

Crowd-powered product design site quirky has generated two finished products that are up for pre-order on their site. The first, a universal wire retractor, named the Sling Back, is a stackable cord management device that can roll up and dispense up to 3 feet of cable. So far they have 103 of the 500 pre-orders necessary to make this product a reality.
Secondly, there is a souped-up version of the traditionally bland looking arm sling. The product team at quirky has added features and designs which look to be significant upgrades to both the comfort and usability of the standard sling. [...]

Bloc Party has gone the way of crowd-sourcing for their latest video. Made up of mostly fan-submitted mobile phone footage, the video for the group’s song Ares (Villains Remix) has a great raw feel, pulling together a colorful cross-section of different perspectives. Watch the results below.

[via Metro UK]

Fosters in Australia teamed up with the Taboo Group to create a beer based on the tastes of thousands of creative minds (and their tongues). Nelson beer has been brewed in Melbourne and is the product of user feedback. They held gatherings and parties and then gathered feedback from almost a thousand “creative types” regarding the look, taste, and possible names for the beer.

An article by one of the project team on Lost At E Minor describes the process more:
For the past few months, our Newcastle office has been getting stuck into the goodness that was the aptly [...]

Bicycle Built For 2,000 is a fantastic crowd-sourced performance piece composed of 2,088 different voice recordings from around the world. Volunteers were paid $0.06 to sing a short bit of the song “Daisy Bell”, which was made famous as the first ever example of musical speech synthesis. The results were synced up into a disjointed, but intriguing composition. Experience it here, and watch the video below for a detailed background of the project.
Bicycle Built for Two Thousand from Aaron on Vimeo
[via Mike Arauz]

Blogger Robert Scoble recently shared a personal health problem he’s dealing with on his Friend Feed page. His revelation prompted an interesting debate about the benefits and downsides of public problem solving. And while by being open about his condition led to suggestions on how to better handle his condition, he also wonders about the future, and value of medical privacy in our increasingly open world. Looking up information on “Doctor Internet” and commiserating with others is all well and good – but if a public trail exists about your condition, could it lead to being denied future health insurance [...]