Tuesday, December 6, 2011

SOMETHING WORTH SHARING

Last year I sent an email to a bunch of friends and family members with a link to watch the most incredible Christmas food court flash mob ever... most appropriate as we enter this Christmas season and celebrate our Lord's birth.... so, I decided to check it out on YouTube (watched it several more times) and found that is has been viewed over 34 MILLION times since being posted late last year! That has broken ALL flash mob world records! I decided to do a little more digging to find out where it took place and learn more about the folks who made the video.
Seaway Mall
Here are links to my findings:

Where it was shot: At the Welland Seaway Mall in Welland, Ontario... about 10 miles southwest of Niagra Falls, best I can tell from the map on their FB page... I just looked at the Mall's website and on their opening page, they have a link to view the video! How cool is that?!

Group that produced the video: Alphabet Photography (They are located in Niagra Falls, Ontario, Canada with offices in the US and UK.) In 2010 alone, Jennifer Blakely (founder of Alphabet Photography) partnered with over 20 non-profit organizations, donating more than $30,000 back to these charities.
Celebrity fans of Official Alphabet Photography include: Nelly Furtado; John Schneider; Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Drew Barrymore, just to name a few.

What they do: Using photographs of architectural detail, they have chosen those details that resemble letters to spell out family names, inspirational words, etc. I had just started seeing this kind of artwork lately and I love it... Can you see the word in this image?

Since its inception in 2007, Official Alphabet® Photography has generated more than 100,000 online orders, has received worldwide media attention as far as Chile & Australia, and even Prince Charles himself called the work "smashing"!

If you go to this link on their site, you can type in a word (I typed "Christmas" to get the image above - were you able to read that?) and it will replace the letters with photos of these archectural details... if you don't particularly like one (or all) of the letters, you can click on one and a pop-up opens that shows additional photos for that letter.

What they have made available for iPhone/iPad users for FREE:
Earlier this year, Alphabet Photography developed and launched an iPhone/iPad App entitled Word Chaos. This innovative word scramble game has been downloaded more than 100,000 times in the Apple App Store. (I just downloaded it... it's going to be one of my favorites... you get photos that are scrambled and you have to unscramble them into the correct word.) Here's what the screen looks like... it's interesting that it's automatically turned the long way on my phone...
The letters represented here are: F G O... you drag each letter down into a spot below and in the right order to spell FOG and you then get another set of letters to guess the next word.
I am a true addict of word games... I have several on my iPhone and I usually have the maximum of 18 games of Words with Friends (like Scrabble) going on most of the time... I don't play it constantly or even every day... but I do think it helps keep me sharp and may be instrumental in warding off Alzheimer's... ; )

Hope you'll take a minute to watch the video (again) and let others know about it too... a great way to get the word out as to the real reason for the season!

Blessings!
~Kathy

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