Despite Apple’s high-profile use of figures like Martin Luther King, Jr and Ghandi in their Think Different ad campaign, I find Apple’s profiles of pro users fairly conventional.

The profile of Seamus Conlan, however, is a bit more socially engaged:

In Rwanda in 1994 covering a notoriously lethal civil war, photojournalist Seamus Conlan found himself suddenly and unexpectedly reassigned, not by a magazine or newspaper editor, but by his conscience. “I was working in Rwanda as a freelance photographer doing documentation on the lost children, a very big problem and a huge story,” says Conlan. “As I was riding in the back of a truck, photographing the orphans and collecting them at the same time, I decided to take a photo of every child as a means of tracing them.”

Conlan dropped out of photojournalism to complete his self-assigned new mission, photographing 21,000 orphans over a period of a year and a half. But because the children were known by ambiguous names such as Child of Hope or No Man Should Dishonor Me — “There were no John Smiths” — Conlan completed his tracing solution by posting the photographs on billboards sorted by place of origin. “If a child came from Kigali, the parents would go to that billboard, point to the child, give the ID number to the Red Cross and take that child home.”

Conlan’s photographic tracking method is now used by all major relief agencies.

See this 2006 piece on CNN, Camera reunites Rwandan children, families, and Seamus’s own site.

Why is New York City’s census count always so low? In addition some concern about a history of census abuse targeting minorities, there’s a whole host of ways people bend the rules to live here. Folks may not want to be counted if you live in off-the-books housing, with off-the-books tenants, or do off-the-books work for a living.

And though immigration is a perennially hot-button issue, I wonder whether this latest flare-up has more to do with mid-term elections or suppressing counts (thus money and power) in non-white districts where Democrats tend to lead.

“Take the knife” or “don’t take the knife?” One of the more interesting uses of YouTube I’ve seen, this video is the first in a narrative that unfolds as you decide what the main character will do. Each decision affects the outcome of the next 30 second clip, which then prompts you to make another choice. Ultimately, however, it’s the initial decision that determines the conclusion. The videos are shot handy-cam style from the point of view of the main character, which works well here.

The project was produced by AMV BBDO for an anti-violence campaign site droptheweapons.org run by London’s Metropolitan Police Service.

The video was Osocio’s 2009 Campaign of the Year.

A friend in DC sent this photo of great poster popping up there. The English language poster is always accompanied by a Spanish language version.