We launched a new activity a couple of weeks ago and we hope it will build up over time. Called Faces of Happiness, it’s an interactive process by which the Project Happiness community can create an online photo mosaic based on four key questions and on “your” reactions to them thru photography.

You play using email and your digital photos. We suggest that you play from a mobile phone, but you can use regular email if your phone doesn’t do photos.

Visit Faces of Happiness to play.

Or just go take a look at the photo mosaic.

It may not be your nightmare, but it’s mine. I’m the guy who maintains the Project Happiness websites. And whenever someone includes music in their video, I have to be concerned about whether the music has been properly checked and whether you have the rights to use it on the Internet. “Music wants to be free” they say - and yes, it’s true you can download music and then include it in your video without paying for it, but what happens afterward? If that music belongs to someone else and hasn’t been licensed (special fees - money!) for use in your video, then the owner can issue a DMCA “takedown” request, which we have to honor, and that means taking your video off the website. All your work was wasted. (And you’ll call me a jerk or something worse.)

We can’t even consider your video for public display without considering where the music came from.

How can you avoid this from the start? Simple - use podsafe music in the first place.

Have you ever used podsafe music? Please let us know where you got it and how it worked out for you. We’re going to bring up a page at Project Happiness that points to some of these resources, and we need your help and experience in locating them. Just ping music@projecthappiness.com to let us know. (Or post a comment on this article.)

Some examples to get you started:

• Podsafe music network - I haven’t used ‘em but it looks like you download for a small fee ($0.99) and then use the selection in your podcast without worrying about further royalties [also see PMN article on wikipedia]
• Stockmusic.net “Pay once. Use forever” - pricier, with a wide selection
• Podsafe Audio dot com
• Comparison chart of podsafe providers

The George Lucas Educational Foundation [GLEF] provides online information and inspiration for teachers.

Social Emotional Learning [SEL] is an important part of what’s going on in schools and is being widely discussed in the educational community. It’s also at the core of what’s happening in Project Happiness.

GLEF has a huge digital media focus and provides all sorts of online video resources and inspiration for teachers in K-12 schools. Many of these will be of interest to teachers and parents involved with our project.

One that we’d like to feature today is entitled Smart Hearts: Social and Emotional Learning. You can find lots more GLEF resources online.

Between now and the end of the calendar year we’re conducting a pilot test of the “expanded” Project Happiness. This signals the conversion of the blog from just a medium for students to a medium for expressions from the entire Project Happiness community.

For the last 12 months, three cornerstone schools have been working hard to understand lasting happiness and how they can find it for themselves and contribute to it for others.

Now it’s time to blast their findings out to a group of pilot test schools. We will include a couple of dozen teachers and their students in this test. Those teachers and their students will begin contributing to this blog very soon.

Teachers can “register” their class by contacting Maria Lineger by email. And there’s a special web page where pilot testers can get instructions on how to best participate online. Come join us now!

Sorry it took so long, but I finally managed to get the blog working the way I wanted it to work. We have all the blogs from our trip to India organized on a separate page so that it’s easier to get to. To visit it, click on “Blogs from India” under “Categories” on the side bar or click here.

Richard Gere

I was amazed by the seemingly endless layout of the city that stood before me; an everlasting wonderland for my eyes. Buildings so high it hurts your neck to try to see the top. People so many in numbers it’s like trying to count the stars in the sky. It is a city of beauty. We only had two days in NY, but it was just enough to get me hooked. The people, the food, the sights, it was all a wave of new experiences for my mind to absorb.

We had two interviews during our stay. Our first interview was with a member of the Beastie Boys, Adam Yauch. He was a very down to earth person. Being a practitioner Buddhism, he has done a lot of work through his band and his fame to promote the Free Tibet Movement. One thing I really respected about Adam Yauch was how sincere he was with his answers to us; he showed no restraint in asking for clarification in our questions. (more…)

Naomi Magid

I don’t believe there is anything more contagious than the human smile. I remember when I was a little girl, I’d test the theory in a car game called “sweet and sour”. I’d sit in the back of my mom’s Volvo wagon and smile gleefully at passerby’s in the cars alongside ours and based on their response deem them either “sweet” or “sour”. I can recall how happy it made me to see a stranger reciprocate the smile…an expression of their internal happiness. I couldn’t place why at the time, but thinking of it now I am sure it came from a place of compassion for others…that seeing another’s happiness delighted me because it touched something that I believe is engrained in many of us: a wish for universal happiness. His Holiness touches on this same subject in chapter 5 of his book. He says that even in the case of someone he has nothing to do with, when that person smiles at him, he is touched. He goes on to ask why this is. Why is it that such a basic human function on the face of a stranger can brighten one’s day? I ask the same question and I believe the only answer is that is something engrained in humans…that seeing someone truly happy can bring up that same emotion within us. Happiness is created by our surroundings, what we choose to take in. But why then is there so much suffering in the world? We spread all sorts of diseases and negative emotions instead of infecting others with our smiles. We forget that our happiness is just as powerful as our sadness. If any of you are upset with the world we live in today, I ask that you bring this awareness back and utilize it. Smile at a stranger, and see how it makes you feel, knowing that with such a small and natural action, you may have brightened that persons day. Smile when you might want to frown…you may remember how powerful it can be.