Every Dot Connects

If you followed the story of the Frozen Pea Fund from the beginning, you know that just before Susan Reynolds was diagnosed with invasive breast cancer, David Neff of the American Cancer Society had asked me to do some pro bono work for the Society on a new project. SharingHope.tv has now launched, and I’m very happy I was able to be part of the effort to let people know about this new Web community created to help connect cancer survivors, their friends and family members.

David, who is director of Web and interactive strategy for ACS, was kind enough to sit down with me recently and talk about the origins of the idea for SharingHope.tv, and why they decided to build it with Ruby on Rails and enable OpenID. (My video skills obviously need a lot of work. Note to self: buy a tripod for the Flipcam.)

* upload videos, photos, music or artwork
* add free background music from independent artists
* view content, make comments, and share it with others
* embed videos on their own blogs or MySpace and Facebook pages
* store twice as much video content as YouTube
* log in with an existing OpenID
* create an OpenID using ACS Passport

For more information, read the news release. Susan Reynolds has started posting videos on SharingHope.tv, sharing information she wishes she’d had access to before her surgery, such as this one where she talks about the process of making treatment decisions.