iPhorest - Plant your virtual/real tree!!

Pls do it, if you have an iPhone! It warms my heart to know someone is doing this - and sparkles lots of micro-donation ideas that we can be pursuing with iPhone. The app costs $4.99. Not cheap. But it's not just a game. With the app, you will dig a hole to sow the seed, shake your phone to create a storm/rain and to have the sun come out, and you will repeat this so that your virtual tree can grow. You can share your tree growth with others by emailing them a picture. The app will place a dot on a map where you first launch iPhorest. So all that's virtual. Mirroring this in the real world, the Conservation Fund will plant a native tree in real life for every virtual one you planted (in the US where the Fund operates, I believe).

There's a clear parallel to Xu Bing's Project Forest. Last year, he went to Kenya and taught school children there to draw trees with words, told them that each tree they draw will "become real". The way it happens is that the kids' paintings will be auctioned online, proceeds used to plant a real tree in Kenya - so the painted trees indeed become real. As a record of the work, there will be a big LED screen (somewhere in China?) to show dots on a Kenya map where trees are planted. So, also a case of making the virtual REAL!