Call us crazy, but it looks as if the people at Great Harvest have managed to pull off what the rest of us only fantasize about. They've built an organization that practically runs itself

Chase Jarvis recently posted about his Create-Share-Sustain paradigm. I’ve referenced it, linked to it, quoted it several times this past year. In that paradigm, the notion of sustaining the create-share cycle is generally seen as a financial one. It’s the grease on the wheels that allows you to keep going – whether that’s working at Starbucks or a day-job you love, or even making photographs as a career itself. But there are other means by which we sustain ourselves. Man, Jesus once said, does not live by bread alone. Of course, He was referring to prayer, a sustenance of the soul. Art too sustains the soul. But how do you sustain art?

Once again, The Times Magazine looks back on the past year from our favored perch: ideas. Like a magpie building its nest, we have hunted eclectically, though not without discrimination, for noteworthy notions of 2009 — the twigs and sticks and shiny paper scraps of human ingenuity, which, when collected and woven together, form a sort of cognitive shelter, in which the curious mind can incubate, hatch and feather. Unlike birds, we can also alphabetize. And so we hereby present, from A to Z, the most clever, important, silly and just plain weird innovations we carried back from all corners of the thinking world. To offer a nonalphabetical option for navigating the entries, this year we have attached tags to each item indicating subject matter. We hope you enjoy.

Creativity is commonly thought of as a personality trait that resides within the individual. We count on creative people to produce the songs, movies, and books we love; to invent the new gadgets that can change our lives; and to discover the new scientific theories and philosophies that can change the way we view the world. Over the past several years, however, social psychologists have discovered that creativity is not only a characteristic of the individual, but may also change depending on the situation and context. The question, of course, is what those situations are: what makes us more creative at times and less creative at others? One answer is psychological distance.

Reading a newspaper, I saw a picture of birds on the electric wires. I cut out the photo and decided to make a song, using the exact location of the birds as notes (no Photoshop edit). I knew it wasn't the most original idea in the universe. I was just curious to hear what melody the birds were creating. I sent the music to the photographer, Paulo Pinto, who I Googled on the internet. He told his editor, who told a reporter and the story ended up as an interview in the very same newspaper. Here I've posted a short video made with the photo, the music and the score (composed by the birds).

“Once you develop a style and become known for a particular kind of work – turn in the other direction, stop being formulaic and re-invent yourself”

Being a professional creative might seem like the ultimate dream job for some--and for many of us it is. But it ain't always easy. In fact, staying inspired is really hard work. I recently received the above tweet (to @chasejarvis) and it got me thinking. Here's 9 things I've done over the course of my 10+ year career that have helped me overcome those times when uninspired or stale work invades:

Brushes is a natural media painting application designed from scratch for the iPhone and iPod touch. Featuring an advanced color picker, several realistic brushes, extreme zooming, and a simple yet deep interface, it is a powerful tool for creating original artwork on your mobile device.

Breaking new ground in hand-held music technology, Loopy is a sophisticated loop-based musical scratchpad and performance instrument. It’s also an easy to use, beautiful yet powerful recording studio. No musical ability required!

Great use of the flickr photostream (via @gvenk via gizmodo.com)

Elizabeth Gilbert muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses -- and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person "being" a genius, all of us "have" a genius. It's a funny, personal and surprisingly moving talk.

MyMind is a combination of an outliner an a mind mapping application. Or a mind mapper with built-in outlining functionality. Whatever way you see it, it’s a unique application, you won’t find anything similar.

MindNode Pro is an elegant and simple-to-use mindmapping application for the Macintosh. It was created with the user in mind and features a very simple and intuitive user interface that lets the user focus on expressing and developing ideas. Nearly no time is required to learn the interface.

Canon’s much-ballyhooed but not universally welcomed 5D Mark II also (and this is a new thing for SLRs) operates as a high-def videocam. There are two videos linked from The Online Photographer and they are mind-bogglingly, jaw-droppingly beautiful. But it won’t work for you. The pictures you take with this camera will almost certainly look great with little effort, while your videos will require huge effort and probably still end up lousy.

J.K. Rowling, author of the best-selling Harry Potter book series, delivers her Commencement Address, “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination,” at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association.

For our latest mission, we filled a subway car with identical twins, creating a human mirror. Enjoy the video first and then see below for our report with tons of photos

We all know déjà vu—looking at an unfamiliar situation and feeling like you’ve been there before. But what’s valuable to innovation is vuja dé—looking at a familiar situation with fresh eyes, as if you’ve never seen it before, and with those

Developing new habits can jumpstart our creativity and even help us grow new brain cells, reports the New York Times.

Breakthrough ideas are around the corner, says the Google co-founder. But most of us are failing to take a chance on them.

Why let all of your ideas die with you? Current Copyright law prevents anyone from building upon your creativity for 70 years after your death. Live on in collaboration with others. Make an intellectual property donation.

Here it is: I like to find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems (c) that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1, then (f) iterating rapidly.

"Many Flickr users have chosen to offer their work under a Creative Commons license, and you can browse or search through photos under each type of license."

Writing is easy, it’s quality that’s hard. Any idiot who knows 5 words can write a sentence (e.g. “Dufus big much Scott is”). It might be grammarless, broken, or inaccurate but it is writing. This means that when people can’t start they’re ima