¿Proyecto con conciencia social o simple experimento con cobayos humanos? Este tipo de interrogantes son los que nos solemos plantear cuando leemos noticias sobre acciones que, a pesar de tener una interesante base teórica, en la práctica suelen chocarse contra obstáculos de la vida real que terminan por vencerlo.

Es por esto que quizás el proyecto Last Mile (última milla) tendrá el desafío de lograr superar esas barreras para demostrar que pueden haber alternativas para personas que se encuentran cumpliendo una sentencia en la cárcel y que en muchos casos y por distintos motivos, ya nunca podrán reinsertarse en la sociedad en forma normal porque esa marca los seguirá por siempre.

En la cárcel de San Quentin en San Francisco, una pareja de emprendedores decidió trasladar toda su experiencia en el mundo de los negocios y de su aceleradora de proyectos KickLabs, a un programa destinado a brindarle herramientas concretas a los reclusos para crear sus propios emprendimientos y lograr una exitosa reinserción social.

Este proyecto combina capacitación en tecnología, marketing, comunicaciones y finanzas con el objetivo de que los seleccionados logren crear un plan de negocios sobre una idea propia y que pueda tener sustento en el mundo real.

Click aqui para ver el video.

En relación a los costos que supone capacitar y acompañar un proyecto en sus primeros pasos, las autoridades que aprobaron el proyecto consideraron que mantener a prisioneros reincidentes implica un costo mucho mayor, ya que estadísticamente, el 30% de los prisioneros que cumplen su condena reinciden en un período de no más de tres años.

En Estados Unidos, el costo de mantener a una persona en la cárcel es de USD$31.286 al año, lo que implica que una inversión en un programa como The Last Mile podría significar una interesante inversión a futuro para reducir esos costos.

La experiencia creada por Chris Redlitz y Beverly Parenti inscribió a siete interesados en el proyecto piloto de 2012 y ya tiene a los inscriptos 2013, pero planean hacerlo más grande y en otras instituciones del estado. Según sus creadores, el objetivo es “utilizar la tecnología para producir un cambio social”, y está apoyada en su nombre, que alude a ese último tramo de reclusión que viven los prisioneros antes de quedar en libertad y los interrogantes que se les plantean por tener que readaptarse al mundo exterior.

¿Crees que un proyecto como Last Mile podría lograr resolver una problemática tan compleja como la reinserción social de personas que cumplen condenas por delitos y que la tecnología podría ser la llave para esta reinserción?

Link: This startup accelerator for prisoners is creating the next generation of entrepreneurs (policymic)

Este artículo, fue publicado originalmente aquí: http://www.fayerwayer.com/2013/05/the-last-mile-proyecto-para-convertir-a-prisioneros-en-emprendedores-tecnologicos/

Google just announced that it has invested $75 million in a 50 MW wind farm in Rippey, Iowa, a small town an hour outside of Des Moines. This is Google’s second wind energy investment in the state. In 2010, Google entered a long-term contract to buy green energy for its Iowa data center, but this is the company’s first direct investment into an Iowa wind project.

The wind farm, Google notes, is already in operation and has been contracted to sell all of its energy to the Central Iowa Power Cooperative, which will use it to provide electricity to about 15,000 homes. It looks like none of this electricity will be used for Google’s local data center.

With this investment, Google has brought its total committed investment into green energy projects to just over $990 million. The company’s other wind energy investments include a $157 million investment in a Southern California wind energy farm and a $100 million investment into a wind farm in Oregon that is anticipated to be the world’s largest at 845 MW. Google’s first wind energy investment was worth $38.8 million and involved two North Dakota wind farms. Besides the wind farms themselves, Google also owns a 37.5 percent stake in the Atlantic Wind Connection backbone, a project that aims to build transmission lines for green energy along the mid-Atlantic coast.

More: http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/15/google-invests-75m-in-iowa-wind-farm-bringing-its-total-green-energy-investments-to-almost-1b/

Mozilla retrasó su proyecto de bloquear las cookies de terceros por defecto, que originalmente se pondría en marcha con Firefox 22. La idea es bloquear estos archivos, que permiten recolectar datos de los usuarios. Esto no significa que la organización haya cambiado su postura al respecto, aseguró el CTO Brendan Eich.

La razón del retraso es que se necesita más trabajo sobre un parche desarrollado por un estudiante de Stanford llamado Jonathan Mayer, que permite el acceso de cookies de los sitios que estás visitando, pero bloquea las que corresponden a terceros sitios que no estás viendo (como cookies insertadas a través de avisos publicitarios).

El parche se está probando en la versión Aurora y Beta del navegador, y Mozilla está preocupado por algunos “falsos positivos” y “falsos negativos” en el sistema.

En el primer caso, se bloquearían cookies de sitios que no estás visitando directamente, pero que corresponden a la misma compañía. Por ejemplo, si visitas un sitio llamado “foo.com”, que inserta una cookie de un sitio llamado “foocdn.com”, Firefox aceptaría las cookies de foo.com pero bloquearía las de foocdn.com porque nunca visitaste directamente esa URL, aun cuando ambos sitios corresponden a la misma compañía.

Por otro lado está el caso de los falsos negativos. El que visites un sitio una vez no significa que estés de acuerdo con que te rastree en todo Internet y sitios no relacionados para siempre. “Nuestro desafío es encontrar una forma para lidiar con este tipo de casos. Estamos buscando mayor definición que decidir automática y exclusivamente en base a si visitaste un sitio o no”, explica Eich.

De este modo, la opción por defecto en Firefox 22 será de permitir las cookies de terceros, tal como ha funcionado hasta ahora, hasta que se logre superar estos problemas. Esta versión del navegador está programada para el 24 de junio.

El plan de Mozilla de bloquear las cookies ha sido criticado por las empresas de publicidad online, que utilizan los datos para entregar avisos a los consumidores.

Link: C is for Cookie (Brendan Eich)

Este artículo, fue publicado originalmente aquí: http://www.fayerwayer.com/2013/05/mozilla-pospone-su-plan-para-bloquear-cookies-de-terceros-por-defecto/

Kickstarter might be better known for funding films and hardware projects, but it’s now getting its first synthetic biology proposal. A Singularity University alum, a Stanford post-doc and a Stanford Ph.D. are looking to use synthetic biology and software from startup Genome Compiler to creating plants that glow.

While the first several generations of plants might be weaker at emitting light, the long-term idea is to replace electric or gas lighting with natural lighting from plants.

“We live in a world that is generating too much carbon dioxide,” said Antony Evans, who is one of the three people behind the project. “Nature has figured out ways of creating energy that don’t require so much CO2 use, and what we really want to do is awaken people to the potential of that. Instead of having all these expensive street lights, why don’t we get plants?”

With the project, they’re inserting bioluminescence genes into a small flowering plant called Arabidopsis that’s part of the mustard family.

They’re looking for $65,000 in funding to print DNA sequences they’ve designed using the Genome Compiler software and then to create rewards for backers like “Maker” kits that let you create your own glowing plants. The startup associated with the project, Genome Compiler, lets people easily design genetic sequences and order them online.

The project comes at a time when costs around both genome sequencing and DNA printing are falling precipitously. Printing DNA at this points costs at least 25 cents per base pair. So for an 8,000-character sequence, they’re looking at at least $2,000 per unique sequence.

They’ll test a number of experimental sequences and print them with partner and Silicon Valley startup Cambrian Genomics, which has made a DNA laser printing system that cuts the cost of DNA synthesis dramatically. Then they’ll use bacteria as a vector to insert the new DNA into the plant.

Evans, who doesn’t have a background in biology at all, got into the field through Singularity University and Biocurious, a bio-hacking space down in Sunnyvale.

His bet is that the next decade will usher in a new era where it’s as easy to hack on animal or plant genomes as it is to build software with Python or Rails. The cost of sequencing a full human genome is falling even faster than Moore’s law would suggest at a current rate $8,000 down from $100 million in 2001. Not only that, DNA printing is getting cheaper as well with companies like Genscript.

They’ve also gone through the regulatory process to ensure that the project is compliant with U.S. law. Regulators from the USDA and EPA are naturally concerned that synthetic plants could become pests and crowd out or compete with natural plants for resources. They check for whether newly designed life forms have genes associated with pests; Evans has cleared this. The third agency that regulates synthetic biology experiments, the FDA, isn’t really involved here because these “Glowing Plants” are inedible.

Reference: http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/23/glowing-plants/

Google Wallet ahora está integrado con Gmail, de modo que los usuarios de este sistema de pagos podrán transferir dinero directamente desde el correo electrónico.

“Es gratis enviar dinero si tu cuenta bancaria está enlazada con Google Wallet o si estás usando tu saldo de Wallet, y se aplican tarifas bajas si envías dinero usando tu crédito asociado o tarjeta de débito”, explicó la compañía en un post. Aunque se dio a conocer hoy, el anuncio no fue parte de lo presentado durante Google I/O.

El envío de dinero sólo está habilitado parra Gmail desde el escritorio y no desde móviles aún. La opción desplegará en Estados Unidos durante los próximos meses.

Link: Send money to friends with Gmail and Google Wallet (Google Commerce)

Este artículo, fue publicado originalmente aquí: http://www.fayerwayer.com/2013/05/google-integra-wallet-con-gmail-para-transferir-dinero-por-e-mail/

Apple’s patent filings today reveal one concept outside their usual product-focused applications, detailing a method for harnessing wind power in a manner different from that employed in traditional turbines. Electricity gathered from a wind turbine would be converted to heat energy and stored in a “low-heat capacity fluid” in Apple’s patent, allowing it to be tapped on an as-needed basis whenever the wind dies down.

It all gets pretty technical, but painted in broad strokes, the system would potentially use the motion of the rotor shaft moving against a “low-heat capacity fluid” (such as ethanol or mercury, for instance) to generate heat through friction between the two surfaces. This can then be transferred from the storage fluid to a working fluid which is then boiled off to release steam. The steam powers a turbine, converting the energy to usable form.

Apple’s system differs from basic wind-power generators that are highly subject to variances in wind power, as well as systems that use batteries to store energy made through rotational energy for later use when wind isn’t actively making that much power. Instead, it is designed to make wind power available on a more “on-demand” basis, which is of significant importance for facilities requiring a constant, uninterrupted power supply. That likely explains why Apple is pursuing this kind of tech: Its massive data centers have huge power requirements, and the company has stated its commitment to harnessing wind, solar and other alternative energy sources to help keep these facilities running smoothly.

So far, Apple has been working mostly on building solar farms and biogas generators to help fulfill its energy needs at data center locations like the one it has in Maiden, NC, and competitor Google recently revealed that it has powered a data center with wind power for the first time.

In a second filing published today, Apple is back on track with its more consumer-oriented patents, this time detailing an evolution of the mouse that would bring more gesture controls to the input device. The additions would allow a mouse to detect tilting, tilt-sliding, lifting and other gestures to add additional command capabilities to the mouse’s basic clicking, movement and scrolling. It’s sort of a Wii Remote-lite, which is likely an easier control paradigm for traditional desktop computer users to adopt than anything more drastic.

This is interesting is because Apple is still showing an interest in iterating on its input device design, which still requires a lot of improvement. The Magic Mouse, while promising with its multitouch surface, is in practice a frustrating device to use. Apple traditionally hasn’t done great with mice, and it’ll be interesting to see if it can do any better while adding motion control into the mix, if this patent ever turns into a shipping product.

Learn more: http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/27/apple-exploring-alternative-wind-power-technology-and-motion-control-mac-mice/

Rally.org, the U.S.-based crowdfunding platform designed for socially-minded causes, is taking its mission to Europe. Today, the startup is opening an incubator in Berlin, its first outside of the U.S., and on a limited beta will start to process donations made on its proprietary payment platform in euros, with the intention of adding British pounds and other currencies in the very near future.

Rally.org — which, commendably, used its own platform to raise $7.9 million from the likes of Relay Ventures, Mike Maples of Floodgate Fund, Reid Hoffman of Greylock Partners, Kevin Rose of Google Ventures, Craig Shapiro of Collaborative Fund, Michael Birch of Bebo, Tim Ferriss and Eric Ries — recently passed 3 million people contributing to 23,000 campaigns on its platform, and the idea is to tap into more local social causes and fundraising activities in this part of the world to grow that base even more.

In an interview with TechCrunch, Rally.org co-founder and CEO Tom Serres says that the company chose Berlin for its incubator and head office partly because Rally.org had already opened a Rallypad co-working space of sorts in the city last year; and partly because it’s a very startup-friendly city economically (in other words, it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg to start a new company there). “We wanted a community, not just a product,” he said.

But the intention is to expand very soon to the UK, which Serres notes has the highest concentration in Europe of people who donate money to good causes. For Rally.org, a cause can be anything from a donation drive for a non-profit; to an environmental startup project aimed at improving, say, energy consumption; to someone looking to raise money for their education — not a small issue in Europe, where student fees are skyrocketing in many countries as states pull back spending in these recessionary times. (Rally takes a 5.75% commission on all final fundraises.)

While crowdfunding sites seem to be approaching a dime a dozen these days, Rally.org has a few points that distinguish it from the pack. Its emphasis on good causes is the obvious one. But the other may be the one that helps it grow: it has built its own payment platform — independent of PayPal, Amazon and the rest — that underpins the service, which is already capable of handling 17 different currencies, says Serres.

“My long term vision is to be the infrastructre of the next economy, the cause economy,” Serres told TechCrunch, describing a future where we make purchasing decisions based on making bigger statements and helping the world: think Tom’s Shoes and its idea of donating one pair to a needy child for each pair bought, expanded into all of your daily transactions. “The idea is: Everywhere I go I make a statement to the world.”

Serres points out every person who makes a contribution through Rally.org gets a virtual wallet, and the idea is to eventually make that wallet into something that consumers can use for more donations, as well as for purchases elsewhere.

For now, those posting campaigns on Rally.org will need to have German bank accounts to receive funds — although this will expand over time, Serres says. Companies based in the company’s Berlin incubator — Startup Weekend, music resource-sharing company Muzup, and social relocation community G1OBALS — will be the first Europeans to use the product. Another group is starting a campaign to preserve Berlin’s princesses garden, Prinzessinnengarten.

Learn more here: http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/07/social-crowdfunding-platform-rally-org-expands-to-europe-with-new-berlin-incubator/

El año 2010 informantes anónimos de la banca filtraron dos millones de archivos –unos 400 GB de datos entre correos electrónicos, planillas de cálculo y bases de datos– a la agencia tributaria británica, y que sumados a los 260 GB de información filtrada hace un tiempo atrás por el Consorcio Internacional de Periodistas de Investigación gatilló una investigación en conjunto de las autoridades tributarias de tres países para identificar a los evasores de impuestos que utilizan paraísos fiscales para esconder su dinero.

Las agencias tributarias de Estados Unidos, el Reino Unido y Australia trabajarán en conjunto para analizar toda la información filtrada, la que revelaría los complejos mecanismos que utilizan cientos de empresas y particulares para esconder enormes sumas de dinero de compañías y países en paraísos fiscales como Singapur, las Islas Vírgenes Británicas, las Islas Caimán y las Islas Cook.

“Los datos también exponen información que puede ser compartida con otros organismos tributarios para que sean parte de la batalla mundial en contra de la evasión tributaria“, afirmó la Agencia Tributaria y de Aduanas británica (HMRC). “Hasta el momento, hemos identificado a más de 100 personas que se benefician de estas estructuras y están siendo investigadas por evasión tributaria“.

Este año la presidencia del G8 recaerá en el Primer Ministro del Reino Unido, David Cameron, quien elevó a la más alta prioridad “dirigir un esfuerzo internacional para aumentar la transparencia, y atacar la evasión y elusión tributaria“.

Links:

-No safe havens for offshore tax cheats (Gobierno del Reino Unido)

-Tax Authorities Move on Leaked Offshore Documents (ICIJ)

-‘WikiLeaks of financial data’ prompts worldwide hunt for tax evaders (The Register)

Este artículo, fue publicado originalmente aquí: http://www.fayerwayer.com/2013/05/agencias-tributarias-se-lanzan-contra-paraisos-fiscales-luego-de-masiva-filtracion/

As a fourth generation venture investor, Adam Draper was pretty much predestined to work with startups. The son of Tim Draper, the founder of global VC firm Draper Fisher Jurveston, Adam has made it his mission to do everything in his power to help entrepreneurs bring their ideas to life — without relying on his family name to do so. After taking the plunge as an entrepreneur himself, co-founding a capital raising and trading platform and an equity crowdfunding portal, the 26-year-old again finds himself back in the Draper wheelhouse: Early-stage finance.

In the summer of 2012, Draper launched his third venture, Boost.vc, a San Mateo-based accelerator that offers housing (in an on-site hotel), office space, mentorship and seed funding as part of its 12-week incubation program. But by today’s standards, considering the glut of startup accelerators that have emerged over the last two years, what was once an attractive model now almost sounds run-of-the-mill. I’d argue, and Draper would agree, that accelerators can provide more value for startups over the long-run by focusing on a particular vertical.

Today, Boost.vc is taking its first (experimental) step in that direction by focusing on one of the hottest verticals in the tech industry: Bitcoin. About three months ago, the decentralized, ungoverned currency became “an obsession,” Draper says, and since then, it’s been the focus of his blog, meetings and now, in part, his accelerator. Boost.vc will be dedicating half of its second batch (seven startups total) to companies building products and technologies around the Bitcoin ecosystem.

When it comes to Bitcoin, Draper unabashedly wears rose-colored glasses, calling Bitcoin “one of the most exciting innovations happening in the world today.” While the kind of endorsement might give some pause, Draper isn’t alone. Last month, Lightspeed Venture Partners’ Jeremy Liew penned a post for TechCrunch explaining why VCs “love the Bitcoin market.” Liew himself has been a champion of Bitcoin and its incarnations, having recently backed OpenCoin, the developer of open source payment protocol, Ripple, for example.

Now Liew and other VCs are ready to ante up and continue to put their money where their mouths are by helping to establish the “Boost Bitcoin Fund.” The Fund, Draper exaplins, is a follow-on or “start” fund for all Bitcoin companies that graduate from the accelerator program. Each of the fifteen companies in Boost’s cohorts receives $15K in seed capital (in exchange for a 5 percent equity stake), but with the new fund, Bitcoin startups will receive an additional $50K investment upon completing the program.

The fund is anchored by Lightspeed, Rothenberg Ventures, The Bitcoin Opportunity Fund and Beluga founder Ben Davenport, all of which have begun to invest more aggressively in Bitcoin startups. Draper says that the team began to toy with the idea of a follow-on fund when the founders decided to accept seven Bitcoin startups into its summer session.

In floating the idea for a Bitcoin Start Fund to the investment community, the team was surprised by the warm reception that followed. In fact, Draper says, the capital came together in a week. With the Bitcoin movement continuing to gain steam, both entrepreneurs and investors are eagerly jumping into the space and testing new ideas in hopes of finding business models that will stick.

True to form, Draper says that the Boost.vc team is fully “committed to pushing Bitcoin toward becoming the next digital frontier.” Even if, as part of that experiment, the eight startups not focused on Bitcoin have to look on with envy as the other half of their cohort pockets an additional $50K at the end of the program.

Not only that, but as part of moving to commit (half of) itself to the vertical, Boost.vc will be bringing in “a number of Bitcoin-focused mentors,” including Davenport, who has recently dedicated himself to the space, along with additional speakers, experts and investors.

As a testament to the growing interest in the Bitcoin market, the digital currency now has its own conference, Bitcoin 2013, which is scheduled to take place this weekend in San Jose. Naturally, the conference will also play host to a Bitcoin-focused hackathon, and Draper tells us that Boost.vc plans to pick one of the seven startups that will participate in its program from the field.

As to the program: Applications for Boost.vc’s second cohort are being accepted on a rolling basis, with a final deadline of June 1st. The program will kick off June 24th, concluding in a demo day in the middle of September (the date has yet to be set). Those interested in applying can do so here.

Go: http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/14/to-test-the-bitcoin-waters-adam-drapers-boost-vc-accelerator-adds-backing-from-lightspeed-beluga-founder-more/

A number of startups have been trying their hand at subscription-based children’s books services, or something like a “Netflix for kids’ books,” so to speak. Today, another entry called Zoobean joins the flock, with the debut of its own handpicked catalog which parents can either subscribe to, or choose to just shop online like a standard e-commerce website.

The company was co-founded by Jordan Lloyd Bookey, Google’s head of K-12 Education Outreach, and her husband Felix Brandon Lloyd, who is a former Washington, D.C., Teacher of the Year. Like the founders of similar services in this space, including the recently launched Sproutkin and The Little Book Club, for example, Bookey and Lloyd are also parents.

“About a year ago, when our daughter was born, we were looking for a book for our son that would help him understand what it would mean to be a big brother. And in this particular case – we’re a multi-racial family – we were looking for something that might have kids that more resembled our family,” explains Lloyd.

That challenge proved harder than they thought.

The parents wanted a way to find a recommended book that matched their interests, but one they knew was also quality reading. So they built Zoobean to address this problem.

The site, at launch, has nearly 1,500 books for sale, all of which are parent-recommended, curated by a team of parents, teachers, librarians and others, and which are cataloged more extensively with topics, characters’ backgrounds, recommended ages, keyword tags and more. That way, when a parent is looking for a specific book on a topic, they can click to see all those that address that topic – like “self-esteem,” “anger and frustration,” or “growing up,” for example, as well as find books that match their own family structure and characteristics (e.g. “brother & sister,” “mother & child,” “black,” “Chinese Americans,” etc.)

The site will directly sell five featured items per month centered around a theme, and one of these will be available through an optional subscription. Subscribers pay $14.95 for the featured book of the month, a high-quality, hardcover. However, the majority of the cataloged books on Zoobean are being sold through affiliates like Amazon. Zoobean also offers a weekly reading guide for parents detailing the books in its featured collection along with activities parent and child can do together to learn more about the topic.

Though when the founders were speaking of their site’s uniqueness, their focus was on the curation aspects and the way the books were cataloged in more detail. But one of the more interesting things about this service with respect to its competitors is the diversity its selection reflects. There are books about many different ethnicities and subjects, and even harder-to-find books that cover transgender issues or bullying, for example.

“Any kid, parent or loved one who’s coming to find the right book can find one that the child can see him or herself in,” explains Bookey of the Zoobean collection.

The company has raised $500,000 in a seed round led by Kapor Capital, along with other private angels, friends and family. The plan is to raise another $250,000 on top of that.

Until today, Zoobean was in private, invite-only beta with some 200 testers. Now, it’s opening its doors to all parents or anyone else in the market for kids’ books. Users can sign up or browse the collection here.

Learn more here: http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/13/zoobean-grabs-500k-from-kapor-capital-others-for-its-handpicked-kids-books-subscription-service-online-shop/