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How to help fight pancreatic cancer

Darrell Etherington — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 18:12:39 +0000

Steve Jobs may be gone, but the disease that killed him is unfortunately still with us. Pancreatic cancer is an especially deadly form of the cancer, with only one in five of those diagnosed surviving through their first full year following its detection. Jobs’ ability to persist and continue to work in the face of such odds is yet another way he was one in a billion. We can help others have the same fighting chance Jobs had by supporting research to help curb and cure pancreatic cancer, with earlier detection measures and better treatments.

Donate directly

One way to contribute is by donating directly to organizations dedicated to fighting pancreatic cancer. The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network is a good example. It’s a not-for-profit that funds research, government advocacy, patient services and community outreach through funds it collects. President and CEO Julie Fleshman shared her condolences for the loss of Jobs, as well as a call to action in an open letter.

Johns Hopkins Medicine also has a dedicated pancreatic cancer research center, to which you can donate directly. Eighty percent of any donation made to Johns Hopkins goes directly to support the science and education efforts combating pancreatic cancer. The remaining 20 percent goes to Hopkins for infrastructure support to keep the organization running.

Donate indirectly through developers

Some developers have introduced plans to forward proceeds from the sale of their software to help fund the fight against pancreatic cancer. Realmac Software is one such company. For Thursday, Oct. 6 and Friday, Oct. 7, all proceeds resulting from the sale of RapidWeaver, Analog, Courier or LittleSnapper will go to Pancreatic Cancer U.K. All are great-looking apps that also work very well, including Analog, the latest addition, which allows you to quickly and easily add Instagram-style effects to your photos in Mac OS X. All are available in the Mac App Store.

Marco Arment, developer of Instapaper, is also donating all revenue from the sale of his app Oct. 6 ($4.99, iOS Universal) to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network. The app lets you save text-heavy articles from the web in a streamlined format for offline reading on your iPhone or iPad.

Volunteer your time

November is actually National Pancreatic Awareness Month in the U.S., and you can participate by volunteering to help. Signing up in the U.S. is easy through the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network’s dedicated site about the awareness event in November. The network will hook you up with your local affiliate, who’ll then provide more specific information about how you can help.

There’s also a bill before Congress to help devise a national strategy for fighting pancreatic cancer, which you can help along by contacting your local elected officials.

This isn’t a comprehensive look at your options for helping by any means, but it is a good starting point. Of course, it’s always a good idea to donate to or volunteer with the American Cancer Society (or your local national equivalent), too. Let us know if you have any other ways to help.

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Panic Donating Proceeds From Software Sales to Help Japan

Josh Sunshine — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 21:18:59 +0000

Panic, the company behind some great Mac applications such as HTML-editor Coda, announced Thursday that all proceeds taken until tomorrow morning will be donated to the Japanese relief effort.

All sales of any of the company’s software between 10:00 a.m., March 17 and 10:00 a.m., March 18 (PDT) will be donated directly to a mix of the Japanese Red Cross Society and the Mercy Corps based in Portland, Ore. That includes both sales on Panic’s own site and sales made through the Mac App Store, and absolutely 100 percent of proceeds will be donated.

By purchasing any of Panic’s applications today, not only are you getting some great software, but you’ll also be helping out a country in need of a helping hand at the moment. In Panic founder Cabel Sasser’s own words:

You might be sick of it — being told to donate to a charity. If you’re like me, donating to a charity is an abstract, disconnected affair. So, we thought we’d make it a little more tangible, allowing you to help Japan directly while getting Panic software with one swift click.

Sasser also explains that there’s a very personal reason why Panic wants to do what it can to help:

Nobuhiro, who runs Panic Japan, packed up his wife and two kids in his home town of Kashiwa, and, after finding gas, drove them to Nagoya, far from the looming threat of a legitimate nuclear disaster. Kenichi, our icon genius, was, amazingly, right here in Portland when everything hit, and he watched it unfold stunned and disconnected: just the latest Bruckheimer production in a tiny streaming video window. He’s now on his way back to Nagoya. And while part of me wonders if he’s headed in the wrong direction, when he e-mailed me the latest ultrasound sent from his pregnant wife (it’s a boy!), I knew he was right.

If you’ve been waiting to buy any of Panic’s applications, there’s no better time than right now. Even if you only buy something small such as CandyBar, you’ll be doing your bit to help out. Why not take the opportunity to download any applications you already own, but from the Mac App Store, to make updating and installation on multiple computers easier?

Have you heard of any other generous developers helping the Japan relief effort? Let us know in the comments.

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Raise the Village Blurs Line Between Games, Real Life

Darrell Etherington — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 22:30:54 +0000

We Farm, Tap Zoo and countless other similar apps have made tons of money by asking you to spend yours on virtual goods. A brand new iPhone app called Raise the Village wants to use the same model to benefit a charitable cause. And in an odd twist, virtual goods you purchase in Raise the Village actually end up paying for their real-world counterparts.

Raise the Village puts you in charge of managing and customizing a village, as its name implies. Unlike other virtual community management sims, however, the village in this app represents a real one in Uganda (Kapir Atiira, specifically). You purchase items in-game through Apple’s in-app purchasing iOS feature to improve the virtual village, and then the company behind the app uses those funds to purchase the same items in the real world for use in the actual Ugandan community. The relationship isn’t one-to-one, and uses a group-for-one giving model, but player choices influence real-world decisions.

Users (game players?) then get updates like photos of the items being delivered, and information about the village’s progress. Of course, the virtual village in your game changes as you build improvements and buy upgrades as well.

The freemium model is powerful, and makes a lot of money for iPhone developers. To see it being put to use for charitable purposes is refreshing in many ways, and I don’t begrudge these Ugandan communities any monetary benefit they might stand to gain from the use of the Raise the Village app. But all that said, the app strikes me as very weird, and risks crossing a line I’m not sure I’m comfortable going over just yet.

Think about it: You’re basically “playing” a real village. Unlike in the vast majority of video games to date (meaning all, really), the effects of your decisions in-game have an effect on real human beings living in a real community. It’s not at the point yet where you have as direct an effect as you might if you were playing a real-world version of The Sims, for example (you can’t control your villager’s actions), but your choices aren’t without consequence. When asked about how direct a player’s impact is on real-world infrastructure build in the Ugandan village, New Charity Era, L3C Director of American Operations Tracy Shank provided this response:

The items that we deliver are those that are purchased using our in-game currency: Florin. And those purchases directly represent what we will deliver, so it is the gamer’s choice on what he or she would like to have delivered to the villagers on his or her behalf. To go into more detail, most of the buildings within the game are free, becoming available at different levels for village points. It is the processes and items within those buildings that are purchasable. For instance, if you put a crop farm in your village, you can grow/harvest a multitude of crops needed by the villagers such as beans or maize.

So while you can’t determine whether or not a farm or building gets built, you do have a role in deciding what goes on at those facilities. According to Shank, ”[a]ll of the items were chosen based on a needs-assessment of the villagers and the game is optimized for users to make balanced giving decisions,” so it’s less of an ethical briar patch than it might be if you and other players were determining what gets built and what doesn’t. Still, users take on a degree of responsibility not often seen in the role of charitable donor, let alone that of gamer.

Gamification has been a huge trend this year, and it continues to influence all aspects of business. Seeing it appear in such a literal fashion in the not-for-profit sector isn’t surprising, but is “gaming” with a community’s future something we’re really comfortable with at this point? Isn’t this at least objectifying, and at worst, demeaning, the actual Ugandans involved? Shank doesn’t think so. Rather than playing with people, she sees it as “playing for people through a company dedicated to bringing villages (Kapir Atiira first) [...] to a sustainable level.”

Maybe I’m overreacting, but I think this has ethical implications that go well beyond those generally associated with your standard casual gaming fare, regardless of how direct an influence you have as a player. What do you think?

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Buy Mac Software, Help the Haiti Aid Effort

Chris Brandrick — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 19:28:09 +0000

Ever since the tragic earthquake struck Haiti last week, people the world over have been generously donating towards the much-needed aid effort. Thankfully, due to several unique and innovative schemes, it has never been easier to make a pledge. One such upcoming program is the Indie+Relief fundraiser, which aims to raise money for the vital relief fund through the sale of certain Mac and iPhone software.

Tomorrow, Jan. 20, Indie+Relief will be taking all of the sale proceedings from a range of applications and be giving them to select charities. The impressive list of applications on offer include the likes of image editor Acorn, MarketCircle’s Billings, cataloging software Delicious Library 2, web statistics manager Ego, FTP client Flow, newsreader Instapaper Pro, to-do list Things, Twitter client Twitterific and many, many more.

The project started only a few days ago and has been made possible due to a joint collaboration between developers Garret Murray and Second Gear. Since they announced the project, a whole host of other developers from the Mac and iPhone community have gotten involved, with the Indie+Relief site now listing over 130 applications. Developers partaking in the fundraising all had the opportunity to select any charity of their choice, all of which will benefit the Haiti aid process. Popular charities include The Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders and UNICEF.

If you are in the market to buy any of the listed applications, then be sure to take the plunge this coming Wednesday, as all of the proceeds will go to Haitian aid organizations. And if you’re not, be sure to check out Indie+Relief anyway as you may just find something new!

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Donate Directly to Haiti Relief Efforts via iTunes

Darrell Etherington — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 15:27:14 +0000

One very impressive thing about the international reaction to Haiti’s recent devastating earthquake is the many, many ways you can contribute to relief efforts. The Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations acted quickly, setting up donations via the web, through partnerships with product makers, and through incredibly simple text messages charged directly to your bill.

The flipside is that it can be hard to know exactly which methods are legit, and in which cases the bulk of your donation actually goes to relief work. Apple and the Red Cross have set up a method for donating money that makes it very simple to make a contribution that will go entirely towards helping Haitians deal with the fallout of this tragic event; you can now donate via iTunes.

At the U.S. and Canadian iTunes stores, and at many European ones, too all you have to do is follow this link and you’ll be taken to a Red Cross donation splash page. You can then choose from six different preset donation amounts, including $5, $10, $25, $50, $100 and $200. Clicking the “Donate” button beneath any amount will then prompt the “Sign in to buy” dialog, where you’ll confirm your iTunes account credentials in order to finalize the donation.

Apple explains where your donation is going and to what end on the donation page:

100% of your donation will go to the American Red Cross (…) Your donation of any size could help save the day by providing food, water, temporary shelter, medical services and emotional support to someone in need.

In the even that the American Red Cross reaches its target for the Haiti Earthquake Appeal, any excess donations will be applied to other American Red Cross efforts. Further information about the American Red Cross and its financial administration can be found at www.RedCross.org.

A quick test reveals that the iTunes link to the donation page does not work on the iPhone or iPod touch iTunes store at this time. If you do want to donate from your mobile device, the best way is probably still via text message. Texting “HAITI” to 90999 will donate $10 to the relief efforts on many U.S. carriers, although it won’t work for international donations.

Haiti is nowhere near out of the woods yet, so if you haven’t yet contributed, or if you’d just like to do it again, and donate more than the max $20 or $30 that most carriers allow for the texting method, the iTunes store is a safe and easy way to help out.

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(Shazam)RED Makes the App Store a Slightly Kinder Place

Darrell Etherington — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:50:57 +0000

The (RED) movement allows companies to give a little back while also selling their products, by branding versions of their goods with the (RED) logo, name, and color. In exchange, a portion of the price of said products is donated to the fight against HIV and AIDS in Africa. Apple is on board with the program, with (RED) iPods, and now one of its iPhone developers, Shazam, has thrown its weight behind the cause, too.

Shazam is the first mobile app to endorse the program. (Shazam)RED is available on the App Store now for $4.99, which is the same price that Shazam Encore retails for.

The only difference between the two is that when you purchase (Shazam)RED, 20 percent of the purchase price of the app, or a little less than $1, will be “contributed to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria,” with (RED) funds specifically going towards the fight against HIV and AIDS. Also, in addition to the features included in Shazam Encore, you get access to (RED) news and content via an icon on the bottom menu bar that loads (BLOG) RED in a built-in browser.

In an interview with TMCnet.com, Shazam CEO Andrew Fisher highlighted the success of the (RED) program, and the potential reach of (Shazam)RED given the iPhone’s massive user base. With over 10 million people owning either an iPhone or an iPod touch worldwide, the potential boon for projects like (RED) is astronomical. And the relationship is mutually beneficial, since developers get access to the marketing value inherent in the (RED) brand.

In case you aren’t familiar with the new features of Shazam Encore, which is the paid version of the wildly popular music identification app Shazam, it allows you to find recommendations for your music tags, search for songs, albums, and artists, and see charts of the most-tagged music. You can also sync your tags with the web-based Shazam interface and share them via Facebook and Twitter. Finally, you can use car mode to identify playing on the radio while you’re driving.

If you were planning on paying for Shazam Encore anyway, there’s no real reason not to opt for (Shazam)RED (iTunes link) instead, unless you’re worried about future updates. I’m sure that Shazam will update this product for at least as long as they do Encore, though, because I can’t imagine much additional effort or expense would be required, if any, to do so.

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Reforest the Planet With Your iPhone

Darrell Etherington — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 21:00:25 +0000

The iPhone is a lot of things to a lot of people. You can control your home, buy movie tickets, track projects, play games, and more. Now, you can also use it to help the environment. A Real Tree, a recent addition to the App Store, offers users a chance to use their iPhone or iPod touch to give back, in what could be the first in a wave of charitable apps.

Mokugift, the developers of A Real Tree, designed their application to stand in stark contrast to the much-publicized I Am Rich application, a vanity app which offered no utility and carried a very high price tag. A Real Tree also offers limited utility, in terms of adding functions to your iPhone, but that’s where the similarities end. The app is inexpensive, costing only $0.99, and it is designed not to show your wealth or massive ego, but instead your generosity. Using revenue generated by app sales, A Real Tree plants real trees in areas significantly threatened by deforestation, making it possibly the most appropriately named application available in the App Store. There is a one-to-one ratio of app purchases and trees planted, so the idea is simple…you buy the app, they plant a tree.

The real purpose of the app is clearly the real world tree planting, but it does have some features as well. Starting A Real Tree results in an animation of a tree growing, and then brings you to a screen where you can click a Safari link to view the existing forest. Mokugift tracks purchases of the app, and displays a running total of trees planted on their website, along with a visual map of where the real world trees are planted. The countries that receive trees bought through the app’s sales are Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Burundi, Senegal, Zambia, India, Philippines, and Haiti. Each is located near the equator, in tropical regions where deforestation has the most significant effect on global warming. Clicking on the tree image on the app’s home page will also start a short animation of a bird flying in and around the tree. Mokugift promises additional features in future updates.

The model is simple, and has shown some early success (nearly 100 trees have been planted so far), so it could attract the attention of similar organizations. LIVESTRONG.COM previously released their Calorie Tracker app, but it’s designed to simply heighten brand awareness, whereas A Real Tree is attempting to actually generate charitable revenue. The iPhone/iPod touch platform is a good place for this sort of thing for a couple reasons. First, overhead is low. Developing a simple iPhone app and submitting it to the App Store is not expensive, especially when compared to the cost of things like mailing and door-to-door campaigns. Second, iPhone/iPod touch users are a good demographic to go after, if you’re looking for charitable donations. They’re more likely to have disposable income, and as we’ve recently seen, they’re generally comfortable with marketing on their devices, and with buying and downloading applications of all kinds. Let’s hope A Real Tree begins a trend of socially responsible iPhone/iPod touch development.

A Real Tree is $0.99 in the App Store.

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