ShiftMyGift.com: website from Chester County’s Blair Souder is gift registry for donations

Blair Souder of ShiftmyGift.com. Photography by Ryan Donnell

Say that for Christmas, you didn’t want gifts. Instead, you’d rather have friends and family donate to a cause of you’re choosing.

A Chester County startup aims to be the solution, with its ShiftMyGift.com.

Launched in August by Blair Souder after being moved by a hiking trip in poor swaths of Nepal, the site acts like an online gift registry for nonprofits, in which users highlight philanthropic efforts they support. Others can make donations on their behalf, from which Shift My Gift takes a $1.49 processing fee and makes 4.75 percent ‘grant’ to the Network for Good — the group through which the donations are made – as Entrepreneur reported. USA Today has also covered the project.

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AWeber Communications Raises $5,700 for the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in video game marathon

This event coverage was written by Liz Cies, a spokeswoman for Huntingdon Valley-based email marketing firm AWeber, and edited by Technically Philly.

For the second year in a row, the staff at AWeber Communications put down the keyboards and picked up the gamepads to participate in the nationwide Extra Life video game marathon.

This past Saturday at 12 p.m., the AWeber game changers team locked themselves in AWeber’s game room to play video games in support of kids at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

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She’s the First developing world education fundraising nonprofit launched by College of New Jersey alumnae: Sunday Video Special

To help inspire you for the next week, Technically Philly will post a video each Sunday around entrepreneurship, innovation and action.

Fast Company recently interviewed Tammy Tibbetts, a 25-year-old College of New Jersey graduate who launched She’s the First, a nonprofit helping to send girls in the developing world to school. Watch the interview below.

Donate your old laptops to Nonprofit Technology Resources

Donate laptops to Nonprofit Technology Resources during Philly Tech Week and beyond.

Nonprofit Technology Resources, which refurbishes computers, offers training and workforce development for low-income Philadelphians, is hosting a laptop donation drive during Philly Tech Week.

NTR is accepting laptops with at least a Pentium 4 processer, which includes just about any laptop purchased since 2001. Donations to the nonprofit are tax deductible and all laptops are wiped clean of any remaining personal data, information or files. NTR can accommodate large donations from established groups and organizations.

There is greater interest and need for laptop donations to connect lower-income Philadelphians than ever, says NTR founder Stan Pokras, as computing moves away from the desktop.

While the  nonprofit is located at 1524 Brandywine Street in the Spring Garden neighborhood, laptop donations can be brought to the remaining Philly Tech Week lunchtime series events at WHYY from 12-1 p.m. today, tomorrow and Friday. If you are interested in donating otherwise, contact us or NTR. Find all PTW events listed here.

In March, Technically Philly reported on NTR budget concerns, which are on-going.

[Full Disclosure: NTR is a former TP advertiser]

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Mmy Moon.

Duffels4Dignity4Devs supports child victims of domestic violence with sign up

Until midnight tonight, web developers have the chance to support children leaving homes of domestic abuse.

The Northern Home for Children, the historic Manayunk orphanage, is partnering with marketing shop Red Tettemer to raise money for their Duffels4Digitnity program, which accepts donations of any amount to purchase duffel bags of clothes, toothbrushes and stuffed animals. The bags are given to children, from infants to teenagers, who are relocated to foster care during late night domestic disputes — a more recurrent problem than we might want to imagine.

Alcatel-Lucent, the Paris-based telecommunications giant with offices in Murray Hill, N.J. and staff in Doylestown, has jumped into the fray with their “Duffels4Dignity4Devs,” a pledge to donate one dollar for every developer who signs up for their Open API Service. The platform gives access to network and third party technology through bundled API solutions without cost.

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Salvation Army opens Target Media Center in West Philadelphia

Students watching video on Nov. 9 from the International Space Station inside the Salvation Army's new Target Media Center in West Philadelphia.

Somewhere someone once said that technology makes the world smaller.

Yesterday, inside its West Philadelphia Corps Community Center, the Salvation Army of Greater Philadelphia opened a Target Media Center, a renovated 20- by 30-foot multi-purpose room crafted into a library and youth theater.

One of its most dynamic features is the incorporation of a teleconferencing system designed to connect students with virtual field trips — like faraway zoos, aquariums and, yes, as depicted above, space stations. Students in West Philadelphia, many perhaps with far fewer opportunities than others their age, will be able to teleconference with astronauts.

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Comcast Roundup: The digital transition, rumors of partnership with T-Mobile and More

Every Thursday morning, find all the stories you need to know about your friendly telecommunications giant in the Comcast Roundup.

My rabbit ears don’t work anymore.

Yes, the federal government spent $2 billion and 13 years to finalize the nation’s transition from analog to crisper digital television transmission, and yes, much to the delight of Philebrity, the FCC said the Philadelphia region was responsible for the fourth most complaint calls to a hotline dedicted to the transition.

The Associated Press reports that Comcast’s new $1.5 billion debt issue received an investment grade rating on from Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services. The rating was “BBB+,” with a positive outlook for the possibility of further upgrade. It’ll be a two-part sale, according to Reuters. To the markets!

But, look, it ain’t Comcast’s fault. In some coverage areas, the cable giant launched a “rapid response team” to perform same-day installations for those who still needed a digital TV solution. ‘Course that didn’t help resolve the need for the FCC to send its own additional support here to help viewers who still hadn’t made the transition.

I mean, people lost 6ABC and WHYY, for goodness sake.

Maybe that’s why, when Comcast filed comments to the FCC for a proposed national broadband plan, part of their advice was to undergo a massive education program.

After the jump, porn and children’s shows get a buffer, a partnership with T-Mobile, video of Comcast playing nicely with children, among others.

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Technically Not Tech: NPower PA gives IT support to nonprofits in need

Updated: added grant details @ 4:35 p.m.6/16/09

It just might take a miracle to help lead at-risk Philadelphia teens away from the obstacles that have become something of a cliche in the urban education saga.

It will take a miracle or, perhaps, youth organizations that share information with each other through a sophisticated network of information sharing technologies.

That’s what NPower PA does.

The Center City organization fundraises for, organizes, implements and maintains IT for nonprofits that can benefit but don’t have the capital to do so on their own.

In January, this six-year-old group, one of 11 in the national NPower Network, completed perhaps its most ambitious project. After winning the grant in July 2007, NPower PA began integrating a collaborative data collection system in four communities — three in Philly and one in Chester — in the hopes of helping those young people better navigate the pitfalls they face.

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Profit and conscious with new South Philadelphia incubator

They’re going to incubate profitable good works.

That’s much the angle of GoodCompany Ventures, which opened its Philadelphia Naval Yard Business Center offices with a ribbon-cutting ceremony highlighted by appearances from Mayor Michael Nutter and Chuck Lacy, a former president of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, yesterday.

All the startups they take in will be for-profit and looking to make a difference or two.

Yesterday, the incubator was also welcoming its inaugural 2009 class of “social entrepreneurs,” including the following: Cyrus-XP, which focuses on advancing the management and delivery of healthcare; CalendarFly, a single source scheduling solution for families (for a test drive, use “student for username and password), and VolunteerBIG.com, a philanthropic social network that was gunning for grant money earlier this year.

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Google Earth application maps U.S. military deaths, 16 lost from Philadelphia

Nick Zangara was 21-years-old in 2004 when a makeshift bomb exploded near his convoy in Tikrit, 90 miles northwest of Baghdad and a universe from his home in Northeast Philadelphia.

The George Washington High School graduate is one of at least 16 people from Philadelphia who have been killed in Middle Eastern military conflicts this decade, according to a new Google Earth layer called “Map the Fallen.”

“This Memorial Day I would like to share with you a personal project of mine that uses Google Earth to honor the more than 5,700 American and Coalition servicemen and women that have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan,” writes Sean Askay, the layer’s creator. “I have created a map for Google Earth that will connect you with each of their stories, you can see photos, learn about how they died, visit memorial Web sites with comments from friends and families, and explore the places they called home and where they died.”

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