This week in PopTech: White House love, domestic farming and rainbow tango
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Friday, March 30, 2012 UTC
There's always something brewing in the PopTech community. From the world-changing people, projects and ideas in our network, a handful of this week's highlights follows.
- 2011 Social Innovation Fellow Jake Porway’s Data Without Borders brings data scientists and social organizations together to design transformative visualizations and decision-making tools. Yesterday, the White House recognized Data Without Borders in their “Big Data Research and Development Initiative” announcement.
- 2009 PopTech Fellow Jason Aramburu launched re:char in 2005 to develop low-cost technologies that fight climate change while improving the quality of degraded soils. re:char’s systems convert agricultural waste into renewable fuel and into biochar, sequestering atmospheric carbon and improving soil quality. Previously focused on bring biochar to developing countries, Aramburu is expanding his work stateside with a Kickstarter campaign to kick off a trial to evaluate the effectiveness of biochar for domestic farmers and gardeners.
- Eli Pariser (PopTech 2010) is an expert on the social and political impact of the personalized web and how (and what kind of) information spreads. Earlier this week, Pariser, along with The Onion‘s Peter Koechley and Facebook’s Chris Hughes launched Upworthy, a new project that hopes to help people "find important content that is as fun to share as a FAIL video of some idiot surfing off his roof."
- Finally, some lighthearted Friday fun. OK Go (PopTech 2010) has teamed up with College Humor to announce OKGopid, the world's most fun and least successful dating site. In music news, OK Go released a rainbow of tango, or what you might call a music video for the song "Skyscrapers" yesterday. Have a great weekend!
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Image: OK Go
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