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Posts with tag donation

Microsoft's I'm Initiative hits Hotmail

microsoft i'm initiative
Microsoft is expanding that successful I'm Initiative we heard about last year to include Hotmail. The company started the I'm Initiative in 2007's March and has so far raised nearly $1.5 million to give to charities.

The "service" makes using Microsoft's services -- specifically Hotmail and Messenger -- beneficial to several causes. Microsoft shares a portion of its advertising revenue collected through its email and instant messaging apps, and although this is "nice" on Microsoft's part, there's a clear business-minded motivation behind it.

Despite that, at least there's some good coming out of the ridiculous amount of instant messaging and emailing we all do. Though we can't praise Microsoft too much: $1.5 million out of the billions Microsoft makes everyday is hardly significant. Then again, if more companies donated a tiny portion of the tremendous amount of money they make everyday, the world could benefit significantly.

Takes All Types: Use Facebook, donate blood, save a life

Takes All Types

You might turn to Facebook to see what your friends are up to, organize a party, or just waste some time. But a non-profit group has decided to try to leverage the social networking site for another cause: to find blood donors.

Despite the fact that thousands of people give blood every day, there are constantly shortages of blood. People keep getting sick and injured, and donated blood has a limited shelf life. So the Red Cross and other organizations regularly reach out to news organizations to get the word out that there's a need for more donations. But the non-profit group Takes All Types wants to send the message out via Facebook.

If you sign up, Takes All Types will send you a Facebook alert when your blood type is needed in your area. You'll also be prompted to give blood regularly, and you can opt to receive notifications by phone, fax, email, or SMS as well. Overall, this seems like a great way to get the word out when there's a blood shortage, as you can directly target people who have already expressed an interest in donating blood.

[via New York Times]

Need money? Get your friends to 'ChipIn'

ChipIn
When Jammie Thomas got slapped with a $220,000 judgment by a jury friendly to the recording industry, the entrepreneurs at a little company called ChipIn had no idea how much free publicity they were going to receive. That's because Jammie is using their donation-tracking widget to raise money for her legal defense.

ChipIn lets you park their widget in your web site, MySpace page, and so on, in order to collect money for any cause you choose. ChipIn will handle the credit card transactions needed to bring in the funds. The more money you collect, the higher your 'progress meter' indicates on your widget, until you've hit your goal.

Adobe donates JavaScript engine to Mozilla

adobe donation to mozillaAdobe will be generously donating some code that will allow JavaScript programs to run within Firefox. This new donation will form the Tamarin Project, a new initiative with developers from both Adobe, and Mozilla. The code in question is called the ActionScript Virtual Machine, and is used to run scripts inside the Adobe Flash Player 9. The new code integration is expected to be fully integrated into future Firefox versions, first released in the first half of 2008.

This new donation is the largest donation to date for the open-source Mozilla Foundation. The new addition will drastically help the development of the Firefox browser, especially since HTML and Flash developer communities will both be on the team collaborating on a common language. The addition of the script engine is said to be extremely important to open source projects including both Firefox and the Thunderbird email application.

Google's creative donation

creative commonsGoogle is full of cash that they have to offload. Perhaps just for tax purposes, but also just to be good and give back to the community that gave them so much. What better place to give a nice wad of cash to then the Creative Commons (CC) during their annual fundraising campaign? Creative Commons is a little non-profit organization that helps creators of original content retains their licensing rights, and copyright protection, all the while permitting free use of their materials within certain guidelines. Creative Commons has also recently launched licensing for audio and video materials, giving protection on a whole other level. Google's $30,000 donation to CC was an extremely gracious gesture, again, showing that they do care about content.

Microsoft throws Creative Commons a $25,000 bone

Creative CommonsOver on his blog Lawrence Lessig, chairman of the Creative Commons board of directors, writes, "At 12:30pm, an envelope from Redmond appeared at the Creative Commons office. Inside, a check for $25,000. From Microsoft." The check, which arrived on December 30, put the organization well over their $225,000 fundraising goal for 2005. Though $25,000 is pocket change to Microsoft, it's still an interesting move. Is it truly a gesture of good will, or is Redmond trying to gain influence with Creative Commons?

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