Planned Parenthood enrolls in 500 Startups’ seed program

Planned Parenthood has been threatened repeatedly with blockage of access in several states since Trump became our 45th president. But it also, as a consequence, has received a serious spike in donations (40 times its normal rate, according to the Guardian). The organization’s leaders are now looking to 500 Startups’ seed program to help them capitalize on the recent surge and harness technology to help further the momentum.

500 will donate $100,000 to the growing trove Planned Parenthood has already received since Trump took office, as well as kick off a hackathon for the organization. Planned Parenthood team members will also receive mentorship for its period-tracking app Spot On to help them find ways to improve the product and grow the user base.

The American Civil Liberties Union did something similar this year, joining Y Combinator’s winter batch to gain mentorship and network with some of the Valley’s most powerful allies in what is being called “The Resistance” — a growing progressive movement to confront the Trump presidency.

The sexual health nonprofit is part of this resistance movement now honing in on Silicon Valley’s top tech talent to help give people the resources and information they need without government interference.
“Spot On and the digital product lab are really a big part of that,” says Planned Parenthood’s senior director of its digital product lab Jenny Friedler, who tells TechCrunch the app has the potential to reach a much larger audience who can utilize the app for sexual health information. “For us, the opportunity with 500 is thinking about growing audiences and 500 has experience particularly in growing audiences and reaching new audiences. It really helps us in huge ways on that promise of ‘care no matter what.'”

The growth work with 500 possibly comes at an advantageous time. President Trump signed legislation last week to cut off federal access to Planned Parenthood and other groups performing abortions, and several states have added bills to defund the organization, nullifying a measure taken by the Obama administration just two days before Trump took office to bar states from cutting off that same access to family planning clinics.

Read More

Comments

How To Hide Text In Microsoft Word 2007, Reveal It & Protect It

Sometimes what we hide is more important than what we reveal. Especially, documents with sensitive information, some things are supposed to be ‘for some eyes only’. Such scenarios are quite common, even for the more un-secretive among us. You want to show someone a letter composed in MS Word, but want to keep some of the content private; or it’s an official letter with some part of it having critical data. As important as these two are, the most common use could involve a normal printing job. Many a time we have to print different versions of a document, one copy for one set of eyes and others for other sets. Rather than creating multiple copies and therefore multiple printing jobs, what if we could just do it from the same document? That too, without the hassle of repeated cut and paste. We can, with a simple feature in MS Word – it’s just called Hidden and let me show you how to use it to hide text in Microsoft Word 2007. It’s a simple single click process. Open the docum...

Boom, the startup that wants to build supersonic planes, just signed a massive deal with Virgin

Have you heard about Boom? Boom is a relatively new startup that’s aiming to build something pretty crazy. They’re not building an app… or a social network… or even some new gadget for the Kickstarter crowd. Boom wants to build planes. Really, really, really fast planes. Specifically, they’re trying to design and build a supersonic passenger plane that goes 2.2x the speed of sound. If all goes to plan, they’ll be able to shuttle people from New York to London in 3.5 hours, and SF to Tokyo in 4.5. Sound crazy? I wouldn’t disagree. It’s worth noting that the company is in the very early days for something as intensive, massive, and hugely expensive as designing and producing a passenger aircraft. They’re still working on their first prototype, and hope to fly it by late next year. But it’s also worth noting that the team behind the plane has some serious talent in its blood: the company’s 11 employees have collectively contributed to over 30 aircrafts — having worked on thin...

Fun Tools to Translate Your Name into Japanese Calligraphy

Japanese calligraphy is an artistic writing style of the Japanese language. Its Chinese origins can be traced back to the twenty-eighth century BCE. Calligraphy found its way into Japanese culture in 600 CE and is known as the karayo tradition. For Westerners, calligraphy is forever fascinating. However, it takes years to learn how to properly draw the signs. Two basic principles must be known to understand Japanese writing: there are different writing styles and different alphabets. Kaisho for example, is a writing style most commonly used in print media. Tensho on the other hand is used in signatures. Other writing styles are Reisho, Gyosho and Sousho. The alphabets include Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana. Katakana is used for writing foreign words. It can also serve to highlight words, in analogy to capital letters as we know them from the Roman / Latin alphabet (Romaji in Japanese). Each Kanji character has a meaning of its own, while Hiragana or Katakana characters merely repres...

Kiran Upadhyay

Search This Blog