Author Archives: ewoyke

Digital Divide Then And Now: EdTech Nonprofit MOUSE Turns 15

More than a decade before Code.org or Girls Who Code kicked off, New York nonprofit MOUSE was teaching tech in underserved city schools. MOUSE is still doing that work, but now its reach is national.

MOUSE recently marked its 15^th anniversary with a celebration in New York City. I covered the event for EdSurge.

MakerBot printers at the MOUSE anniversary event were printing trinkets like this.

It would be easy to group MOUSE with the recent crop of programming nonprofits. The organizations share a lot of goals, including bridging the digital divide, training our future workforce and helping young people develop confidence and other personal qualities. I found that MOUSE favors a more human-centered learning style than most programming outreach groups, though.

MOUSE Corps, MOUSE’s afterschool program for high schoolers, functions almost like a youth version of IDEO or frog design. Members (who must apply to the program) spend a year developing socially-conscious tech projects via a hands-on, anthropological process.

MOUSE students demo 3D printing in the makerspace

MOUSE Corps is small and New York-only right now. MOUSE’s other program, MOUSE Squad, is more established and better known. MOUSE Squad is intriguing in its own way. It teaches middle and high schoolers to be the tech experts in their schools. They can act as their school’s IT helpdesk or assist professional IT staff. Squad members can also learn robotics, 3D printing and game design through MOUSE’s online curricula.

This is where MOUSE stands now. Next, it wants to expand far beyond its current strongholds in New York City, California and Chicago. Dramatic growth could be tough since other tech-centric youth development nonprofits have started courting school support and corporate donations. But kudos to MOUSE for what it’s achieved in its first 15 years.

Big Data In Public Schools Ignites Privacy Debate

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Big Data looks different when the target is your child. I’ve written before about the benefits of marshaling and analyzing swaths of data. InBloom, an Atlanta-based nonprofit, wants to bring big data’s perks to public schools, but it’s encountering resistance from parents who view the data collection and crunching as an invasion of their children’s privacy.

I covered the New York City version of this debate for EdSurge here. On one side: parents and some educators who oppose New York State and City’s decision to build a new education data portal based on inBloom’s software. They worry that inBloom’s infrastructure, which is capable of capturing and tracking reams of data, will gather too much sensitive information, which could be hacked or otherwise misused.

On the other side of this issue are education officials and technologists who believe the new software adequately protects privacy while enabling schools and teachers to better customize learning and save money.

It’s a debate that is already occurring elsewhere around the country and will likely spread further. New York is currently one of eight states piloting inBloom’s new software. I imagine similar discussions will take place in any school districts that sign on to inBloom in the future.

The New York parents I met want to halt inBloom completely. As Big Data moves into all realms of life, inBloom may set an important precedent.

Beyond Mint: New Investing Apps And Tools

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If your knowledge of investing apps begins and ends with Mint.com — a great service but also one that’s been around since 2006 — then check out the March issue of Money magazine. Money publishes an annual list of personal finance-related apps called the Money Mobile Guide. This year, I helped out by researching and reviewing investing apps and online tools.

The 2013 list includes some tried-and-true standbys like your brokerage’s app (Fidelity, E*TRADE, etc.) and Bloomberg’s comprehensive financial news and data app. But the focus is really on the new tools: Motif Investing, Personal Capital and SigFig. All three offer creative ways to optimize your portfolio, whether through themed buckets of stocks geared towards trends and interests (Motif), user-friendly summaries of your spending and investment accounts (Personal Capital) or customized weekly investment recommendations (SigFig).

Novice investors may find SigFig a good place to start monitoring and managing their various accounts. The free service imports users’ investment data into a single dashboard for easy viewing and quick analysis. SigFig’s weekly recommendation emails are free, too. Users don’t need to follow SigFig’s advice, of course, but it is designed to reduce fees, uncover hidden charges and increase returns.

The rest of the Money Mobile Guide covers apps related to banking & budgeting, cars, home upkeep, shopping and travel. You can find the online version of my story here and the rest of the guide here.

P.S. After this story went to print, Motif Investing began letting users build their own buckets of stocks — a.k.a. motifs — from scratch. I haven’t tested that feature but it’s certainly an intriguing notion.

‘Don’t Change It, Just Make It Better’

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Say ‘Range Rover’ and certain words come to mind: rugged, adventure, classic, expensive. Land Rover/Range Rover’s brawny/outdoorsy/upscale image has been incredibly consistent over the years. At the same time, the UK-based company has been subtly modernizing its marketing. It’s the only way to ensure Land Rover can keep growing in the hyper-competitive auto industry.

Some of Land Rover’s redesigned mobile sites.

Recently, I had the fun task of exploring exactly how Land Rover is managing to uphold tradition while innovating in digital branding and advertising. The story, which appears on Google’s Think with Google site, profiles Kim McCullough, Land Rover USA’s brand vice president, and outlines the marketing strategy McCullough has pursued since (re)joining Land Rover about two years ago.

Videos and social networking are key. Under McCullough, Land Rover redesigned its mobile and YouTube sites and joined Pinterest and Tumblr. The company is also testing new types of search and display ads and collaborating with artists on photo and video series. “The Land Rover story is what appeals so much to people, but you also have to make a modern statement,” McCullough explained to me. To encourage experimentation, she follows a 70/20/10 rule: earmarking 70 percent of her budget to time-tested forms of marketing, 10 percent to new, edgy projects and 20 percent to continuing new-ish projects that have proved effective.

These digital initiatives don’t mean Land Rover has abandoned more traditional forms of marketing. The company still hosts a lot of events for affluent shoppers — and follows up with handwritten thank-you notes. This hybrid approach led me to characterize McCullough as a ‘digital traditionalist’ in the story. It seems to be the right formula for Land Rover. As McCullough notes at the end of the piece, Land Rover owners often tell her, “Don’t change it, just make it better.”

‘Marketing Is About Creating New Markets’

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Beth Comstock oversees sales, marketing and communications for General Electric. As the leader of three huge divisions in one of the world’s largest companies, Comstock has an incredible array of responsibilities. Those facts alone make her a compelling subject for a profile. But what I found most interesting about Comstock was her global, open and integrated outlook on business, both within GE and beyond it.

I wrote about Comstock’s philosophy and the changes she has instituted at GE since returning as Chief Marketing Officer in 2008 in a story for Google’s Think with Google site. Comstock wants her 5,000 GE marketers to be entrepreneurial. “Marketing is about creating new markets,” she says.

For GE, that means partnering with start-ups, launching cross-business initiatives, inviting academics and other experts to campus and setting up innovation centers around the world to ask locals what they need. Besides entrepreneurship and marketing, the story talks about management, collaboration, emerging markets, globalization, digital media and the Internet of Things (which GE is calling the Industrial Internet).

If this sounds like a lot of buzzwords, well…GE has a lot of buzzy initiatives right now. It’s a 134-year-old company with a great desire to stay relevant. You can find the piece here.

EdLab: Building EdTech And Community At Columbia’s Teachers College

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In New York, the educational technology scene is dominated by start-ups and Meetups. I belong to the NY EdTech Meetup, which is popular and organizes good panels and discussions on a regular basis. At times, though, I’ve thought the community would benefit from another organization stepping in and being active.

Monitors outside Columbia’s EdLab office showing sites and apps the organization developed.

Over the past few months, Columbia’s EdLab has taken on that role. Though EdLab is part of the Teachers College library system, it operates relatively independently, brainstorming its own ideas and quickly prototyping them. The result is a steady stream of innovative educational software products, including apps, news sites and online curricula.

In recent years, eight-year-old EdLab has started opening access to these services and websites beyond Teachers College. The 40-person organization has also begun connecting entrepreneurs, students, faculty and working teachers through seminars and demo nights.

EdLab staffers told me outreach is a natural transition since EdLab regularly speaks to these groups. You can read more about EdLab and its evolution in this story I wrote for EdSurge. Anyone interested in edtech, particularly New York edtech, may want to keep an eye on EdLab’s product-development and community-building work. EdLab has some big plans, including a multi-year effort focused on rethinking education, which will kick off in 2013.

Special thanks to Kate Meersschaert, the EdLab Innovation Fellow who introduced me to the lab and its many projects.

Auto Gadgets And Apps

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You don’t have to attend CES, with its auto company CEO keynotes and tricked-out show cars, to realize car tech is a huge industry. I recently looked at the latest in affordable, aftermarket car tech for a Money magazine story. During road trips in Vancouver and Chicago, I tested multiple GPS systems, Bluetooth speakerphones and in-car cellphone chargers as well as one tablet-like gizmo that streams music and pulls data from iPhones. I also sifted through the wide, wide universe of car-related mobile apps before choosing a few to feature in the story. A version of the article, which appears in Money’s November issue, can be found here. (If you’re interested, check out the piece in print; the layout is fun.)

How Small Business Can Marshal Big Data

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Image credit: Van Run

It’s clear by now that smart analysis of big data can help companies spot important trends and boost profitability. Less clear: whether small businesses can access the same benefits from mining their “big data”.

Curious about this point, I interviewed a number of companies for Inc. magazine. Some were small-to-medium-sized businesses that had utilized big data analytics. Others were big-data start-ups that specifically catered to small-business clients.

The customers I talked to, including an established fashion website, a popular task-outsourcing service and a small retailer that sells candles online, said they had profited from big-data analytics. Services vary based on cost (from a few dollars to a thousand-plus per month) and the technology driving the analytics. Some analytics companies incorporate unstructured data into their algorithms and deliver the kind of predictive analytics popularly associated with big data. Others mostly pull information from a company’s existing database, aiming to uncover insights through better data organization and visualization.

People may argue whether the latter approach counts as big-data analytics. I included a range of examples in the story to show the diversity of models and still-evolving nature of the industry. The companies I interviewed did consider this work to be big data–their version of big data. You can read the story, which appears in Inc.’s November issue, here.

‘Gangnam Style’ Mints New Entrepreneurs

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Entrepreneur David Lee in one of his Gangnam Style tux jackets.

South Korean singer Psy’s Gangnam Style video has inspired legions of people to dance, rap and dress in wacky new ways. Gangnam Style also triggered David Lee’s entrepreneurial instincts. Last month, the San Francisco web developer threw together a Gangnam Style Halloween costume business in a matter of days. Lee’s site sells replicas of Psy’s most popular Gangnam Style outfit, including a blue tuxedo jacket (patterned after a jacket Lee found in a local thrift store) and Psy-style tuxedo shirts, bow ties and sunglasses.

I wrote a short profile of Lee and his race to be the first to market with a Gangnam Style costume. To read it, click through to Hyphen magazine’s blog.

Mapping Seoul Indoors And Out

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In my daily life, one of my most wished for mobile apps is a robust outdoors/indoors navigator. The app would guide me on the streets and keep working when I ducked into the subway (my primary mode of transportation). If I entered a shopping mall, the app would transition to an interior map of the mall and provide step-by-step directions to the stores I wanted to visit. Think of it as a GPS app that also functions indoors and underground, where GPS signals can’t penetrate.

An interior view of Seoul’s Gangnam subway station shopping mall, as mapped by Fing.

Such an app exists in Seoul for the city’s enormous shopping center/exhibition hall, COEX. Soon, Seoul will get a similar, citywide app with augmented capabilities called Fing.

I wrote about this upcoming app, which is already in beta in Google’s app market, Google Play, for The Atlantic‘s urban topics site, The Atlantic Cities. You can find the story, along with some images from the app, here.

Besides mapping Seoul’s shopping malls and largest subway stations, the app contains a one-touch shortcut button for emergency aid. Push the button and the nearest police/fire dispatch will receive a request for help along with the sender’s location coordinates. The app will also let users send instant messages to approved friends for free. (For safety and privacy, outsiders can’t see a person’s location.) The app determines users’ indoors position by radio-mapping signals from a facility’s existing Wi-Fi infrastructure. The technology comes from KAIST, South Korea’s leading science and technology university.

More intriguing are KAIST’s plans for a citywide app that would track a user’s location on trains, buses and subways as well as indoors/outdoors. The app would be able to guide users door-to-door on complicated, multi-mode trips. Development is slated to begin in early 2013.

A number of companies and research institutions want to be leaders in indoor location. Google currently offers indoor maps of selected locations in five countries (Canada, Japan, Switzerland, U.K., U.S.) In the U.S., Google has mapped a few dozen airports and museums, some shopping malls and a good chunk of Las Vegas. Thus far, however, its coverage in any one city is not citywide or integrated with that city’s public transit systems.