SAJAforum

Startup website makes voting easy

ElectNext founders liken their website to a dating service. But instead of setting you up with a singleton with a penchant for wine and salsa dancing, you may end up with Barack Obama, Herman Cain or Mitt Romney.

Founded by Philadelphia-based Keya Dannenbaum, an MBA student at Wharton, and Paul Jungwirth, a software engineer and PhD candidate at UPenn, the website was created for the politically active citizen, and those interested in voting smart, to explore which candidate’s agenda matches their own ideals.

Earlier this month, the duo took the winning prize for startups at the O’Reilly Web 2.0 Expo, an annual showcase of web-based businesses held in New York. 

Dannenbaum’s idea started as a graduate student at Princeton, where she she realized that what she was learning about politics in the classroom didn’t match up to what was going on in Washington.

“After learning all of this democratic theory, I felt there was a huge disconnect in what actually happens in the election process,” Dannenbaum said. 

She left Princeton to get involved with the Hilary Clinton campaign in 2008, but it wasn’t until she started her MBA that she teamed up with Jungwirth to launch ElectNext, supported by the Wharton Venture Initiation program.

The process is relatively simple. Log in to the free site (you can use a Facebook account, too), choose what issues matter most to you, and answer a few questions about where you stand on those issues. The ElectNext algorithm delivers the candidates that align with you, and those who don’t.

Dannenbaum said users sometimes are shocked by the political candidate with whom they are matched. My own results – John Huntsman – were certainly surprising.

After receiving feedback from over 500 users, the team is planning to incorporate a forum where users can share their views and have a debate and share their thoughts.

“It really adds depth and nuance to the site,” Dannenbaum said.

The site is currently in its Beta stage, with a plan to launch in mid-November. 

TV: "Outsourced" hits the small screen, as an NBC sitcom

While Kal Penn  and Aziz Ansari  have paved the way for South Asian funny guys, a full cast from the subcontinent are just now making their way to the small screen in NBC Thursday’s new sitcom, “Outsourced”.

A spin-off of the 2006 movie by the same name, the plot follows a jaded salesman, Todd (Ben Rappaport), to India to oversee a call center.

If the movie is indeed a taste-test, “Outsourced” promises to channel a stereotype into a subtle, lively storyline complete with romance and cultural commentary.

The cast is mostly comprised of vaguely recognizable BBC stars, sitcom hoppers and newcomers such as Rizwan Manji, Rebecca Hazlewood, Anisha Nagarajan and Sacha Dhawan.

Writer Robert Borden hails from “The Drew Cary Show”, and director Ken Kwapis tested out his diversity comedy with “The Office”. 

“Outsourced” bumped out “Parks and Recreation” (starring Ansari) for the Thursday evening spot at 9:30, although that doc-style comedy is only on hold, not canceled. NBC is adding five new comedies and seven new dramas to their line-up, according to the NBC website.

You can see some clips from the show here.

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COMEDY: "Desi OC" and "Bobby Khan's Ticket to Hollywood"

There’s Hollywood. There’s Bollywood. Then there’s Bobby Khan.

Bobby Khan will try, fail, and try again to crossover from Bollywood to Hollywood when Raising Desi Production’s "Bobby Khan’s Ticket to Hollywood" debuts this year.

A venture of California-based Atif Mirza and Tarun Shetty, Raising Desi Productions has gained popularity through its online show, "Desi OC" (short for Orange County in California), attracting at least 1 million hits online.

With the standard sunshine, palm trees and pretty faces of a young adult drama, Desi OC follows young South Asian Americans and their friends through the dating scene, family life and career woes.

“We essentially go off of what we’ve been experiencing ourselves,” Mirza said.

DESI SPOTTING: Nikhil Arora and BTTR Ventures getting attention

Coffee might power red-eyed Americans at 7 a.m., but it’s the leftover waste of java grounds that is driving a young business venture in California.

Nikhil Arora (pictured at right, above) and his partner Alejandro Velez, both 22, are the founders of BTTR Ventures, an initiative in San Francisco that converts tons of America’s coffee ground waste into gourmet mushrooms. The company was nominated for Business Week’s America’s Best Young Entrepreneurs and BBC’s World Challenge competition (vote for them before the Nov. 13 deadline here).

The two Berkeley alumni were sitting in a business ethics course last December when a lecturer told the class about women in Colombia and Africa who were fighting malnutrition with used coffee. Thinking of America’s strong coffee habit, Velez and Arora decided to partner up and try out the idea themselves – starting off in a fraternity kitchen.

“We spent the last semester knee deep in coffee and experimenting to see if our idea would work,” Arora said.

They worked with Berkeley’s ecology department and received a $5000 grant from the social innovation department. Arora and Velez took their mushrooms door to door for feedback from friends, restaurants and food producers.

Arora was originally going to continue a consulting career before founding BTTR Ventures.

He said his family was surprised, but supportive. Arora’s older brother is also an entrepreneur who started an advertising web site, www.retargeter.com. But he said explaining a green startup to some of the Indian community, and his grandparents, was a little harder.

“I’ve always had this itch to do something of my own,” he said.

BTTR Venture is now supported by franchises such as Whole Foods and Peet’s Coffee & Tea.

The company is expanding their products to include shitake mushrooms and gourmet home gardens that will harvest mushrooms multiple times. Arora said he hopes to also increase the availability of their products to more people.

“That’s one of our biggest things – local fresh food movement has been tailored to wealthy and upper class people, but it should be something that’s open [to everyone].”

Commitment to society is a core principle of the venture. The team donates the used coffee grounds for compost, and helps support a gardening program for high school students.

Arora said he hopes the company will grow to include more social-minded projects and business ventures.

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ESSAY: Class of '09, exit stage left

While many of my friends are getting their diplomas and moving into the real world this spring, I’m taking the scenic route to graduation – pinning on an extra semester that allows time for a Gainesville Sun newspaper internship, journalism trip to Brazil, volunteer work in north Indian villages, and some extra multimedia classes.

“Oh, you’re such a free spirit,” my mom’s friends tell me as they nudge their children toward law school or MCAT classes.

But my sense of adventure might have something to do with the fact that finding a job has me shaking in my hiking boots.

The other day I looked up from my elliptical to the gym TV to see a headline that read “Worst year to graduate ever?” Soothing.

It’s not just the news, or the demise of the Boston Globe, CosmoGirl or Oprah Home. It’s also the journalism conferences where even lighthearted, successful columnists like Dave Barry have given budding writers the yellow light.

Professors in j-schools around the country are arming students with “backpack journalism” skills like video editing, RSS-savvy writing and Web design, but telling us to be open to PR and advertising.

My mother, who still makes me open up Word or upload photos for her, is pushing me to become more technical. Basically, a computer programmer who might have a couple story ideas too.

MEDIA: NPR's new Pakistan bureau (Q&A with NPR's Loren Jenkins)

In April, foreign correspondent Julie McCarthy moved to Islamabad to open NPR’s first permanent bureau in Pakistan, and found herself covering its latest crisis: the Taliban's incursion into the Swat Valley, and the creation of thousands of refugees.

The move by NPR follows the expansion of the New York Times South Asia bureau, and suggests that while some media outlets are cutting back their international coverage, others see the region as too big and complex to ignore or underplay. NPR's New Delhi correspondent continues to be Phillip Reeves--see our Q&A with him, after the Mumbai attacks. The Afghanistan correspondent is Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson.

Prior to the move, McCarthy (photo credit Wen Wang) was NPR’s South American correspondent based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, covered the Middle East from 2002-2005, and headed the Tokyo bureau.

McCarthy’s seemingly fearless accounts cover the impoverished and hungry, and the politically powerful and affluent. Her coverage of the Asian economic crisis in 1998 resulted in an Overseas Press Club of America Award. She's also won a Peabody.

Here is some of McCarthy’s work starting with her most recent Pakistan stories (complete list here):

• Pakistani Civilians forced to Flee Swat Valley
• U.S. surprised by Taliban's land grab in Pakistan
• Taliban Exert Influence in Pakistan
• Venezuela-Columbia Conflict Put Region on Edge
• Catholic Church Losing Ground in Latin America
• Spiraling Food Prices Buffet Poverty-Stricken Haiti
• Palestinians Await Changes in Gaza
• Hamas' Political Clout Grows

Loren Jenkins, NPR’s Senior Foreign Editor, spoke to SAJAforum about the McCarthy’s move and the new bureau:

SF: What aspects of Pakistani news will the bureau emphasize in its coverage?

LJ: We will cover all aspects of Pakistan news that we judge might be of interest to our listeners -- political news, economic news, cultural news, etc. Obviously the Obama administration has made it plain that it considers Pakistan and Afghanistan part of the same foreign policy challenge and that will be an important--but not exclusive--focus of our coverage.

TECH: MIT's Pranav Mistry and Sixth Sense

On days like today, when my phone lies in some Gainesville gutter, accumulating messages that I will never receive, I think about my childhood wish – that we could program our contacts, data and daily devices into our person, never worrying that we left them at the restaurant or in the cab.

Enter TED: a conference of Technology, Entertainment and Design that is developing wearable technology that allows you to use natural hand gestures to interact with data. MIT’s Pattie Maes and her student Pranav Mistry have developed what they are calling “Sixth Sense” to make information accessible on a new level.

Let’s break this down without science jargon. Picture someone being able to access Wikipedia with the flourish of a hand and his pointer finger and project it on any surface such as a wall or mirror. Currently, the prototype for this technology includes a projector, mirror, camera, colored finger caps and a phone. But Maes and Mistry hope to consolidate the pieces into one device.

The following video from TED highlights the incredible uses of Sixth Sense, including using your hand as a cell phone number pad. Pranav Mistry demonstrates with explanation by Pattie Maes.

With technology like this, it makes you wonder how easy those history tests in high school would have been if you could project your textbook onto the desk.

TV: Noop Dogg keeps going on American Idol

We took note of American Idol's Anoop Desai when he was one of 13 finalists. Desai slid into the bonus 13th spot in an unexpected twist in the last elimination.

Anoop Desai, dubbed “Noop Dogg” by American Idol judges is now one of the 10 remaining finalists on the popular talent show.

He secured his place at the top with Willie Nelson's "Always On My Mind," sparking the caustic Simon Cowell to quip that he went from "zero to hero."

With just a few public appearances, Desai already has fan Web sites, blogs and Facebook groups devoted to him (one of which has 15,494 members). Forums pronounce him “geeky, but hot” and “the next Indian icon.” AnoopDesai.com is subtitled "An icon is born."

Desai has crossed the ocean and garnered attention in India. From the Hindustan Times:

“Youngsters in Delhi have started following the show after he made it to the top 13, and are even revisiting his previous performances on YouTube.

SRI LANKA: Gunmen kill Lasantha Wickramatunga, newspaper editor who criticized government

Lasantha Wickramatunga, editor of the major Sri Lankan newspaper the Sunday Leader and a vocal critic of the Sri Lankan government, was killed by unidentified gunmen on Thursday as his car was stopped in traffic in Colombo, the nation's capital.

Wickramatunga was rushed to the hospital and died after three hours of surgery. The gunmen escaped on motorcycles.

Wickramatunga, 52, had received death threats before. His in-depth coverage of government corruption put him under pressure throughout his career with the anti-establishment newspaper.

The killing of Wickramatunga has brought new attention to the threats and violence that Sri Lankan journalists endure. The country is one of the world's most dangerous for reporters. Now, with prominent coverage of the story of his death, the Sri Lankan government faces new pressure to ensure the safety of its media.

From The Guardian:

The Sunday Leader is locked in a legal battle with the president's brother, Sri Lankan defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who is suing the newspaper for defamation over stories it published alleging corruption, Reuters reported. Rajapaksa has denied any wrongdoing.

From the BBC:

[Wickramatunga] was prosecuted for criminal libel of President Chandrika Kumaratunga in 2000, but escaped serious punishment.

Correspondents say that while some of his stories verged on the salacious, others exposed high-level corruption - he recently reported on an arms procurement deal with Russia in which it was alleged that government ministers were receiving financial "kick-backs".

The Hindu reported that the U.S. and India, two of Sri Lanka's allies, made statements condemning the murder. Agence France-Presse reported that in Colombo, "hundreds of Sri Lankan journalists took to the streets Friday to protest." One news site, LankaDissent.com, closed down in protest of Wickrmatunga's death.

On Thursday, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa released a statement condemning the crime and ordered an investigation of the killing of a man he called "a close friend" and "courageous journalist":

"This heinous crime points to the grave dangers faced by ... our country, and the existence of forces that will go to the furthest extremes in using terror and criminality to damage our social fabric and bring disrepute to the country," he said.

Asked to comment on the killing, former SAJA president and Time magazine South Asia Bureau Chief Jyoti Thottam told SAJAForum:

PREZ RACE: Kal Penn sightings

On Wednesday night, actor Kal Penn could be seen in his weekly portrayal of a young doctor on the hit Fox show "House." But the day before, on Election Day, he was playing a very different role.

Without pomp and presentation, the "Harold and Kumar" and "The Namesake" star was handing out precinct fliers at our University of Florida campus all day Tuesday and urging students to vote for Barack Obama. People walked by him thinking he was just another student unless they looked closer.

Why did he spend the big day at UF? Maybe because we were a vital swing state, or maybe because Florida sports tolerable November weather. 

Penn was was making his second visit in the past few months after speaking for the Obama campaign this summer. He was followed this year by Michelle Obama and Joe Biden, both of whom made visits to Gainesville in the last month. The Alachua county voting polls had recording breaking numbers of students this election. 

From the UF newspaper The Independent Florida Alligator:

Penn, an Independent, said he met a student–volunteer in Minnesota who returned from Iraq after being hit by an explosive, leaving him in a wheelchair.

“He said he’s volunteering every day for the Obama campaign because, as he put it, ‘I don’t want anyone else to go through what I went through,’” Penn said. “They want a better solution for the direction of our country. It’s the most moving thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Although an Obama–Biden victory would be nice, he said, students should keep the same attitude after the elections.

“So many college students have gotten involved in a campaign of their choice,” he said. “It would be a shame after today, no matter who wins, if we didn’t continue to participate in the political process.”

Earlier Kal Penn appearances on SAJAforum:

• Kal Penn & Barack Obama
• Spotting Kal Penn at the DNC

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