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Google’s “Develop for Good” hackathon winners tackle environment, human rights

At Google’s I/O developer conference in June, the company held a “Develop for Good” hackathon as a collaboration between the I/O conference and Google’s philanthropy arm, Google.org. On Friday, Google picked the winners from the hackathon in three main categories: Ideas, Politics and Elections and Green. The selection of winners highlighted some interesting projects where companies are using technology to tackle issues in human rights and the environment. Hackers in the Ideas arena were asked to develop a tool that could be used for reporting information from hostile situations with limited internet and repressive government regimes. The winning project, Silent Lens, developed software for Android that allows users to capture sensitive information and securely transmit that information to others even with a hostile government and limited connectivity. Silent Lens founders explained on their website the importance of getting information from those hostile environments into the world: “Information about incidents of violence in these situations is tremendously important: it can shame governments into reform, help the international community pressure regimes to cease violence, and increase citizens’ own commitments to affecting change.” More…

News selected by Covalence | Country: Global | Company: Google  | Source: Gigaom

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