There's always something brewing in the PopTech community. From the world-changing people, projects and ideas in our network, a handful of this week's highlights follows.

• Why are we all so tired all the time? In last week's New York Magazine, Kathryn Schulz (PopTech 2010) explored body clocks, chronotypes, and internal vs. external time.

• Sean Gourley, PopTech 2010 Science Fellow and co-founder of Quid, a company that builds software to capture, structure and visualize vast amounts of data, explained to the Huffington Post how to use Big Data to find a better, more informed way forward.

• Richard Florida had a conversation on The Atlantic: Cities website with Jonah Lehrer (PopTech 2009) about the cities chapter from his book, Imagine: How Creativity Works. Lehrer says, “Cities force us to interact with strangers and with the strange. They pry the mind open. And that is why they are the idea that has unleashed so many of our new ideas.”

• Game on! UCLA researchers, led by Science Fellow Aydogan Ozcan (PopTech 2009), are using online crowd-sourcing to diagnose malaria.

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Image: Helga Weber

There's always something brewing in the PopTech community. From the world-changing people, projects and ideas in our network, a handful of this week's highlights follows.

• PopTech 2011 Social Innovation Fellow and MASS Design Group’s Michael Murphy spoke to a group at Van Alen Books for the launch of Empowering Architecture, a publication showcasing the Butaro Hospital in Rwanda. Murphy discussed his group’s holistic approach to architecture and the potential for architectural practice to play an integral role in building spaces that heal and strengthen communities.

• Longtime friend of PopTech, Nancy Duarte, the CEO of Duarte Design, has advanced the art and literature of presentations, emerging with her agency as one of the most sought-after authorities in presentation design. Duarte has just released Resonate for iPad, a cinematic, interactive and media-rich business book.

• You'll definitely want to carve out a chunk of time to read a piece in the The New York Times by Siddhartha Mukherjee (PopTech 2010) entitled Post-Prozac Nation: The Science and History of Treating Depression.

• Finally, yesterday, Social Innovation Fellow Jake Porway announced that his organization, Data Without Borders, will now officially be known as DataKind. 

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Image: Global Pulse

There's always something brewing in the PopTech community. From the world-changing people, projects and ideas in our network, a handful of this week's highlights follows.

• This week Soundcloud released a video that explores the four effects sound has on us – physiological, psychological, cognitive, and behavioral – with familiar faces Imogen Heap (PopTech 2008, 2010) and Radiolab host Jad Abumrad (PopTech 2010).

• Join Imogen Heap (PopTech 2008, 2010) as she performs live from her garden on Earth Day, Sunday, April 22nd.

• On Thursday, PBS' Media Shift blog profiled community builder and PopTech 2011 speaker Milenko Matanovic. Matanovic uses collaboration to transform communities nationwide.

• Tech site Mashable takes a look at 2010 Social Innovation Fellow Yasser Ansari's Project Noah and declares, "If Charles Darwin created Foursquare, it might look like this."

• Finally, do you create data visualizations? Yes? Brian Eno (PopTech 2006) wants to give you $30,000.  
  

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Image: James Vaughan

There's always something brewing in the PopTech community. From the world-changing people, projects and ideas in our network, a handful of this week's highlights follows.

• This week, Thomas Thwaites (PopTech 2011) of The Toaster Project was interviewed on The Rumpus. Thwaites talks about wondering where things come from, ruining his mother's microwave and taking another crack at building a toaster from scratch...on TV. 

• Ze Frank (PopTech 2004, 2005) kicked off A Show with Ze Frank, a brand new Kickstarter-funded web series on Monday. He's already three episodes in. Start here for Episode 1: An Invocation for Beginnings.

• We're disheartened to read in Salon that U.S. filmmaker Laura Poitras (PopTech 2010) continues to be repeatedly detained at the border. 

• Bloomberg profiles PopTech 2011 Social Innovation Fellow Paul Needham's pay-as-you-go solar venture, Simpa Networks.

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Image: Thomas Thwaites

There's always something brewing in the PopTech community. From the world-changing people, projects and ideas in our network, a handful of this week's highlights follows.

• Van Jones (PopTech 2007) is founding president of Rebuild the Dream, a pioneering initiative to restore good jobs and economic opportunity. In Jones' new book, Rebuild the Dream, he reflects on his journey from grassroots outsider to White House insider. For the first time, he shares intimate details of his time in government – and reveals why he chose to resign from his post as a special advisor to the Obama White House. Read an excerpt from the book on GOOD. 

• 2008 PopTech Fellow Heather Fleming founded Catapult Design, which helps foundations and non-profits apply design thinking to global development. Interested in learning how to use design to positively impact society? Check out Catapult Labs this May in San Francisco!

• Artist eL Seed's (PopTech 2011) works are a mixture of street art and Arabic calligraphy. Last week eL Seed brought what he calls calligraffiti to Harvard University and created a piece entitled "Taking Back the Purple." He explained that, “You have to be a kind of ‘artivist,’ an artist and an activist at the same time, and I believe that is the duty of art: to speak what other people do not want to speak. Say loudly what other people don’t want to say.” 

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Image: eL Seed

There's always something brewing in the PopTech community. From the world-changing people, projects and ideas in our network, a handful of this week's highlights follows.

• 2011 Social Innovation Fellow Jake Porway’s Data Without Borders brings data scientists and social organizations together to design transformative visualizations and decision-making tools. Yesterday, the White House recognized Data Without Borders in their “Big Data Research and Development Initiative” announcement.

• 2009 PopTech Fellow Jason Aramburu launched re:char in 2005 to develop low-cost technologies that fight climate change while improving the quality of degraded soils. re:char’s systems convert agricultural waste into renewable fuel and into biochar, sequestering atmospheric carbon and improving soil quality. Previously focused on bring biochar to developing countries, Aramburu is expanding his work stateside with a Kickstarter campaign to kick off a trial to evaluate the effectiveness of biochar for domestic farmers and gardeners. 

• Eli Pariser (PopTech 2010) is an expert on the social and political impact of the personalized web and how (and what kind of) information spreads. Earlier this week, Pariser, along with The Onion‘s Peter Koechley and Facebook’s Chris Hughes launched Upworthy, a new project that hopes to help people "find important content that is as fun to share as a FAIL video of some idiot surfing off his roof."

• Finally, some lighthearted Friday fun. OK Go (PopTech 2010) has teamed up with College Humor to announce OKGopid, the world's most fun and least successful dating site. In music news, OK Go released a rainbow of tango, or what you might call a music video for the song "Skyscrapers" yesterday. Have a great weekend! 
  

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Image: OK Go

This mesmerizing visualization of wind flowing over the U.S. hits on a number of our interests: data, design, mapping, and energy. Trust us, you're going to want to check this out. 

An invisible, ancient source of energy surrounds us—energy that powered the first explorations of the world, and that may be a key to the future. 

This map shows you the delicate tracery of wind flowing over the US right now. 

Read more about wind and about wind power. 

(via It's Okay To Be Smart)

There's always something brewing in the PopTech community. From the world-changing people, projects and ideas in our network, a handful of this week's highlights follows.

• At PopTech 2011, Amy Cuddy revealed that we can actually change feelings we have about our own status through the physical positions we take with our bodies. Her research participants had higher levels of testosterone and lower levels of cortisol after only two minutes in a “power pose”. Cuddy is profiled in this week's issue of Time Magazine as a game changer who is inspiring change in America. Go go Power Poses! 

• ZanaAfrica, founded by 2011 Social Innovation Fellow Megan Mukuria, empowers Kenyan girls to break cycles of poverty through simple, sustainable solutions. With sanitary pads and health education, girls can stay in school with confidence. To tell this story, ZanaAfrica teamed up with longtime PopTech collaborator Peter Durand of Alphachimp Studio to make an animated promotional video.

• Kopo Kopo, founded by 2010 Social Innovation Fellow Ben Lyon, helps Kenyans pay by mobile phone with mobile money. Kopo Kopo provides a web-based application (accessible by PC and Android) that enables small- and medium-sized businesses to accept and track purchases made with mobile money.

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Image: Alphachimp

There's always something brewing in the PopTech community. From the world-changing people, projects and ideas in our network, a handful of this week's highlights follows.

• At PopTech 2009, Jonah Lehrer, the best-selling author of How We Decide and Proust Was a Neuroscientist, noted that, paradoxically, lacking expertise on a subject can be an asset. “It’s what allows us to see the connections, to see the problems that no one else can see.” Lehrer's lastest book, Imagine: How Creativity Works, will be released this Monday, March 19th. 

• Singer-songwriter Ethan Lipton (PopTech 2005) has created “No Place to Go,” a musical ode to unemployment at Joe's Pub in the East Village. The show received rave reviews in the New York Times this week. 

• Kevin Starr (PopTech 2010), Mulago Foundation director, looks for the best solutions to the biggest problems in the poorest countries. In an article published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Starr takes another look at “Carbon for Water” in Western Kenya.

• And finally, enjoy this delightful animation by Marija Jacimovic of Michael Pollan's (PopTech 2009) Food Rules, an exploration of how our industrial food system keeps us overly dependent on fossil fuels. 

If you'd like to receive a stream of these updates (and more) throughout the week in real time, follow us on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, sign up for our newsletter, and subscribe to the PopTech blog.

Image: Marija Jacimovic

There's always something brewing in the PopTech community. From the world-changing people, projects, and ideas in our network, a handful of this week's highlights follows.

• Collaboration alert: Our friends at Hot Studio conducted a facilitated workshop for PopTech 2011 Social Innovation Fellow Megan White Mukuria's organization, ZanaAfrica. In their structured brainstorming session, Hot Studio and Zana developed a framework for designing the web components of Zana's services.

• Congratulations to PopTech Fellow Hayat Sindi who was named 1 of the 100 most influential Arab women of 2012 by Arabian Business.com! A leader in both science and social innovation, Sindi launched i2, the Institute for Imagination and Ingenuity at PopTech 2011. Sindi created the Institute to bridge the gap between education and opportunity in the Middle East.

• Additionally, both Sindi and lawyer, high court justice, and novelist Unity Dow (PopTech 2011) have been named to The Daily Beast's list of the 150 most fearless, trailblazing women in the world.

• Finally, congrats to 2011 Science Fellow Pardis Sabeti, named to the 2012 Forum of Young Global Leaders.

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Image: Zana Africa and Hot Studio