Hasta La Gadget!

One night in 2011, Xenia Papastavrou was at a restaurant in the Athenian suburb of Chalandri. She noticed how much of the food around her was wasted. Having worked at a food bank in the past, she wondered what happened to all the restaurant’s leftover food.

A few months later, while images of the breadlines — or “sisitia” — in Greece received international attention, Papastavrou, along with Alexandros Theodoridis and Alexia Moatsou, founded Boroume, which means “We can.” Their aim was to become the connecting link between those who had extra food to give away and those who needed it.

“At first we started with a few cheese pies that were donated by a small cantina, called Oscar, in the neighborhood of Ayioi Anargiroi,” Theodoridis told HuffPost Greece. “Gradually, things got more organized, and in January 2012 the three of us founded Boroume.”

Three years later, they have given approximately two million portions of food to the hungry. Boroume collaborates with more than 800 institutions to connect with those in need.

The supply map

In Boroume’s small office in the center of Athens, the telephones don’t stop ringing. A big map of Greece, like those that can be found in the elementary schools, is filled with little flags that mark every point that Boroume has worked. A much more detailed digital map can be found on their site — one can insert a postal code or area name to find the closest Boroume partner institution or social organization. They also recently created an Android app that does exactly the same job.

Boroume gives away an average of 30,000 portions of food each day. Its funding is 100 percent private and comes from a broad range of donors, from big institutions to individuals who wish to offer their leftover food.

“I was feeling very bad that I was going to throw so much food away.”

The Boroume team has many anecdotes about food offers, and, as Theodoridis stresses, the joy that all parties feel afterward. Those who donate food and the beneficiaries — not to mention Boroume’s staff — feel joy because they know their work is helping others. They spoke to HuffPost Greece about just two of the many incidents that have occurred in the past years.

Theodoridis recalled: “One night, we get this call from a man who owns a bakery in Haidari [a suburb west of Athens], who tells us that he had 60 loaves of bread left. Somehow, we remembered that somebody from a group that works with us called ‘Draseis Plission’ (Action Near You) lived next to the bakery. So we called him and he was in shock. He said: ‘I can’t believe that you are calling me now. I have prepared soup that we are taking to the homeless tonight and I was thinking that I didn’t have enough money to buy bread.’ This made him extremely happy. But also, the people from the bakery wrote to us to tell us how pleased they were that we helped them so quickly, and enabled them to give their bread to people in need instead of throwing it away.”

He continued: “Another time, it was 11 o’clock on a Saturday night, and we got a phone call from a man working at the Veneti bakery on Galatsi [a northern Athens suburb]. They had 2 huge cartons of different kinds of pies that they were going to throw away. The owner told me: ‘Thank you so much for coming because I was feeling very bad that I was going to throw so much food away.’ The saleswomen were happy because they make the pies every morning and they were sad to know that all this food would be wasted. We took them to Floga (an institution for children with cancer) and the person who is responsible told us how glad he was, because in this way they could cover all the kids’ breakfasts for two days. And our joy was immense. We all won.”

“It’s all a matter of human dignity.”

Boroume’s latest plans aim to take advantage of unallocated agricultural surplus, as well as a new program called “We are Family.” Many Greeks of the Greek diaspora, but also people from other nationalities, were willing to help one specific family every month. So a special program was created for families in need. Every family receives a voucher for food from one of two Greek supermarket chains. “The social services hand them out to the chosen beneficiaries and explain very clearly to them, that with these they can buy food. All the receipts are scanned and sent to us via email so that the benefactor can check them out at any time,” Theodoridis said.

“The most important thing of all is something that we were told by social services, something that we hadn’t even thought about,” he said. “The families need to get out of the breadlines. A breadline is a very harsh environment. There is nothing worse than to see a mother with her child waiting on this line. Think how much better it is for the child to watch his mother cooking at home. It’s all a matter of human dignity.”

The US Justice Department may have tried to hit below the belt and appeal to emotion rather than reason by painting a gruesome future. Because while tech companies are working towards strengthening a user’s privacy, the government is getting worried that they will be shut off from gathering personal information that could potentially save lives. In particular, the new encryption … Continue reading

The visual effects team that made Gravity look so God damn great is planning to “tell the story of the universe,” using Magic Leap’s augmented reality technology to create an immersive live show next year.

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Imagine if you ran out of juice on your phone in the middle of the day, but instead of running around trying to look for a charger, how about you break off a rechargeable battery pack like you would from a bar of chocolate, stick it onto your phone, and you’re good to go? If that sounds like an intriguing idea, then design Tsung Chih-Hsien’s Mini Power battery concept could be of interest to you.

As you can see in the image above, the Mini Power battery concept works like this – you break off the battery that you need which is measured in hours, as you can see in the image above, attach it to your phone, and it should provide enough juice to last for a particular amount of time. When you’re done, you can take it back to the shop you bought it from and recycle it, where presumably they will recharge it full and resell it to customers.

The less amount of time you need, the smaller the break off piece would be, so if you just need some juice for a quick phone call and fire off some emails, then you’d break off the 2-hour piece, and if you wanted more time, you’d go for the 6-hour piece, and so on. Unfortunately as it stands, the Mini Power battery is a concept at the moment.

It has won a Red Dot design award but there is no telling if and when such a design would ever be made a reality, but what do you guys think? Is this a good idea, or would you rather just stick to your battery cases and power banks?

Mini Power Battery Concept Is An Interesting Idea , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

So we’ve heard of teens who might have accidentally racked up thousands of dollars in in-app purchases, claiming that they did not know they were being charged as the game was listed for “free”, but what do you know of anyone who might have willingly spent thousands of dollars on apps?

Well as it turns out the former singer of the Sex Pistols John Lydon admitted that he has blown about 10,000 GBP on iPad apps in the past two years. This was revealed during an interview Lydon had with The Telegraph in which Lydon admitted that spending that much money on iPad apps was considered to be one of his more extravagant purchases.

According to Lydon, “I wasted – you’re the first to know this – 10,000 f‑‑‑‑‑‑ pounds in the last two years on apps on my iPad. I got into Game of Thrones, Game of War, Real Racing, and I just wanted to up the ante. And like an idiot I didn’t check myself. I’ve been checked now. But there’s a kid in me, see? A bit of my childhood was taken from me and I’m determined to bring it back.”

Yikes! That’s a lot of money! Now admittedly we’ve all spent a fair amount on apps which is easy to rack up since an app here or an app there costs a dollar or two, something we don’t really have to think too much about, although considering that we had heard a teen in Belgium who had managed to accumulate $46,000 in in-app purchases, Lydon’s spending doesn’t seem too extravagant anymore!

Rock Star Admits He Spent £10,000 On iPad Apps , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.