charities

Apple CEO Tim Cook might just be taking some tips from Bill Gates--last week he announced he donated $100 million to charity, according to The Verge.

Cook made his announcement during an internal town hall meeting celebrating Apple's successful fourth quarter.

According to The Verge, Cook said $50 million had been donated to Stanford's hospitals, with $25 million for a new main building and $25 million for a new children's hospital. Another $50 million has been donated to Product RED, which is a charity that combats diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.

Since becoming Apple … Read more

In the mood for some cheap gaming? How about a little philanthropy? You can get both with the set-your-own-price Indie Gala game bundle, which includes five PC games, two bonus games, and your choice of how to divvy up the proceeds.

It works like this. After you take a peek at the games, you decide how much you want to pay. Yes, it can be a buck, or even a penny, but you're not that cheap, are you? I think a reasonable minimum for a bundle like this is $5--but let your conscience be your guide. The games have … Read more

While it's probably long been the fantasy of nerdy women everywhere, it took a charity to get the shirt off of The Doctor's back.

As part of this year's annual Children in Need Telethon in the U.K., Matt Smith of "Doctor Who" announced that the show will be auctioning off one of The Doctor's familiar tweed and bow-tie costumes, with all proceeds going to the children's charity. Smith announced the auction in character before unveiling a trailer for the "Doctor Who Christmas Special, The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe."

While all sorts of bylaws make it difficult for Americans to tune in to BBC content online for licensing reasons, it would seem the good ole' limping dollar is good over at BBC headquarters. There's nothing in the auction rules that I can see preventing U.S. fans of The Doctor from bidding and buying the costume. Exchange rates would apply, and (with the pound running roughly double the dollar) an American fan would have to dig deep. But, it's a good cause.… Read more

A little golden badge isn't much of a gadget in the great scheme of things. It doesn't get online. You can't text anybody with it. It doesn't come with so much as a 1 megapixel camera. But the Star Wars Gold Heart Pin should serve its particular function of benefiting needy children well enough. … Read more

Game bundles for PCs and Macs are a dime a dozen. The best ones, like the Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle I wrote about last week, share a portion of the proceeds with a worthy charity.

But here's something you don't see every day: an app bundle for smartphones. The Corona Indie Bundle comes with five games for Android and iOS. Purchased separately, they'd cost you around $8. Bundle price: 99 cents.

The deal gets better: 17 percent  of the purchase price (an odd amount, I grant you) gets split between three good … Read more

I'm a big fan of the Humble Bundles, a series of name-your-own-price game collections that have reportedly raised more than $2 million for charity.

The latest, the Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle, plays fast and loose with the word "bundle," but it's still a worthwhile buy.

See, the original deal was for a single game: Frozen Synapse. (Last I checked, one game does not a bundle make.) But there's now a bonus game: Trauma. And if you pay more than the average purchase price (which is currently $4.66), you get the Humble Frozenbyte … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Johnny Long used to be known for Google hacking--finding vulnerable servers on the Internet using specific search terms. Now he's helping humanitarian groups, street kids, and police in Uganda learn how to use computers and keep malicious hackers out of their systems, as well as matching other information security professionals to charities that need help.

Long, who started the Hackers for Charity nonprofit in 2008, launched a new program at the DefCon hacker conference here this weekend that he's calling InfoSec without Borders and which is modeled after the Doctors Without Borders program.

"The volunteers are … Read more

For the past couple of months Pioneer DJ (a division of Pioneer Electronics) has been traveling the East and West coasts with the DJ Art Mix Tour, raising funds for VH1's Save the Music Foundation, to restore music education programs in public schools.

The event enlisted some of the top DJs, urban artists, and designers to create original works of art using a unique canvas: the Pioneer CDJ-2000 digital music player.

August 2 through August 23, everyone will have the opportunity to bid on one of the 12 original art pieces created by Steve Aoki, Tommy Lee and DJ Aero, BT, The Crystal Method, Jesse "Dean" Graves, Joe Hahn of Linkin Park, Bob Haro, Man One, Victor "Marka27" Quinonez, Ritzy Periwinkle, Rost Arr, and George Thompson.

Bidding will begin at $400, with final bids being accepted until noon ET, on August 23. All the information you'll need about each individual work of art and the artist(s) can be found on the Pioneer DJ Art Mix page on charitybuzz. To boot, 100 percent of the proceeds will be donated to the VH1 Save The Music Foundation.

We had the opportunity to check out the Pioneer DJ Art Mix show held at Twelve21 in New York on June 23.… Read more

Now this I like.

The Humble Indie Bundle #3 is a collection of five PC games, all of them compatible with Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. Their combined value: about $55.

Your price: whatever you want to pay. Think the bundle's worth a buck? Pay a buck. Think it's worth $15? Pay $15. Feeling generous? Pony up $5,000 and earn the pole position on the Top Contributors list.

What's great about the Humble Indie Bundle is that you get to decide how to divvy up your contribution among four potential recipients: the game developers, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, … Read more