NextDraft: The Best-Run Charity and Other Fascinating News on the Web

High-Tech Charity Water of love deep in the ground But there ain’t no water here to be found Some day baby when the river runs free It’s gonna carry that water of love to me. – Dire Straits “It’s like sleep-away camp for geeks.” Scott Harrison has used the language and strategies of start-up culture to build Charity: Water, one of the most significant water-related organizations in the world. He not only borrows from the start-up culture, he also taps into the cash and expertise of some well-known execs and investors. How does he get so many young and wealthy individuals to back his efforts? He leads them to where the drinkable water isn’t. From the NYT Magazine: A Save-the-World Field Trip for Tech Moguls. + If you want to learn more and/or get involved, here’s more about Charity: water. Obama Cancels Talks with Putin We’ve gone from the Cold War to the cold shoulder. President Obama has cancelled planned talks with Vladamir Putin following several fallouts (of the non-nuclear kind) over issues including the handling of Edward Snowden. As The Daily Beast’s Peter Pomerantsev explains, the relationship between Obama and Putin has hit an all-time low. Newest Smoking Trend Forget all those rules about not smoking in bars or the workplace. The new smokers aren’t exhaling smoke into your face, they are sucking on an e-cigarette and emitting a smoke-like vapor. The so-called “vaping” is changing the rules of smoking, and possibly starting to make it cool again. In addition to getting smokers to “quit,” are the new e-cigs getting non-smokers to start? + The Vaping trend may come as good news to employers. According to a recent study, the cost of a smoker to an employer runs nearly six grand, between the time taken for smoke breaks and health costs. Short Attention Span Theater Mixbit is a new app for sharing and editing short video clips. With several players already in the marketplace, why is this news? Because Mixbit is run by YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve



via NewsFeed | TIME.com http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/08/08/the-best-run-charity-and-other-fascinating-news-on-the-web/