Paypal cofounder Peter Thiel doesn’t shy away from making risky bets in disruptive technology and research.

Today, the Thiel Foundation announced it would grant $350,000 to two of Breakout Labs’ teams: SkyPhrase and Stealth Biosciences. Both startups are working to bridge the gap between technology and the biological sciences.

SkyPhrase is working on making computers understand human language with greater precision. It’s creating a platform to search, access, and monitor data that relies on natural language processing. The company is already viewed as a potential competitor to Apple’s Siri, which struggles to understand complex-language questions.

Stealth Biosciences is developing a device that can exert control over biological processes at the level of single cells. The technology is the brainchild of Stanford University professors Nick Melosh and Craig Garner. These devices could be a new toolset for research and diagnostic applications; it will initially use the funding to develop a “Nanostraw” device that can reprogram human T-cells for the purposes of cancer therapy.

Thiel is funneling the millions he made through early investments in Facebook, Yammer, and Yelp into potentially life-saving research. Through the nonprofit Breakout Labs, which was founded in 2011 and received financing through the Thiel Foundation, he kick-starts ideas that most traditional venture capitalists wouldn’t touch.

Last year, Breakout Labs’ funded a dozen startups, including a venture to produce bioengineered animal products — lab-grown meat — with about $4.5 million. Breakout Labs awards grants from $50 to 350,000 on a rolling basis, but the funded companies retain their intellectual property.

Many of the companies admitted into Breakout Labs go on to win government and academic grants, and many of the founders are university professors. This reflects “a growing and much welcome interest from the academic community in commercialization,” said Breakout Labs executive director Lindy Fishburne.

Peter Thiel image via Kenneth Yeung/Flickr

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LAS VEGAS – IBM just announced that it’s basing its cloud products and services on open cloud architecture.

IBM is placing its considerable heft behind OpenStack, a cloud operating system that kicked off two-and-a-half years ago to enable any organization to create and offer cloud computing services running on standard hardware. The nonprofit Open Stack Foundation manages the product, and IBM announced it would be a big-time sponsor last April.

“It’s a vote of confidence for the maturity of the [OpenStack] technology,” said Robert Leblanc, the senior vice president of IBM Software (pictured, left), on a conference call with the press. IBM made the announcement at its Las Vegas cloud conference “PULSE,” which began Sunday and ends Friday.

The hope is that IBM’s existing customers will adopt open source-based technologies, which can be ported across hybrid cloud environments.

“I’m excited to see IBM throw their considerable weight behind Open Stack,” said Deepak Advani, a general manager at IBM customer Tivoli, on the call. 

IBM is a long-time contributor to the OpenStack project, along with companies like Rackspace, Dell, Cisco, and Yahoo.

“I think the first couple years of OpenStack is really about helping people run and configure it,” said Scott Sanchez, Rackspace’s strategy lead for Open Cloud in a recent interview with VentureBeat. “But we are seeing a tremendous amount of traction,” he said.

Going forward, IBM will dedicate 500 of its developers to work on open cloud projects. IBM also announced that its Smart Cloud offering (the cloud portfolio used by 5,000 customers) will incorporate open cloud pieces. ”It brings along so many capabilities ” said Leblanc, who pointed out Smart Cloud launched before there even was an Open Stack movement.

IBM’s rebranded offering, “SmartCloud orchestrator,” is currently in beta testing. Benefits for customers include a reduction in operational costs, better integration with third party tools, and a simplification of cloud services.

Jim Smith, a managing partner for Mohr Davidow Ventures, said this is a step forward in “breaking the chains for high cost technologies.” On the conference call, he said that for large businesses and entrepreneurs, “the canvas for innovation is moving to the cloud.”

Photo illustration by Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

Prestigious accelerator Y Combinator is expanding its horizons by backing a nonprofit called “Watsi.”

The startup, which caught the eye of YC’s outspoken founder Paul Graham, is helping impoverished people pay their medical bills through small donations. Graham explained in a post this morning that he saw “revolutionary potential” in the idea in just 30 seconds after perusing a discussion on Hacker News.

“They were a hit with HN [Hacker News] users and raised a significant amount of money,” Graham wrote.

Watsi is a nonprofit, so Y Combinator will make a charitable donation instead of an investment.

Founder Chase Adam revealed in an interview with NBC News that he built the site in his spare time. In 2010, the former Peace Corps volunteer was passing through a town in Costa Rica called Watsi when a woman in tattered clothing boarded a bus and asked for donations for her son’s medical treatment. On the company’s website, Adam described his “epiphany,” and the subsequent formation of the site.

“If I could somehow connect this woman with my friends and family back home, she would have the money to pay for her son’s medical treatment within the day.”

Adam and a small team of developers were inspired to create a startup that would connect a beneficiary in need of medical treatment to potential donors. Donors can view profiles — primarily young children — to inspire a personal connection, and can give as little as $5. Pictures and summaries (see below) are provided by the startup’s health care partners in third world countries.

According to Graham, 100 percent of the donations directly fund medical treatments, and there are no administrative costs. However, this may change as the startup scales out its operations.

Top image credit: Sascha Burkard

With piles of beautifully wrapped presents under the Christmas tree, we can’t help but feel grateful for everything we have. This desire to give back translates into an army of willing volunteers at food banks and homeless shelters, which usually dissipates by New Year’s Day.

How do we keep up the spirit of giving all year round? Here are three ideas from the tech community to turn you into a change-making habitual philanthropist.

Change.org

Why not start a grassroots campaign?

Company: Change.org
What is it? An online petitioning site.
Membership: 25 million users; the company is growing at a rate of 2 million new members a month.
Who’s it for? Ordinary people who want to start hyper-local movements against corporations or interest groups. “If you want to win battles, you do it locally,” Change.org CEO Ben Rattray (pictured, above) told VentureBeat.
How does it work? Petitions are nothing new, but marrying them with social media and focusing them in a hyper-local way — that’s where things start to get interesting. Simply launch a petition on Change.org, share it with your social networks, and watch it take off. The startup has a support team that will help you mobilize and put pressure on your target.
Greatest success story: Don’t believe you can take on the big banks? Twenty-two-year-old nanny Molly Katchpole launched an online petition on Change.org to put pressure on Bank of America to drop its new $5 monthly debit card fee. It was signed by 300,000 people. Victory was affirmed in November 2011.
What is the secret sauce? The company has a charismatic CEO in the form of Rattray (pictured, above), who believes that technology can arm ordinary people to start revolutions. In a recent interview at his San Francisco headquarters, Rattray said that people are apathetic because they learn over time that their opinion or vote doesn’t matter. Inspired by examples of successful campaigns launched on blogs, Facebook and Twitter or sites like Change.org, they are recognizing that they can make a difference. “As the platform gets bigger, people in power know who we are,” said Rattray. “They recognize the potential power of viral campaigns.”

Why not raise money for a charitable cause?

Company: Rally.org 
What is it? A platform that helps people to rally around and raise money for causes they believe in.
Who’s it for? A rebel with a cause.
How does it work? Create a fundraising page on Rally.org in a matter of minutes, and start accepting donations. Add your extended social network to your support list, and reach out to them on Facebook and Twitter. If your fundraising takes off, you can access a dashboard to analyze what’s working and view a list of your greatest supporters.
Membership: Approximately 1.5 million users.
Greatest success story?  A member recently raised $20,000 to help save a Minnesota church from foreclosure.
What is the secret sauce? Its all-star network of supporters. Rally.org has successfully rallied celebrities like Bon Jovi and Silicon Valley’s venture capital community. When Digg.com founder Kevin Rose joined Google Ventures, Rally.org was his first investment. It was further propelled into the spotlight when the Romney campaign chose it as its fundraising platform. “We’re increasingly seeing artists, brands and large corporations being very vocal and open about leveraging their celebrity and brand to benefit causes,” said Nick Warshaw, Rally.org’s business development lead in a recent interview with VentureBeat.

Why not offer an internship to a teen programmer?

Organization: CodeNow
What is it? A nonprofit that encourages high school students from inner city neighborhoods to pick up computer programming.
Who’s it for? Developers with a few hours to spare on an occasional evening who would be willing to teach; tech startups that can offer an internship to teen graduates of the program; kids from want to learn foundational skills in computer programming through free extra curricular off campus training.
How does it work? Teens reeceive netbook computers when they enter the program and sign up for 45 hours of programming training after school and during the summer or winter break. Once they complete the program, some of the graduates land internships at tech startups like LivingSocial.
Membership: The program has about 50 alumni. It started in Washington, D.C., but it recently expanded to San Francisco.
Greatest success story? Wilfred, a teen from a rough neighborhood in Washington D.C., who was ready to hand out handwritten business cards with the title “future engineer” in a few months. A natural at the programming language Ruby on Rails, he is now teaching the new recruits.
What is the secret sauce? Its close ties to the tech community. In attendance at the recent launch event in San Francisco were venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and other high-profile techies like Jonathan Abrams, founder of Friendster, and Roy Bahat, chairman of Ouya. The organization’s emphasis on diversity is both impressive and unique — about 40 percent of the program’s graduates are girls.

Red ribbon image via discpicture // Shutterstock

The startup mines social data from Facebook and leverages it into fundraising and outreach. In a nutshell, this platform modernizes traditional mobilization campaigns by providing an online replacement for phone calls, emails, and snail mail.

Amicus gamifies social fundraising by letting users earn points and move up a leader board as a result of how many friends they talk to. There is also the opportunity for people to win real world prizes. On the organizational side, Amicus helps them conserve time and money by creating a more effective outreach channel. Administrators can use the management platform to stay on top of the campaigns.

Customers include juggernauts like the Human Rights Campaign, National Education Association, and the AFL-CIO. During the lead up to the recent election, Amicus powered outreach efforts in the four states that had marriage equality on the ballot.

The company participated in Y Combinator’s 2012 summer class and investors include YC partners Alexis Ohanian, Garry Tan, and Harj Taggar. Other investors include Omidyar, Y Combinator, Peter Thiel’s FF Angel, Andreessen Horowitz, Start Fund, SV Angel, and General Catalyst, IA Ventures, High Peaks Venture Partners, and 500 Startups, as well as existing investors RRE, Quotidian Ventures, Esther Dyson, and other angels. The team is based in New York.

It only took a few months for Wilfred, a teen from a rough neighborhood in Washington D.C., to begin handing out handwritten business cards with the title “future engineer.“

With a presence in D.C. and now San Francisco, CodeNow is a nonprofit that encourages high school students from inner city neighborhoods to pick up coding skills. Wilfred (pictured left, teaching a fellow student) was one of the first to join the program — he practiced up to five hours a night and has a proclivity for the programming language Ruby on Rails.

Wilfred’s was just one of the many heartwarming stories shared at the launch event, held at a co-working space in San Francisco this week. In attendance were venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and other high-profile members of the local tech community. Jonathan Abrams, founder of Friendster, and Roy Bahat, chairman of Ouya, are among the organization’s supporters.

“About 40 percent of the students have the potential to be developers,” said CodeNow founder Ryan Seashore during a phone interview with VentureBeat. Once they pick up these skills, the kids increase their chances of getting into a top engineering school at college, and many aspire to become entrepreneurs.

There are already over 50 alumni of the CodeNow program, which has close ties to the tech community. Teens are given netbook computers when they enter the program and sign up for 45 hours of programming training after school and during the summer or winter break.

Once they complete the program, some of the graduates land internships at tech startups like LivingSocial. The internship program is still under development — Seashore told me he’s hoping to connect with tech companies in the Bay Area that would be willing to mentor a budding developer.

Seashore had the idea for CodeNow in early 2011 when he struggled to find a great programming class. “If I’m having trouble finding a program, these kids must not have a shot,” he told me. Convinced that high school students, particularly those from underrepresented communities, would be empowered by learning to code, he launched a pilot class.

CodeNow is currently oversubscribed, and its focus is on maintaining diversity. The program’s directors are particularly proud that 40 percent of its students are girls.

Seashore is confident that CodeNow will be met with a warm welcome in the Bay Area, the nation’s tech capital. “We can do it if we get the financial resources and the right companies behind us. It’s the perfect place for our program,” he said.

CodeNow is looking for volunteers, mentors, programmers, board-members, and donors in D.C. and San Francisco. If you’re interested, apply through the site. 

WeTopia is a free-to-play Facebook game where players create villages and help their neighbors. When players purchase virtual goods in the game, that results in a direct donation to a real world cause. Buying an in-game fountain, for instance, leads to a donation for clean water. Actual projects related to the donations have already begun in the U.S. and Haiti and will soon launch in Africa, Asia, Europe and South America.

But players don’t have even have to make purchases to to have an effect. They earn ”joy” points from viewing ads from sponsors, who then make donations to nonprofits that provide children and families with basic needs, healthcare, and education in the real world.

Lexington, Ky.-based Sojo Studios has lined up an impressive number of partners, including a variety of children’s charities and celebrities such as talk show host Ellen DeGeneres.

Players can track their contributions inside the game through pictures, videos, blogs and in-game posts. The goal is to combine fun and tangible help, so that rewards in games are more than just a collection of points.

“With WeTopia, players can have fun with friends and family in-game, and experience the joy of supporting projects that help children in the real world. Best of all, players can see and track the progress of these real world projects,” said Lincoln Brown, founder and chief executive at Sojo Studios.

The idea of playing for good isn’t new. Social game maker Zynga has donated millions of dollars to causes via its Zynga.org group. The Game Developers Conference sponsors a conference and special interest group focused on Games For Change. That group has been around since 2004 and focuses on the creation and distribution of social-impact games that serve as tools for humanitarian and educational efforts.

But Sojo’s WeTopia has an impressive list of partners. They include Save the Children (www.savethechildren.org), buildOn (www.buildon.org), and the Children’s Health Fund (www.childrenshealthfund.org), among others. Dave Morin, CEO and founder of Path, and tech investor Esther Dyson are advisors.

Some of the nonprofits will offer limited-edition social goods (or virtual goods) such as food stuffs or specialty shops.

“Save the Children is thrilled to be part of Sojo Studios’ innovative approach to social gaming,” said Carolyn Miles, president and CEO of Save the Children. “WeTopia will help to build awareness about important social issues and give people a fun way to make a lasting difference for children in need. Thanks to Sojo, millions of people can become important partners in the work we do each day.”

Brand partners for Sojo include Clorox, Mattel and Dippin’ Dots. Those brands assist with the donations. Sojo itself is donating 50 percent of its net profits to nonprofit groups around the world. Sojo has about 20 employees and was founded in 2010, after the earthquake in Haiti.

Brown, the founder, had been going to Haiti for years and was there after the quake. He saw a need for improving how people could contribute to a social cause in a more sustainable way. He was inspired that so many people were playing games online, and he wanted to tie that to causes in a transparent way. The company has offices in New York and Los Angeles and has raised $8 million to date from private investors. The game has been in a closed beta test in six countries.

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“I’m around nonprofits a fair amount and saw that most of them were small and really struggling with just getting up a simple website,” said Dodd Caldwell.

Caldwell recently got in touch with VentureBeat to tell us about Bellstrike, his solution for tech-challenged nonprofit organizations.

“Many of them didn’t have websites,” he continued. “Of the ones that didn’t many of them just weren’t that great and didn’t accept online donations. I love trying to start things, fixing problems, and helping nonprofits. So, starting Bellstrike seemed like a pretty good idea.”

Bellstrike uses beautiful fonts, eye-catching colors, social media options and modern themes to create websites that help nonprofits communicate their missions and raise the funds they need to keep operating.

The websites integrate features that let organizations instantly accept online donations. Nonprofits can even choose to create a gift catalog so visitors can “shop” for donations. Bellstrike even sends automatic receipts to online donors via email.

Bellstrike makes its money by taking 6 percent of online donations, capping fees at $80 per month.

Caldwell said the service first outfits each nonprofit’s main navigation menu with home, about, programs and donation pages, as well as a blog and one custom page. “We’re working on allowing them to customize these somewhat after the fact, but they don’t have to worry about what their site’s architecture will be,” he said.

“If they don’t have a logo, we take their name, use a cool typeface with Typekit, and throw some effects on it to make it look good.”

Then, depending on the theme the organization chooses to use, Bellstrike automatically sets up complimentary typefaces, colors and layouts.

“I’ve been around too many nonprofits that go to post a blog post and then spend two hours trying to format it, determining whether to wrap text to the right or left around a photo, how large to make the font, what color to make it, etc. When they upload a photo with Bellstrike or write text, we put it where it’s supposed to go,” he said.

Altogether, the website-creation process is, as Bellstrike puts it, “as fast as a round of Candyland and as easy as making a sandwich.”

Check out this quick demo, and if you know of a nonprofit that’s struggling with the web, pass along the info:

Have you ever considered how a simple, free technology such as YouTube videos could drastically improve a global problem such as education?

Sal Khan, founder of the Khan Academy, is something of an expert on the topic. In this video, he talks about the future of higher education in the U.S. and how to increase access to and quality of education. The remarks were made to education influencers from around the world, including university heads, state governors and other policy makers, at the Future of State Universities conference last week.

For ages, home-schoolers and kids in rural areas have been using videos to learn; however, educational YouTube videos are now also being used in traditional classrooms to “supercharge” the educational experience.

Khan, founder of the somewhat loftily named Khan Academy, has pioneered the concept of free, on-demand video instruction for K-12 education, especially in tougher subjects such as science in math. In 2006, Khan was working in the world of hedge funds. To help his young cousins who were struggling with science and math concepts in grade school, he started tutoring them remotely via a series of YouTube videos.

At this conference, he talked about how his YouTube channel has introduced a new model for education at all levels.

With 30 kids to a classroom, opportunities for feedback and interaction are scarce; Khan says this kind of environment is a dehumanizing experience. In that kind of situation, technology can, ironically enough, bring more interaction and individual instruction back into the mix.

Next, Khan would love to see this general line of thinking (simple tech solving tough problems) applied to topics such as healthcare or democracy. Read his thoughts on that subject in our recent exclusive interview with him.

Other speakers at the conference included Jeb Bush, Tony Blair, Arne Duncan and Clay Christensen.

This article is part of a series of posts about DEMO alumni and news of their progress. Zurb launched at DEMO in Spring 2010. Check out more at DEMO.

Yesterday, interaction design firm Zurb held its annual ZurbWired event, a day-long affair where all Zurb employees stay up for 24 hours to design a website and marketing materials for a nonprofit in need.

Zurb prides itself on being more than just “dudes in expensive chairs.” The firm offers web design services, but also creates tools to help implement designs internally, gives how-to lessons, and will make house calls to help teams code and install designs.

ZurbWired is the one day out of the year when coffee flows Bacchanalia style, and cat naps are the only form of rejuvenation. For this year’s event, Zurb chose Rebekah Children’s Services to receive a new website, pamphlets, posters and other marketing materials from the 24-hour push.

“A lot can get accomplished in 24 hours if you just dedicate yourself!” marketing lead Dmitry Dragilev (pictured above) told VentureBeat in an interview. “We have to go for 24 hours. We don’t sleep, we don’t go home, we just crank through it and create a website and brochures.”

The effort is not free — it takes a lot of hands to make the project a success, but it has a lasting impact on nonprofits who generally don’t have the resources to take on months-long web design initiatives.

At the time we talked with Dmitry, Zurb and a group of seven volunteers had already created 70 mock ups for Rebekah Children’s Services. Zurb makes sure the chosen nonprofit is involved in the design process — in this case it was five people from the nonprofit’s executive team.

The group hoped to finish the job by 8am Friday morning, and they succeeded. By that time Rebekah Children’s Services had a new website, an updated backend using Joomla, a full mobile version of the website, new website and promotional copy, printed brochures and post cards, two new logos, and newsletter, letterhead and business card templates.

You can see the completed website here.

When its not being altruistic, Zurb is continuing to turn the innovation gears.

“We’re going to the next stage where we’re staring to release products for people to create websites on their own,” said Dragilev.

Zurb will have released up to six web applications by the end of the year. Many of these apps will work with Zurb’s product Verify, which it demonstrated at the Spring 2010 DEMO conference. Verify is about feedback and testing concepts. One of these web apps will allow designers to bypass coding a test page for feedback. Instead, they will be able to upload their design onto Zurb and share the mock-up in a link.

Zurb was founded in 1998 and is located in Campbell, Calif. The company has 13 employees.

Photo and video shot by Zurb.

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Omidyar Network, started by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam, funds startups and projects that could positively impact the developing world, the environment, or the way people connect with one another. Some of its more notable investments include social news aggregator Digg, thin-film solar developer NanoSolar, solar lantern maker D.light Design, and peer-to-peer money lending network Prosper. Given this background, Kiva is a clear fit.

In addition to loans, some of the grant — the largest the nonprofit has ever received — will go toward upgrading Kiva’s operations, namely its technology platform, which allows people to send small amounts of money (usually about $25) online to foster businesses elsewhere in the world. Kiva allows lenders to choose who and what businesses they want to support based on location, biographies of those involved, risk levels, and how much they have already raised.

To make sure loans make it into the right hands, the organization works with a constellation of field partners around the world — smaller micro-finance groups on the ground that work closely with local communities. Some of the money from Omidyar will go toward expanding these partnerships. Money is passed back and forth between all stakeholders via PayPal.

Based in San Francisco, Kiva recently hit its fifth anniversary. It continues to be the most popular nonprofit of its kind. Its Board of Directors already includes LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Jenny Shilling Stein of the Draper Richards Foundation. Now Amy Klement, vice president of investments for the Omidyar Network will also join.