Good guy Apple gives $2.5 million to Hurricane Sandy relief

After successfully raising "millions" of dollars toward the American Red Cross' Hurricane Sandy relief efforts, Apple CEO Tim Cook told employees today that the company will donate $2.5 million of its own money to help the storm's victims recover.

Apple will donate $2.5 million to victims of Hurricane Sandy, according to an internal memo obtained by 9to5Mac. The charitable gift comes on top of untold millions raised by Apple customers for the American Red Cross through a special page on iTunes. 

Apple originally launched the Hurricane Sandy relief page in iTunes on November 1, just days after the storm decimated communities up the East Coast, including towns and cities in New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut. Apple iTunes customers can give amounts ranging from $5 to $200 through the page.

Sandy is said to be the second most-costly hurricane in U.S. history, after 2005′s Hurricane Katrina. Eleven days after Sandy made landfall, around 265,000 homes in New Jersey, and more than 168,000 in Long Island remain without electricity. An untold number of people are displaced or homeless because of the storm.

News of Apple’s donation follows a joint project between Silicon Valley vacation rental starup Airbnb and the New York City Mayor’s Office, which are urging Airbnb hosts (or anyone with a bit of extra room) to lend out their space to displaced Sandy victims for free. As of this writing, more than 530 hosts have signed up for the effort.

Apple’s charitable giving has increased under CEO Tim Cook. In February, Cook revealed that the company had given a total of about $150 million to charity, a large number, but a small fraction of the electronic giant’s approximately $117 billion in cash it had on hand, as of this summer.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Liberal Democrats More Likely to Hit ‘Like’ Than Conservative Republicans, Says Pew Report

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Does your political leaning say anything about how you use Facebook‘s “Like” button or social media in general? It could. The Pew Internet & American Life Project has found, among other things, that liberal Democrats are more likely to hit the “Like” button than conservative Republicans.

Specifically, 52 percent of liberal Democrats have “liked” a post to promote material related to politics, while 42 percent of conservative Republicans have done so. Pew also found that 38 percent of the social media-using population has used the “like” function to promote political issues.

Democrats are also more likely to encourage people to vote on social media. Forty-two percent have done so, compared to the 36 percent of Republicans.

In other areas of social media use, though, it appears that Democrats and Republicans aren’t all that different. For instance, Pew said 42 percent of liberal Democrats and 41 percent of conservative Republicans who use social media have posted their own thoughts or comments on social media sites.

Pew said 39 percent of Republican social media users repost political content from others, while 34 percent of Democrat social media users do so.

“There is a mixed picture along party lines. One party doesn’t have an obvious social media edge. The biggest driver here is whether you are interested in politics in the first place. If you talk about it with friends, you are going to use the social tools to talk politics,” Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Center, told ABC News.

Kay Lehman Schlozman, a professor of political science at Boston College and co-author of the survey, said, “I would not hyper-analyze the differences. What is clear is that the liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans are more active than moderates or independents because they care so much more about politics.”

Beyond partisanship, the rise in usage is certainly the major takeaway. The report found that 66 percent of the social media users use services like Twitter or Facebook to engage in some form of political discussion. According to Pew, that amounts to 39 percent of all American adults.

The results of the report were based on a survey of a national sample of 2,253 adults (18 or older). It is important to note that the survey was conducted between July and August and that some of these patterns may have changed as the election season has progressed.

Source : abcnews[dot]go[dot]com