Technology

Genesys Works matches high school students with tech internships

Unlike most of his classmates at Skyline High School in Oakland, Allan Qin, a shy 18-year-old, finishes class at noon and goes straight to work at the Emeryville headquarters of Peet’s Coffee & Tea. His day is just getting started. A high school senior, Qin has been working at Peet’s in technological support for more than five months. Opportunities for low-income students to find work are hard to find, and meaningful work is even more rare.

East Bay taxi drivers join class action lawsuit against Uber

California taxi divers face a new frustration: booming competition from companies like Uber and other app-based taxi companies that have recently entered the market with new services, systems and often better cars. Standing close to his cab in a taxi garage, Ben Ezeokoli, a driver who works at the Oakland Airport, says he has been in business for nearly 30 years. Back when he started driving his taxi, the business was paying off—there were a lot of customers and few…

Oakland hackathon seeks to develop local talent

This weekend, 10 teams of young people—predominately African American and Latino students between the ages of 7 and 20—worked alongside designers and developers in Oakland to build innovative apps and websites to “hack” their communities.

Omni Commons supporters work to build a free, open community workspace

Every corner in this building has something going on: La Commune, a collectively-run and worker-owned bookstore and café, is turning the entrance into a cozy place which will welcome visitors with a cup of something to drink and something interesting to read. There is a space for Food Not Bombs, a project that brings free food to parks, political events, neighborhood gatherings and social centers. The Sudo Room and Counter Culture Labs share a spacious room that was once bocce…

Washio brings on-demand laundry service to Oakland—by phone app

Before the sun is even up, Mehdi Shokouhi, 34, is wide awake, checking the trunk and backseat of his Hyundai Sonata for the black laundry bags he will be bringing to customers, either handing off an early-morning delivery of clean and pressed clothes or picking up a load of dirty laundry. By 6:30 a.m., Shokouhi had already left his Berkeley home, driven into San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood and returned to the East Bay, part of his job working…

“Grow a Rainbow” Project aids bees and humans

What if people could create more colorful neighborhoods by simply throwing herb and vegetable seed balls on the ground? What if they could rescue the declining bee population using this method? Or what if someone could throw them from a small airplane to sow an entire field of wildflowers? That’s the goal of the “Grow a Rainbow” project developed by Christopher Burley, the “Lead Pollinator” and CEO of Seedles LLC, who has set a goal of growing one million wildflowers….