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Shareworthy articles and content syndicated from other sites. These aren’t things I’ve written or necessarily endorse, for the record.

Avoid Data Caps and Compress Your iPhone Data with Onavo

onavo150.jpgIf you have to keep an eye on your iPhone data usage – whether it’s due to data caps or roaming fees – then you might like Onavo, a new app that will monitor and compress your data so you can use (and pay for) less data.

Once you download the Onavo app and register your device, your data is routed through Ovaco’s services, which compress your data and help you track your usage, identifying for example which apps are data-download-intensive.

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Once installed the app runs in the background of your iPhone and automatically compresses your download data (not your streaming data, it’s worth pointing out). The app can be toggled on and off and will pause itself when you’re using a WiFi connection. You can also opt to turn off email compression so that data is ignored.

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The trade-off of saving money on data here is, of course, running your data through a third-party service. Onavo does say “we take our users’ privacy very seriously,” storing the minimum amount of data – all aggregated and anonymized. Some metadata is kept to be able to generate the reports. Onavo says it doesn’t story any data and can’t read HTTPS traffic, with the exception of Exchange Mail authentication info, something that users will have to explicitly approve in order to set up.

The app works on iPhones and iPads and is coming to Android soon. It’s currently free, but the startup indicates this is just a limited-time offer and it will eventually charge a fee to use the service. In the meantime, Onavo announced today that it has raised $3 million in funding from Sequora Capital and Magma Venture Partners.

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$40 Million Twitter-Based Hedge Fund Now Open for Business

Derwent Capital Markets, a London investment firm that has long been touting itself as the first social media-based hedge fund, has opened its doors.

The £25 milllion ($40.5 milion) hedge fund is basing investments on an analysis of 10% of the 10 million tweets sent daily. The firm applies trading algorithms and sentiment analysis to those tweets before making its bets. (We’ve written about why social media analysis makes financial sense.)

Derwent may be the first boutique investment firm to take this approach, but the idea of using information gleaned from social networks as a stock market predictor isn’t new. StockTwits, for instance, is a popular third-party Twitter app that provides a forum to discuss investment-related matters. Others in the space include Chart.ly and Covestor.

Three computer science students at Cornell — Johan Bollen, Huina Mao and Xiao-Jun Zeng — also authored a paper, which found that monitoring sentiment in tweets yielded was 87.8% accurate in predicting the “daily up and down changes in the closing values” of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The Financial Times has also reported that a fund in starting up in Japan will base its investments on sentiment found by analyzing blogs.

More About: Chart.ly, covestor, Derwent Capital, investing, StockTwits, twitter

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The case against Khan Academy and for 3.5 million Sal Khans instead

Many in the school reform camp and their supporters in the Silicon Valley and Foundation crowds are crying out for education “disruption”, a word being tossed around very casually these days. Because it works in business, they understandably believe that new technology will be the vehicle and keystroke data will map the way. First off their lips as an example of what it might look like is the Bill Gates championed and very commendable Khan Academy.

The vision is to have 30 students at 30 computers or iPads each watching Khan videos, moving at their own pace and motivated by game mechanics. And the teacher in the classroom? The teacher is ostensibly walking around helping one here one there and analyzing data — essentially assisting Sal teach her students.

This seems to make sense, especially if the teacher in the room–now a teaching assistant or facilitator–isn’t really that good at teaching and especially if our goal is to transmit basic facts and knowledge. Every student moves at his or her own pace. Data is collected, analyzed and acted upon. Students help each other. And the facilitator keeps the electricity on and adds a few volts as needed, takes attendance.

I think there should be some schools/classes like this for it will suit certain kinds of courses and students–students who learn best the way Sal teaches or those who need to race ahead—and be a good fit for neighborhoods that have a hard time attracting teachers that are really good at teaching or that have budget shortfalls which make this better than the alternative. In fact, there already are schools like this and they call them blended or hybrid schools, something every school will be to one degree or another very soon. This is a necessary choice.

But my choice is for something even better than this. You see, the above scenario runs the risk of DEVALUING teachers even more.  Our best and brightest, the ones we hope to enter the teaching profession, are naturally proud people. They will only enter proud professions, well-paid empowering professions where they can meet their full potential.

Let’s say you are one of these, but the schools in your area want Sal to be the teacher. Would you agree to be a teacher assistant and facilitator rather than the teacher? No, you would not; you want to be Sal, you want to be the teacher. You want to teach because you know your stuff and you know how to teach it, and you will get better every year. You know how to assess kids and help those who are falling behind, and you get better at it every year. You know how to keep the gifted students in your classroom engaged and continuously learning and you get better at it every year, like Sal.

This is the school I’d want to send my son to, a school with incredibly high quality teachers–all Sals–who are able to make the wise (ie. human) choice of when and where to use technology and technology-delivered content (it was always thus with filmstrips, remember?) because they are the authorities in the room, they are the teachers. We need 3.5 million Sals and the good news is that they exist, many are in fact in place already. All we need to do is find a way to attract more of them to the field and to keep them there. Now that would be disruptive.

So Silicon Valley, I challenge you to help make teaching an even prouder and more empowering profession. Find innovative ways to pay teachers extravagantly, give them autonomy within a set of objectives (also called standards) and let them choose which technology to tap and when to tap it. Support and train continuously. This is where your innovative power should be directed! Help us to create and unleash 3,500,000 Sal Khans.

Paul Edelman is a former NYC public school teacher and the founder of TeachersPayTeachers, an open marketplace where teachers buy/sell/share original teaching materials. Teachers have earned over $2,000,000 to date on the site.

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Why Gift Cards Will Lead the Transition From Plastic to Digital

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David Douglas Stone is co-founder and CEO of the digital gifting and incentives company CashStar. Recently named a Prepaid Top 5 Entrepreneur, Stone has served as a senior executive in several emerging growth technology and financial services firms for the past 25 years, including American Express, where he pioneered the first universal prepaid product, the American Express Gift Cheque.

Over the past several years, gift cards have become the most popular kind of gift. They are the most widely-used addressable person-to-person payment method, totaling $91 billion in sales during the 2010 holiday shopping season. We love them because of their convenience. And we hate them because they don’t truly feel personal.

The mobile digital device will help to wipe away this awkward paradox. The days of plastic-based payment and gift cards are numbered. The ability to make a payment or send a gift from any device, anytime, anywhere, in any amount, dramatically shifts the convenience paradigm. And the gift card’s shift from plastic to digital may pave the way for other forms of digital payment.

Here, we’ll take a look at the three major factors driving this shift.

1. Embracing Digital Gifting

The first is the exponential growth of businesses that are embracing digital gifting. They are doing so to extend their revenue streams and to differentiate themselves from their competitors. RSR Research reported in late 2010 that half of the top 100 Internet retailers now offer digital gift cards. In January, Starbucks estimated that digital gift cards would represent as much as 20% of its gift card business in the near future.

But there are hundreds of others shifting away from plastic as well — from global brand names to smaller regional and local retailers. According to Urban Wallace Associates, more than 6 million U.S. shoppers bought digital gift cards within the past 6 months — a 150% increase since last measured three years ago.

2. Virtual Goods

The second key trend is increased purchasing and gifting of “virtual goods.” This market — already nearly $2 billion in the U.S., according to Inside Network Research — has millions of fans who love to buy and give gifts like virtual cakes, clothing, badges and FarmVille goods.

The next logical extension is for consumers to give digital gift cards that can actually be used to buy real stuff. Facebook already sells its credits as gift cards in retail stores. As the popularity of Zynga, Facebook and digital gift card currencies grow, they may well become major payment modes in both the virtual and physical worlds.

3. Personalization

The third major trend is personalization. The digital age not only enables it but stimulates it. Plastic is a form factor that knows nothing about you, nor can it easily express your personal gifting sentiments. Digital gifting is radically different. The Home Depot eGifting program, for example, enables consumers to upload not only photos but can now also capture live video on its digital gift cards.

Mobile apps are proliferating to support creative and new forms of retail promotion and value. Digital forms of stored value offer new experiences and opportunities never before possible with plastic. Three examples illustrate how versatile and pervasive the post-plastic era is becoming. These include:

  • Starbucks Foursquare checkin: To celebrate its 40th anniversary, Starbucks gave the first 600 customers to “check in” an instantly redeemable mobile gift card.
  • IntoNow: This social TV companion app partnered with Pepsi to give users instant digital gift cards for watching certain TV ads.
  • Chase GiftShelf: Chase’s iPhone app lets you redeem credit card points on the go for digital gift cards at Gap, Chili’s, Papa John’s, The Container Store and a dozen other retailers.

Conclusion

These developments provide only a glimpse of what is possible in the post-plastic card era. Digital gifting and payments are creating new possibilities of “instancy.” If you forgot to bring your nephew a present, you can order him a digital gift card for his birthday as you’re walking toward his house. Or you can send your niece one via Facebook and personalize it with a photo or short video telling her how proud you are of her.

It is no longer a question of “if” but rather of “how fast.” Market interest is clearly there. Starbucks’ new mobile card, for example, has already generated more than 3 million transactions, proving that mobile payments using digitally stored value can work.

Skeptics remain, but they’re of the same mind as those who said people would never prefer credit cards over cash. People, however, love convenience and immediacy. In 1975, one of the major credit card companies made a name for itself with the tagline “Don’t leave home without it.” Today, you will never have to leave home without a means of paying digitally. Those in the market who support that transition will be the winners.

Disclosure: Starbucks, The Home Depot, Gap, CVS, Chase, Chili’s, Papa John’s and The Container Store are clients of CashStar.

For more lists, how-tos and other resources on this topic, check out Mashable Explore!

Image courtesy of Flickr, b.franchina

More About: App, credit-card, digital payment, ecard, ecommerce, Gadget, gift card, Mobile 2.0, tech, technology, transaction

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