With AngelWish.org mashup, it's dirt simple to make a kid's wish come true
Although AngelWish.org founder and president Shimmy Mehta describes it as an old school mashup (in other words, in may not draw upon Internet-based APIs to get what it gets done, done), the mashup is no less effective than some of the more modern ones that rely on newer development techniques. And what it gets done is something that we should all take part in.
Much the way Brian Hamlin is a man on a mission, using his skills in technology to do whatever he can do to hasten the damage being done to the environment, Mehta sees a special group of children that deserve more attention than they're getting. In my interview of him (see video above), Mehta says that there are a lot of children out there who deserve to have their wishes fulfilled. But the one group that's often neglected are those kids with HIV/AIDs.
Enter Angelwish.org.
Like many retailers, Amazon.com has a feature that allows its customers to maintain wish lists of book or products they want. These also include baby and wedding registries. But what most people don't realize (and I didn't realize this until after our interview was over) there's no easy way to find the great many wish lists on Amazon.com that are for charitable causes. Maybe I'm blind, but, I looked around Amazon's main user interface and did some searching, but nothing jumped out at me.
To help the wish lists of kids with HIV/AIDS rise to the top, angelwish.org is essentially a filter that sits on top of the Amazon wish list engine that take all the friction out of (1) identifying care centers for children infected with HIV/AIDs, and (2) pulling up the Amazon.com-based wish lists of the children associated with that care center. So, in my case (and you see this in the video), Mehta demonstrated how I could zero in on the care centers in my home state of Massachusetts and pull up the combined wish list of the kids under the care of that center. Whereas Amazon.com provides limited information about each care center (in fact, hardly any), angelwish.org gives complete profiles to help you decide which care center to work with.
What's remarkable is that the search results range in price. In the video, you'll see how there was an item we pulled up for $10.59. But in going back and scanning that same list, there were items for under $10.
On the care center side, Mehta works closely with the coordinators at the care centers so that (a) they know how to use Amazon's wish list functionality in such a way that their lists bubble up into angelwish.org and (b) he has all the profile information to make it easy to search through the care centers for kids with HIV/AIDs.
I asked Mehta if he makes any money on this (since a lot people want to know where their money is going) and he said that he does benefit from a nominal royalty -- pretty much some funds to help cover the expenses of running angelwish.org. Mehta is not done tapping his altruistic drive. Here at Mashup Camp, he led a discussion on how all of us can think about tapping our skills in technology to help charitable organizations; a mission he calls connecting geeks with organizations in need. The idea was an outgrowth of a discussion he had at a previous Mashup Camp which eventual gave birth to a central coordination point for the meme: karmageek.org.