Tech Tuesday – May 27, 2014 | The Triangle

Tech Tuesday – May 27, 2014

App Alert: Bunkr

In-class presentations can be particularly stressful — not necessarily due to the large body of strangers staring blankly at you, but if you’re like me, you want your presentation to stand out. Your goal is to create a presentation that captures your audience and one that you feel confident will convey your information the best. Tools like Microsoft PowerPoint, Prezi, and Google Sheets are commonly used by college students today to achieve this goal, but now there’s a new application on the scene: Bunkr.

bunkr

Bunkr is a web application that offers a fresh look for all of your presentation needs. With templates and a gallery of presentations to inspire you, Bunkr has a creative edge that combines the simplicity of Google Sheets, the creativity of Prezi, and the traditional functionality of Microsoft PowerPoint. Perhaps the best feature of Bunkr is its price point: free. Bunkr is compatible with all operating systems and presentations are viewable on tablets and smartphones without needing to download an additional application.

Started by three men in Paris during the early months of 2012, Bunkr has expanded to employ a team of 10 members and their latest release, Bunkr 3.0, has more than 50,000 registered users creating presentations. While TechCrunch writer, Romain Dillet says that Bunkr “is still not enough to uninstall PowerPoint from your computer,” Dillet believes that the future is bright and the possibility of doing away with PowerPoint isn’t totally outlandish.

Sign up for free today so that you can upload your presentation for finals week that you definitely haven’t started two weeks early. Even if you don’t have a presentation due during finals week, who doesn’t love learning new innovative technology that will get you brownie points with your professor?

Check out my first Bunkr project and share the link to yours in the comments section below for a chance to be featured as the next Smart Student!

Working World: SAVES Reporting

SAVES

Despite the shocking statistic that one in four college women are victims of sexual assault, less than half of those women ever report it to authorities such as Drexel Police or Philadelphia Police. According to the creators of the Sexual Assault Victim Empowerment System, “That means that 95 percent of all completed rapes are never reported. That number drops even lower for other forms of sexual assault.” But filing a SAVES report can help you help someone else from falling a victim.

With SAVES, victims are able to enter an incident report with perpetrator information into “a double blind database where each sensitive field (information) is encrypted and sent to a separate server to shatter the data. Shattering removes the danger of a report being seen or acted on by hackers or interlopers.” From this information, SAVES compiles a comprehensive report from each incident that is filed by running all data through an algorithm. SAVES is completely anonymous and victims are able to contribute as much or as little information as they feel comfortable.

SAVES is a Pattern Associated Crime Technology Suite, which means that their purpose is to identify patterns and assault-trends in organizations and areas around the country. SAVES will not investigate reports and information will not be evaluated or shared without consent. It is SAVES’ hope “to change the world by providing an outlet for victims, one response at a time, and one voice at a time, all victims together.”

SAVES is not a Drexel-affiliated service and you do not have to have previously filed a report with Drexel Police or Philadelphia Police in order to submit an incident report. In development since 2012, SAVES is a patented application that was developed and is maintained by Steven Webb, Candace Wannamaker and Gail Lloyd. Since SAVES went live May 19, Wannamaker confirms that reports have been submitted from 15 states — a result that was particularly surprising to her.

Wannamaker wrote in an email, “One of the questions we have received was, ‘Who can see my information?’ and the answer is, ‘No human looks.’ That’s the value of the patent.”

She continued, “Many victims know their perpetrator and are forced to interact with them on campus and that doesn’t stop after reporting a rape. By using SAVES REPORTING victims have the opportunity for it to no longer be ‘your word against the perpetrator.’ If SAVESREPORTING can run an algorithm to identify a pattern and a group of victims can move forward together for a choreographed approach wouldn’t it be worth it?”

To learn more about SAVES and to file a report, visit www.savesreporting.com or their Facebook page.

Maria Elena Marinelli is a junior information technology major and the assistant web production manager for The Triangle.