cheesebikini?

Vogue announces: police brutality is sexy. The new black is black-and-blue.

And here I was, hoping it was passe.

Lilia Manguy busted arse with three teammates for nine months to create a cleverly-designed, well-implemented tool that won an award for outstanding final Masters’ project this year at my alma mater, Berkeley’s iSchool.

What they built has the potential for plenty of social good. The software’s called “iBuyRight” [Web site, Master’s project report] and it helps people make purchases aligned with their personal values. When you’re out shopping, you can scan a product’s UPC code using your camera phone, and iBuyRight will display on your phone’s screen information about the product and the firms behind it, how they treat their workers, associated environmental and health concerns, etc.

Now Lilia claims that Dara O’Rourke, a Berkeley assistant professor who suggested that the team implement this idea, is attempting to remove Lilia from the project and take it over. Lilia says O’Rourke’s core justification for this is that he came up with the idea behind the project. She says that, months into the students’ work building iBuyRight, he filed a draft patent application listing himself as sole inventor.

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