As a kid, I always enjoyed a good playground. What kid wouldn’t? It’s your first sense of danger. Monkey bars, slides, and contraptions that spin you around until you want to throw up may not seem all that dangerous now, but I’m sure that there was a point in your life when you were intimidated. And that’s why you grew up to be such a successful young adult—all that time on the playground. PlayPumps International also brings success to children through playground equipment, albeit in a very different way. Of course they enable kids to enjoy childhood and have fun in the face of danger just like all playgrounds do, but they are also helping to end poverty in developing nations around the world. You’ll see why in a second.
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international,
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At some point during my Junior year in college (by the way I’m back at Cornell for the weekend), I got the bright idea that I could wear slippers as shoes. These weren’t flimsy slippers, these were sturdy leather ones with shearling lining. They were made by Orvis (where I interned and had an awesome 50% employee discount), and they were great. I loved sitting in class knowing that my feet were more comfortable than everybody else’s. Then I came back from Thanksgiving break. I was admiring the Christmas lights that my roommates had adorned our otherwise aesthetically unpleasing house with, and I slipped. See, my slippers had flat rubber soles. My feet came out from under me as I fell down a muddy slope. My right hand came down hard on the sidewalk, and I had a broken wrist. I gave up wearing slippers for a while, but when my Mom bought me a pair of UGG slippers with proper soles, I reverted. Now UGG slippers are my go to shoes during the winter, and I’m a huge fan of Deckers Outdoor Corporation. They’re the company behind UGG, Simple, Teva (is it Tee-va or Tevv-a?), Tsubo, and Deckers, and they’re headquartered in Goleta, CA with a location in Flagstaff, AZ as well.
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Arizona,
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e-commerce,
Internships,
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outdoors,
seo,
shoes,
unpaid,
web development
I love statistics—especially when applied to sports—so it should be no big surprise that some of my favorite blogs include The Wage of Wins Journal, Sabernomics, and FanGraphs. Surprisingly, the statistical knowledge found on the best blogs these days is often far ahead of what you will find in the front offices of many major sports teams. The reason for the recent advancement in statistical sports knowledge of laypeople has a lot to do with how easy the Internet and computers have made it to collect and analyze in-depth data. A big reason that sports data is available is because of Northbrook, IL based STATS, Inc.. Their story is pretty cool. They were founded in 1981 and “began as a grass roots operation tracking baseball in a unique, esoteric fashion.” Now, they’re “the world’s leading sports information, content and statistical analysis company.” I guess that numbers worked out for them.
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football,
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Illinois,
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sports,
statistics
For most of the internships that we feature here, safety isn’t much of an issue. You may be concerned about internship security given the current economic conditions, but not many of the internships that we cover will put you in harms way—at least as long as you don’t tip back too far in your desk chair. Unfortunately, there are still a lot of dangerous jobs out there, and many of them are in the construction industry. It’s doubtful that the business of building things will ever be completely safe as long as humans are doing it, but CPWR is doing its best to improve safety in the construction industry. Their acronym used to stand for The Center to Protect Workers’ Rights, but now it seems that their full name is The Center for Construction Research and Training. They are a Silver Spring, Maryland based non-profit organization (despite their .com web address) that was created by the AFL-CIO in 1990, and they’ve become “an international leader in applied research, training, and service to the construction industry.”
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Maryland,
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I never really had a use for URL shortening services until I started using Twitter, but now that I’m trying to cram messages into 140 characters, I use them all the time. Honestly, I almost always use TinyURL.com, but I should be using Bit.ly. Their service is more user friendly, and they allow you to track your links to see how many clicks they get. That can be pretty useful – especially for Internet marketers, but I’m still not sure what Bit.ly, which is based out of New York City, looks like as a business. URL shortening has a ton of users, but what’s the revenue model? I don’t know, but it’s not my job to know. Some people whose job it is to know have invested $2 million in Bit.ly, so I wouldn’t be too worried. Maybe, as ReadWriteWeb suggests, it’s all about the data that Bit.ly collects.
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New York,
social media,
social networking,
support,
web development
My first introduction to William Shatner was watching Rescue 911. Little did I know that his body of work extended far beyond narrating a show about real life heroes. I imagine today’s children will have an equally narrow view of William Shatner’s career, as they’ll know him as “Priceline Negotiator.” (Can you read those words without hearing the corresponding tune? I can’t.) Anyway, the whole idea behind William Shatner’s newest role – besides his doing the commercials in return for stock – is that Priceline.com will negotiate the best deals on travel-related items like hotels, car rentals, and airline tickets. They also have a “name your own price” model that used to be the core of their business, but now Priceline has widened its focus to discount travel in general.
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Connecticut,
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e-commerce,
engineering,
hospitality management,
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Internships,
public relations,
travel
Usually when I’m looking at the job and internship requirements to get a feel for what a company is looking for, I’m looking at things like education, experience, skills, and job functions. It’s not often that I’m thinking about security clearance, but at today’s company, SPARTA, it’s essential for most of their jobs and even some of their internships. (Now, don’t worry if you don’t already have Top Secret Clearance, they still might have jobs for you as long as you didn’t get into too much trouble during your college years or before.) The reason that there’s all this talk about clearance is that SPARTA is a company whose “core business areas include strategic defense and offense systems, tactical weapons systems, and space systems” and whose “major intelligence credentials include intelligence production, computer network operations, and information assurance.”
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Colorado,
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defense,
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Maryland,
math,
paid,
science,
software development,
statistics,
Virginia
I’m an iPhone guy, so I tend to feel sorry for people who are constantly thumbing away on their BlackBerries. That’s just my being a smug Apple user though. I realize that a lot of people love their BlackBerries and for good reason. They’re pretty remarkable devices, and they’re perfectly tailored for business use. (Although not as perfectly tailored as my iPhone! Ok, I’m done.) That’s why Research In Motion, the company that makes BlackBerries, has a 16.6% share of the smartphone market. They seem to have hit a bit of a rough spot lately (at least their stock price makes it look like they have), but their market position is still very strong. That’s why it’s no surprise that they appear to have a huge internship program; however, the real reason that I wanted to feature Research In Motion here is that they chose an unfortunate, yet inappropriately hilarious domain name for their Jobs site (it redirects now, but I think that you can figure it out).
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Texas,
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Washington
I remember the days of browser wars. It was Netscape vs. Internet Explorer, and it was ugly – the Internet that is. Back then it was all about whether or not your browser displayed pages properly, and people were passionately in favor of one browser or the other (or maybe some weird 3rd option). Now it’s all a lot simpler (unless you’re still using Internet Explorer) – your browser probably displays most sites just fine, and you’re more worried about speed and bells and whistles. That’s where Mozilla shines with their Firefox browser. They’re absolutely dominant with web savvy users (except with me – I still use Safari), and they are constantly making their products better. The Mozilla Corporation is a Mountain View, CA based wholly-owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation. The Foundation is a non-profit, while the Corporation calls itself a “public benefit organization.” That means that they are “dedicated not to making money but to improving the way people everywhere experience the Internet” – even if by definition they’re still a for profit.
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quality assurance,
quality engineer,
research,
software development,
web development
Data is everywhere. There’s too much of it. It’s never been so easy to collect data, but organizing it is another issue. Metaweb Technologies is a company that realizes how big this problem is, so they want to “build a better infrastructure for the Web” before things get out of hand. Their first product is called Freebase, which is “an open, shared database of the world’s knowledge.” Metaweb Technologies’ goal is audacious, but they think that they can achieve it; however, they can’t do it without really smart people. That’s why they’re looking for interns.
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I’m kind of a nerd – I really like reading Economics blogs. So I was delighted to come a cross a a post about internships on Greg Mankiw’s Blog. He’s certainly one of my favorite Econ bloggers (and he’s a Harvard professor), so I value his internship recommendations quite highly. Unfortunately I came across his post when the deadlines had passed for Summer internships at many of the organizations he named. I made note of this, and now that we’re looking at Fall internships, I’ve decided to return to some of the ideas Dr. Mankiw shared. Today we’re going to look at The Heritage Foundation,
a research and educational institute – a think tank – whose mission is to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.
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Washington DC
I love American Express. When my girlfriend ran over my iPod Nano (ok, I dropped it on the ground behind her tire and didn’t know it, my bad) their Purchase Protection Plan covered it. When my money was running a little short during the holidays, I won a 25% off Amazon.com coupon through their MyWishlist Promotion. It made buying gifts a lot easier. When my Mother and Grandmother went to visit my Aunt, AMEX provided a free companion ticket. It was 2 for the price of 1. There’s no credit / charge card company that treats its customers as well as American Express does.
They also treat their employees (and hopefully their interns) well. They’ve won more top employer awards than we care to list. Their products and services are unparalleled, they’re passionate about their business, and they always seem to put customers first. They have an amazing brand, which is the 15th most valuable in the world. Yes, their brand alone is worth more than $20 billion. This all translates into an extremely strong employment brand and a company that any college student would be luck to intern for.
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