zapped into this TV report on microfinancing:
Mikro-Kredite
Basically, microfinance provides loans and insurance to entrepreneurs too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans.
An alternative and maybe more effective way to fight poverty…
These two institutions were mentioned in the report:
OikoCredit
Procredit Holding
[update] Another similar institution is:
Opportunity International Bank of Malawi
see also Mike’s blog entry
Mark your calendars. There’s a blogger BBQ planned for July 24 in Konolfingen near Bern.
See Blogger-Bräteln 2005 for all relevant details.
CNET on the Indian IT Job Market:
Turnover in the software services industry runs at about 15 percent a year on average, and can exceed 30 percent at some companies, according to various sources.
Relative to their counterparts in the United States and other developed nations, workers at Indian companies are both plentiful and inexpensive to employ. This cheap labor, however, has led to explosive growth and, in turn, to unprecedented competition for qualified employees. Double-digit raises are the norm.
[…]
“The total number of engineering students in all four years of college is over a million at any time,” […] “So you see, this is our problem, and this is our opportunity.”
“The real issue here is the growth in the salary levels. The salaries in India are still growing at 18 to 20 percent annum,” […] “The stickiness of people to companies is very low. A little bit more stabilization is needed.”
The above article reminded me of this entry.
On Kenya Unlimited:
In response to the continued growth of the Kenyan Blog Webring (KBW) kenyaUnlimited set out to create an online meeting place for the diverse Kenyan visions, minds and voices that inhabit cyberspace.
via Blogshop
stumbled across this report from the JavaOne conf a couple of seconds ago:
But did Nokia’s decision a decade ago to adopt Java technology just force Pres. Bush change his mind about the amount of U.S. aid to Africa?
Here’s Gage’s tale, presented at Sun’s JavaOne developer conference Wednesday: Social cause fighter and rocker Bono, of the band U2, has so far coaxed thousands of concertgoers to cell phone text message the White House about increasing aid to Africa. Sun’s Java programming language gets right in the middle of the charitable work. And voila, the U.S. doubles the dollar amount. Without No. 1 cell phone maker Nokia’s commitment to putting Java in all its phones, there would likely be few participants.
kind of *too* far-fetched feel-good-about-Java for me.
source: News.blog at CNET News.com
Remember the movie “The Terminal” with Tom Hanks…
BBC Africa has this report on a man that lived for 13 months in the duty free area of Jomo Kenyatta Airport in Nairobi:
Tipps für Corporate Blogging [in German]
In celebration of its first anniversary, BILDblog.de asked its readers to design an advertisement in postcard size:
Macht Reklame für BILDblog [in German]
Mlle. A. received a special mention for her entry.
Auguri from Basel!
The FAZ* recently published a page-long article on Howard Rheingold and his predictions.
Es sei eine ganz andere Welt, in der jeder die Möglichkeit habe, auf seiner Website seine Meinung zu verbreiten: “Und es wird immer schwieriger diese Welt von einer zentralen Stellen zu kontrollieren.”
In a nutshell: It’s not so much about what new technologies are evolving, but rather the ways and means social communities are using these to interact and behave…
Other remaindered links pêle-mêle:
Skype is number one in the North American VOIP business – and spending 0 $ on advertising.
On Blogosophy: Don’t mention the skiing looks back to the blog age: Is there any proven evidence that blogging existed at the start of 21st century?
—
*not available online = this publication may lose significance and influence in certain social communities in the near future
[update] re: FAZ-article – it seems i was a little fast in my criticism that the article is not available online. Here it is.
Thanks Mlle. A.
Just wanted to check my email… and ended up upgrading Opera to 8.0, WordPress to 1.5.1.2, and trying out another new theme.
I’m kind of collecting advice on corporate blogging (with no particular goal in mind). A couple of background links I’ve found useful:
Ãœber-blogger Scoble also provides advice how to react to negative comments. If you know of any other good links, please leave a comment.
Found this article on writing at kottke.org:
Poynter Online – Writing Tool #50: The Writing Process
The article describes the steps required to produce great writing:
currently listening to Halley’s interview with Meg Hourihan:
I’d forgotten about the Segway parody at 0sil8.com
[update June 9] quote from her Tuft profile:
Companies like Google advertise for employees with computer science degree, but as Hourihan herself points out, “On paper I don’t qualify for what their requirements are, and yet they bought my company. Looking at different types of experience and different types of backgrounds is important.”
Having founded two pioneering high-tech companies in the past five years, Hourihan’s English degree may seem a bit incongruous. But she doesn’t think so.
“My career path in technology is not at all an aberration,” she explains. “Many women in technology come to technology later and don’t come through traditional academic, undergraduate degrees.”
here’s a blog documenting the different fonts being used on signs and ads in the Zurich area:
TYPE AND THE CITY
What’s it like to live in Africa?
here’s an interesting view from a Ghanaian living in the Netherlands:
My view is that political independence is meaningless until it is linked with economic independence. I think the best place to grow up in this world is in Africa and the worse place too because of the mixture of governance. There is no stage that is so interesting and indeed makes me happier in my life other than those days I vividly remember in my childhood. Independence from colonial rule is relatively good for Ghana for it has already happened and irreversible but I think my life could have been much better if we were still under colonial rule.
People pay more attention to you when they think you’re up to something.
I was browsing thru the list of bloggers that attended yesterday’s meetup (me included). This entry at Starfrosch.ch had me laughing out loud:
Beta forever (in German)
Heh, I agree beta deserves better. And here’s my link to Nirgendwo.
There’s a discussion going on at CyberWriter about this Technology Review article … [mostly in German]
