Crowdsourcing Medal Design For The Olympics
The first ever Youth Olympics will be held in Singapore. Interestingly, they’re crowdsourcing the design of the 1st time Youth Olympic Medals. Winners will receive a week-long VIP trip for two to the games, a replica of the Youth Olympic Games gold medal, and PR package that will give visibility to the designer.Open Government Directive & Citizen Participation
Obama’s new open government directive marks a turning point geared towards bringing government and citizens closer together. The new Obama administration mandate pushes U.S. government agencies to be more transparent by providing information in “open formats” online. Data has always been available to the public by request under the Freedom of Information Act. However, few people know and request the data because its usually an arduous processes, difficult to request and retrieve, and not particularly user friendly for building web applications.
Using Open Source To Visualize Afghanistan Election Data
Problems are usually easier to solve when you can see them visually. Understanding of the data is even more important if you’re figuring out how trends correlate to triggers and underlying variables. Perhaps this is why it’s so difficult for us to enact solutions, on a personal and group level, to thwart plaguing issues such as world hunger, deforestation, poverty, and pollution amongst others.
DailyTailgate: Simple and witty sports info delivered to you
Calling all sports enthusiasts (and people who should know a bit more about sports): there is a new tool on the market worth checking out. DailyTailgate is a refreshingly simple and witty…
8 Free Online Entrepreneurial Finance Classes from MIT
Running a business is never easy, especially if it’s your first time going it on your own. There are a million things to remember, clients to find, employees to be managed and of course, money to be…
(via haylieerin)
Sequoia Capital’s new homepage. They funded Google. Proof enough they know how to invest.
Can Microfinance Cure Poverty?
“My own view is that we have to approach extreme poverty a little like the way in which a doctor might approach a patient. By that I mean do a diagnosis and understand what is it that is really ailing the particular country, the particular region. Sometimes its terrible governance and the question is how to improve the governance and the hope for the kind of change that is needed. In other places it’s the terrible burden of disease that may be addressable by good public health measures. In other places it is to show how to grow more food. In other places its how to get business going and microfinance has proven to be an incredibly powerful tool.
Once the basics are in place, the people are eating and can survive, then microfinance can play a huge role in helping a poor community find ways through the market to get new opportunities, to earn new income, to start saving, making investments and start the process of climbing the ladder of economic development in your children, in your business or your farm and continuing up the process of improving skills, specialisation, new business ventures and so on. We’ve learnt that microfinance can be a wonderful tool for that.”
Jeffrey Sachs - Director, The Earth Institute, Columbia University
10 Levels of Intimacy in Today’s Communication (via geofox)
Sustainable Communities.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about sustainable communities. Not sustainable in the sense that they have a low carbon footprint (although this is an important aspect to creating an economically sustainable community), but in the sense that people want to live there.
Among other things, a sustainable community is facilitated by an infrastructure that encourages interaction and cooperation among its occupants. It leverages human nature to ensure positive outcomes. For example, more outdoor common areas are incorporated into sustainable communities. This results in more interaction between occupants, fulfilling an innate human desire which in turn lowers crime rates and encourages the collective maintenance of common areas. Everyone wants to live in a welcoming, clean neighborhood.
Let’s take low-income housing developments as an example. Instead of forcing underprivileged families into sprawling projects outside of high-rent urban areas, what if cities invested in environments where families actually wanted to live? How would that change the ethos of communities challenged by crime and cyclical poverty? It would be economically beneficial to the city on many levels.
I want to share this PBS program with you because I think it defines sustainable communities quite well. Its 30 minutes long, but i encourage you to set aside the time.
