Following on from last evening’s post on the amazing Esoriano’s challenge on the Best Educational Blog on The Blogger’s Choice Award I checked in tonight to see how many votes he has garnered since yesterday. Alas for Esoriano he no longer appears on the education section, (with 424 votes though, he is still very much the leader in the Religion section). But hang on there is another new leader in Education, Angdatingdaan , nice one guys but hey even I have moved on from the King James’ Version…
On another more interesting front, from the BBC comes this report on an interesting use of web connectivity, social lending. As they report,
“…the idea is to introduce people who need money to people who want to lend some – cutting out the middlemen like banks and mortgage companies.”
The article then goes on to discuss Zopa a pioneer in this field which for the past two years has provided a brokerage like service to enable members to borrow and lend on their own terms.
Whilst Zpoa is interesting enough, another service referred to in the article, Kiva is an incredibly heart warming example of Tom Friedman’s flattening of the world. Through Kiva you can choose to “sponsor a business” through the provision of a no interest loan to a business operator of your choice. The New York Times has a great video story about one such loan in action.
Whilst the thrust of the site is not to replace traditional charities it does mirror in an interesting way the recent Nobel Awarded Grameen Bank.
Now maybe if we had a competition category for the best use of Web 2.0 to advance the betterment of humankind????
I’m off to
My Other Blog 
Another interesting read John.
I really must read Tom Friedman’s book. Now I wonder if Kiva’s venture caplitalists are willing to support an Australian start-up business…..