Kiva.org brings micro-lending as envision by Grameen to cyberspace. I found this site quite accidentally and has been surfing around for sometime reading about stories of the lenders. It is basically an interest-free loan to the people, and once repayed can be recycled back to your pool for lending again. Best of all, Kiva is using Paypal... safe and easy to transfer the funds.
I remember from my previous post of on Yunus's ingenius social innovation of Grameen bank a that the recovery rate is extremely high at 98.61%. I sure hope that Kiva can helped further this cause of fighting poverty.
Interestingly, I noticed from reading some of the defaulted payments from Kiva were actually from male lenders. Immediately, I compared the lending by Grameen were primarily to women. I also see the 16 decisions key to what Grameen is doing. But mainly because historically or evolutionary wise, but best guess is that women tend to be the focal point of the family and community which makes microcredit far more successful with them.
In any case, I like to see how this goes and maybe join. This is a form self-help rather than direct contributions to the people.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Next Phase of KM - Web 3.0
Semantic Web or Web 3.0 looks like set to take over the current Web 2.0 applications. Found that a company called Radar Networks has rolled out a Twine on beta release.
Apparently different Facebook which is purely a social networking application. This entirely new approach is called "Knowledge Networking" by the company. Sort of like an e-personal assistant which can help to manage your emails, bookmarks, wikis and etc and share or collaborate with people you trust. All great ingredients for a community of practice here as envisioned by Etienne Wenger.
Will this is be the killer application that brings forth the knowledge management to the individuals and their social communities? It may even spark the new phase of Knowledge Management as what Dave Snowden had posted in Whence goeth KM.
Dave said "Finally KM was important in releasing technology from the corporate strait jacket. Most people forget that when KM started computing was still fairly new. The internet was in its early stages, email was not yet universal and the sheet volume of information that is now available was hardly envisaged by other than an enlightened few. The first collaboration software in Lotus Notes was a part of the creation of KM as a discipline and many of the early applications were written in it. It was also user friendly enough that people could start to build their own workflow and collaboration systems. Web sites, HTML etc etc all blossomed around this time and they co-evolved with the emerging ideas of KM to create the distributed, collaborative and information rich environment in which we now live. The last decade had seen technology move from centralised and privileged control to distributed free access and use. KM was and is a part of that."
Well, if Twine or similar products starts to evolve and gains wide acceptance and adoption, we shall then see than KM will definitely bloom in the next couple of years.
See below for some snapshots of Twine:
Apparently different Facebook which is purely a social networking application. This entirely new approach is called "Knowledge Networking" by the company. Sort of like an e-personal assistant which can help to manage your emails, bookmarks, wikis and etc and share or collaborate with people you trust. All great ingredients for a community of practice here as envisioned by Etienne Wenger.
Will this is be the killer application that brings forth the knowledge management to the individuals and their social communities? It may even spark the new phase of Knowledge Management as what Dave Snowden had posted in Whence goeth KM.
Dave said "Finally KM was important in releasing technology from the corporate strait jacket. Most people forget that when KM started computing was still fairly new. The internet was in its early stages, email was not yet universal and the sheet volume of information that is now available was hardly envisaged by other than an enlightened few. The first collaboration software in Lotus Notes was a part of the creation of KM as a discipline and many of the early applications were written in it. It was also user friendly enough that people could start to build their own workflow and collaboration systems. Web sites, HTML etc etc all blossomed around this time and they co-evolved with the emerging ideas of KM to create the distributed, collaborative and information rich environment in which we now live. The last decade had seen technology move from centralised and privileged control to distributed free access and use. KM was and is a part of that."
Well, if Twine or similar products starts to evolve and gains wide acceptance and adoption, we shall then see than KM will definitely bloom in the next couple of years.
See below for some snapshots of Twine:
Friday, November 30, 2007
This Blog's Readibility Rating...
Found this fun website that rates blogs readiblity. Key in your blog's url and it will return the level of education required to read your blog.
http://www.criticsrant.com/bb/reading_level.aspx
This blog got rated as College: Post-Grad.
http://www.criticsrant.com/bb/reading_level.aspx
This blog got rated as College: Post-Grad.
Good fun!
Evolutionary Psychology
The theory of evolution has been applied to the area of psychology. Read this book called "Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters: From Dating, Shopping, and Praying to Going to War and Becoming a Billionaire-- Two Evolutionary Psychologists Explain Why We Do What We Do". Really long title, but had an interesting point to make.
What was my key-takeaway from this book? Whatever we do in terms of our lives has been due to our tendency to have sex, procreate and ensure our lineage is being continued.
Evolutionary psychology is really new branch of science as compared to the mainstream social psychology... This therefore really goes back to the nature versus nurture that had been going on for many years amongst the scientific community.
What was my key-takeaway from this book? Whatever we do in terms of our lives has been due to our tendency to have sex, procreate and ensure our lineage is being continued.
Evolutionary psychology is really new branch of science as compared to the mainstream social psychology... This therefore really goes back to the nature versus nurture that had been going on for many years amongst the scientific community.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Iwo Jima and Yamato
My last day of exams and I reached home wondering what I should do for the evening.
So, I settled down to watch Letters from Iwo Jima directed by Clint Eastwood. I found the film to be touching as it really shows how wars can affect human lives. It cuts through the usual protrayal of the enemy as the cruel and unjust people they are.
I was glad that the unseen angle of humanity in war films was so well-protrayed here. Truly seen in the eyes of the human and not the enemy. We could learn to "try to do the right thing because it is right". This was written in a letters by one of the mothers of American marine caught by the Japanese soldiers.
After the film I did some research in Wikipedia on The battle of Iwo Jima, and found that more than 20,000 Japanese soldiers died in Iwo Jima, with the remaining last 2 surrendering only about 4-5 years after battle ended in 1945. It is really amazing that these guys could actually continue to hide in the caves.
Of course, there is the earlier film similarly directed by Clint Eastwood; The Flag of our Fathers... which I did watch too. Similar tale of soldiers, but this time on the American side and how they suffered following their return to the United States.
Another Japanese made movie Yamato also showed the real humanity and I could feel emotional intensity when the sailors had to leave their families to go on their final mission.....
Wars are destructive and brings loss to families of the victims, soldiers, sailors and civilians alike...
So, I settled down to watch Letters from Iwo Jima directed by Clint Eastwood. I found the film to be touching as it really shows how wars can affect human lives. It cuts through the usual protrayal of the enemy as the cruel and unjust people they are.
I was glad that the unseen angle of humanity in war films was so well-protrayed here. Truly seen in the eyes of the human and not the enemy. We could learn to "try to do the right thing because it is right". This was written in a letters by one of the mothers of American marine caught by the Japanese soldiers.
After the film I did some research in Wikipedia on The battle of Iwo Jima, and found that more than 20,000 Japanese soldiers died in Iwo Jima, with the remaining last 2 surrendering only about 4-5 years after battle ended in 1945. It is really amazing that these guys could actually continue to hide in the caves.
Of course, there is the earlier film similarly directed by Clint Eastwood; The Flag of our Fathers... which I did watch too. Similar tale of soldiers, but this time on the American side and how they suffered following their return to the United States.
Another Japanese made movie Yamato also showed the real humanity and I could feel emotional intensity when the sailors had to leave their families to go on their final mission.....
Wars are destructive and brings loss to families of the victims, soldiers, sailors and civilians alike...
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Exams... Exams... Exams
The dreaded word of all students has finally dawned upon me.... Exams! The whole month of November will see my mugging hard for my examinable subjects. Hmmnn... surely I should be able clear it ah..!
This is the part of any course that I have taken in the past years that really makes me feel compelled to do.... Otherwise it has always self-motivation that had enabled me to read and study subjects of my interest.
Sometimes, I really wonder whether there will a structured formal course from an academic institution would sprout out to accomodate a non-examinable format. Well, it did come about when I read about problem based learning that Republic Polytechnic offers.
I attended one of its seminar which introduced the Academic Associate position. Apparently, the polytechnic hires part-timers to conduct and facilitate its courses with students. Pays SGD300 a day for a someone to do this... Talked to some of my classmates who are doing this full-time and they tells me its not easy work...
If one day, all academic courses from Primary School all the way to the University do it in a non-examinable way... it will be the most joyous day for all students! For me, it would be too late... I don't think I shall live to see that day ah...
This is the part of any course that I have taken in the past years that really makes me feel compelled to do.... Otherwise it has always self-motivation that had enabled me to read and study subjects of my interest.
Sometimes, I really wonder whether there will a structured formal course from an academic institution would sprout out to accomodate a non-examinable format. Well, it did come about when I read about problem based learning that Republic Polytechnic offers.
I attended one of its seminar which introduced the Academic Associate position. Apparently, the polytechnic hires part-timers to conduct and facilitate its courses with students. Pays SGD300 a day for a someone to do this... Talked to some of my classmates who are doing this full-time and they tells me its not easy work...
If one day, all academic courses from Primary School all the way to the University do it in a non-examinable way... it will be the most joyous day for all students! For me, it would be too late... I don't think I shall live to see that day ah...
Sunday, October 7, 2007
FORA TV - Another great video site
Recently, just discovered another fantastic video site just like TED. FORA TV however is very different from TED in terms of its theme and content. There are more on geopolitics, military, economics... more serious stuff than TED.
Its sessions are also definitely longer as it includes speeches which may last more than an hour....
The URL :
http://www.fora.tv/
Its sessions are also definitely longer as it includes speeches which may last more than an hour....
The URL :
http://www.fora.tv/
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