Innovative Solutions
Sweet! You Can Track Your Senator Via RSS
This past year I really fell in love with RSS feeds. I love bringing everything that interests me on the Internet onto one page. It has really streamlined my life and made the time I spend on the Internet so much more efficient.
Now I can track every move Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer [...]
Help Me Decode My Genome by Christmas
I really want to decode my genome by Christmas. Update: $1000 raised! See "Update 4" below for more.
Unlock the secrets of my DNA if you will. Not only that, I want to be able to read and understand my DNA. I want to figure out what diseases I'm going to catch in the future. I [...]
Thank You, Radiohead. It’s About ****ing Time
Photo: Saul Williams & Trent Reznor
I just want to say that I'm enjoying the new music distribution models that some of the larger music artists like Radiohead and Trent Reznor are trying.
Both Radiohead and Trent Reznor have come to the end of big contracts with large record labels. They are trying new music distribution [...]
darkshapes, MD
Photo Cred: Noah K
I phlog (photo+blog) my photography over on world-renowned (not really) photo collective TUFTS vs CITS regularly. A lot of the kids over at TUFTS vs CITS are big fans of the Flickr photographer darkshapes, especially me. I regularly check his new stuff out along with other big Flickr photographers Noah K and [...]
Can Music Artists Give the Middle Finger to Offline Major Labels?
I’m very interested in new models of promoting and distributing music on the Internet. I think it is in area in which we are going to see a lot of innovation over the next couple of years. Music like print newspapers and print magazines is starting to develop a larger presence on the Internet.
We [...]
The Perfect Kiva Model, Direct-to-Entrepreneur Loans via Cell Phones
Matthew Flannery, Kiva’s founder and CEO, had an excellent post yesterday about why they don’t offer disintermediated loans like Prosper.com and the UK’s Ropa.
Disintermediated loans meaning loans that don’t need third party involvement like Kiva’s MFI partners. He also mentions in the post that in the future they would like to offer disintermediated loans directly [...]
Peer-to-Peer Online Lending Is Flourishing
Peer-to-peer online lending is going to do amazing things for entrepreneurs in developing and developed countries alike.
It will provide a new source of funding to people previously seen as unbankable by banks.
For instance, an entrepreneur in India who needs a $100 loan while making only $2 a day is seen as unbankable by most banks. [...]
We Need Innovative Credit History Collection In Emerging Countries
I grew up thinking credit histories and credit scores were these evil things.
They seemed to do more harm than good.
Last summer, I quickly learned how wrong I was.
I spent my summer designing a survey for a microfinance organization in India. The work allowed me to travel southern India extensively meeting tons of entrepreneurs who on [...]
Bright Future for African Mobile Phone Applications
I find the recent growth of mobile phone use by low-income Africans to be fascinating. They are quickly showing us that mobiles phone, not PCs, are the computers of the future for the developing world.
The growth of mobile phone use amongst low-income Africans will be beneficial to the developing world as a whole. It will [...]
Cell Phone Banking Will Bring A Microfinance Revolution
Its about time cell phone banking came to the US.
Before banks like Bank of America, Wachovia and Citibank jumped on recent cell phone banking trends all we had was PayPal. And, PayPal isn’t even a bank. They just offer cell phone activated money transfers.
Cell phone banking is nothing new for countries like South Korea, Japan [...]
I pretend to have a real job [read: started my own company]. 
