Around the World

» In US: Goldman Sachs announced it will pump $100 million into a management education program for women in developing nations. The goal is to educate these women on skills needed to start and expand their own businesses. Dubbed “10,000 women”, this initiative will be carried out in the next five years.

» In Japan: The Nikkei, Japan’s leading business daily, recently conjured up stats to show a correlation between women’s hair length and state of the economy. According to stats, Japanese women start wearing their hair short when the economy is worsening and let it grow longer when times are getting better. The idea is similar to the long-standing theory that the wearing of shorter skirts is linked to economic prosperity. Interesting!

» In India: Tata Communications is planning the world’s largest commercial Wimax network. It will create a system of 3,000 base stations to deliver limited or full broadband service to 110 cities. US vendor Telsima is contracted to build the network, which is expected to capture 200,000 retail customers in 2009. Currently, India has just 3.1 million broadband customers out of a population of over 1.2 billion. This network rollout should be able to make a pretty significant change in that stat!

Also in India: Rapid commercial growth has prompted an unprecedented demand for design and advertising skills. The growth has caused some confusion though, since design is still often misunderstood as a profession. Good news is, India’s design community is evolving. The Kyoorius Designyatra, an annual conference for designers to meet and exchange ideas, saw delegate numbers double since its debut last year. The team behind the Designyatra also runs the Kyoorius Design Magazine, the only mag in the country that solely focuses on design. Both conference and magazine provide aa much-needed voice and place for open discussion amongst designers across the country.

» In UK: The Fairtrade movement has experienced a surge in popularity, hitting sales of almost £500m. Twice as many Fairtrade products were sold in 2007 as in the previous year, rising in value by 81%. According to the Fairtrade Foundation, this movement to help poor farmers abroad is finally starting to have a “significant” impact on commerce. Tea and coffee are amongst the most popular products sold, along with bananas (!!!).

Facebook Update

» Takes All Types (TAT), a non-profit organization, recently released a Facebook application to encourage blood donations. About 43,000 pints of blood are donated each day by Canadians and Americans, which help the 4.5 million patients who need blood transfusions on a regular basis. However, total donations aren’t enough to satisfy demand. To help ameliorate the blood shortage issue, TAT’s application will build a database of people with their blood type, zip code and how often they are willing to be contacted to donate blood. Saving lives with social networks—great concept.

Also, Facebook decided to let people add themselves to a named political party on their profile. You can now choose from any of your country’s political parties as well as a religion of your preference. This can be fun ‘n games for users, but Facebook may have ulterior motives. When you choose a party/religion etc, it turns into highly valuable data that Facebook can then use to serve you more targeted ads (especially important this year, with billions going into advertisements for the presidential elections). Tricky tricky.

Newfangled Things

» Zicasso will help you line up the perfect trip without the hassle of planning it yourself. All you have to do is submit a description of where you’re looking to go and what you’re looking to do. Zicasso will then send your description to a network of 100 service providers, four of which will get back to you with proposed itineraries within two days. You can then compare their offerings and decide which one to follow up with. Not only will travelers benefit from getting more personalized travel packages, travel agents also benefit by being able to compete for customers on a global scale.

» Yahoo updated its maps function by adding 12,000 new neighborhoods in 300 cities. The maps now denote neighborhood boundaries with subtle changes in the background color. Points of interest such as schools and subway stops are conveniently marked.

» Asterpix is working on technology that adds ‘hotspots’ to video. These hotspots, which look like dash-bordered boxes, hover over particular objects in a video and shows relevant info on the objects in consideration. All you have to do is place your cursor over the hotspot to trigger pop-up info. Up until now, hotspots had to be created manually by content producers or publishers. Asterpix’s tools will automate that process by: 1) deploying bots that will find videos already posted on the web and 2) using algorithms to tag these vidoes with relevant hotspots.

» Psylock makes it easy for biometrics to be added to online projects. It’s a Flash-based interface that compares your typing style against a list of known styles and logs you in based on your individual typing fingerprint. To enroll, you simply type a sentence 9 times and then the system senses the pauses, mistakes and speed of your typing. Fascinating!

» Google now offers search boxes within their search results. For example, if you’re looking for Amazon in a normal Google search, it’ll provide you with a link for Amazon.com along with a “search Amazon.com” box located right under the link. Could save people an extra step.

» Virgin Charter has officially opened its doors to the public after being in closed beta for over a year. Now anyone can find and book the crazy-expensive flights with the ease of standard commercial flight sites. There are currently 1,000 aircraft in the system, which will be cross-promoted on Virgin America’s website and other Virgin properties in the future. Virgin Charter might make charter flights more affordable by filling up seats that go empty otherwise. About half of all charter flights fly with no passengers because planes need to be flown back to their base after dropping off passengers. Those empty legs are priced into the current cost of charter air travel. This is what Richard Branson once told a group of reporters:

“I wanted to call the company Empty Legs. We can put all of these empty legs on the site and people can bid on them. It will bring down the price of flying privately.”

In a way, Virgin Charter is coming back full circle for Branson. 25 years ago, he was stuck in Puerto Rico after a canceled flight to the Virgin Islands. So Branson found a charter plane and went around the airport with a blackboard that advertised a charter flight for $39 per person. He filled all 50 seats, and that is how he started Virgin Atlantic. Now he is using the Web to do the same thing. Brilliant.

» DanceJam offers dance battles where users “dance off” against each other, with viewers voting on the best video. The site itself is not all that exciting, but I just had to mention it because it was part-founded by M.C. Hammer

» NY-based Totspot is a social networking site for—-babies. The site is targeting new mothers who will create profiles for themselves and babies, and add other mom/kid combos as friends. A key service is the recording of developmental milestones with text, video and photos. Users can then have books printed with all of this material for an additional fee. Sounds like a money-making idea, especially since social sites around parenting are increasing in popularity (exemplified by the acquisition of Maya’s Mom by BabyCenter in August 2007).

» And lastly: Paul McCartney has signed a $400 million deal with Apple for distribution of the entire Beatles’ back catalog on iTunes. Under the deal, the money will be distributed to Ringo Starr, the families of George Harrison and John Lennon, Michael Jackson, EMI and Sony, along with McCartney getting his share as well. The deal now completes Steve Job’s quest for the Holy Grail of music downloads.