Rachel and I attended a presentation by the creators of the Facebook API about the design of the platform. Rough notes after the jump.

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A new microfinance site just went live (Microplace) and it bears some similarity to Kiva, but with some important differences. I thought I’d outline those differences and point out that both offer an opportunity for ordinary people of privilege like ourselves to make a huge, sustained impact on the lives of the “working poor” around the world.

In a nutshell: Kiva is more personal, and some would say more interesting. Microplace, on the other hand, is safer and allows for larger, hassle-free loan-making. There’s a place for both. Kiva has made over $14 million in loans, already, breaking ground for average people to consider microfinance as part of their investment portfolios. It has connected tens of thousands of people all over the world who would never have any interaction, otherwise. Microplace, on the other hand, has the potential to grow the market enormously. Kiva’s $14 million (and growing exponentially) is nothing to sniff at, but Microplace could bring in many orders of magnitude more.

A potential Kiva investment

A potential Microplace investment

I have a longer explanation, after the jump; click through to read on.

I encourage everyone to try out Kiva and Microplace, as both make it really easy to invest. I’ve signed up for both, in fact, and will be putting a chunk of change in each. In a year or so, I’ll report back on my experiences.

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A month ago, on my way home to San Francisco, I stopped in New York for the weekend to visit some good friends. While I was there, Aaron came across this post in one of his professor’s blogs, mentioning an interesting talk by Neal Lesh. I went, and now I’m finally getting around to posting up my notes.

Dr. Lesh’s background is related to my latest trip to the Congo: he’s a computer science researcher who went back to get his Masters degree in Public Health, and then developed several information systems for the delivery of medical care in the developing world. He was one of the early contributors to OpenMRS, the software I was piloting in Goma.

Since everyone was working during the day, on Monday, I decided to head uptown to Colombia (Natalie was going in at the same time anyway) and sit in. He spoke about the challenges and opportunities for applying information technologies for the well-being of people in countries like Rwanda and Bangladesh.

The question for me, going forward, is how I can also bring my resources to bear on the world’s problems, if only a person-sized piece of them. I have some ideas which will hopefully solidify as I continue my work (remotely) with the OpenMRS pilot in Goma.

I took some rough notes of the lecture; they’re after the jump.

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