Friday July 24, 2009

This microfinance stuff is pretty cool. By placing funds into my Kiva account I've been able to make small loans to a variety of people around the world and then continue to make additional loans as loan payments are deposited to my account.

I've been using Kiva now for just over two years and have made a total of 20 loans, ten of which have been completely repaid and ten of which are currently in active repayment. I've had no delinquencies and no defaults. While I can withdraw my funds once they are paid back to my account, I plan to continue making loans indefinitely since, 1) psychologically it feels as if I spent the money two years ago when I opened my account, and 2) I can see that these loans really make a difference for people.

My previous loans were to people in Ghana, Tanzania, Nicaragua, Peru, Lebanon (2), Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, and Samoa. My current loans are for construction, clothing sales, crafts, transportation, hardware, tailoring, etc. to people in Lebanon, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Cambodia (2), Samoa, Mexico, Tajikistan, and Azerbaijan (2).

As part of the 40th anniversary commemoration of the Apollo 11 moon landing, the source code for both the Command Module and the Lunar Module have been released. In addition to being able to view the code, you can also run it on an emulator. Go here for details. Cool!!