The Kev Blog

Rumours are spreading today about the possibility of Microsoft acquiring a 5% stake in Facebook, for anywhere between $300 to $500 million.

If my math is correct, that values Facebook at anywhere up to $10 billion, although Mark Zuckerberg has shown signs of not budging for less than $15bn.

Remember when Yahoo made a run at Facebook for $1bn?

For anyone following Facebook over the last few months, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. After acquiring Parakey and hiring the former CFO at YouTube, it is clear that Facebook has been looking to make some big moves. Could this be it?

It is likely that this is a move from Microsoft which will play part in its larger plan to catch up with rival Google. This would be a key acquisition for either of the companies as they realize how important social networking has become to consumers, not to mention Microsoft’s attempt to dominate Web advertising (more than the already-existing Facebook/Microsoft deal that is set to expire in 2011).

While this is just a rumour, it will be interesting to see what happens. Google and Yahoo could make a comeback offer to Facebook, although Google has been pouring many of its efforts into its own social networking site Orkut (www.orkut.com)

September 24, 2007
Marc and Craig Kielburger

Walking along the streets of Khartoum these days, it’s not very difficult to find a dim sum restaurant.

It’s an odd image, to be sure. The colourful Chinese signs – for everything from restaurants to pharmacies – stand out in Sudan’s dusty capital. But it’s a reflection of Africa’s rising economic reality. Foreign investment, once scared away by fears of war, corruption and instability, is pouring into the continent like never before.

Last year alone, nearly $40 billion worth of foreign direct investment landed on African soil – more than double that of 2004. Africa’s growth rate is now outpacing both Japan and the United States.

And Asian investors are leading the way. Exploding economies in places like China, India and Singapore mean that those countries are in need of untapped natural resources and fresh markets for their goods. Africa is the perfect fit.

In fact, the economic ties between the two continents are now the strongest in the developing world. China has companies in nearly every African country, and upwards of 750,000 Chinese nationals work on the continent.

But despite the multi-million-dollar contracts and trade deals, this new era of co-operation, as the United Nations calls it, has done little to boost Africa’s fortunes.

That’s because much of the foreign investment has been geared towards the continent’s resource-rich oil and mining industries, which often generate low tax revenues – meaning little money actually trickles back into the economy.

For example, according to a UN report, Ghana has seen a significant spike in investment in its gold industry, yet receives as little as 5 per cent of the value of the gold it exports. So despite its mineral wealth, nearly 80 per cent of the country lives on less than $2 a day.

At the same time, many of the business deals with countries like China are becoming wrapped up in the continent’s political troubles.

Beijing has long been criticized for propping up the regime in Sudan accused of committing genocide in Darfur. Nearly two-thirds of Sudan’s oil exports are sold to China, in deals worth $2 billion.

For Sudan, increasingly isolated for its role in the killing of civilians, that is much needed cash.

While most Western countries would hesitate to work with governments suspected of massive human rights violations, China sees the allegations against Sudan as internal affairs. For them, business and politics don’t mix. That has many people worried and has spurred calls in the U.S. for a boycott of next year’s Olympics in Beijing if China does not do more to end the bloodshed in Darfur.

So if Africa is going to reap the benefit of economic investment, foreign businesses will need to stop treating the continent as a place to flood markets with cheap goods in exchange for oil and minerals, no questions asked.

Many of the continent’s economies are driven by single commodities. Those economies must diversify if they are going to compete. And Africa will have to better attract foreigners to its manufacturing and agricultural sectors, alongside its lucrative natural resources, by clamping down on corruption, red tape and poor governance.

Doing so would mean the billions of dollars pouring into Africa would benefit local populations the way it is supposed to. That’s an investment worth making.

Just about everyday I hear of some form of mass collaboration being used to develop a project; whether my new friend Marc Stamos at Rebearth (www.rebearth.com), or the many people working to make others’ projects happen over at Cambrian House (www.cambrianhouse.com). While I happen to see a lot of cool stuff in a day, every once in a while something I see really hits me.

This is one of those things.

I like big ideas. I like mass collaboration. I love the idea of changing the world.

If anyone is reading this, here is what I need you to do:

Read up, watch the vid, and start thinking. If you have any ideas on how we can come up with a film for this project, get in touch!

Here’s a big idea: Pangea Day plans to use the power of film to bring the world a little closer together. We’re divided by borders, race, religion, conflict… but most of all by misunderstanding and mistrust. Pangea Day seeks to overcome that — to help people see themselves in others — through the power of film.

On May 10, 2008 — Pangea Day — sites in Cairo, Dharamsala, Jerusalem, Kigali, London, New York City, Ramallah and Rio de Janeiro will be linked to produce a 4-hour program of powerful films, visionary speakers, and uplifting music. The program will be broadcast live to the world through the Internet, television, digital cinemas, and mobile phones.

Your film could be part of it. The online video revolution has helped spawn a new generation of grass-roots film-makers worldwide. Much of the output, of course, is mediocre. But hidden in there are amazing talents capable of using film to astonishing effect… and capable of telling stories that can create powerful bonds between us.

So ask yourself this. If you had the entire world’s attention for just a few minutes, what story would you tell? Perhaps you think the world looks at you, your country and your culture… and just doesn’t understand. Then do something about it. Make a film and upload it here http://www.youtube.com/group/pangeaday. You never know. It could end up bringing millions of people that bit closer together.

Pangea is the name of the original super-continent which contained all the world’s land mass before the continents started splitting apart 250 million years ago. We’re launching Pangea Day with the vision that the people of the world can begin to overcome their divisions, and that the power of film can help make it possible.

Movies can’t change the world. But the people who watch them can.

To register as a film-maker, to get more ideas about film submissions, or to host a screening or learn how you can get involved, please visit our website at http://www.pangeaday.org.

Chinese pity comes from their belief that we are a country in decline. More than a few Chinese friends have quoted to me the proverb fu bu guo san dai (wealth doesn’t make it past three generations) as they wonder how we became so ill-disciplined, distracted and dissolute. The fury surrounding Monica-gate seemed an incomprehensible waste of time to a nation whose emperors were supplied with thousands of concubines. Chinese are equally astonished that Americans are allowing themselves to drown in debt and under-fund public schools while the media focus on fights over feeding tubes, displays of the Ten Commandments and how to eat as much as we can without getting fat.”

James McGregor
Chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China
The Washington Post, July 31, 2005

Over this past summer, I spent a lot of time researching trends and issues in modern architecture. Of course, new innovations in architecture are happening at a lighting-fast pace, leading to new designs, technologies and concepts - even including the processes behind building design (open-source, collaborative software, etc.)

Why should buildings simply exist? These structures, which literally shape our world, could serve so many more purposes than simply shelter, whether it be energy production or conservation.

Dynamic Architecture has done just that. Check out their new building design, projected to be built in Dubai:

“The Dynamic Architecture building, which will be constantly in motion changing its shape, will be able to generate electric energy for itself as well as for other buildings.”

This from Alex Pasternack at treehugger.com:
Click here to see the article.
“As part of worldwide Carfree Day, major roads in each city, according to officials, will be open only to pedestrians, bicycles, taxis and buses from 7 am to 7 pm on Saturday, September 22. Good timing — that’s two days after Beijing’s first north-south subway line opens.

Never mind that the website for World Carfree Day, the campaign inspiring China’s no car day, is apparently blocked in China!”

New from Microsoft, a unique architecture allowing images to be put together in order to recreate a real space. Use the space bar to scan from image to image, use your scroll button to zoom; its incredible. Combined with Microsoft Surface Technology, or what has until now been labeled as “Project Milan”, there are some really unique applications; retail, navigation, education, ebooks…

Check out the beta version of Photosynth and play around with it! You can’t yet add your own photo collections, but you can play around with collections uploaded by Microsoft.

“In our collections, you can access gigabytes of photos in seconds, view a scene from nearly any angle, find similar photos with a single click, and zoom in to make the smallest detail as big as your monitor. A Photosynth experience begins with nothing more than a bunch of digital photos. They might all have been taken by one person, or they might be a mixture of images from many different cameras, shooting conditions, dates, times of day, resolutions, and so on.

Each dot represents an extracted feature

Each photo is processed by computer vision algorithms to extract hundreds of distinctive features, like the corner of a window frame or a door handle. Photos that share features are then linked together in a web. When the same feature is found in multiple images, its 3D position can be calculated. It’s similar to depth perception - what your brain does to perceive the 3D positions of things in your field of view based on their images in both of your eyes. Photosynth’s 3D model is just the cloud of points showing where those features are in space.”

Check out the initial unveiling of Photosynth at a recent TED conference:

Google recently asked its users to submit clips of how they imagined a Gmail message traveling around the world. A perfect example of collaboration and the people out there willing to submit a small amount of content to develop a much larger initiative.

Check out the final video!

That is all.

Finally, we see some movement, right in Canada, that suggests that open access to information really is happening.

http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/254701

“The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the federal government’s health research granting agency, unveiled a new open access policy for the research that it funds.

The new policy – the first of its kind for Ottawa’s three major research granting institutions that dole out hundreds of millions of dollars each year – will revolutionize access to health research by mandating that thousands of articles published each year be made freely available online to a global audience.

This marks an important step in the “open access” movement in Canada, which had been falling behind peer institutions in the United States, Europe and Australia.”

Could we somehow fit this idea into education? MIT Open Courseware (http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm) is a great example. Free course material offered to anyone in the world who can access a computer. Someone in an internet cafe in Nigeria can be learning from the very same materials as a student studying at MIT in the US. So, what’s the next step?

What we do with all this information.

With this freedom, of course, comes responsibility. It sounds elementary, but we have a responsibility as global citizens to contribute, to participate, and to change things. That’s what will continue to push these movements and truly flatten the world.

After all, “Ideas are the currency of the future”, says Kevin Roberts at Saatchi & Saatchi.