eBay site lets people finance the world's poor
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EBay Inc , the world's largest  online auctioneer and payments company, launched on Wednesday a  Web site allowing ordinary investors to buy securities aimed at  improving conditions in the world's poorest countries.
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You can donate food to the poor, or help unwanted animals in shelters, simply by visiting various Web sites and clicking; no donation required.
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Forty-five rich and middle-income nations agreed yesterday to provide a record $25.1 billion to the World Bank for generous-term loans and grants to the world's poorest countries. But for the first time since Dwight D. Eisenhower pushed for the creation of the bank's arm for helping the poorest of...
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The Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged $3 million and Amazon.com has raised more than $3.5 million in online donations to aid South Asian countries devastated by tsunamis.
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Buyers save billions of dollars  each year bidding on eBay auctions, according to a new study  that quantifies the benefits online consumers enjoy over and  above what is derived by sellers, or eBay itself.
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Billionaires who can afford anything buy these objects of desire.
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U.S. and Canadian residents can pay $400 for one laptop to keep and one to give to a child in a developing nation.
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PlasmaNet Inc., which operates an online lotto game played by millions worldwide, approached Oxfam America in Boston with a unique concept to assist tsunami victims: Players on its website could volunteer to turn over their winnings to help Oxfam rebuild a village in Sri Lanka, where a plaque would honor them.
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A popular financial portal has its say.
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Buyers save billions of dollars each year bidding on eBay auctions, according to a new study that quantifies the benefits online consumers enjoy over and above what is derived by sellers, or eBay itself.
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One of the world's poorest countries, Cambodia, is set to ask for almost $2bn in aid over the next three years.
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The F.D.A. has opened the way for U.S. taxpayer dollars to be used to buy cheaper AIDS medicines for use in poor countries.
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If you want to make money go to where the people are paying.
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(InfoWorld) - A massive computing grid helps eBayÂ make changes to its auction Web site on the fly while maintaining a 99.94 percent up time, said Paul Strong, a distinguished research scientist there. While eBay designed most of its grid infrastructure, the company also wants to participate in standards-setting communities to bring more improvements to computer grid technology, Strong said Tuesday during the GridWorld conference in Washington, D.C. EBay's core business is hosting Web-based auctions, not in creating new grid technologies, he said. "We don't see ourselves as an IT development shop for development tools," he said. By working together on grid standards, participants can help "transitions be less painful," he added. On Monday, the Open Grid Forum standards body officially opened for business, delivering on its commitment made in June to detail its goals during GridWorld. EBay has made great strides in its back-end technology since the late '90s, but the company still wants more improvements, including the ability to change the site's code nearly instantaneously, Strong said. Right now, the company, with more than 15,000 servers in its production environment, distributes new application code to its Web site every two weeks, he said. EBay developers write about 100,000 lines of code each week, and using a traditional grid made up of about 350 Windows, Linux and Solaris computers, the site takes about 20 minutes to update with the new features, Strong said. With 104 million items listed for auction on eBay every day, the company needs to keep the site running while those changes are happening, he added. "We can't afford to take the site down," he said. "It's like changing the engines on a jumbo jet mid-flight." About $1,608 worth of merchandise sells on eBay every second, and a vehicle sells every two minutes on average, Strong said. A trading card sells every six seconds, and a pound of the Korean food kimchi sells every minute. The site has seen huge growth since the late '90s, he noted. Ebay.com has gone from 54 million page views a day in June 1999 to 874 million in December 2005, Strong said. The site sent out 35 million e-mail messages a day in December, compared to 1 million a day in June '99. And the site's up time went from about 97 percent to 99.94 percent in that time period. Still, the company would like more grid functionality, Strong said. EBay would like to get closer to that mythical 99.999 percent up time, he said. "We break almost anything we use," he said. "We're pretty much at the extreme limit of what you can do with off-the-shelf technology." And eBay doesn't want to wait to update the site every two weeks, he added. "We want to be faster; we want to be more agile," he said. "If someone comes up with a cool change that's not that big, I'd like to be able to roll it tomorrow." Improvements in grid computing is where community standards can help, he said. "We believe everyone has something to contribute," he said to the GridWorld audience. "We'd like to share ... with the community." GridWorld is organized by IDG, the parent company of IDG News Service.
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Americans know a good deal when they see it. Today a group of  leading scientists and practitioners from several fields -- agriculture,  medicine, economics, education, engineering -- is making a proposal to  the world. If  rich and poor countries will follow through on the promises  they have made over the past five years  to fight extreme poverty and disease -- and rely on the best science and technology in doing  so -- the world can save millions of lives and extricate hundreds of millions of  its poorest people from the trap of extreme poverty. The cost is a mere 50 cents out of every $100 of rich-world income in the coming decade.
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The World Bank said on Wednesday it had approved a $600 million loan for India to help it revamp thousands of ailing rural cooperative banks and fight village poverty through cheap loans.
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Online lender E-Loan Inc. EELN.O on  Monday said it entered into an agreement with eBay Inc.  EBAY.O to provide financing to consumers who buy cars and  motorcycles through the online auctioneer, sending E-Loan  shares up as much as 34 percent.