Microfinancing online

Over the past few years, microfinancing has grown in popularity with a number of internationally focused entrepreneurs and international development workers. The concept of microfinance was introduced by Dr. Muhammad Yunas, who began an experiment in Bangladesh in the mid 1970’s. The professor gave a group of 42 women only $27 to start a bamboo chairmaking operation.  ...

Wal-Mart’s Certain Something

Those polling maniacs over at Rasmussen Reports released a study today that claims that 69% of Americans still have a positive opinion of Wal-Mart, while 29% do not like the superstore. The report revealed the following:

• Americans who are in the lower or middle income brackets are more likely to have a positive opinion of Wal-Mart than those in the upper income bracket.
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Do We Have Less Close Friends due to the Internet?

A new study published jointly by Duke University and the University of Arizona found that Americans have fewer close friends today than they did twenty years ago. The average number of people who are considered close confidants dropped by nearly one-third, from 2.94 in 1985 to 2.08 in 2004.

The study speculates that the drop may be a result of increased work hours and/or the use of the Internet for socializing....

UMass Releases Study on Business Blogging

Dr. Nora Ganim Barnes, a Professor of Marketing at the University of Massachusettes, recently published an excellent study on the habits of 74 business bloggers. Here are some stats from the survey:

• 49% of the bloggers surveyed said that the time blogging take is the major drawback to having a blog
• 66% of those surveyed spent less than 1 hour a day writing blog entires;
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Website as a Graph (and Art)

Was on the site of Edward Tufte, the author of the stunning series of books about data and its visualization — The Visual Display of Quantitative Information is the first in the series — looking up info about his new book, Beautiful Evidence. Was especially intriqued by his notion of Sparklines....