Being Connected

Connectivity and ease of access are often the defining criteria for development. This map shows, very lucidly, the level of connecctedness of various areas of the earth, and points out traffic to the major shipping routes.
Hat tip Tyler Cowen.

Local Solutions - Water Harvesting in India

Anupam Mishra in TED India gives a fascinating and entertaining lecture on how local knowledge has led people in desert towns in India to develop age-old, ingenious solutions to water management.

All Play and No Work

Play Pump International developed a simple and fun way to pump water without electricity. It uses the energy from kids playing on a carousel game to pump water. Simple and efficient.

India's Hunger Problem - Alarming

According to the 2009 Hunger Index, India is ranked 65th, below even Zimbabwe and most of sub-Saharan Africa. Truly alarming, for an "emerging" market.

Dr. Shetty and efficient heart surgery

This is not quite a "small solution", but operational efficiency taken to a higher level - in order to provide expensive heart surgeries to the poor in India. I have even visited this place myself, for families' procedures, and can vouch for the professionalism of the staff.

Q-Drum

A small invention that can change the way water is transported in developing countries.

So easy a kid can use it.
Click here for more details on its use and history.

Google Scholar adds Legal Opinions!

Google has just changed an entire industry. By adding legal opinions to Google Scholar, Google has fundamentally altered the power of the law firms by democratizing the access to legal opinions from state and federal courts across the country.

I have no real clue how Google achieved this other than through dogged determination and some amazing logistical operations, however, I am very happy that they've done it.

Read the Google Blog release here.

The implications are still uncertain but I what is certain is that LexisNexis and Westlaw must be furious. Google is giving away a good chunk of their business model. These two services charge a fee for every article retrieved and they both have terrible search engines. Google provides all the articles without charge and it provides the Google search engine allowing infinitely more flexibility in case of misspellings or incomplete initial seed information (e.g., type in Marbury and you get Marbury v. Madison!!). This might seem trivial to non-lawyers but the implications for the legal profession are profound.

If you haven't tried it out, give it a test ride:

scholar.google.com

Try Plessy v. Ferguson, Brown v. Board of Education, Marbury v. Madison

This is as big as Google Maps if not bigger...

TED Talk: Sugata Mitra shows how kids teach themselves