4 Million Microloans Visualized in 4 Minutes [VIDEO]

4 Million Microloans Visualized in 4 Minutes

very cool!!

Intercontinental Ballistic Microfinance from Kiva on Vimeo.


4 Million Microloans Visualized in 4 Minutes [VIDEO]

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Blogger is (Finally) back

Hello all readers of the MasterBlogs!

Excuse us for the breakdown in our blog service, but Blogger is to blame!!! - not us!!

What a frustrating day. We’re very sorry that you’ve been unable to publish to Blogger for the past 20.5 hours. We’re nearly back to normal [...] in the coming hours posts and comments that were temporarily removed should be restored. [...]

Here’s what happened: during scheduled maintenance work Wednesday night, we experienced some data corruption that impacted Blogger’s behavior.

Yesterday we returned Blogger to a pre-maintenance state and placed the service in read-only mode [...] We rolled back to a version of Blogger as of Wednesday May 11th, so your posts since then were temporarily removed. Those are the posts that we’re in the progress of restoring.

You can read their latest blog post below with their mea culpa. We hope all the posts posted between May 11th and today, May 13th, will be restored soon!

Thank you for your understanding.

The MasterBlogs

Blogger is back

What a frustrating day. We’re very sorry that you’ve been unable to publish to Blogger for the past 20.5 hours. We’re nearly back to normal — you can publish again, and in the coming hours posts and comments that were temporarily removed should be restored.  Thank you for your patience while we fix this situation.  We use Blogger for our own blogs, so we’ve also felt your pain.


Here’s what happened: during scheduled maintenance work Wednesday night, we experienced some data corruption that impacted Blogger’s behavior. Since then, bloggers and readers may have experienced a variety of anomalies including intermittent outages, disappearing posts, and arriving at unintended blogs or error pages. A small subset of Blogger users (we estimate 0.16%) may have encountered additional problems specific to their accounts. Yesterday we returned Blogger to a pre-maintenance state and placed the service in read-only mode while we worked on restoring all content: that’s why you haven’t been able to publish.  We rolled back to a version of Blogger as of Wednesday May 11th, so your posts since then were temporarily removed. Those are the posts that we’re in the progress of restoring.


Again, we are very sorry for the impact to our authors and readers.  We try hard to ensure Blogger is always available for you to share your thoughts and opinions with the world, and we’ll do our best to prevent this from happening again.


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Israel leverages stance in global economy

Israel leverages stance in global economy
By DAVID ROSENBERG / THE MEDIA LINE 28/01/2011

By acting as a technology mentor to countries like China, India, Brazil, Israel hopes to enhance its global economic role.

Israel is weighing steps to leverage its place in the global economy by acting as technology mentor to the rising powers like China, India and Brazil, according to Eugene Kandel, chief economic adviser to Prime Minster Binyamin Netanyahu. “We are a small country and can’t offer trade benefits. But we can offer technology benefits. A small idea implemented in a big country becomes a big idea,” Kandel said in a briefing to financial reporters on Wednesday, saying that policymakers are only in the early stages of developing a strategy. Israel is an acknowledged technology power, ranking among the world’s leaders in research and development spending and patents. But with just over seven million people, its total gross domestic product is about $200 billion, about the size of Louisiana’s. Israel’s two-way trade with China amounted to just $4.55 billion in 2009, or 0.2% of China’s Kandel said Israel's technology companies will have to shift some of their focus from the developed markets of the US and Europe to developing economies. That will involve more than simply adjusting existing products but also developing technology that is cheaper and meets the other needs of less-advanced economies, he said. In the past, Israel has used innovative capabilities to win friends, most notably in agro-technology and in defense electronics. Its drip-irrigation systems are used around the world and bilateral ties with India and China have involved large arms deals. But more recently, the technology Israel contributed to the Internet revolution and in biotechnology has been largely directed toward developed economies. Israel and China have already begun cooperation in technology. Beijing wants to use Israeli innovations to help it to move up the value chain, Yiyi Chen, a professor at the Shanghai Jiaotong University and an adviser on Middle East affairs to the Beijing government, told The Media Line last week during a visit to Israel. China National Chemical Corporation (ChemChina) two weeks ago completed its purchase of a majority stake in Israel’s Makhteshim Agan Industries, the world’s biggest maker of generic agro-chemicals. The purchase will give Chinachem access to Makhteshim’s research and development and licensing expertise. Nearly a year ago, China made its first foray into Israel’s start-up sector when Yifang Digital Technology acquired Pegasus Technologies. Huawei, China’s biggest maker of telephone equipment, has quietly opened an R&D center in Israel. “We need to create an atmosphere and environment that when Israeli entrepreneurs decide what to work on next look not only on their familiar environment of the US and Europe but also look how to scale to China and India -- large counties that are growing fast,” Kandel said. While he is counting on Israel’s private sector to lead the way, Kandel said Israel’s government will have to play a role because in China, at least, government-to-government ties are important even in business. Israel has been struggling to adjust to changing world trade patterns. About three quarters of its exports, led by technology, pharmaceuticals and chemicals, go to the US and Europe. The so-called BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) account for only about 13%. “This isn’t enough,” he said. Meanwhile, Israel is starting to raise the bar on foreign direct investment (FDI), as the economy’s need for foreign capital has diminished, Kandel said. Israel has been running a surplus in its current account since 2003 while a shake-up of the pension fund sector has redirected more domestic capital to industry. The discoveries of massive reserves of natural gas off Israel’s Mediterranean coast will improve Israel’s balance of payments situation as its need for oil and coal imports declines, he added. “We have to change our policies to say we don’t want foreign investment just for the sake of foreign investment; but if it will benefit us, that will build industrial clusters,” Kandel said, citing technology multinationals like Intel and Motorola as the kind of business Israel wants to attract. “Companies like these that bring a lot of cutting-edge technology and create cutting-edge companies around them amplify our competitive advantage,” he said. Earlier this month, Israel formally moved to what Kandel called an “agnostic” stance on FDI when it ended the practice of giving preferential tax rates to government-approved overseas investment. Although Kandel said Israel hadn’t taken any steps to discourage it, FDI has in fact been on the decline since 2006 when it peaked at $15.3 billion. In 2009, it plunged to $3.9 billion as the global financial crisis weighed down on cross-border investing, but last year as the world economy revived, FDI into Israel continued to decline, reaching just $456 million in the first nine months of the year. http://www.jpost.com/Business/BusinessNews/Article.aspx?id=205617

Chinese Espionage and French Trade Secrets

Chinese Espionage and French Trade Secrets
January 20, 2011 | 0953 GMT

By Sean Noonan

Paris prosecutor Jean-Claude Marin on Jan. 14 began an inquiry into allegations of commercial espionage carried out against French carmaker Renault. The allegations first became public when Renault suspended three of its employees on Jan. 3 after an internal investigation that began in August 2010. Within days, citing an anonymous French government source, Reuters reported that French intelligence services were looking into the possibility that China played a role in the Renault espionage case. While the French government refused to officially confirm this accusation, speculation has run wild that Chinese state-sponsored spies were stealing electric-vehicle technology from Renault.

The Chinese are well-known perpetrators of industrial espionage and have been caught before in France, but the details that have emerged so far about the Renault operation differ from the usual Chinese method of operation. And much has been learned about this MO just in the last two years across the Atlantic, where the United States has been increasingly aggressive in investigating and prosecuting cases of Chinese espionage. If Chinese intelligence services were indeed responsible for espionage at Renault it would be one of only a few known cases involving non-Chinese nationals and would have involved the largest amount of money since the case of the legendary Larry Wu-Tai Chin, China’s most successful spy.

STRATFOR has previously detailed the Chinese intelligence services and the workings of espionage with Chinese characteristics. A look back at Chinese espionage activities uncovered in the United States in 2010, since our latest report was compiled, can provide more context and detail about current Chinese intelligence operations.

Chinese Espionage in the U.S.

We chose to focus on operations in the United States for two reasons. First, the United States is a major target for Chinese industrial espionage. This is because it is a leader in technology development, particularly in military hardware desired by China’s expanding military, and a potential adversary at the forefront of Chinese defense thinking. Second, while it is not the only country developing major new technologies in which China would be interested, the United States has been the most aggressive in prosecuting espionage cases against Chinese agents, thereby producing available data for us to work with. Since 2008, at least seven cases have been prosecuted each year in the United States against individuals spying for China. Five were prosecuted in 2007. Going back to about 2000, from one to three cases were prosecuted annually, and before that, less than one was prosecuted per year.

Most of the cases involved charges of violating export restrictions or stealing trade secrets rather than the capital crime of stealing state secrets. As the premier agency leading such investigations, the FBI has clearly made a policy decision to refocus on counterintelligence after an overwhelming focus on counterterrorism following 9/11, and its capability to conduct such investigations has grown. In 2010, 11 Chinese espionage cases were prosecuted in the United States, the highest number yet, and they featured a wide range of espionage targets.

Ten of the 11 cases involved technology acquisition, and five were overt attempts to purchase and illegally export encryption devices, mobile-phone components, high-end analog-to-digital converters, microchips designed for aerospace applications and radiation-hardened semiconductors. These technologies can be used in a wide range of Chinese industries. While the mobile-phone technology would be limited to Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) such as China Mobile, the aerospace-related microchips could be used in anything from rockets to fighter jets. Xian Hongwei and someone known as “Li Li” were arrested in September 2010 for allegedly attempting to purchase those aerospace-related microchips from BAE Systems, which is one of the companies involved in the development of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Similar espionage may have played a role in China’s development of the new J-20 fifth-generation fighter, but that is only speculation.

Chinese Espionage and French Trade Secrets
(click here to enlarge image)

Five other cases in 2010 involved stealing trade secrets. These included organic light-emitting diode processes from Dupont, hybrid vehicle technology from GM, insecticide formulas from the Dow Chemical Co., paint formulas from Valspar and various vehicle design specifications from Ford. These types of Chinese cases, while often encouraged by state officials, are more similar to industrial espionage conducted by corporations. Since many of the major car companies in China are state-run, these technologies benefit both industry and the state.

But that does not mean these efforts are directed from Beijing. History shows that such espionage activities are not well coordinated. Various Chinese company executives (who are also Communist Party officials) have different requirements for their industrial espionage. In cases where two SOEs are competing to sell similar products, they may both try to recruit agents to steal the same technology. There are also a growing number of private Chinese companies getting involved in espionage. One notable example was when Du Shanshan and Qin Yu passed on technology from GM to Chery Automobile, a private, rather than state-run, manufacturer. In the five trade-secret cases in 2010, most of the suspects were caught because of poor tradecraft. They stored data on their hard drives, sent e-mails on company computers and had obvious communications with companies in China. This is not the kind of tradecraft we would expect from trained intelligence officers. Most of these cases probably involved ad hoc agents, some of whom were likely recruited while working in the United States and offered jobs back in China when they were found to have access to important technology.

Lithium market to see huge overcapacity by 2020-TRU Group

Lithium specialists TRU Group warn the future of lithium mining and exploitation is not as lucrative as investors may believe.

Author: Dorothy Kosich
Posted: Wednesday , 19 Jan 2011
RENO, NV -

Tucson, Arizona-based lithium research consultants, TRU Group, says the 2020 lithium supply-demand forecast is "shocking" as " seemingly unstoppable supply growth will cause such huge overcapacity that the stability of the industry will be threatened."

TRU Group says it has evaluated and modeled most of the known existing lithium properties and advised a number of players on a wide variety of lithium business, investment and exploitation issues.

In presentations scheduled to be made during the IM Toronto 3^rd Lithium Supply & Markets Conference this week, TRU Group's updated lithium model reveals the possibility of "massive lithium oversupply through 2020."

TRU CEO Edward R. Anderson estimates lithium demand will be 40,000 tonnes annually in the next decade while pipeline projects and expansions could increase capacity by an additional 40,000 tpy-"double what the industry needs."

Veteran lithium geologist Ihor I. Kunasz, who is also presenting for TRU at the conference, says existing lithium players "have three times the lithium concentration and also reserves that dwarf any of the new players."

Lower prices and fierce competition through 2020 is bad news for new lithium project promoters, "who will find it impossible to compete against the distinctive natural cost advantage of brine-based lithium producers Chemetall-SCL, FMC and SQM," TRU Group's research has determined.

"In addition, SQM, by far the world's largest lithium supplier, has for many years re-injected excess lithium produced into the Salara de Atacama, adding to the lithium resource of the salar," Kunasz noted. Kunasz developed the original lithium reserve model at Atacama.

TRU advises existing lithium chemical producers have the in-ground reserves and ability to meet nearly all market requirements in the next decade, simply by expanding capacity.

Anderson believes that lithium projects already in the pipeline will increase the mineral's supply-demand gap from 2013 to 2015. New development projects may exacerbate the oversupply situation between 2015 and 2020.

Between 2017-2018 Anderson forecasts "serious peak oversupply" that will negatively impact current lithium producers.

In his analysis, Anderson questions the need for significant new sources of lithium production, contending instead that existing low-cost (brine-based) lithium plants can expand significantly. He advised that emerging technologies-including selective iron adsorption, electrodialysis and nanofiltration "provide new options for medium-scale lithium developments."

"Lithium carbonate prices fell precipitately to $4500 per t in 2010 and will remain depressed," Anderson forecast. "Long term there is no market-driven upward-price pressure so prices will remain stable and likely below $5,000 per t."

Anderson claims that "only a select few new projects could make it into profitable production and then only as marginal suppliers. Bottom line is if you do have a good resource make sure you also have the strong possible lithium technical capability to develop it."


Mineweb.com - The world's premier mining and mining investment website Yesterday`s Top Story: Lithium market to see huge overcapacity by 2020-TRU Group - INDUSTRIAL METALS / MINERALS | Mineweb

Tufts E-News: Innovation on the Go

Tufts E-News
http://enews.tufts.edu/

Innovation on the Go

Tufts engineers make their mark with successful apps for smartphones.

Medford/Somerville, Mass. [08.24.10] As companies and independent computer programmers seek to gain a foothold on your smartphone's home screen, the development of mobile applications-or "apps"-has emerged as a hot new industry.
We spoke to three developers from the School of Engineering, two alums and a current student, who have had success in this burgeoning field.
Loren Brichter (E'06) - Tweetie / Twitter for iPhone
When Loren Brichter (E'06) developed Tweetie-an iPhone application for users of the microblogging service Twitter-in the fall of 2008, he didn't expect it to be a big deal. It was simply his initial foray into mobile app development.
But as Twitter users discovered Brichter's app, it became a big deal. In April 2009, Wired magazine wrote: "Tweetie will create a significant impact on Twitter as a whole." Brichter went on to win a 2009 Apple Design Award, and Time magazine hailed the second version of Tweetie as one of the top 10 iPhone apps of 2009.
Twitter took notice. This past April, Brichter joined the company's mobile development team and appropriated Tweetie as the default Twitter client for the iPhone.
"Looking back, I released it when Twitter was just exploding in popularity, and Tweetie hit some sweet spot between power, speed and simplicity," Brichter said in an e-mail interview. "I just got lucky. "
A coder since middle school, Brichter had taught himself an array of programming languages before arriving at Tufts, where he majored in computer and electrical engineering-"the hardcore hardware stuff that makes the software work," he said.
"You can treat something as a black box after you understand how it works," he said. "Nothing is magic."
After graduation, Brichter went to Apple and was part of the team that worked on the original iPhone. A year after leaving Apple, he developed Tweetie, mainly because he wasn't happy with the other Twitter apps that were available.
"I never ever would have guessed this is where it would take me, but it's been an awesome ride," said Brichter. "The folks [at Twitter] are crazy talented, and they really appreciate good design and give fantastic feedback. The upcoming stuff is going to be way better than what I could have made alone."
So what is next? Could it be the Twitter app for the iPad he was hired to help develop? Brichter remains cagey. "Hopefully you'll find out in a few weeks," he said, signing off with the emoticon for a smile.
Michael Sheeley (GE'05) - RunKeeper
Michael Sheeley (GE'05) is training for a half-marathon in what you might call a perfect union between brawn and brain.
Sheeley is co-founder and COO of the company behind RunKeeper, an app for iPhone and Android phones that helps runners, walkers, hikers and cyclists track their training regimens and fitness. Time magazine named RunKeeper, which has been downloaded more than 2 million times, one of the top 10 iPhone apps of 2009.
But he's not just the co-founder-he's also a customer. Realizing that he needed to use his company's product in order to better understand it, Sheeley, who was not a runner, began using RunKeeper last year to train for an 11K race. He lost 15 pounds in the process and received support from the RunKeeper user community. By training for the half-marathon, he's hoping to drop another 30.
"Throughout my career, I've realized leadership usually comes from the person who's the most knowledgeable," says Sheeley, who earned a master's in computer science. "What Tufts did was put me to the next level in my career and in my knowledge to become a leader in software [development]."
Entrepreneurship seems to be part of Sheeley's DNA. In 2001, as an undergraduate at the University of Connecticut, he developed a social network for college students, well before Facebook launched in 2004. As a graduate student in Tufts School of Engineering, he started his own company developing mobile applications to help cable television repairmen respond to customer calls while on the road.
"Devices were too expensive," he says. "Wireless networks back then weren't robust enough" to support the volume of data being transmitted.
At Tufts, he studied with Professor Carla Brodley, whose data modeling course informed his research into GPS tracking-a key function of RunKeeper.
"She let me research stuff that I was interested in," recalls Sheeley. "She knew I was an entrepreneur and didn't constrain me or my ideas."
After graduation, just as the cost of cell phones began to drop and data networks were becoming more sophisticated, he got a job at the aerospace firm BAE Systems, where he continued to build his skills in mobile development.
"When the iPhone came out, it was like, 'Eureka! A business model can be built on top of these platforms,'" Sheeley says.
He connected via the career networking service LinkedIn with Jason Jacobs, a fellow entrepreneur who envisioned a mobile application for runners, and the two founded RunKeeper. The app launched in August 2008.
Sheeley foresees developing a "Facebook for fitness," where users can track their exercise and nutrition and draw motivation and coaching from their network.
While Sheeley admits it's been a "crazy ride," he says "it's extremely rewarding to actually have a product out there that people are using. I'm actually making a difference in our users' lives."
Foster Lockwood (E'13) - The Facility
There is no riddle behind how Foster Lockwood (E'13) became interested in computer programming. Now it's his own riddles that have put him on the app map.
"The Facility," an iPhone mystery puzzle game he developed for computer science lecturer Ming Chow's Introduction to Game Development course, has been downloaded more than 95,000 times. In May, the game achieved iPhone App Store rankings as high as eighth for puzzle games and sixth for adventure games. It also ranked as high as 39th for top games and 71st for top applications.
Lockwood, whose dad ran a software company, first experimented with programming by trying to recreate the features he saw in other games. After high school, he took a community college class in the programming language C++, which he found unexpectedly intuitive.
As a freshman at Tufts, he took a course in data structures with Associate Professor Soha Hassoun, learning programming principles such as memory management, which is especially relevant to iPhone development since the small devices have more memory constraints than desktop computers. "Afterward, I didn't believe how much more I knew," he says.
Lockwood developed The Facility as his final project for Chow's class and, at his professor's suggestion, submitted the game to the iPhone App Store. It was accepted within the week. At one point, it was downloaded 10,000 times in one day. He has since created a sequel, "The Facility 2."
Lockwood got the idea for the game from an interactive fiction-writing exercise in Chow's class. The game begins with the player waking up alone in a strange room and gradually exploring the rooms of "The Facility" and unraveling the mystery.
"I'd always been into the programming part of things, but not the ideas," Lockwood says. "But this got me to take the coding out of it. You really just had to make an interesting story."
Like programming, the game's foundation is attention to detail. To create the world of the game, he taped giant Post-It notes to the wall of his dorm room and drew a grid that laid out the rooms of "The Facility."
Puzzle games exploit the part of the human brain that thrives on reward, Lockwood says.
"It's amazing how addicting just answering riddles or trying to find out the plot of a mystery can be," he says. "You can really get people into something just with a simple paradigm like solving a riddle."
Profiles by Georgiana Cohen, Office of Web Communications

Printed from: http://enews.tufts.edu/

Tufts E-News: Innovation on the Go

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The $100 Million Status Symbol

The $100 Million Status Symbol

by Rebecca Dana

September 23, 2010 | 10:54pm

Mark Zuckerberg is donating millions of dollars to the NJ school system. Credit: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images From Zuckerberg to Koch to Gordon Gekko, $100 million has become the figure du jour for jaw-dropping philanthropy. Rebecca Dana on the sudden raft of nine digit newsmakers.

What do you get for $100 million these days?

If you’re the Newark Municipal School District, beneficiaries of a gift in that amount from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, you may finally get to claw your way up from the lowest ranks of the public-school system.
If you’re Zuckerberg himself, that money will buy you a news cycle, a turn on Oprah’s couch and a torrent of good press coverage, coinciding with the release of a fictionalized movie about your life, which you reportedly hate.

If you’re Gordon Gekko, on the other hand, resurrected this weekend in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street 2, that’s precisely the amount you’ve managed to squirrel away in Swiss banks. It can buy your professional comeback—or help your bleeding-heart-liberal blogger daughter realize her alternative-energy dreams.
It used to be $1 million was enough to induce gasps in a banquet hall. These days, just a seat on the board of the Met costs a cool $10 million, and to really drop jaws—as Zuckerberg did Thursday with a carefully placed story in The Wall Street Journal previewing his new education initiative, which he’s set to officially announce Friday on The Oprah Winfrey Show—you’ve got to hit nine digits.
The first $100 million gift in modern history was awarded in 1966, by businessman James A. Chapman to a variety of education institutions. Giving at that level shot up in the last decade, led by awards from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2001 to combat AIDS and a pair of donations in 2002 from pharmaceutical heiress Ruth Lilly to her family endowment and the Modern Poetry Association.
“But it’s still quite exceptionally rare,” said Patrick Rooney, director of research at the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. “It is sort of a mind-boggling and attention-grabbing number. At that level, the media is willing to pay attention.”
“What is clearly striking here is that he’s making such a large donation at such a young age,” said Francie Ostrower, a professor of public affairs at the University of Texas and the author of Why the Wealthy Give. “Would people be writing about him if it were $50 million?”
• Insider: Zuckerberg Wanted to Delay $100 Million DonationYes, certainly, given that people write about Zuckerberg, worth an estimated $7 billion, when he ventures into the men’s room. But if the donation were just $50 million, who could have helped but notice that his gift, while enormous, paled in comparison to other recent examples of philanthropic largesse?

The first $100 million gift in modern history was awarded in 1966, by businessman James A. Chapman.

In September, billionaire George Soros gave $100 million to Human Rights Watch, earning a story in The New York Times. In August, Saudi Arabia promised $100 million to help Pakistani flood victims, a donation that made headlines worldwide because it beat the United States’ promised $76 million. Last year, the Gates foundation awarded $100 million to Tampa’s Hillsborough County School District to fix its system for training and evaluating teachers.
The last few years have seen a raft of high-profile $100 million donations. In 2008, billionaire Tea Party enthusiast David Koch gave $100 million to renovate the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center, which now bears his name. That same year, Wall Street financier Stephen Schwarzman gave that much to the New York Public Library, which now bears his.
But why $100 million? Why not, say, $97.5 million, as the Orthodontic Education Community gave the University of Colorado School of Dentistry in 2003?
“At the most elementary level, we all do this. We all round up,” said Eugene Steuerle, an economist at the Urban Institute who has studied charitable giving patterns of the wealthy. “You want it to be large enough so that people can’t dodge what you’re trying to achieve.”
And it’s not just the status figure du jour in philanthropic circles—$100 million is now the going rate for a certain kind of tabloid dignity. People cheered at early, incorrect reports that Elin Nordegren’s divorce settlement from her philandering golfer husband Tiger Woods netted her $100 million. This week, Lindsay Lohan withdrew a $100 million lawsuit she filed against online brokerage firm E-Trade, claiming they defamed her in a Super Bowl ad that featured a “milkaholic” talking baby named Lindsay. The troubled starlet, currently back in jail, reached an undisclosed settlement with the company, presumably valued much lower than her initial asking price.
In the territory of scandals, $100 million feels like the ultimate affront to decency. In the winter, bankers were spreading rumors around Davos that Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein would take home that much in salary and bonus this year. At the height of the Gulf oil spill, BP executives estimated the company was spending $100 million per day on cleanup and containment efforts. In the scramble to pass health-care reform late last year, ABC News reported that a single congressional vote, that of Louisiana senator Mary Landrieu, had cost $100 million in pork funneled to her state. And just this spring, a thief waltzed out of Paris’ Museum of Modern Art with five paintings, including a Picasso and a Matisse, valued at an estimated… you guessed it.
Zuckerberg’s donation comes less amid scandal than personal nuisance: the pre-release hype for Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Network, a fictionalized account of his time at Harvard and the founding of Facebook, which is already drawing raves from reviewers. Zuckerberg’s visit with Oprah will air just hours before the movie premieres at the New York Film Festival, a week before its wide release.
With his gift to New Jersey schools, Zuckerberg joined the ranks of Soros and Gates—and beat the movie to a big $100 million announcement. But if the critical praise is any indication, The Social Network is headed for the ranks of Twilight: New Moon and Iron Man 2, which hit the current box-office benchmark for a big-screen hit: $100 million on opening weekend.
Rebecca Dana is a senior correspondent for The Daily Beast. A former editor and reporter for The Wall Street Journal, she has also written for The New York Times, The New York Observer, Rolling Stone, and Slate, among other publications.


The $100 Million Status Symbol

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Does Google's Free Phone Service Work in Other Countries? - NYTimes.com

Does Google's Free Phone Service Work in Other Countries? - NYTimes.com

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Larry Ellison, George Lucas Join Billionaires in Buffett-Gates Charity Pledge - WSJ.com

TECHNOLOGY

AUGUST 3, 2010

U.S. Super Rich to Share Wealth

By SHELLY BANJO And ROBERT A. GUTH

Billionaire Oracle Corp. founder Larry Ellison will join film director George Lucas and 38 other mega-wealthy people in following a call by Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates to pledge to give the majority of their riches to charity.

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Former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates

On Wednesday, Mr. Buffett announced that 40 of America's wealthiest individuals and families, from formerCitigroup Inc. leader Sandy Weill to hotel mogul Barron Hilton, have signed the "Giving Pledge."

Mr. Buffett and Mr. Gates in June had asked the individuals and families to publicly commit to give away at least half of their wealth within their lifetimes or after their deaths.

The pledge stemmed from a series of dinners the two men held for the nation's billionaires over the past year to discuss the effects of the recession on philanthropy.

Rob Guth discusses the public pledge by 40 billionaires, led by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, to give away at least half their wealth before they die.

The push by Mr. Buffett and Mr. and Ms. Gates is publicizing what had been a private matter for many wealthy people. Many of those who joined the pledge already had intended to give away much of their money.

The effort comes during the second consecutive year in which philanthropy experienced its deepest decline ever recorded by the Giving USA Foundation, which has tracked annual giving since 1956.

Donations fell 3.6% to $303.8 billion last year, down from $315 billion in 2008, according to Giving USA. In 2008, charitable giving fell 2%.

In an interview, Mr. Buffett said that while the pledge push might produce a short-term boost in giving, the main goal is to set an example over the long term for others to get involved in philanthropy.

"The behavior of those before does affect what happens with those after, particularly if those people are somewhat admired in society," Mr. Buffett said. "If Carnegie and Rockefeller hadn't done what they'd done, there'd be less philanthropy in the United States today."

Mr. Buffett said he and Mr. Gates in coming months will meet with wealthy individuals in China and India to talk about the pledge in the hopes of adding more names from outside the U.S.

Some signatories on the list Wednesday came as a surprise. Mr. Ellison, the software mogul, is among those who had been involved in philanthropy but hadn't stated their intentions so publicly.

Some of the Donors

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Mario Tama/Getty Images

Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway

• More photos and interactive graphics

"Until now, I have done this giving quietly—because I have long believed that charitable giving is a personal and private matter," Mr. Ellison wrote in a public letter in response to a call from Mr. Buffett to joint the group.

The letter was posted on the Giving Pledge website, set up to display the billionaires' commitments.

Mr. Ellison said he has put virtually all his assets into a trust with the intention of giving away at least 95% to charitable causes and has already given hundreds of millions of dollars to medical research and education.

"So why am I going public now? Warren Buffett personally asked me to write this letter because he said I would be 'setting an example' and 'influencing others' to give," Mr. Ellison wrote.

"I hope he's right," he added.

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New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg

Mr. Lucas, creator of the "Star Wars" franchise, said he was "dedicating the majority of my wealth to improving education" in a pledge letter on the Giving Pledge website. "It is the key to the survival of the human race," he wrote.

In an interview, Tom Steyer, founder of hedge fund Farallon Capital Management LLC in San Francisco, said he and his wife had planned to give away their wealth but decided to go public after Mr. Buffett called.

Mr. Steyer made the pledge to support what he sees as an effort by Mr. Buffett to show how those who profit from capitalism can help improve society.

"We want him to succeed in reshaping the way people think about the private enterprise system," Mr. Steyer said.

Other billionaires on the list, including New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens , had previously stated their plans to give away the majority of their wealth but said calling attention to their plans will encourage others to follow suit.

On a conference call with media, Messrs. Buffett and Bloomberg said that tax deductions weren't a main motivator for people to join the pledge.

Still, for a donor in the 35% income tax bracket, the highest U.S. bracket, the effective cost of a $100 donation while alive can be $65, subject to some limitations.

The dinners will culminate with a daylong meeting where donors can swap project ideas and advice, as well as discuss challenges such as how to draw children into giving.Philanthropists who sign the pledge will be invited by Messrs. Gates and Buffett to attend three or four dinners this fall, Mr. Buffett said.

The group won't monitor whether the signatories meet their pledge commitments.

"I think the chances of there being any significant slippage of that are virtually nil," Mr. Buffett said. "When people make a pledge like this I think if anything their commitment becomes stronger over time."

Mr. Buffett said he and Mr. Gates and Ms. Gates called between 70 and 80 people based, in part, on their record of philanthropy.

He said he was able to persuade two individuals to expand their giving, while a couple was convinced by their children to increase their giving.

The big question is whether the group can find new donors in the months ahead, especially in an uncertain economy.

While America's rich have recovered somewhat from the recession, their spending and investing have slowed because of the volatile stock markets, rising taxes for top earners and economic uncertainty overseas.

—Robert Frank contributed to this article.

• Buffett on World's Growing Wealth
• Wealth Report: The New Social Status?
• Read the full list of donors
• Deal Journal: Who Hasn't Signed the Pledge
• Earlier: Gates, Buffett Goad Peers to Give Billions

Write to Shelly Banjo at shelly.banjo@wsj.com and Rob Guth at rob.guth@wsj.com

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