Kiva is a go-between website that allows people to donate cash to entrepreneurs who need a jump start. How does it work?

So what’s the point? How can you help an up-start entrepreneur? If you have a Pay-Pal account, it’s very simple to transfer funds to an entrepreneur. That entrepreneur will eventually pay you back. There are no benefits besides the happy feeling that you get from helping another person bring their idea to fruition.

If you’d like to make a profit off a loan you issue to an entrepreneur, perhaps Zopa is more up your alley. This website allows you to ask for or issue a loan. An interesting selling point is that you can pick your own lending rate!

The following video explains how Zopa works.

Both of these websites allow users to easily lend money to upstart entrepreneurs. I think Zopa is more appealing (since you can set a rate and the user interface looks cooler). After learning more about them, which one do you prefer?

Check out these cool Google Lab applications!

• Want to search for images in an interactive way?
• Want to search for something by taking a picture of it?
• Lost and looking for a business close to you? You don’t have to use the Yellow Pages!

I hope you like these cool applications I found?

YouTube suffers from video duplication. Video duplication occurs when a YouTube video user uploads a video that already exists, or copies a video already on the site but changes the video slightly to make it different.

Let’s search for a popular song we like to listen to! In this case, let’s look up Metallica’s “One” because I’m feeling like listening to something heavy.

Ok. Open up a new tab, navigate to YouTube, enter “Metallica One” as the search query, and tell me how many duplicate videos you get on the first page.

I leniently counted six. A lot of the videos on the page are for live performances, so we’ll consider them to be unique videos. We can also assume the audio quality is pretty much the same across videos. What peeves me is the five different videos offering lyrics to let you sing along. This sort of video duplication simply is unnecessary.

Why is video duplication a problem? It skews the rating system. It takes up space on YouTube’s servers. Finally, it doesn’t promote innovation. Why should a user provide new content when he’s able to copy a previous upload and consequently get more profile views by doing something completely boring and unoriginal?

What do you think? Does this bother anyone else?

Earlier this week I made a post detailing ChromeBird, a really handy Twitter app for Google Chrome. Since then, I’ve found some other cool applications that I’d like to share!

• Google Similar Pages: this little app will point you to similar webpages! I’ve used it to find websites that are largely similar. Be wary though; sometimes it simply links you to wikipedia or has trouble finding similar sites.
• FastestChrome: this app will allow you to search twitter, Google, and Wikipedia for select text. It saves a lot of time and looks nice doing it.
• Google Preview: you’ll be amazed how much easier it is to find results on Google when you can see a preview of the website before you click the link.

Got any other apps that you can’t live without?

For everyone who wishes to have an easy way to access files across computers, watch this video!