TOMS Shoes, Inc. employs the One for One business model. For every pair of shoes I buy, they send another pair to a child in need. The idea of “conscious capitalism” is to create sustainable charity that’s based on for-profit business as opposed to relying on donations or fundraising.
Shoes run the average 50-$60. They are simple and stylish. They look comfortable. You wouldn’t think it’s a business with social concerns unless they marketed themselves as such, which they do. I’d like to try out a pair.

Who reads digg? As an aggregator, digg does not create content, but pulls it in from other sites that do the hard work. This makes for an interesting division between those who read digg first, and then go to the content with those who first read the content.
Digg is supposed to save me time by evaluating, via the wisdom of crowds, the quality/interest/value of articles on the internet. But I’d rather go straight to the source and find out for myself. My network is enough of third-party evaluation that I don’t actually have time for something like digg.

Creative Commons, more than simply a framework for sharing content, is an extraordinary example of a private solution to a public policy problem.
The nature of the Internet is such that the fundamental unit of exchange is a copy. As such, copyright law applies to the Internet at every level of transaction. Technically, it’s illegal to forward an email without permission from the author because to do so would require you to make a copy of the email. The problem is not only that the law is outdated, but also that it is incapable of reacting fast enough to the changing environment. Congress has a built in retardation, the purpose of which is to mitigate recklessness. The trade-off for such bureaucracy, however, is a crippling latency between policy and the public for whom the policy is designed. Creative Commons is a clever work-around to this particular disconnect regarding copyright.
However, it would be shortsighted to stop there. Lessig’s incisive case for revamping copyright law failed in the court system, but this only propelled him to work outside of the legal system. Creative Commons raises a simple, important question: in what other areas can private solutions fix public policy problems?

Design21 is a social design network. Social design is taking design, which is often considered a process exclusive for developing products and services, and directing it towards social issues.

The social networking site incorporates a competition series. Challenges are centered around the the sites mission statement–to “inspire social consciousness through design.” Some examples:

1. Game Changers: Design a game that aims to create change by improving lives or inspiring new behaviors.
2.Create the poster for 2010, International Year for the Rapprochement of Cultures; a competition to promote better communication and understanding between all peoples and cultures.

Prizes about $2k.

“PayPal provides Kiva with free payment processing. Kiva’s is the first account at PayPal with a free payment processing agreement.”

The first, and not likely the last.
Money is a medium of exchange. Kiva is a milestone in the transition from paper money to digital money because of its position with PayPal. Exchanges incur a cost of transaction, at the very least the time it takes to actually exchange. Right now, most digital transactions go through credit card companies, which take a cut of transactions at numerous points.

The advantage of online networks, like online games, is that they can use their own currency and bypass transaction fees. Of course, the currency of most online games don’t have a wide scope of value. Microsoft Points are an example of a digital currency with growing area of use–Xbox subscriptions, Zune items, Windows Live Apps. PayPal offers an almost universal scope, and they’ve already allowed for a frictionless account. Kiva is an innovative microfinancing site, however it’s also an important checkpoint for a digital medium of exchange.