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I just helped finance two small businesses in Uganda and Kenya. I say this not to brag, but rather to point out what an incredible idea Kiva is. The organization uses the Web to connect individuals who would like to put their spare cash to good use with business owners in developing nations who need “microloans” — loans so small that most banks won’t bother.

In reality, the system is connecting you to a microfinance institution that vets and works with the business owners. But by taking care of that behind the scenes and bringing the business owners themselves to the forefront, Kiva’s rewriting the way microfinance works. After all, when you decide to put some money toward a good cause, wouldn’t you rather know exacly who it’s helping, as opposed to seeing it go into some large, nameless account somewhere?

Oh, and another great thing about Kiva: they encourage participants to tell others about their loans. (Forget the days of giving silently — the more people who contribute, the better chance these businesses have of getting off the ground.)

And Kiva makes it stupid simple, too. When you make a loan, they give you a single snippet of HTML code that you can plug into your own blog or Web site. The result? The promo box you see at the beginning of this post.

We were enjoying a great day at the beach, near where we were camping for the weekend, when suddenly the lifeguard came cruisin’ by in her truck, telling people to get out of the water — and fast. The reason? A great white shark was just spotted nearby.

By itself, this story — about a 74-year-old woman whose personalized license plate (NWTF) was rejected because some DMV employees think NWTF refers to a bit of Internet shorthand (wtf) — is already perfect.

But the fact that it also includes the following quote takes the story to a level where it quite possibly will win the award for being the defining story of the Internet era:

“Apparently, the young people use it on the computer,” she said.

Yes, apparently they do.

That’s the sort of line a reporter could spend his entire life just waiting to hear.

The latest issue of the New Yorker has an article about citizen journalism and discusses, in part, OhmyNews — the organization that hosted me at the International Citizen Reporters’ Forum in Seoul last month. I haven’t quite yet decided what I think about the article, except that:

1. it was surprisingly unfocused and dull for a New Yorker piece; and
2. I can’t figure out why the copy editors decided to refer to the organization as “Oh My News” when its official name is clearly OhmyNews.

The “Oh” in OhmyNews, by the way, is a reference to the founder’s name, Oh Yeon Ho, and not to the English expression “Oh My”. (In case you were wondering.)

This one is for the in-laws, since I’ve been boring them with some of my posts recently and since every good editor knows it’s never wise to alienate the core audience:

The latest issue of Fortune magazine features a half-page flap titled “Executive Bookmark: Required Reading.” The items on the list are all about environmental issues.

What’s item #5? The Green House: New Directions in Sustainable Architecture, by Alanna Stang and Christopher Hawthorne.

Sorry to get all techie-pedantic on you, dear readers, but I’ve just got to get this off my chest: People, a podcast is not synonymous with any old audio file you put up on your Web site. A podcast is what you get when you actually distribute your audio file automatically to subscribers using RSS or some other syndication method.

Phew. Thanks. Geek levels falling back to normal levels now.