Just a few morsels brought back from my trip over Thanksgiving with Amy:

• walking up broadway for bagels and lox, and sharing the experiences of Zabar’s and H&H
• walking through central park on an unseasonably warm winter day (BONUS: Roger Daltrey sighting!)
• ice skating in the afternoon light at Wollman rink
• running along the Hudson in Riverside Park
• noshing in NoLIta - including a deliciously wacky rice pudding joint called Rice to Riches
  
• pizza worthy of the name!
• Picholine!
• Getting a spot at the bar at the Spotted Pig
• The Room and its siblings
• Bistros, bars, and cafes
• The first swipe of the metrocard in a subway turnstyle - i feel like I’m getting “into the system”
• walking from Broadway-Lafayette to Broad and Water, through little Italy, Chinatown, City Hall Plaza, Ground Zero, and the NYSE
• Fifth avenue store windows (and knowing i can be a native, live in the city for years, and still be a little bit of a tourist)
• taxis, weddings, bagpipes, saxophones, roast chestnuts, oysters, water towers, city squares. . .

Okay, okay, enough already. You get the idea. (stay tuned for pix!)

In follow-up to my Thanksgiving post, I made micro-loans to two African entrepreneurs through Kiva.org: Jerioth Wanjiru, a 27-year-old hairdresser in Nakuru, Kenya who needs expansion capital to effectively service her growing customer base; and Mary Gachai, a Kenyan landlord who uses her rental income to support orphaned children.

I was delighted by how easy it was to browse by region for entrepreneurs in need (I wanted to focus on east Africa because of my sense of the tremendous opportunity and need for entrepreneurial infrastructure there during my visit in 2001), read profiles to select loan candidates, see what organizations are tending the investments locally, sign up, and donate via a nicely integrated PayPal. Their “marketing” has just the right touch - when you check out, they very nicely suggest a 10% match to Kiva itself to keep the lights on). As Fred W. would say, there is authenticity here.

In addition, Kiva has some very cool social features, like badges you can put on your site to track these entrepreneurs, and the ability to see who else is participating in your loans and create a profile page others can see.

I’ll add badges to my site soon and keep you all posted on how things play out with my load portfolio - in the meantime, please check out Kiva.org if you’re in a mood to do some good this year.

On a morning when the NY Times headlines tell us the civilian death toll in Iraq has reached a new high, and my inbox includes a note that unexpectedly large numbers of US residents have “very poor food security” (a term only a bureaucrat could invent), it’s a good time to give thanks for just how good we have it.

I was talking to some friends of mine yesterday and we got onto the subject of human capital in the developing world - where “seed capital” is not just a metaphor, and where we all feel a sense of lost opportunity. I then went out to a dinner that probably cost more than a semester of college in a country like Tanzania. And certainly most of the people reading this blog will be indulging in a feast tonight.

So let’s all pause for a moment - you can give thanks to whomever you like, but I prefer to think about what more I could be doing. This week, I will make a micro-loan through Kiva.org.

Have a happy, healthy, and thoughtful Thanksgiving, everyone.

Wesabe launched this morning. They also have a blog. Wow - I was looking forward to this, but not expecting it so soon. I’m excited to dig in.

Congratulations and good luck, Jason and Marc!

I’m at Webmaster World in Las Vegas, listening to Guy Kawasaki’s keynote. He is entertaining and brilliant, and you don’t need me to tell you he’s one of the people who just gets it.

I am not going to list all of his rules here; it’s his speech. But I will share two that I like:

1. Make meaning. Innovators are pure of motivation - to improve people’s lives and perpetuate good things.
2. Make mantra. Know why you exist, and that doesn’t mean a corporate mission statement like “the mission of Wendy’s is to deliver superior quality products and services for our customers and communities through leadership, innovation, and partnerships.” It means “authentic athletic performance” (Nike), or “peace of mind” (FedEx).

Sounds right to me.

UPDATE: I have a new favorite word: “Bozosity”

I’m here at BarCampLA2, where I’ve just launched my contribution, SixWordSciFi. It was inspired by a Wired magazine article that I think was a neat idea, but executed in a very 1.0 way. 30+ well-known writers were given the assignment to do futuristic six-word stories in the vein of Hemingway’s famous “For Sale: baby shoes, never worn”, including BarCampLA participant Cory Doctorow.
Unfortunately, I can’t reprint any of the Wired contributions here, due to Conde Nast’s restrictive copyright policies, and I think it’s too bad that there’s no way to comment on the stories (or even the article as a whole), subscribe to new entries, or contribute as a reader.

So I’ve open-sourced it onto a WordPress blog. Anyone can comment or vote on the submitted entries, and I’m going to leave it open for anyone to register and post unless it becomes a problem. All submissions are published under a Creative Commons license, so you can reblog them - or create a sci-fi fortune cookie company if you like.

I’m betting we can collectively outdo the success of a very established Conde Nast publication. Please enjoy your power responsibly

Welcome to the blogoshpere Willan Johnson, who has launched a blog along with his foray into the world of venture capital and published it under the intriguing header of Reputation, The Web, and Our Lives! I look forward to seeing what comes up in all three categories.