G O B l o g

Stumbled across the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative , while I was reading about MSF . MSF donated their 1999 Nobel Prize winnings to them. Other notable funders include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation . There are a lot of under-recognized diseases that affect the developing world, but there is often a lack of research, drug development and public advocacy for these epidemics. It's nice to see an initiative that is starting to tackle this issue. Keep this organization in mind when planning your gift-giving. Some excerpts from their website: "Despite major advances in drug development in recent decades, essential medicines to treat many diseases that affect the world’s poor are either too expensive, no longer produced, highly toxic, or ineffective. Recognising these issues from its field experience, Médecins Sans Frontières committed its 1999 Nobel Peace Prize funds to develop an alternative model for the research and development (R&D) of new drugs for negle...

Google's blog post on Wave:  http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/update-on-google-wave.html My feedback to Google (which they probably already know): As you will likely read in many articles about this, I didn't understand how to use Google Wave in my daily life. I watched the YouTube videos (not all of the cuz they were so long!), and was in awe of the functionality and drooled at the possibilities. However, when it came down to trying it out, the main thing that kept me from using it was the fact that it wasn't linked to my Gmail. That is, I didn't get a chance to play around with it on a regular basis because I did not have any "data" (i.e. communications like email, IM, etc) to play around with.  I would message other Wave users who didn't really check it on an ongoing basis. What's the point in that? No real conversations can be had with that. Plus, dealing with existing email and IM accounts is already time consuming, now I have to manage ...