The eBay of banking

Zopa lets ordinary citizens borrow money from other ordinary citizens -- no bank needed. This service is open to any UK resident over 18 years who clears a credit check. There are 2 categories for borrowers, those who have strong credit history and those who have a weak credit history. Those in the latter category pay higher interest rates. Zopa, meanwhile, takes a 1 percent commission from every borrower's loan. I think the eBay model can be added to many other businesses too and it may well bring the barter system back from the dead.

Turn your life around

The Suite Vollard in Curitiba, Brazil is supposed to be the world’s first revolving apartment building. It has eleven 3,000 square foot units, each of which occupies a whole floor. The owner of an apartment can rotate the apartment as well as control the speed and direction of the rotation and a 360 degree rotation can take from anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour. The bathrooms and kitchens are in the stationary core of the building so that the pipes and wires don’t get twisted. At 300k an apartment, I would prefer to walk to the other side of the apartment if I want a different view but it's a cool building nonetheless.

Iraqis now look for freedom in cyberspace

Iraq wants to administer and control the internet domain name .’iq’. The domain name is technically under the control of a Texas-based company called InfoCom, whose owner is a Palestinian, Bayan Elashi. Bayan Elashi is currently on trial in a US federal court for funding the hardline Palestinian movement, Hamas. This could one of the reasons the Iraqi government want the domain name under their control.
The US-led Coalition Provisional Authority recently conducted a survey of internet use in Iraq and only about 6% of Iraqis said they have internet access and only 2% said they use it regularly. I don’t know how reassigning control over the .iq domain will help improve these figures but many Iraqi officials are optimistic that it will help educate people about the internet in Iraq.