Nicholas Negroponte is a mastermind behind “100$ laptop” initiative; after Wikipedia:

In November 2005, at the World Summit on the Information Society held in Tunis, Negroponte unveiled a $100 laptop computer designed for students in the developing world. The project is part of a broader program by One Laptop Per Child, a non-profit started by Negroponte and other Media Lab faculty, to extend Internet access in developing countries.

The homepage of the “One Laptop per Child” association provides the following illustrative on how the Linux-powered device would look like:

Reactions of the computer industry players are quite mixed. (read more…)

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As a first comment after watching the movie on Friday?s night I have to say that, unsurprisingly, I developed an urge to read In cold blood as a natural follow-up to the film. One excerpt from the book, which was also used in the movie, sets the background for the story:

?Until one morning in mid-November of 1959, few Americans – in fact, few Kansans – had ever heard of Holcomb. Like the waters of river, like the motorists on the highway, and like the yellow trains streaking down the Santa Fe tracks, drama, in the shape of exceptional happenings, had never stopped there.”

I was still wondering how can I get my hands on the original English version of the book here in Poland, when today I found that New Yorker is reprinting the first part of the book here; In cold blood was originally published as a serial in this magazine.

If you are fascinated by how exceptional intelligence can manifest itself you will inevitably be attracted by the personality of the book?s author Truman Capote, even if you disregard this anecdote from Wikipedia:

Capote attended the Trinity School where he was given an IQ test as an entrance exam, and he scored 215, the highest in the school’s history.

Internet reveals plenty more resources on the tragedy, among which most peculiar are: the online grave of one of the victims, 16 year old Nancy Clutter, with more than 300 condolences and virtual flowers; a number of original photos of Truman Capote, some of which strikingly similar to his movie equivalent; and lastly, pictures of places where all the involved are buried – the family that was murdered, the murderers, the genius, but extravagant writer – all now peaceful, reduced to just the names on the tombstones.

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Seems that after all there are some professional blogs in Poland, I found one today:

MEDIA CAFÉ POLSKA (in Polish) by Krzysztof Urbanowicz

It’s about media industry and thus not so much in my area of interest, but still a good start, I’m looking for more.

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One of the advantages of having a blog in English and suffering from an urge to be always correct is that, sooner or later, you feel compelled to do something positive about your writing skills. Even if you, like me, spend days and nights producing doubtlessly English content, when you start to write an article you find that a very different language competence is required.

As it is apparent to everyone reading this, I have not made so much progress as far as this competence is concerned, but at least I found some resources, namely two of them, which I can recommend. Both are quite dated. Fortunately time doesn?t matter much in this faculty.

Elements of Style, ?the little book? was originally written and published privately by William Strunk in 1918. Its age takes away little from its usefulness but allows to read the first edition free of charge, e.g. here. As Wikipedia notes, the value is not only in the rules it contains, but in the examples it provides to support them.

Donald Hall?s Writing Well is the second and the last position that the library of the Warsaw School of Economics is able to offer on the topic of style. I only started reading; this book is not so ?little?. Halls? description of a cliché helped me realized that most of what I read daily is composed exclusively of it:

?Little cinder blocks of crushed and reprocessed experience (…) familiar and seem to mean something, yet are meaningless (?) prevent true contact?

In contrast to Strunk, Hall takes a broader perspective to the act of writing. Of particular interest is the understanding of how good writing is distinguished by giving the reader impression that the author is truthful in what he communicates, as opposed to feeling of indecisiveness and dishonesty in bad writing. Technicalities aside, this point struck me as a key and in the same time probably the main difficulty in writing the way that people will find enjoyable to read.

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It turned out that the construction taking place on the opposite site of the street where I live will soon be a new outlet of the EFG Eurobank, operating under “Polbank EFG” brand in Poland; Eurobank name is already occupied. Greeks are reported to open up to 200 branches. “Now there is a construction here but soon…”:

Getin’s Open Finance is already there, just next doors. In the area where I work you can find three branches belonging to Getin holding, distributed every 50 meters, two of them Open Finance “independent” advisors:

No need for a consultant to say that it’s getting crowded in here.

Update: Now there’s also Polbank’s logo.

Final update: Polbank opened its Call Center (Polbank24) and first branches in Warsaw:

Bank will open 15 branches in Katowice, Poznan, and Warsaw till till the end of February; can’t tell if this number includes the first 4 outlets. However, a total of 50 should be open by the end of the year. Polbank is reported to create 500 jobs in 2006.

The offering includes Consumer Finance products, as well as loans for small enterprises. Of interest is a micro-loan up to 1,000 PLN, available with no formal income statement required. I find it an interesting idea to build the initial customer base rapidly.

First day of operations was glitchy; Puls Biznesu reported it required 1 hour 14 minute for the first client to open an account and get a loan.

Bank’s CEO, Kazimierz Stańczak is a former partner at McKinsey&Company.

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