New Fruit

Today brings with it a bunch of different news. Most interesting new development is zopa.
Following on from the success stories of peer-to-peer exchanges such as Betfair and eBay, Zopa aims to do the same thing in the world of personal finance, by giving users the chance to lend or borrow money within the network.

The European Union is now announcing research proposals via video web casts. A big improvement on long, dull documents. Now they just need to talk using more normal human language.

Also noticed this local news regarding Holland/Europe. Forum 2020 which aims to mobilize the ‘post-baby boom’ generation to take an active part in the debate on Europe in general and the European Union in specific. It seeks to engage and inform its ‘members’ through workshops and by providing tailored in depth information on selected topics of European policy. This information will be accompanied by multidisciplinary expert commentary to enhance the participants’ understanding of the scope and context of the issues under discussion. The forum’s ambition is to challenge its participants to come up with a series of policy recommendations to the policy makers of the EU and in member state’s governments. The forum consists of 100 members selected to represent a broad range of backgrounds, ranging from business, civil service, politics, arts and culture, to media and sports.

It sounds like a wonderful initiative. Hope it just does not turn into an information silo.