More Than a Government Institution: The World Bank is Making a Difference for Youth Today

In today’s money driven economy, it is important to go beyond profit margins and data lines and reach out to those suffering and less fortunate. With most people spending a large portion of their day on the internet, a main way to preach activism and spread involvement is to put the content on the internet. One institution doing that is the World Bank. The World Bank is “one of the world’s largest centers in development economics conducting research in the areas of poverty, trade, globalization, and the environment. It has specialized departments that use this knowledge to advise countries in such areas as health, education, nutrition, finance, justice, law and environment.” The World Bank’s affiliate website Youthink! provides information on global issues and ways to get active in making the world a better place. Coincidentally the site was this year’s Webby Award Winner for Activism. The Webby Awards are “the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences." A site should be consistent and goal driven, innovative and true to its word, and powerful so people will take notice. Youthink! provides readers with accurate and dependable information while applying the bigger idea that individuals, no matter their age, are able to make an impact on the world today. The Youthink! website, although at times swaying from the specified criteria of the Webby Awards, is truly award winning because it remains focused on its mission of educating others about important causes ands what they can do to get involved and stop injustices from occurring while remaining technologically competative in the internet medium.

Being informed about global issues and how to get involved is very important to people searching the internet. According to Pew Internet and American Life Project, 91% of people online use a search engine to find information and 18% use the internet to make a donation to a charity online. Keeping figures like this in mind Youthink! has created a website that presents the facts, allows people to share their points of view, and shows ways to act and make a difference in their communities. If a person is interested in the topic of corruption, they go to the section labeled ISSUES and can easily locate the topic and the content related to it. Once an individual has become informed, they are able to leave a response to the information they have read. For example in the GET INVOLVED section youth from all over the world have the opportunity to submit their commnents on current affairs. Mazoo from Pakistan commenting on corruption says, “If we change the word conflict with love and eradicate corruption from our life on individual basis then this world become more beautiful than heavens above."The section also offers a link to the Get Involved Resource Page which offers suggestions on volunteering, speaking out, donating, and working for a change.The Web Style Guidestates that “Corporate intranets, training sites, educational sites, reference sites, and many well-known news and information sites benefit from audiences that know what to expect at a particular site and arrive there with a specific goal in mind.” The site's main audience is youth, but the relevance of the content spans from little children to adults. The main purpose of the site is clear, and readers know when they look at the page it has content appropriate to world involvement and global issues.

Youthink! is structured so that even if a user is unsure about the site when he or she first arrives, after looking at the site for a few moments the user knows what information is going to be presented and the direction it is going. According to the judging criteria used by the Webby Awards, “Good navigation gets you where you want to go quickly and offers easy access to the breadth and depth of the site's content.” If the structure is unclear the user may go to a different nonprofit site that more clearly presents the information. The consistent and predictable navigation buttons on the Youthink! website allow the user to easily move through the variety of information the site offers without getting lost or feeling that the content is no longer relevant to what initially intrigued them about the site. For example, under the ABOUT heading the user learns the mission of the World Bank “Our goal is to help you stay in touch with the issues that shape our world. We’re not telling you what to think; we’re offering another perspective and the latest facts. You need to decide how you are going to make a difference in your community and your world.” A direct link to the World Bank homepage allows users to learn more about the World Bank and how it is helping to benefit economies around the world. There are also accompanying links to the issues that may be of importance to the user, to the ways he or she can become involved, and to where the user can post comments, all content consistent throughout all the pages on the website. Consistency allows visitors to gain knowledge of the site structure and become comfortable with format, causing them stay around longer and frequent the page more often.

Having a multimedia component is a key feature of what differentiates the internet from other mediums of information and keeps people coming back to it as a source for information. According to the Web Style Guide “Interactive elements are what separate the Web from other media.” Youthink! has a multimedia section that provides videos, photos and games on a range of topics includes AIDS, the environment, political corruption, health, and globalization. A user can view galleries or videos, hear audio clips or play a game to learn more about different issues.A recent topic of focus was “Asia Through My Eyes.” The gallery of images “speaks volumes on how young people perceive the world of contemporary Asia today and their hopes for its future.” Keeping its target audience in mind and the different ways to gain their attention, the Youthink! site has sections on its website especially for 4KIDS and 4TEACHERS They want teachers to integrate the material from the Youthink! website into their daily curriculum. “Thank you teachers for boldly moving toward two exciting areas in education: multimedia and international development.” It is important for the World Bank that youth feel like learning is fun and not a chore; education at a young age allows these topics to remain with children as they grow into adulthood and become prominent figures in their communities.

Youthink! has managed to gain award winning status while bending at times the Webby Awards criteria because it remains fun and is not too serious even though the information being presented is educational. Good visual design, according to the Webby Awards, is “high quality, appropriate, and relevant for the audience and the message it is supporting.” The color selection is conflicting. The colors do not complement each other well and at times take away from the content being presented. For example, on the home page a beautiful picture is placed next to a putrid green information box. The content in the box highlights the site's featured issues, and a bold color would draw reader's attention to the box and its contents. There are also a variety of graphics within the site which can be overwhelming to anyone who remains on the site for a long period of time. The audience is youth so the site wants to grab their attention by using different coloring and graphics, but at times the site becomes cluttered and confusing. Involvement for future generations is very important to the World Bank so it should not let something small like color selection and graphic placement deter readers from exploring the plethora of enlightening information the site has to offer. It is difficult for a website to follow all the guidelines perfectly; however, it is imperative that the site remains focused on its mission to inform and educate others.

The World Bank’s website demonstrates a message of activism and involvement in world affairs in a concise and virtually engaging manor. The Web Style Guide believes by “sticking with simple language and navigation applied consistently throughout the site everyone will benefit.” Looking back at past years pages it is easy to see how much Youthink! is expanding and developing. A clean and clear format has not been sacrificed to include advancements in technology. The site has come a long way and will continue to grow and improve-- possibly making the site available in more languages. The internet is a business like any other, and it is important to grasp users’ attentions. There are a variety of nonprofit organization websites. In order to distinguish the World Bank’s site from the others, Youthink! offers a variety of knowledge in an interactive interface.

Zune: the Tune of Microsoft's New Song

The portable music player industry is expanding once again. Apple, who for a long time now has had nearly complete control of the market with their product the I-pod and their music downloading software I-tunes, may have cause for concerns as well as other competitors in the industry like Sandisk who recently has been in the number two position. Microsoft, looking to expand its already flourishing empire and capture profits available in the music industry market, has given notice that they will soon release their version of the mp3 player called Zune. Competitively priced and offering new features, Zune is in position to change the way music is being heard and shared. Currently, Zune does not offer enough advantages to sway I-pod users and gaining ground in the competitive market will be slow.The threat of competition and gossip surrounding the next big thing are very intriguing to people. I was curious to hear what other people were saying about Microsoft’s attempt to close the gap with Apple. One blog Engadget, a gadget centered blog, speaks of how unsure they are about the situation. I, too, am uncertain about the what the implications of the introduction will mean for music sharing. Another blog CyberNet, a technology news blog, at first was uncertain about Microsoft’s latest creation, but now has the opinion that Microsoft has come up with a great product to challenge Apple and the I-pod market. I am left guessing the effects on the market economy.

Social Shopping: Combining Your Favorite Online Pastimes into One

You are checking your Facebook profile, scanning pictures of your closest friends’ latest excursions, when you come across a picture of a friend in a shirt that you would love to have. What if you could? That may soon be the case. A new kind of e-commerce called “social shopping” is putting a new twist on things. Social shopping combines online shopping with online social networking.

The idea of “social shopping” is a way for companies to manage the billions of dollars generated annually in online sales. Features of the system include product ratings, reviews, "best of" lists, and other people's recommendations. An example of such a program is Pick Lists from Yahoo. It lets users create personalized pages listing their favorite products with reviews or descriptions of each product. Others can make comments, and integration with the Yahoo 360 social networking service allows members to see whether the author of a Pick List is connected to them. You would be able to buy the shirt your friend was wearing in her Facebook picture without having to spend countless hours searching aimlessly for it online."We're taking e-commerce and making it user-centric," said Chris Saito, senior director of product for Yahoo Shopping. "Finding a great review written by a friend you trust is a powerful combination." Companies can combine what they know of consumer spending habits online with what they know about social networking to increase profits.

Social shopping provides further opportunity for the realm of affiliate marketing. Merchants may begin compensating individuals for the sales they are helping to drive. A person would receive a payment from a merchant when someone clicks on the comment on their site to the product for sale on the merchant’s site. There is also the availability to gain revenue from advertising by allowing merchants to place ads on the individual’s site. It is unclear for certain how large of an increase in sales companies will experience from this exposure, but they know that exposure drives sales, and sales increase profits.

The outcome of the new commerce would be to increase consumer spending and consequently foster growth of the economy. In recent years, social communities like Facebook and MySpace have been providing new outlets for companies and individuals to get exposure to the masses. As the New York Times comments, “These sites are hoping to ride the MySpace wave by gathering people in one place to swap shopping ideas. And like MySpace, the sites are designed for both browsing and blogging.” Companies have links to their products beyond their base website. They receive the wanted attention they desire and are able to compete with companies who have a much larger marketing budget.

Flipping the Housing Market: the Economic Effect on the Real Estate Business

When a person watches TV today, he or she is overwhelmed by the number of programs that are focused on buying homes, fixing them up, and reselling them. The trend of flipping houses for a profit, however, may slowly be coming to an end. As The Economist explains, the pace of existing home sales in America fell by 4.1% in July, the lowest it has been in three years. As the economy continues to slow, housing prices too begin to slow. The make-it-rich scheme of investing in real estate may be a thing of the past.

House prices are a good measure of the US economy. If house prices are extremely high, it shows how the economy is exploding, and if house prices are low, it may be a sign of a recession. House prices have a large effect on consumer spending. House prices were valued relatively high to reflect the housing market explosion; people began increasing spending. If people think their houses are worth less, though, they will decrease spending. A decrease in spending has negative results on the economy—jobs are lost and interest rates rise. Home improvement stores that felt a positive affect from all the do-it-yourselfers who wanted to fix up the homes on there own, may see a decrease in sales consequently affecting the number of jobs the stores have available. Construction companies may also see a decrease in the number of jobs because there is not the same amount of work to be done doing repairs or building new homes. Increasing interest rates is an attempt to curve onset inflation.

However, to combat the decrease in spending, the Federal Reserve may decide to decrease interest rates to prevent a recession. Given the current state of the economy decreasing interest rates is not the best alternative. Instead, the United States should turn to increasing personal savings. The Office of Management and Budget Director Rob Portman thinks that polls show a "disconnect" between how people feel about the economy and how they feel about their own personal situation. People need to be aware of how their individual actions affect the economy so they in return see how the economy affects them personally. Individual should not be discouraged, other parts of the world, like Russia, are seeing a soaring boom in real estate. Economies go through cycles; the good times cannot last forever. Currently, the U.S. is experiencing a downward trend, but the economy will begin to balance out. Investing in real estate will be replaced with investing in the next big thing.