If you don't know already, the TED conference is “held annually in Long Beach with 1450 members in attendance. The event sells out a year in advance and the content has expanded to include science, business, the arts and the global issues facing our world. Over four days, 50 speakers each take an 18-minute slot, and there are many shorter pieces of content, including music, performance and comedy.” They added only 150 seats and have been sold out for the past few years, and I was added on the waiting list after I applied last year.

Excited to go, will write more about the event soon.

AT&T made the fake and *smart* move to allow everyone in Southern California free Wi-Fi access. Kieran Nolan, AT&T vice president and general manager wants to help the community during this rough time and recovery. If for whatever reason you don't know, Southern Cali was affected by pretty bad fires.

Everybody hates AT&T, including three unnamed employees I've spoken to who work there. The obvious thing to do is for me to question their true motives behind offering free Wi-Fi to SoCal. First off, their brand image has been terrible in the recent years. They gobbled up Cingular (which for some reason, people liked better) and decided to drop the name in favor of AT&T. There's been a management change, logo change, marketing attitude change, and it seems to be working... sorta.

AT&T gets a new logo. PayPal recently changed the graphics on their website too. Why? To help eliminate the bad rap associated with their old (and current) brand. Notice the change in graphic and shift to lowercase letters...

Then the move to work with Apple's iPhone. All of a sudden, AT&T is associated with iPhone. iPhone = Cool, AT&T = Still lame.

Recently, AT&T started posting up internet ads and city billboards advertising how their cell service works in more places than before. Notice the advertisement I saw on Gizmodo the other day:

Fail. And now, they're trying to be nice by offering SoCal residents free Wi-Fi. Does it make them look like a kind and caring company? To be honest, to me, it came off as being a fake way to gain more loyal customers for when things settled down and Wi-Fi costs money again.

I'll give these AT&T people some credit. The change in branding is good. The change in management still sucks, but better than before. The agreement with Apple was brilliant. The advertisement campaign was a pathetic attempt to look like a cool, young, hip company. The decision to allow SoCal residents free Wi-Fi was also a smart move.

All in all, AT&T is improving. Their numbers are up. (probably because of the Apple agreement) However, I still thing they have a lot they need to improve on. Inner-company efficiency is terrible. Their branding still looks lame. I'll continue to critique them until they get it right.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, SimonsRockers.com, and Jessicamah.com.

I love the idea of microfinancing. Kiva brings this to a reality by offering any average Joe to invest into a foreign mom/pop shop. Many of these people are in poverty and need just a little bit of financing to jump start their own entrepreneurial ventures. (no, not hot technology startups. Just simple clothing, food, labor related companies)

Kiva takes the role of mediating the transaction. I basically see this as the non-profit version of Prosper.

Here's what an example loan listing looks like:

Enige Sani is very active and enterprising woman. She is married to Mr. Sani. She lives in Benin City, where she sells drugs and drinks to people living in her community.

Enige Sani is requesting a loan of $400, and she plans to repay it in 8 months. She has three years of experience in the business; she has been a LAPO member for two years.

Sounds pretty funny... but it's pretty legit. I really hate how we can only loan $25 each. It does make sense to diversify the risk, but it's frustrating that I can't invest more than I want!

This is just one of many examples where entrepreneurs can bring about amazing change. :)

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, SimonsRockers.com, and Jessicamah.com.