itlnatianle letarissiye daiey

cnsid ring mi naem es jmai READ, wntied te de sundine fer leterussy deaye. THIS as miye balog psot!

Sadly, that is exactly what the world looks like for the 776 million people who can't read - over 90% of whom are in Asia and Africa and 2/3 of whom are female.

September 8th is International Literacy Day, a day recognized worldwide and officially supported by UNESCO and the United Nations.

Literacy has the power to lift families out of poverty in one generation and change the fate of entire communities, particularly in the developing world. Let's make this International Literacy Day really mean something and help more people learn to read.

Today, September 8, Room to Read and Twitter will be circulating a tweet that has been made "illiterate" - symbolizing how every sentence looks to so many people. Share the tweet with your followers and through the tweet, they'll be directed back to Twitter's Hope 140 website (Hope140.org) where they will be able to learn more about what they can do to help.

Go spread words!

Search Party: When Google Goes Social!

There is a lot of anticipation for Google's announcement tomorrow of some sort of social media service. Techmeme's money is on a Twitter-Killer type application that will integrate with the GChat interface, as eplained by The Business Insider. The Wall Street Journal pitts them against Facebook. And a good post at Scobleizer explains why Google could outdo all social networks, even the obscure ethnocentric ones that have a lot of innovative features.

But do we really need more? To be honest, I would be happier with some sort of social media integration into the Google search results. The world of search is shifting to the live-stream but isn't there also value in the reverse by allowing people to comment and share search results? Already we have social ranking and comment systems in Google search (see pic) and of course Digg, Stumbleupon and similar but could we not take it a bit further? What if comments made on the post/article could also be expanded into the Google search? I'm sure there are a million other great examples of how search can be improved by social media elements. I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

I personally don't need another social network. I have my big, public soap box platforms and a few niche hobbyist ones as well. Any more and I will start to explode. Whatever Google comes out with tomorrow, I will be interested and will try and hopefully it will integrate well with stuff I'm already doing. Maybe it will stick and add value to my life. I just don't think it will be killing Twitter or Facebook anytime soon.

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