You can tell I am a bit behind, as their Introduced the Kiva API 5 days ago, but you know, better later than never.

The Kiva API begins as a set of RESTful web services, focused primarily on the tasks of fetching public data from Kiva.

They already posted a few ideas, which are mostly tracking what happens – but everything starts out like that on the net, so I am confident we will see some more transaction oriented ideas too. My favourite ide is the “integrate it with a map”, but I am afraid in the first wave we will see a lot of “tweet your loan” apps.

And they take – at least so far – a rather community oriented approach to the whole API thing as their Welcome to the build.kiva.org post states

Moreover, this is a place where you can help us shape the Kiva API. ?You’ll find our API roadmap and evolving designs on our Wiki, and we expect these to change in direct response to your participation in the community. This site is yours too – let us know what needs to change and how we can make it a more powerful tool for everyone building Kiva. ?(If you like what you see so far, help us give thanks to our designer-friend, Omar Lee.)

Yes, they started an build.kiva blog, so you can follow on the events – grab the RSS Feed if you are interested. I think there will be a lot of really cool apps soon, and hopefully the site will get a lot of exposure.

This video made by Kieran Ball follows the path of a $25 loan from London, England to Preak Tamao village, Cambodia. I can’t add anything to it. Just watch the video.

Ask James McGovern, who is a prominent member of both OWASP and Kiva, the micro-lending website. Well, one point of connection is the obvious, if you are a website dabbling into financial stuffs you need security.

The other is the OWASP Lender Team, started by James, which I have joined back in September.

Now I ask you, yes you, to check out Kiva, and if you think you can afford the luxury of lending a few bucks to someone who really needs it, do it. And if you are interested in software security, join OWASP, both on Kiva and on the OWASP website.

What really happened is that I got an e-mail from James McGovern – author of the Enterprise Architecture and other blogs – who invited me to join the OWASP group on Kiva.

Confused yet? Really, I was, did not know who James McGovern is, did not know what Kiva is, and hadn’t got the faintest idea where did he find me – thanks LinkedIn it took only about 10 minutes to find both of his profiles, it turns out we share a LinkedIn group and I commented on his blog. Nevertheless, a bit less “run of the mill” like invitation would have been a bit better.

So after clearing up the “Who is James McGovern?” mystery I checked out Kiva. If you don’t know what it is about I urge you to check it out, but basically it is a non-profit organization + a system to lend small – like 25USD – amounts of money to entrepreneurs in developing countries, like Cambodia, Peru, Kenya, Tadjikistan and so on.

Lending money to people who has no chance to get it from the banks because they actually need the money. The entrepreneurs are rated on a risk scale of 1-5, and the site clearly state that there is a chance that you will never see your money again, and there are couple of pages explaining the process, the risks, how they rate and so on.

I always thought that the saying “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will eat every day” is pretty sensible one, and I agree with James Shikwati in the “For God’s Sake, Please Stop the Aid!” inetrview, that giving free/cheap food is a nice thing, but it actually wipes out the local farmers who cannot sell their own crops, and that the solution is not making them more dependent but to help them become independent.

I am lucky, I have a roof over my head, have a nice bed, a car, a good job with good salary, and a family that I know will help me if times get rough. In other words, I am a pretty lucky guy. And if I am this lucky, and can spare 25 or 50 USD for a couple of month, and that helps someone to live a little bit better, then why not?

So I say, go and check out Kiva. Think about it a bit, read about it a bit, and if you think you can take the risk the price of a couple lunch to help someone less fortunate, then go for it.

And become a (n Ad)Venture Capitalist :)