The Internet has enabled people to create thousands of websites that we can’t live without today.  From Google, YouTube, Yahoo to your local bank’s website, it’s hard to imagine living without the Internet.  However, there are many successful websites ran by one person that are making a big difference in many people daily lives.  One such site is Khanacademy.org operated solely by Sal Khan.

Khanacademy.org has over 1,600 free 10 to 15 minutes long mini-lectures/tutorials (primarily math, science and finance) all narrated by Khan. His videos are viewed about 70,000 times per day on YouTube and  his website, which is nearly double the student body of Stanford and Harvard combined.  (See video below.)

Khan is a 33 year old Harvard MBA who was a former hedge fund manager.  

Khan started out 4 years ago by helping his cousin in math by recording tutorials and storing them on YouTube.  His videos became popular and started receiving testimonials from students who found his videos helpful. He then decided to quit his job and converted a walk-in closet in his home with a few hundred dollars of video equipment to start filming his tutorials.   Khan receives zero pay, however, he does make some money from advertising via his YouTube videos.

Recently Bill Gates became an admirer of Khan and stated that “This guy is amazing…It is awesome how much he has done with very little in the way of resources.”  Gates stated that his 11 year old son, Rory, began soaking up Kahn’s videos from biology to algebra.

For more information visit khanacademy.org and youtube.com/user/khanacademy

Groupon is a service that provides daily deals that save customers money. Every day they feature a new deal at deeply discounted prices.  However, you will only get the deal if enough people take the offer.  See the video below for a detailed description of how the service works.

If you are in the job market and want to differentiate yourself from everyone else, you may want to consider trying Alec Brownstein’s method for landing a job.  Brownstein identified influential individuals in his field who could hire him.  He then created ads on Google Search by bidding on the names of the people he wanted to notice him.  When they Googled their names, Brownstein ad would appear.  As a result he was able to land his job.  See video below.  Read more here.

A palindrome is a word or phrase that reads the same backward as forward.  Check out the video, it reads the exact opposite backwards as forward.  Not only does it read the opposite, the meaning is the exact opposite. The video is simply brilliant.

The video was created by a 20-year old for the AARP U@50 and won second place.  According to the creator, the video is based on Argentinian Political Advertisement “The Truth” by RECREAR.

The Economist has released a very interesting video (see below) about how dominant TV is compared to online videos. Yes people are viewing online videos more than ever on sites like YouTube, but TV still dominates even though competition within TV is extremely competitive.

Have you ever wondered how other people handle their finances?  Now there’s a website named Bundle.com to help your find out how other people handle the same decisions so you can learn what works and what doesn’t.   The site gives you statistics of how Americans save and spend their money from big cites to small towns.

Bundle.com compiles data from the U.S. Government, from anonymous and aggregated spending transactions from Citi, and from third party data providers.  See video below.  To test it out, visit Bundle.com.

Uncle Sam has released images of the upcoming new $100 bill (see pictures above).  The new bill will be released on February 10, 2011 and is the most widely circulated.  The old $100 bill will still be good, but will eventually retire by the new one.  

The new $100 bill shows phrases from the Declaration of Independence and the quill the Founding Fathers used to sign. The rear has a new enlarged vignette of Independence Hall showing the back instead of the front of the building.

New security features have been added to the new $100 bill to prevent counterfeiting which includes:

• The Blue 3-D Security Ribbon on the front of the new $100 bill contains images of bells and 100s that move and change from one to the other as you tilt the note.
• The Bell in the Inkwell changes color from copper to green when the note is tilted, an effect that makes it seem to appear and disappear within the copper inkwell.
• Portrait watermark of Benjamin Franklin
• Security thread
• Color-shifting numeral 100