Here’s the skinny on BOP news in the Blogosphere:

•Nicholas Deleon of Gizmodo.com writes about a $150 laptop that will soon be sold in rural China and South East Asia. Unlike Negroponte’s version, the personal computer discussed here will not have a hand crank but will be powered by a wire plugged into the wall.

•Pablo Halkyard of The World Bank’s Private Sector Development Blog seems to have been snooping around Columbia University’s Economics Department lately. In two posts this week, he mentions Joseph Stiglitz, who argues that natural gas nationalization in Bolivia may benefit the BOP, and Jefferey Sachs, who argues that the private sector—both business and NGOs—can help enfranchise the dispossessed.

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Organic aquaculture is admittedly not the first thing that comes to mind when I think of hot sectors, but the work being done by Primar is not about the latest IT trend or fashionable stock pick, it's about slowly but decisively attempting to change the way an industry functions.

Much like DryWash, another Brazilian company I highlighted last week, Primar is surrounded by competition that operates informally and without quality standards. The company has taken a leadership role in changing this trend in addition to being the first producer of organic shrimp. Primar faced making this shift or going out of business several years ago when the price for conventional shrimp dropped. Because of the company's small size, it was flexible enough to quickly make this transition and adapt to new market signals.