Intel's INSPIRE•EMPOWER Challenge is looking for ideas from individuals, developers, organizations, and the public at large for using technology to address a global issue in the areas of education, health care, economic development, and the environment. Winners will get $100,000 USD to get their idea off the ground!

The program is designed to award people who propose innovative solutions using technology to help people in four critical global categories.

Have any of you tried out Intel's Mash Maker?

Kate Green of Technology Review explains how it works in her post, Web Mashups Made Easy:

"Called Mash Maker, the project aims to let people use their ordinary Web browsers to combine information from different sites. If, for example, you are looking at apartments on Craigslist, you can easily add information about nearby restaurants from Yelp, a recommendation site, essentially augmenting the data on the Craigslist page. With another few clicks of a button, you can put the apartments and Yelp listings on a Google map, which will also appear within the Craigslist page. The next time you visit the Craigslist page, you can reopen the mashup, and it will automatically use new data from the site."

According to Robert Ennals' March 18th post on the Intel Software Network Blog, The Mash Maker Widget API is Now Open. You can watch a video of Robert talking about Mash Maker above, or on YouTube.

If you've used the Mash Maker to make a mashup with social impact, let us know!

Thanks to David Collin for the tip.