I've been thinking a lot about the global internet lately.

Here are the May comScore numbers for total Internet audience

Worldwide - 853mm (up 10% from 772mm last year)

North America - 185mm (up 4% from 178mm last year)

Europe - 240mm (up 8% from 223mm last year)

Asia - 323mm (up 14% from 283mm last year)

Latin America - 63mm (up 19% from 53mm last year)

Middle East/Africa - 43mm (up 23% from 35mm last year)

As is typically the case, the smallest markets are growing the fastest. But a couple other things stand out to me. Asia added 40mm Internet users in the past year. Europe added 17mm. Latin America added 10mm. Africa and the Middle East added more than North America.

It's as Fareed Zakaria says "the US isn't declining, but the rest of the world is rising".

And I'll end this brief post with a link to Pascal Zachary's article in the New York Times about technology in Nairobi, Kenya. If you, like me, are thinking about the global reach of technology and the Internet, then you should read it. This paragraph is telling:

Still, Nairobi is home to a digital brew that invites optimism about its chances for creating unusual innovations. The city has relatively few wired phone lines or networked personal computers, so mobile phones are the essential digital tool. Four times as many people have them as have bank accounts. Text messages are far more popular than e-mail. Safaricom, the dominant mobile provider, offers a service called M-pesa that lets customers send money with text messages. Nokia sells brand-new phones here for as little as $33.

The numbers at the top of this post are for computers (PCs) connected to the Internet. They would look very different if they were total internet connected devices (PCs + mobile phones).

When we went out to raise a second fund at the start of this year, we told our investors that the Internet was getting more global, more mobile, more social, more intelligent, and more playful.

Those are all big trends, but the first two are tightly linked and very powerful as Pascal's article points out.

I’m running out of “green” jokes to use in headlines describing the steady march of cash toward Evergreen Solar’s coffers. The latest example of that, plus a surprising number and variety of venture financings and other deals for one summer week, below.

—Evergreen Solar (NASDAQ: ESLR) announced yet another large, long-term order for the photovoltaic solar panels it manufactures. This one—worth $1.2 billion—brings the Marlborough, MA-based firm’s total contractual backlog to nearly $3 billion.

—Burlington, MA-based NeoSaej, whose MoneyAisle.com site lets lenders compete for banking customers, completed a new round of financing worth over $7 million. The new funding brings its total financing to more than $10.5 million. Boston-based Wellington Management led the deal, which was joined by Stata Venture Partners II and NeoNet.

—MIT spinoff ThingMagic of Cambridge, MA, raised $9.5 million in a Series B funding round that included Tudor Ventures, The Exxel Group, Morningside Technology Ventures, and .406 Ventures. ThingMagic makes hardware and software for reading RFID (radio frequency identification) tags.

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