Digicel is the first recipient from a $10 million fund set up by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and the project is designed to speed up the arrival of cellphone banking in Haiti. The effort follows other mobile banking projects such as the M-PESA program in Kenya.

For now, the Haiti Tcho Tcho service, as the banking program is known, allows customers to make deposits and withdrawals at retail outlets, as well as transfer money between Tcho Tcho accounts. Over time, the service is designed to expand to bill payment and international transfers, as well as the ability to pay for government services.

Bill Gates has been a big advocate of establishing banking and savings in emerging markets as a means of breaking the cycle of poverty in developing countries, and cellphones have shown particular promise as a means to provide authentication as well as to deal with the fact that many of the poor live in remote rural areas, making traditional branch-based banking not economically feasible. He touted the Kenyan program during a tour of U.S. colleges last year.

The grant comes at just about the one-year anniversary of the devastating earthquake on that island nation. Even before the quake, only one in 10 Haitians had access to a traditional bank. Digicel got the grant for being the first company to set up a mobile banking service in the country. A further $1.5 million will go to the next operator to launch service there, while the remaining $6 million will be handed out proportionally to the companies that handle the first five million transactions.

U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Kenneth Merten said that the move is part of America’s effort to provide long-term assistance “to help the Haitian people build back better.”

“The role of innovative companies like Digicel will be critical to ensuring the sustainability of our investments here,” Merten said in a statement.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates–who has been devoting most of this time to philanthropic work via the Gates Foundation–has just launched an ambitious blog and information site.

He is calling it “The Gates Notes: An Inside Look at Global Matters,” but BoomTown has officially nicknamed the site–which you can see on a screen grab below–All Things B(ill) or perhaps the more hip-hoppy All Things G(ates) today.

Here’s a note about the effort, sent out today:

Today, Bill Gates launched The Gates Notes (www.gatesnotes.com), a website designed to share his learning and excitement with his new foundation work along with his personal interests in areas such as energy and the environment. Bill has been spending time learning a lot from thought leaders in their fields. He has been taking notes and sending emails, and the site is a collection of the conversations, books, articles, trips and people who have inspired and informed Bill. The site is designed to encourage people to dig deeper–to explore questions from multiple angles. Bill will update the content on an ongoing basis, and we also plan to add some features in the near future to make the site more interactive such as RSS and commenting/discussions.

And in a welcoming note on the site, Gates writes:

Since leaving my fulltime job at Microsoft to dedicate more time to our foundation, a lot of people have asked me what I’m working on. It often feels like I’m back in school, as I spend a lot of my time learning about issues I’m passionate about.

I’m fortunate because the people I’m working with and learning from are true experts in their fields. I take a lot of notes, and often share them and my own thoughts on the subject with others through email, so I can learn from them and expand the conversation.

I thought it would be interesting to share these conversations more widely with a website, in the hope of getting more people thinking and learning about the issues I think are interesting and important. So, welcome to the Gates Notes.

The site has a spare and elegant look–dare I say, it looks as if it could have been designed by Apple (AAPL)? Interactivity is limited at this point and social networking nonexistent.

The site includes several sections: “What I’m Thinking About” (cheery things today like pandemic response and Haiti), “What I’m Learning” (He loves the book “Super Freakonomics” and lectures from global health professor Hans Rosling), “My Travels” (a video about a recent trip to see health clinics in India), “Curious Classrooms” (questions Gates answers from students), and “Infrequently Asked Questions” (more questions he answers).

Yesterday, Gates officially joined Twitter and restarted his Facebook account.

This has all been in anticipation of this site’s launch, which appears to be part of an effort by Gates to raise awareness of what he has been up to since he stepped down from day-to-day involvement at Microsoft (MSFT) in mid-2008 and stepped up his ambitious philanthropic work.

Here’s the homepage screen (click on it to make it larger):

But–as many readers have requested–they will all be available in their entirety over the next weeks in this column.

Here’s Part 4 of 4 of an interview Walt Mossberg did with the Gates Foundation’s Melinda Gates.

(I posted one video part of the discussion with Melinda Gates every day this week, starting Monday and concluding today.)

As you will see, Melinda Gates is articulate in ways that are critical to the task that she and her husband–that would be Microsoft (MSFT) Founder Bill Gates–have put before themselves: Big league philanthropy with deeply effective results, specifically in health and learning.

In this video, Melinda Gates answers questions from the audience about the time frame for the foundation, models of philanthropy, how businesses can become more philanthropic, how to improve troubled schools by eliminating “facelessness,” entrepreneurs and how to get better teachers.

But–as many readers have requested–they will all be available in their entirety over the next weeks in this column.

Here’s Part 2 of 4 of an interview Walt Mossberg did with the Gates Foundation’s Melinda Gates.

(I will be posting one video part of the discussion with Melinda Gates every day this week through Thursday.)

As you will see, Melinda Gates is articulate in ways that are critical to the task that she and her husband–that would be Microsoft (MSFT) Founder Bill Gates–have put before themselves: Big league philanthropy with deeply effective results, specifically in health and learning.

In this video, Melinda Gates talks about how the massive foundation focuses its efforts, its vaccine programs, her and her husband’s increased involvement and the broken public high school educational system in the U.S.

But–as many readers have requested–they will all be available in their entirety over the next weeks in this column.

Here’s Part 1 of 4 of an interview Walt Mossberg did with the Gates Foundation’s Melinda Gates.

(I will be posting one video part of the discussion with Melinda Gates every day this week through Thursday.)

As you will see, Melinda Gates is articulate in ways that are critical to the task that she and her husband–that would be Microsoft (MSFT) Founder Bill Gates–have put before themselves: Big league philanthropy with deeply effective results, specifically in health and learning.

In this video, Melinda Gates talks about her early days as a Microsoft product manager, how to take technology to the developing world, the politics of vaccines and how the Gates Foundation can be a “catalytic” wedge.

The Wall Street Journal published a special tab (click the image to make it larger) about our sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place live two weeks ago.

The Journal editors selected about half of the interviews done there by Walt Mossberg and me, either separately or together, and edited the longer transcripts down to the parts they thought readers would like best.

Those interviews include: Microsoft’s (MSFT) Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer; Yahoo’s (YHOO) Sue Decker and Jerry Yang; Amazon’s (AMZN) Jeff Bezos; Activision’s (ATVI) Bobby Kotick; the Gates Foundation’s Melinda Gates; TiVo’s (TIVO) Tom Rogers; and Rupert Murdoch of News Corp. (NWS) (owner of this site and the conference).

We hope you’ll enjoy the tab, which is both in print and also online. And you can always read all about it in our D6 highlights here, including super-duper live-blogging from the conference by Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski.

There is also a podcast about the conference with Walt and me, conducted by The Wall Street Journal’s Michael Totty.

The annual gathering of tech and media luminaries was created and is run by my partner Walt Mossberg and me.

D6 tech and media speakers include: Microsoft Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer of Microsoft (MSFT); News Corp.’s (NWS) Rupert Murdoch; Jeff Bewkes of Time Warner (TWX); Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook; Michael Dell of Dell Computer (DELL); IAC’s (IACI) Barry Diller; Amazon’s (AMZN) Jeff Bezos; Howard Stringer of Sony (SNE); and TiVo’s (TIVO) Tom Rogers.

Also: Tom Glocer of Thomson Reuters (TRI); Melinda Gates of the Gates Foundation; FCC Chairman Kevin Martin; Lowell McAdam of Verizon Wireless (VZ); Activision’s (ATVI) Robert Kotick; and former Microsoft tech guru Nathan Myhrvold of Intellectual Ventures.

Just recently, we added Jerry Yang, CEO and co-founder of Yahoo (YHOO), and now he is being joined onstage at the conference by Yahoo President Sue Decker (pictured here in a lovely Wall Street Journal dot-drawing).

The pairing should make for a lively session, given all the heat around Yahoo of late, largely related to the scuttled attempt by Microsoft to buy the company.

What would you like to know about that and anything else about Yahoo?

As it so happens, you can ask!

While the conference is sold out, you can submit questions that you would like answered to Yang and Decker or any of the speakers via text or video. Walt and I will pick the best ones and let loose.

Ask early and often here!

In addition, the whole conference will be online at AllThingsD during the conference, via live blogs and reports of breaking news (and there will be breaking news, as there always is), along with video highlights.

And videos of all the interviews will be posted soon after it is over.

Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer of Microsoft (MSFT). News Corp.’s (NWS) Rupert Murdoch. Jeff Bewkes of Time Warner (TWX). Yahoo’s (YHOO) Jerry Yang.

All of them engaged in roiling Internet deal-making of late and all of them in just three weeks on the same stage–but not, thankfully, at the same time, or we’d need a professional negotiator–at the 6th D: All Things Digital conference in Carlsbad, Calif.

The annual gathering of tech and media luminaries was created and is run by my amazing partner Walt Mossberg and me (see us here at D5) and will take place May 27 to 29.

The conference, as we describe it on our Web site, is “unlike any other executive conference.” What we mean by that is that we try to determine the next direction of the digital revolution via unscripted and informal, but pointed, conversations about the impact of digital technology with industry leaders.

In other words, Walt and I needling at the major players of the digital sector, until they give up the good stuff.

The other digital and media leaders coming? That would be: Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook; Michael Dell of Dell Computer (DELL); IAC’s (IACI) Barry Diller; Amazon’s (AMZN) Jeff Bezos; Howard Stringer of Sony (SNE); and TiVo’s (TIVO) Tom Rogers.

Also: Tom Glocer of Thomson Reuters (TRI); Melinda Gates of the Gates Foundation; FCC Chairman Kevin Martin; Lowell McAdam of Verizon Wireless (VZ); Activision’s (ATVI) Robert Kotick; and former Microsoft tech guru and Nathan Myhrvold of Intellectual Ventures.

To say our timing is impeccably planned would be undeserved–we had no idea so much news related to all these companies and their leaders would break out, from the tough economy to takeover battles to court face-offs to mergers to trying to create a whole new way of reading.

Also, there will be some–as yet under wraps–amazing demos onstage too.

While the analog conference has been sold out for many months, the action will be on the AllThingsD.com site throughout the conference with round-the-clock live blogging by Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski, as well as video highlights from stage.

In addition, we’ll be pointing all over the Web to important tech and media news that breaks at D6.

And we will also stream the entire conference in the weeks after the conference takes place, so ATD‘s audience can experience the whole thing, even if they cannot all attend.

But anyone’s questions can be there, though–this year, you can submit questions to any of the speakers via text or video that you would like answered. Walt and I will pick the best ones and let loose. Ask early and often here!

Walt and I are very excited for D6, even after last year, when we brought together industry legends Bill Gates and Apple’s Steve Jobs, for an historic joint interview.

At the time, Walt and I joked that we would not be able to top that amazing event (the video of the entire interview is below).

That interview was nearly unbeatable, but we also think that with the top-level interviewees we have assembled for D6, that it is game on.

Until then, here’s the Gates/Jobs video from D5: