BRANDING-OP: The profile of Microsoft's education initiatives (with a title that's sure to irk some) in FastCoExist has all the trappings of PR but its numbers--reportedly $500 million donated to 114 countries--suggest that the company is taking tackling the education problem seriously. And employees have apparently volunteered over 383,000 hours and raised $100 million for related causes. (But take it with a grain of salt.)
