China

by Vailancio Rodrigues and the Smashing Magazine editorial team

Aerial photography offers a drastically different perspective than the one you get from shooting on the ground. It includes photographs taken from aircraft, helicopters, balloons, rockets, kites, skydives, etc. It can be a rewarding, challenging and enriching experience. It can produce unique shots that look different than any other ground shot you have ever taken. Scenic flights can give you some great, memorable photos.

Fortune magazine presents the predictions for 2009 of 8 market analysts and experts including yours truly; the other analysts are Bill Gross, Bob Shiller, Sheila Bair, Jim Rogers, John Train, Meredith Whitney, and Wilbur Ross.

Compared to Jim Rogers who sees the Dow falling as low as 4000 I seem like a relative bull as I expect US and global equities to fall “only” another 20% from current levels.

Here is my Fortune magazine prediction:

What's happening to formerly-rich Wall Street bankers, now that their stocks are worthless? Michael Shnayerson of Vanity Fair dishes up a schadenfreude-rich story filled with juicy anecdotes about masters of the financial universe who are down on their luck.

Fromn Barry Ritholtz, a funny and surprisingly plausible way to pay for national health coverage in the US:

1. Set up a large, well capitalized hedge fund. About $5B should do it.

2. The prospectus of the fund should note its purpose is to “Seek out profit opportunities via arbitraging inefficiencies in the markets and health care system of the United States.” Include standard “Socially Conscious” fund language in clauses such as Do well by doing good.

3. Launch the fund — and promptly max out your leverage.

Seen here is a 2700-year-old stash of marijuana, found in a Gobi Desert grave near Turpan, China. Ethan Russo, a visiting professor at the Chinese Acadmy of Scineces, and his colleagues report the discovery in the current issue of the Journal of Experimental Botany (abstract).

The BBC is following a shipping container around the world, and taking videos in an "experiment to lift the veil on the global economy and tell the stories behind the goods inside, those who make them, and how they travel to consumers."

The Box is due to arrive during the broadcast in LA from Shanghai laden with consumer goods for the American market.

A couple of weeks ago we celebrated the first birthday of Google's OpenSocial project, an open API framework for social networks and websites. Google's OpenSocial Blog recently presented some statistics, including that OpenSocial now reaches nearly 675 M registered users and there are 7,500 applications.

Riots are breaking out in factories in Dongguan as bankruptcies and layoffs throw thousands out of work with wages owing. South China, "the world's factory," is in chaos, faltering. After the mid-autumn festival, enormous numbers of workers simply stayed home in the provinces, rather than returning to work in Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Dongguan.

This AP story talks about a riot in the factory where Nerf toys were manufactured for Hasbro -- and no, they didn't fight with Nerf bats.

The current economic collapse is a difficult story for TV. It's a peculiar period in between an election and an inauguration. This most important story, this great-or-not-so great depression, is also the hardest for CNN to tell. I have more than enough reasons why in this late-night rant.

1) It's not a hurricane so Anderson Cooper of CNN is unable to position himself in the middle of the storm for optimal drama. In other words, TV anchors can't get wet and windblown, while viewers worry about their safety. The state of the economy is a disaster but not a natural disaster.

This post is the first in a two-part series about 1) the African mobile marketplace and how Africans utilize their mobile phones; and 2) how organizations are using social marketing to reach this highly mobile population for social change.

The series is based on a conversation I had with Gustav Praekelt, a mobile entrepreneur located in South Africa.