BBC’s Mishal Husain visited the Brazilian pavilion at Shanghai World Expo to find out how it brings samba, soccer and the spirit of Ipanema to China.

Xiao Qiang is adjunct professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of China Digital Times, a bilingual collaborative China news website. Here he discusses the Chinese Government’s approaches to the internet and the phenomenon of the “50 cent blogger”.

The Chinese government is asking its people to spend a little more and save a little less to help get the country through the global economic downturn [...]

While news from Iran streams to the world, Clay Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics [...]

China announced recently it would have all new computers in China pre-installed with a filter software, in a bid to “protect minors” from “unhealthy information” from the Internet. All computers produced or sold in China after July 1 would be installed with such software, said the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MITT). Check a round up of news about the Green Dam internet filter (and how conflicting the information is, depending if the source is Chinese or from abroad):

China is rebalancing its economy to focus more on domestic consumption than exports in order to achieve its growth target, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has said. Addressing an Asian regional forum in southern China, he announced a $10bn (over 1.5 billion US dollars) fund for infrastructure projects in south-east Asia [...]

Would anybody care to share a quote (shall I call it “citation?) for referencing the interaction design process for a paper I’m writing? # reading “IDEO Method Cards”, different techniques for inspiring design, gaining insights into user’s goals, and generating alternatives … # [Technology] Nokia’s Point # [Graphic Design, Digital Art, Architecture, Data Visualization] Data [...]

Monthly groceries at Metro: frozen bagles, panninis, and laffa! Thank you, Lord! # [China] Chinese president meets Brazilian leader in London: Chinese President Hu Jintao met his Brazilian.. http://tinyurl.com/cd6jd2 # [Interaction Design] Music That Makes You Dumb: Virgil Griffith, a CalTech graduate student,.. http://tinyurl.com/cgbw7j # [Technology] Report: Google in Talks to Buy Twitter?: Google is [...]

In this prescient 2005 talk, Clay Shirky shows how closed groups and companies will give way to looser networks where small contributors have big roles and fluid cooperation replaces rigid planning [...]

Robert Fabricant talks about Interaction Design as a practice beyond just computing technology. He gives examples of Interaction Design as far back as ancient history, all the way to a humanitarian project underway today. He shows that Interaction Design’s primary medium is behavior, extending far past the high technology world into the realm of human [...]