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Design Readings

Watch Davide Casali’s “Social Experience Design” talk at Interaction’13 | IxDA Conference

This talk will show a hands-on social experience design method to deal with this complexity and achieve the change projects need, plus some supporting use-cases supporting them […]

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Design Readings

Watch Jer Thorp’s “Data & Human Experience” keynote at Interaction’13 | IxDA Conference

In this talk, Jer Thorp discusses the intersection between data and human experience. He’ll go into detail a number of projects involving diverse data sets, including the 770,000 words in the Shakespeare Folio, astronomical measurements from NASA, text from nightly news broadcasts, and real-time air traffic reports […]

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Information Technology Trend Watching

Information Technology in Brazil: app to reports urban problems is voted best in the world

Colab, a Brazilian application that helps report urban problems, was elected on world’s best by the New Cities Foundation at an event in Sao Paulo. Other finalists included traffic BuzzJourney (Israel) and PublicStuff (United States). These apps participated prize App My City, urban award for best application in the world (those of us trying to unlock the big cities). Colab received $ 5000 in cash […]

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China Economics Trend Watching

Watch Thomas Friedman’s “The World is Flat 3.0” talk at MIT OpenCourseWare

Back in 2000, Tom Friedman recounts, the world began to shrink and flatten, under the influence of digital interconnectivity. Elaborating on his World is Flat thesis, Friedman describes how this new global order puts creative, entrepreneurial individuals in the driver’s seat, and poses distinct new challenges and opportunities. The digital platform that connects Bangalore, Boston and Beijing enables users from any of these places to “plug, play, compete, connect and collaborate,” and is changing everything, says Friedman […]

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Information Technology Trend Watching

Internet in Brazil: banking transactions on smartphones grow more than four times in 2012

Banking transactions via smartphone grew 333% in 2012, according to the 2013 edition of Banking Technology Research, released recently by the Brazilian Federation of Banks Febraban. Mobile banking is the fastest growing channel in the year […]

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Consumer Behavior Information Technology Trend Watching

Mobile Devices in Brazil: Government reduces taxes on smartphones

A decree signed by President Dilma Rousseff and published on Tuesday (9) reduces to zero the PIS and COFINS on the sale of so-called smartphones, cell phones with internet access, costing up to R$ 1,500 (around US $ 760.00) and are produced in Brazil. Together, the two taxes had a rate of 9.25% […]

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Economics Trend Watching

Consumer Behavior in Brazil: Number of billionaires expected to grow 157% in 10 years, study says

Brazil had 53 billionaires in 2012. In 2022, there will be 136, according to the annual survey provides Wealth Report, released recently by consultancy Knight Frank. The growth in the number of billionaires expected for Brazil, 157%, is the worlds third largest, behind China 214% and Indonesia 190%.Currently, the country with the most billionaires are the United States, with 543 people – a number that will rise to 1101 in ten years. Second on the list today is China, with 154 billionaires, and the third is with Germany and the UK – both have 149 billionaires […]

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China Information Technology Trend Watching

Watch Michael Anti’s “Behind the Great Firewall of China” Talk at TED

Michael Anti (aka Jing Zhao) has been blogging from China for 12 years. Despite the control the central government has over the Internet — “All the servers are in Beijing” (also known as “The Great Firewall of China”) — he says that hundreds of millions of microbloggers are in fact creating the first national public sphere in the country’s history, and shifting the balance of power in unexpected ways […]

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China Consumer Behavior Trend Watching

China, Socialism & Consumer Behavior: Rising cost of luxury goods slows to 2009 level

Price increases for luxury goods and services in China this year are at their slowest level since 2009 but continue to outpace inflation, according to a report by the Hurun Research Institute. China’s Luxury Consumer Price Index, which measures price changes in 62 luxury items, rose 4.94 percent in June from a year earlier, 2.79 […]

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Consumer Behavior Trend Watching

Consumer Behavior in Brazil: Cable TV reaches 50 million Brazilians

According to the study, 15.1 million households had Cable TV service in the period… were 319,500 new homes with cable TV in August/2012 […]