ecopolis

The first India-China-Russia Trilateral Conference held in New Delhi- organized by FICCI and CII in partnership the Ministry of External Affairs, government of India – saw V.I. Trubnikov, Ambassador, Russian Federation, Nalin Surie, Secretary (West) Ministry of External Affairs, Bu Jian Guo, Charge d’Affaires, Chinese Embassy and G.G. Petrov, vice-president, Chambers of Commerce engage on strengthening economic cooperation in a range of sectors.

Nalin Surie, Secretary (West), Ministry of External Affairs, pointed out that the Conference was aimed at giving an economic, trade and business content to the ongoing process of strengthening the political relations amongst the three countries, with sectoral focus on energy, infrastructure, biotechnology, chemicals, pharmaceuticals and nanotechnology.

It was agreed that the conference should be an annual event and the next meeting would be held in China in 2009.

The meeting was a follow-up to the deliberations of the Foreign Ministers of India, China and the Russia, most recently in China, where Lavrov said Russia has no plans to enter into a military alliance with China and India. He added: “We advance cooperation in the bilateral format, in the trilateral format, within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization framework and in other structures. We also seek to resolve key security issues through multilateral discussions by politicians,” reported Chinadaily.

India, China and Russia constituted 40% of the world’s population and therefore was one of the largest markets in the world.

It’s really a long and passionate story: the classic scheme of Davide against Golia. this time Davide is a little and innovative company based now inTorino, called Yesmoke, owned by the Fratelli Messina (one of them was even a maratonet).

Before becoming a cigarette producer with its own brand, Yesmoke was the world’s largest online tobacco store, with more than 6 million cartons of 200 cigarettes sold every year: Marlboro, Camel, Winston, Benson & Hedges and all the most popular brands.

The “Tobacco Napster“, as the press called it, shipped its first pack of cigarettes in January 2000. Almost 5 years later, on November 16th, 2004, it was forced to surrender when 200 U.S. agents stormed the J.F. Kennedy Airport in New York, blocked a DHL cargo coming from Switzerland, and seized a large shipment of cigarettes destined for distribution in the United States, where Yesmoke had more than half of its customers.

The new brand was skilfully “neutralised” in the following months all over the world, including Switzerland, where the authorities decided that the entire Yesmoke warehouse stock had to be destroyed, right down to the last cigarette. The reason, in this case, was the a Swiss Canton’s disapproval of the writing “Smoke Better”, printed on of the Yesmoke cigarette packets.

But the customers needn’t worry, in november 2007 “Yesmokes” cigarettes will be back on the market; they are going to be produced in Italy in a new plant in Turin. Moreover, the annual production capacity will be doubled: 50 million cartons, equal to 10 billion cigarettes… the war is not over!

It’s not going well the Radiohead initiative to let their last album,In Rainbows, downloadable from their website at the price every user thought it was right. The album’s release has challenged the music industry’s traditional distribution and sales model by allowing consumers to determine the price they are willing to pay for the album.

A comScore press release reported that 62% of the Radiohead fan that downloaded the album paid nothing. Here a list of the average paid by the consumers of each country:
Great Britain 3,2 Euro
U.S.A. 4,2 Euro

Radiohead released a statement calling into question the validity of the report.
comScore reports are derived from a representative sample of 2 million Internet users, who opt in to their panel and allow them to observe their actual online behavior, including e-commerce transactions. Because the data are based on passively observed consumer behavior, as opposed to polls or survey responses, there is no potential for recall error.

Two different point of view:

“The high percentage of users actually paying more than a few dollars for this download is actually pretty impressive, I expected the vast majority of users to download the album for free or at most a few dollars. With 40 percent of consumers willing to pony up real money, this is a true win for the music industry as it shows there is still perceived value in the digital form of entertainment.”
Jim Larrison, general manager of corporate development at Adify

“While the band, its fans and artists alike are celebrating what looks like a success for Radiohead’s bold move in releasing their new album using the ‘pay what you’d like’ model, I think everybody has overlooked one very important aspect of this, and it doesn’t bode well for the future of the music industry, Radiohead has been bankrolled by their former label for the last 15 years. They’ve built a fan base in the millions with their label, and now they’re able to cash in on that fan base with none of the income or profit going to the label this time around. That’s great for the band and for fans who paid less than they would under the old school model. But at some point in the not too distant future, the music industry will run out of artists who have had major label support in helping them build a huge fan base. The question is: how will new artists be able to use this model in the future if they haven’t built a fan base in the millions in the years leading up to the release of their album under the pay what you’d like model?”
Michael Laskow, CEO of TAXI, world’s leading independent A&R (Artist and Repertoire)

The chocolate enjoyed around the world today had its origins at least 3,100 years ago in Central America as a cerimony beer-like beverage and status symbol, the author of The World of the Ancient Maya (Cornell University Press, 1997), John Henderson said.

All of the Mesoamerican peoples made chocolate beverages, who made it into a beverage known as xocolātl, a Nahuatl word meaning “bitter water”. The seeds of the cacao tree, also being used as a form of currency, have an intense bitter taste, and must be fermented to develop the flavor.

Analysis of residue from a ceramic “teapot” from about 1100 BC, found in Puerto Escondido, Honduras, suggests that chocolate may have been drinking in small, delicate pottery vessels for ceremonial beverages and consumed by elites. This pushed back by at least 500 to years the earliest documented use of cacao.

Deep excavations at Puerto Escondido. The Honduran workman at the right is excavating Olmec-period (approximately 1100-900 BC) remains. Photo by John Henderson.

Chocolate, prepared as a beverage, was introduced in Europe to the Spanish court in 1544 by Kek’chí Maya nobles, brought from Guatemala by Dominican friars. The first load of beans arrived to Sevilla, Spain in 1585. Nowdays Cocoa beans are still used as a form of currency: trade means prices, taxes, and shipping costs. Business chocolate.

The Undesignable Markets are dedicated to post-war Design and Optical Art.

The next Undesignable Market will take place in a former hangar at Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport, where a total area of approximatly 1800 sqm will stage design shops, design galleries and private collectors from all over Europe.

An unique opportunity for everybody to get icons or design furniture from the 20th century : Design Classics, High Class Objects, Vintage Objects and Furniture, Objects from Private Collections.

Easy to reach by private as well as by public transport, the location is also close to the galleries and designs shop of the Keithstrasse, Motzstrasse, Auguststrasse, Schwedterstrasse, as well as the well-known Bergmannstrasse, in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district.

The Undesignable Market Berlin edition, will open for the public on 11th of November 2007, from 11am to 5pm.

Photo : REUTERS/Jumana El Heloueh

A model applauds as she displays an outfit by emerging Saudi designer Sulafa Filfilan (L) as part of her Spring-Summer 2008 collection during Dubai International Fashion Week (DIFW) Dubai, United Arab Emirates, October 24, 2007.

The leading fashion trade event held bi-annually under the patronage of the Dubai Chamber of Commerce & Industry, has announced the signing of their partnership with The Dubai Mall as Principal Partner. This partnership grants The Dubai Mall exclusivity over the next three DIFW events spanning 2007 and 2008, and will further position The Dubai Mall as a global fashion destination. The Dubai Mall, one of the world’s largest shopping and entertainment destinations and the flagship project of Emaar Malls Group, is located in the heart of the prestigious Downtown Burj Dubai.

The Dubai Mall, to open late 2008, will have over 1,200 speciality stores spread over 3.77 million square feet of gross lettable area. It is being billed as a shopping, lifestyle and entertainment destination and features a fashion precinct dedicated to haute couture by showcasing the world’s most luxurious brands.

(We’re off on the) Road to Morocco, performed by Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. Road to Morocco is a 1942 comedy film which tells the story of two fast-talking guys who find themselves tossed up on a desert shore and sold into slavery to a beautiful princess. It is the third of the “Road to…” movies and stars Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour, Anthony Quinn and Dona Drake.

The movie was written by Frank Butler and Don Hartman and directed by David Butler for Paramount Pictures.

It received Academy Award nomimations for Best Sound, Recording and Best Writing, Original Screenplay. The film has been deemed “culturally significant” by the United States Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Mafia is a 3D action game. The player assumes the role of a gangster in an American city of the 1930s, and gets a chance to live through gangster’s rise and fall: high-speed car chases, bootlegging, assassinations, and bank robberies. The figures move thanks to Motion Capture technology, through which the movements of real actors transfer onto the figures of the characters. When a character is speaking, the program moves the lips in synchronization with the words spoken and facial expressions – a smile, a frown, an expression of fear, or we can move the eyebrows. The result is a very lively impression that pushes the real-time animation of figures forward considerably.

Platforms: PC CDROM (Windows 98, ME, 2000 or XP)
Developed by: Illusion Softworks
Published by: Gathering of Developers

Roma, 22 ottobre 2007 source RaiNews24 13:14

La prima azienda italiana si chiama ‘Mafia spa’ e ha un fatturato annuo di 90 miliardi di euro: il 7% del Pil, pari a cinque manovre finanziarie e otto volte il Tesoretto. E’ quanto emerge dal rapporto Sos impresa della Confesercenti sulla criminalità, presentato questa mattina a Roma, in cui si sottolinea che usura e racket – con 40 miliardi di fatturato – costituiscono il principale business per le associazioni mafiose.

Dalla filiera alimentare al turismo, dai servizi alle imprese a quelli alla persona, dagli appalti alle forniture pubbliche, al settore immobiliare e finanziario – afferma il rapporto – la presenza della criminalita’ organizzata si consolida in ogni attivita’ economica

http://www.sosimpresa.it

At the Haus Der Kultuur der Welt, in Berlin, Ricardo Dominguez and Diane Ludin Particles presents Capitalism: Tales of the Matter Market.

Performance
Fri 12.10.2007 12:00h – 24:00h, free admission
Sa 13.10.2007 12:00h – 24:00h, free admission
Su 14.10.2007 12:00h – 24:00h, free admission

Nomadic new york counters Manhattan’s restless flow of money with “decelerated” in-between spaces. Their performance art refuses spectacle. It takes on a political dimension through the formation of temporary collectives which occupy spaces in new ways. The artists open up New York and Berlin through their nomadic coming and going, their avoidance of fixed structures. In Berlin they will tell us a story of life in the global metropolis, a story that we all have in common.

For the market, nanoparticles hold the 21st century’s great promise. For critics, they are a vision of pure horror, as long as the toxicological risks are not known. The era of unregulated nanocapitalism has already dawned, with these smallest of particles being used today in cosmetics, fabrics and dyes. Ricardo Dominguez, founder of the Electronic Disturbance Theater and initiator of virtual sit-ins on the Zapatista resistance, sees his art as explicitly politically commissioned. He and Diane Ludin invite the public to a multimedia lecture-performance with two leading nanotechnologists that will provide insight into the stories of the global particle market. Knowledge is action!

Above Ricardo Dominguez states what is Particle Capitalism:
“We are no longer under the sign of natural selection or even artificial selection—we are now under the sign of atom selection. Everything on the planet, from indigenous aromas to public spaces to our atoms, is now forced to march into the Intellectual Property filters of globalization. Communication and evolution have now muted to a particle – commoditization systems. The neoliberal matrix that started to emerge fully in the 90’s has played itself out on three stages: digital/Virtual Capitalism, genetic/Clone Capitalism and nanotechnology/Particle Capitalism. Each of these stages of technocapital are being integrated via a new “deep harmonization” of the global Intellectual Property agenda: copyright laws, trademark laws and patent laws. A process that starts in the research chambers and ends in ownership enclosures, from patenting technology to patenting life, from patenting information to patenting atom-based reality.” -Dr. Dominguez