Sochagota

Brazil's tourism plans create 'immense potential for rental income'

2009-06-12T15:45:00.000-07:00

Brazil's tourism plans create 'immense potential for rental income'

Overseas property investment news - Fly to let The huge influx of visitors to the Natal region of Brazil makes now an excellent time to invest in a Fly to Let property. And potential for rental income is immense says an overseas investment specialist.

Brazil currently has the 10th largest economy in the world with a National plan for tourism to attract nine million tourists annually.

There is a US$1.8 billion investment for infrastructure improvements and the new airport, which will be the 5th largest in the world, is due to open soon ready for the country to host the 2014 World Cup. Flight time from the UK is around eight and a half hours.

Laguna Beach is an impressive, highly desirable development along the waters edge a short distance from the Capital. The architect is Abreu & Barros who are currently working on the proposed world cup stadium.

“There is a wide choice of properties at Laguna Beach, Tagatinga, which sits on a beautiful beach just 30 minutes drive time from Natal city centre and International Airport. Its potential for capital growth and rental income are immense,” said Pat Creevy of Charles Oliver, the UK based company that specialises in quality homes around the world.

Creevy continued: “The Laguna Beach Management Company , Abreu Imoveis is predicting annual yields from 8 percent to 13 percent. Owing to the world market place I would tend to temper these figures slightly but even so, it offers a tremendous return and capital growth.

Laguna Beach, Tabatinga, Natal, Brazil is a low rise, ocean view homes development surrounded by tropical gardens. There is a large swimming pool plus fully equipped gymnasium and two saunas. There is a games room and children’s club plus concierge service.

It is a gated complex with 24 hour security. The tropical beach at Tabatinga is within 15 metres. Shops and restaurants are within walking distance. There are two water parks in Tabatinga.

Prices range from around £221,000 for a two bedroom apartment, to £660,500 for an exclusive beach bungalow. Also available is a choice of town houses.

Social Enterprises rejuvenate the economy

2009-06-11T10:11:00.000-07:00

Social Enterprises rejuvenate the economy

With the economy continuing to struggle and the nation in need of a brighter-looking future, it’s time for the Third Sector to lift Britain’s communities out of the turmoil created during the recession.

Social Enterprises (or what the government refer to as the Third Sector) will play a pivotal role in the growth of the so-called ‘new economy’. In times of regeneration, the government need to turn to the likes of Phone Co-Op, who have thrived in a highly competitive market, retaining their ethical and environmental policies. They are committed to providing greener telecoms through a range of measures that include buying greener electricity from renewable sources, investing in wind power and offsetting carbon emissions. Another exemplary company is the Wise Group in Glasgow, who are helping unemployed people find jobs by supplying training and work experience programmes. Both of these prestigious companies were winners in the Enterprise Solutions Awards 2008.

Many businesses would consider themselves to be Social Enterprises. However, the true characteristics of Social Enterprises are to be found in those businesses that hold their social and/or environmental purpose central to the running of their organisation. This should be favoured over the importance of getting higher return to shareholders, which given our current situation can only be in the public’s interest. Social Enterprises have a close connection to the community that larger corporations can’t buy. According to the Social Enterprise Coalition they already contribute £8.4 billion to the UK economy, and of a survey of 2,000 people, 30% said they would rather work for a Social Enterprise over any other kind of company.

With redundancies in 2009 at their highest since records began and unemployment reaching 2.2million (the highest figure since 1981), there is a serious need for extra help to get the nation back on its feet. Communities Secretary Hazel Blears and Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell emphasised that the government recognises the important role that Social Enterprises will need to play by creating 15,000 positions for Britain’s unemployed. The government will help with funding through the £1b Future Jobs Fund.

The jobs created through the Future Jobs Fund have to be sustainable to put the economy back on track and produce social value. Third Sector organisations can help to generate this much-needed social value through innovating and unique programmes, such as the Merseyside Getting Out To Work. This programme offers intensive, one-to-one support to ex-offenders to help get them back into permanent employment. Working with The New Economics Foundation, they assessed their social value and the final study showed that for every £1 invested, it generated £10.50 of social value in relation to reduced welfare costs, reduced crime rates and an increase in tax contribution. This has been calculated by measuring the value of the benefits relative to the cost of achieving the benefits (net present value of benefits/net present value of investment).

As well as the Future Jobs Fund, the government is encouraging Social Enterprises to boost the economy by addressing issues such as assets, finance, working with the Public Sector and business support. All of these issues have been raised in a Social Enterprise Summit hosted by the Social Enterprise Coalition for cabinet ministers. The summit also looked over the short and long-term issues and barriers that are in place at the moment, and ways in which to maximise the involvement of Social Enterprises in the recovery of the UK economy.

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I love co-operatives - its an excelent capital and governance model and may be a real alternative to the capital market model

Posted by: Southampton Accountant | May 28, 2009 at 05:00 PM

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Third Sector in Britain seems to be leading the way iterms of innovation & Social Media Marketing Methods, It does not appear that other sectors are adapting so well but pls correct me if i am wrong. British Spirit & integrity is leading the way.

Kind Rgds,
Marcus Horne Owner Sochagota Ltd

Extreme Investing: Inside Colombia

2009-06-10T09:14:00.000-07:00

By Roben Farzad

Extreme Investing: Inside Colombia
An improbable journey from crime capital to investment hot spot. Can this boom last?

"You going there to get some kilos?" asks the driver as he drops me off at Newark's international airport for my six-hour flight to Bogotá. He grins at me in the rear-view mirror as if he has cracked the most original one-liner in history. "Like Scarface," he continues, shifting to his Pakistani/Latino gangster accent: "Say hello to my little friend! Pow! Pow!" He hands me my bags and reminds me to call my mom and make peace with the Almighty before I embark for certain death. "You are crazy, my friend."

Slide Show >>Traveling to Colombia to chronicle the investment miracle unfolding there seemed perfectly reasonable a few weeks earlier. The stats all scream "Go! Go! Go!": Colombia's stock market has soared fourteenfold since October, 2001. Foreign direct investment and capital inflows have more than doubled, while real estate prices have tripled in many areas. Citigroup (C ) CEO Chuck Prince even kicked off his February "world tour" in Bogotá, where the bank is building branches and a Latin American call center. But when most Americans hear the name Colombia they think about the late Medellín drug lord, Pablo Escobar. And roving paramilitary death squads. And speedboat-loads of cocaine headed for Miami.

Slide Show >>I've been assured by bankers that things are getting much better in this nation of 42 million. But it isn't until I step onto the packed 737 to Bogotá that I get my first real sense of the intense interest in Colombian investments. I spy at least 20 business suits, including the laptop-toting Swede sitting next to me who's building a boutique hotel in the beautiful 16th century city of Cartagena on the north coast.

Investors like these have visited many exotic ports in recent years. Colombia's surprising rise has been fueled by two larger trends: the enormous amount of money sluicing through global markets and investors' increasing risk tolerance. First, cash poured into the so-called BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India, and China. Next it flooded riskier secondary destinations such as Turkey and Poland, and last year, with ferocity, Vietnam. Now money is gushing into third-tier hinterlands fraught with political and economic problems, where even the rule of law isn't a given.

THE CONFIANZA INDEX
Call them extreme emerging markets. The Standard & Poor's/IFCG Frontier Index of 22 such destinations, which includes investing curiosities like Lebanon, Côte d'Ivoire, and Bangladesh, has gained nearly 400% in the past five years. The question is whether these nascent markets have what it takes to parlay the fickle enthusiasm of hedge-fund traders and other investors into long-term economic development.

Colombia is particularly extreme. Its stock market has an aggregate capitalization of just $59 billion. In this parallel investing universe, price-earnings ratios take a backseat to fuzzy measures such as confianza, which translates into confidence and trust but is more accurately described as the general sense that people can safely transact business and get through everyday life unharmed. The handful of Wall Street analysts who cover Colombia supply their clients with charts of murder rates and kidnappings.

President Alvaro Uribe, who took office in 2002, nearly five decades into a civil war that has pitted Marxist guerrillas against right-wing death squads, has made confianza his overarching goal. Killings and abductions are down sharply in the big cities, and that has been a boon for all manner of investments, from stocks to real estate. "I guarantee that if you graph the decline in kidnappings to investment gains, the correlation would be one-to-one," says Ben M. Laidler, head of Andean research for UBS Pactual.

On a continent whose economic history is the stuff of a blooper reel, Colombia's strong fundamentals stand out. Its $130 billion economy, a world leader in the production of coffee, petroleum, textiles, and flowers, is growing at 6.8% a year, two full points faster than the Latin American average. In the past 10 years, Colombia has slashed its inflation rate from 18% to 5%, and since Uribe was elected, unemployment has dipped from 16% to 13%. The nation has never defaulted on its debt or experienced hyperinflation. And entrepreneurial thinking is spreading. Run a Google (GOOG ) geographical-hit query, and you'll see that, per capita, nowhere in the world are there more searches for the words "Peter Drucker," the late management guru, than in Bogotá. No. 2? Medellín.

Yes, Medellín. Once the murder capital of the world, this city of 2.4 million is regaining its status as a commercial hub, hosting regional offices for a growing roster of multinationals including Philip Morris (MO ), Toyota (TM ), and Renault, as well as globally minded Colombian companies that make up 70% of the country's stock market value. More high-rises are under construction here than in Manhattan and Los Angeles combined.

But all of it—the stock market gains, the development, the rising living standards—rests on confianza. Foreigners' view of Colombia as a lawless, violent, riven land won't change quickly. As Commerce Minister Luis Guillermo Plata acknowledges, "Why would I invest in a country if I can't go there?"

As I get into the cramped cab that's taking me to my hotel, I can't help thinking about the fabled "millionaire's tour of Bogotá," a stretch of road where colluding cabbies and thieves once drove passengers from ATM to ATM to drain their bank accounts. And then there's the drugs. Colombia still produces the majority of the world's cocaine, an ongoing crisis that draws a steady supply of U.S. military and financial aid. Even corporate crime here takes on deadly overtones: Cincinnati-based banana giant Chiquita Brands International (CQB ) was in the news recently for admitting to having paid $1.7 million in protection money to a Colombian paramilitary group on Washington's list of foreign terrorist organizations.

I'm here to find out whether Colombia's fledgling stock market can keep surging, whether its financial and physical infrastructures can accommodate the flood of investment, and whether an equity culture can take hold.

At the center of everything is President Uribe. "We need to rescue international confidence in our country," he tells me in his heavily guarded compound in Bogotá's historic center full of Spanish colonial architecture. Access to Uribe is preceded by an hour of security checks and chilling looks from guards holding bayonet-tipped machine guns.

The 54-year-old Uribe is a rarity in increasingly leftist Latin America. A center-right ruler with an approval rating of more than 60%, he won a landslide second term in 2006 after having amended the constitution to allow him to run again. Uribe knows Colombia's history of violence firsthand: A decade ago he was governor of Medellín's province, and in 1983 his father was murdered by kidnappers. The sometimes dour leader has driven most of the drug traffickers and leftist guerrillas out of urban centers, though they still reign in remote regions.

But allegations have surfaced in Colombia that the President himself has links to right-wing paramilitaries who murdered hundreds, including labor-union activists. On May 14, 20 Colombian lawmakers and businessmen were arrested on charges in connection with the scandal. Colombia's police chief and head of police intelligence, meanwhile, were ousted amid allegations of illegal wiretapping of opposition politicians and journalists. Uribe vehemently denies any personal connection to the affair. (See Alvaro Uribe: The Change Agent).

Despite his obsession with law and order, the economy is never far from his mind. "The state is the most important private enterprise," he says, "and the public is like a universe of shareholders." Javier Vargas, a Colombian banker with Credit Suisse (CS ), has heard Uribe sound that theme many times. "He talks like a person who is selling and marketing his country," he says. "Investor confidence is key for him." In May, Uribe visited Washington to meet with supporters in the Bush Administration and lobby congressional Democrats on a free-trade pact between the two countries. Democrats have been uneasy with Uribe since the recent allegations surfaced. But Colombia is a vital strategic ally in an increasingly hostile continent, bordered by Hugo Chávez' Venezuela and left-leaning Ecuador. Washington has sent Colombia $5 billion in aid since 2000, including $650 million last year; only Iraq, Egypt, Afghanistan, and Israel receive more.

For Uribe, a deal is crucial both for the tangible economic benefits and the perceptual ones. He has invested much political capital already, visiting the U.S. at least 25 times since taking office. Winning full free-trade benefits with the U.S. would do much to bolster the fragile investor confidence he has been nurturing, while a loss would damage his prestige. Uribe's challenge is one that everyone, from business leaders to taxi drivers, acknowledges. "Investing here is rooted in improving physical safety and lowering the risk of doing business," says Alexander P. Kazan, a Latin American strategist at Bear Stearns & Co. (BSC ) "You really cannot overstate the importance."

SLEEPY EXCHANGE
On a cool April morning, I make my way to Bogotá's bustling financial district. Amid the roar of motorcycle engines and a haze of bus exhaust, the district brims with young professionals sipping tintos—tiny cups of dark coffee—while chatting on newfangled cell phones. At every crosswalk and on street medians, the less fortunate hawk snacks, cigarettes, and telephone calling cards from salvaged baby carriages, stark reminders of the gaping disparities in this poor nation.

Halfway up a glassy office building is an ultramodern floor containing Colombia's stock exchange, the Bolsa de Valores. It's high-tech, but no one would confuse it with the NASDAQ. Just 12 people sit around a circular table staring at their flat-panel displays in a space no bigger than a conference room at a Best Western hotel. It's so quiet you might think you showed up to take the GMAT. I jokingly ask if we're at the right place. Our photographer wonders aloud if he should bother unpacking his equipment.

"This is it," says Jaime Sarmiento, the exchange's 34-year-old communications director, sensing the anticlimax of the moment. He points up at the ticker, a circular LCD sign. "Does anyone know how to turn this thing on?" The specialists on the floor arrange a photo op, choosing a mustachioed elder to sit on the elevated chair in the center of the ring and motion as if he is directing order flow. Truth be told, everyone is just waiting for 1 p.m., when the market closes and the power lunch scene takes hold. When I ask if the early close is a vestige of the Spanish siesta, I'm curtly told that it's purely a result of how little business there is to transact. Sarmiento takes us downstairs to tour the café, a swank lounge that was conceived as a high-energy, high-buzz meeting place for stock junkies. On this day, two or three guys sit around reading the paper, blissfully unaware of the handful of digits flickering on the wall-mounted display above.

Such sleepiness belies the market's breathtaking volatility. This is the central paradox of extreme emerging markets: With so few buyers and sellers, small upticks can quickly turn into major surges, while the faintest of downticks can lead to painful routs. After posting a 128% gain for 2005, second best in the world, the Bolsa nosedived 45% in two months during last year's late-spring emerging-markets swoon, the second-worst showing on the globe. It has since jumped 75%; on June 15, 2006, alone, the index gained 16%. It's down 5% in 2007.

All the choppiness merely confirms the suspicions of most of the locals, who eschew stocks for government bonds, even though they yield just 6% now, a third of what they did eight years ago. "The general public just isn't all that accustomed to stocks," says Rodrigo Jaramillo, CEO of Interbolsa, the country's largest brokerage, and former chairman of the stock exchange. He notes that fewer than 70,000 Colombians bought local shares in 2006.

Even people who invest for a living are reluctant to buy Colombian stocks with their own money. "I like to invest in young cows," admits a 26-year-old private investment adviser in a British-spread collar and Hermès tie between bites of an empanada in a breakfast joint near the exchange. His eyes light up as he explains that his uncle has given him dibs on investing in heifers, an inside opportunity that has lately scored him 20% to 30% annual returns. Why dabble in risky stocks, he asks, when he can collect steady returns on the family ranch? "I sponsor the cows until—how do you say?—graduation," he says, grinning diabolically, of the day when they're auctioned off and he reaps his windfall.

But in fits and starts local investors are coming around. I'm struck by how many twenty- and thirtysomethings in Bogotá are at the leading edge of business and civic life: chief executives, money managers, restaurateurs, even cabinet ministers. Young and educated, Colombia's new elite could ply their trade anywhere in the hemisphere. A decade ago there would have been no question that they would end up abroad. Just four years ago, Bogotá's Club El Nogal, a hot night spot, was car-bombed by a leftist rebel group, resulting in 36 deaths. But El Nogal has come back stronger than ever. Even with all the bomb-sniffing dogs, the place is nearly impossible to get into on a weeknight. Bogotáns consider it a metaphor of their resilience.

I meet some young professionals for dinner at Balzac, a restaurant modeled after Manhattan's trendy Balthazar. José María de Valenzuela, a recently minted MBA at INSEAD in France, lights a cigarette and reflects on his accomplishments. "There was just a small possibility I'd end up back here," he says. All of 32, Valenzuela, who did his undergraduate work at Brown University a decade ago, used to specialize in what you might call distressed investing. "People were afraid to leave the city," he recalls of the siege mentality of seven or eight years back, when terrified families sought escapism at his miniature golf course in Bogotá. "You could buy real estate just for the cost of the taxes." Which is what Valenzuela did, before selling into a property boom and plowing his winnings into what he and a former finance professor correctly thought would be the start of a roaring bull market for stocks. Last summer, Valenzuela rolled those profits into a partnership with HenCorp Futures, a U.S.-based trading firm, to offer currency strategies to foreign investors—a critical building block to outside participation in the Colombian market. The only way to buy Bolsa-listed stocks directly is in pesos, and there are no pure-play Colombian mutual funds available to foreigners.

The next afternoon, on Valenzuela's recommendation, I head to Harry's Bar, in a tony Bogotá neighborhood that resembles San Francisco's Russian Hill. Amid the din of clinking wine glasses, blond-streaked women and sharply dressed men pick at plates of seared tuna and Argentinian steak. In the evenings the place is often overrun by actors, soccer stars, and diplomats. The owner, spotting my reporter's notebook, stops by. "Please tell America we're not a bunch of drug dealers shooting at each other from trees," he says.

COFFEE BUZZ
In walks my lunch guest, Felipe Gaviria, the boyish money manager whose name is on the lips of everyone in the smart-money set. In 1997, at 23, Gaviria was promoted to head of currency trading at a small bank in Cali. Two years later he left for business school in Barcelona. He returned to Colombia when Uribe was elected in 2002, sensing the moment was right to buy Colombian property and bet that the peso would strengthen against the dollar. Now he oversees $3 billion in pension assets for Spain's Grupo Santander. It's common knowledge that Gaviria is being wooed by bulge-bracket investment banks and hedge funds. "I receive everybody," he says coyly.

With more money pouring in as the economy grows, Gaviria says he's impatient for more local investment options. Fortunately for him, some big ones are just around the corner. In an audacious move, Procafecol, of the fast-growing Juan Valdez coffee shop fame, is floating its shares on the Bolsa. The unlikely beneficiaries: thousands of rural caficultores, or coffee growers, who make up Colombia's national coffee alliance. They've recently been swarmed by an army of financial advisers dispatched to the countryside. "Your preferred shares give you dividend priority over ordinary investors," reads the glossy offering letter, as if to poke fun at the more cosmopolitan Class B shareholders.

The real game changer could be the $4 billion initial public offering of state oil concern Ecopetrol, one of South America's four largest. In short order, it could become the most widely held stock on the exchange. And with U.S. bankers circling, a New York Stock Exchange (NYX ) listing could be in the offing. The only other Colombian stock listed in the U.S. is Medellín-based Bancolombia (CIB ), whose shares have jumped twentyfold in the past five years.

Indeed, Wall Street is doing its best to ride the Colombia wave. In 2005, SABMiller (SAB.L ) PLC took over Colombia's biggest brewery, Bavaria, for a record $7.8 billion, with Merrill Lynch (MER ), JPMorgan Chase (JPM ), Lehman Brothers (LEH ), Morgan Stanley (MS ), and Citigroup (C ) advising on the acquisition. Last year ABN Amro advised on the sale of a controlling $657 million stake in a key oil refinery to Switzerland's Glencore International. "You're having more and more investment banks going into Colombia," says Eric Newman, a Bogotá native who was recently poached from Lehman Brothers by Morgan Stanley to cover the country for its Miami-based Latin American private banking arm. He shuttles to Colombia 20 times a year.

Not only are Colombia's top companies doing better at home, they're also branching out to the rest of Latin America and beyond. A company called Chocolates, essentially Colombia's Kraft Foods (KFT ), now ships to Los Angeles and the Southwest, while Argos, the country's foremost cement producer, has been buying operations in Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas. Bancolombia recently acquired El Salvador's largest bank.

One sign of the rising fortunes in Colombia is the sudden misfortune of the self-proclaimed Bulletproof Tailor. Miguel Caballero makes suits and other apparel tough enough to withstand gunshots. His garment factory, located in a seedy neighborhood of Bogotá, features a picture gallery of famous customers, including action film star Steven Seagal and President Uribe, as well as glossies of Caballero discharging his handgun into the bulletproofed torsos of employees. Ten years ago, he says, his company sold 70% of its wares in Colombia. Now, thanks to the ebbing violence, that figure is just 20%. Caballero is dispatching salesmen to Russia, Venezuela, even Iraq. "The idea is to save the business," he says. "You can say we're globalizing."

The growing confidence in Colombia brings a new set of challenges. The streets are safer, and citizens are road tripping again. Export-import activity is steadily growing. Tourism has nearly tripled in five years, and beach-lined, historic Cartagena is among South America's most expensive real estate markets. But with all of that happening, Colombia's highways, roads, ports, and other industrial backbones are becoming increasingly overburdened. "We're really behind on infrastructure," says Juliana Ocampo, a recent MBA from Massachusetts Institute of Technology who returned to Bogotá to work for Mexican cement giant Cemex. "If you ask everyone here, that's where the investment needs to flow next." Says Gaviria, the young money manager: "Our north port is terrible. If we had a world-class port project, I would invest right then and there." Bear Stearns warned in a recent report that growth could halt if tens of billions worth of infrastructure isn't soon built, noting that Colombian pension funds are clamoring to invest. If the buildout stalls, it will undermine Uribe's reforms.

STOCK OPTION
I take up the issue with Vice-President Francisco Santos. Schooled in Texas and Kansas and formerly the editor of Colombia's largest daily newspaper, Santos was once kidnapped by Pablo Escobar's men and surely draws satisfaction from the fact that the cartel's late-'80s vehicles sit rusting in a pound adjacent to his office. "The roads are getting so clogged," he concedes. "But who will pay for all the infrastructure?"

Financiers argue that the money is there for the taking, if only the government would change its thinking. Historically, Bogotá has issued bonds to fund such projects, but investors were hungrier for them when they yielded 20%. It also takes time to rouse all the layers of bureaucracy in the way. Bankers want the government to sell equity in the projects instead, following the privatization trend sweeping Europe and the U.S. "We can build roads without a penny of government money," insists Pedro Nel Ospina, the head of Corficolombiana, one of the country's top investment and merchant banks. "Let us do it already. Give us equity."

The government isn't ready to make that leap just yet. But the fact that a vigorous debate about how best to become an ownership society is heating up—complete with business page editorials and regional free-trade zones—shows how far this rugged stretch of the Andes Mountains has come.

Medellín, in particular, is undergoing one of the most extraordinary urban makeovers in modern times. "Our trucks, drivers, and distributors were attacked at least once a day," recalls Carlos Enrique Piedrahita, president of Chocolates, of the scene seven years ago. "Now it just doesn't happen."

The 45-minute ride to town from Medellín's main airport winds through lush forests and fragrant flower farms. The city is shaped like a bowl, with commerce and wealth concentrated at the center as poverty stares down from the rim. It all descended into chaos with the decline of Medellín's textile industry in the 1970s and the simultaneous rise of the drug trade. In 1991, two years before Escobar met his end in a rooftop gunfight with police, he was recruiting cocaine-addicted teens in the hillside slums, paying them $750 for every police officer they murdered. Gang shootouts continued into emergency rooms. "One can have the impression that Medellín is about to drown in its own blood," The New Yorker magazine's Alma Guillermoprieto wrote in 1991, when the city's homicide rate was 381 per 100,000, the highest in the world.

But exploding revenue from Medellín's resurgent corporate tax base is funding a rapid metamorphosis. Now those very same shanties are connected to the city center by a sky-lift gondola of the sort you might find at EPCOT Center. New libraries and schools court students from other parts of Colombia. "Imagination Park" stands where murdered bodies were once dumped. The business assistance office in the heart of the slum is helping tiny food stores and Internet cafés flourish where there used to be only crumbling cinder block and exposed sewer pipes. Today, Medellín's murder rate is 28 per 100,000, lower than those of Baltimore and Washington, D.C.

Statistics alone don't capture the sense of rebirth here. Atop the slum, in the shadow of ascending gondolas and a new computer lab, the city's poorest children think they're kings of the hill. They chase after me, tugging at my jacket, 30 or 40 at once. It's not my money that they want, it's pictures of themselves and their friends. As I sit down to catch my breath, a runty seven-year-old boy with a precocious understanding of digital photography suddenly climbs out from under the bench. "I don't have e-mail yet," he says. "So print it for me for when you come back, O.K.?"

Corrections and Clarifications
"Extreme Investing: Inside Colombia" (Cover Story, May 28) suggested that Colombia does not qualify for the Standard & Poor's/IFCG Frontier Index of 22 nations. In fact, Colombia's market value and liquidity place it in a more developed index tier of the broader S&P/IFCG Index family.

With Cristina Lindblad in New York

Future of Making Map [SR-1154]

2009-06-10T08:59:00.000-07:00

Future of Making Map [SR-1154]
Download: Future of Making Map [SR-1154]

Future of Making Map [SR-1154]
Two future forces, one mostly social, one mostly technological, are intersecting to transform how goods, services, and experiences—the “stuff” of our world—will be designed, manufactured, and distributed over the next decade. An emerging do-it-yourself culture of “makers” is boldly voiding warranties to tweak, hack, and customize the products they buy. And what they can’t purchase, they build from scratch. Meanwhile, flexible manufacturing technologies on the horizon will change fabrication from massive and centralized to lightweight and ad hoc. These trends sit atop a platform of grassroots economics—new market structures developing online that embody a shift from stores and sales to communities and connections.

The Economist: Mapping a better world

2009-06-10T08:52:00.000-07:00

The Economist: Mapping a better world

June 8th, 2009 by lorenzo fernandez
This morning flipping trough the last issue of the Economist, I ran into an interesting article titled “Mapping a Better World“. Since we have been working together with the LA based NGO Iridescent Learning in the “Urban Schools Needs Project”, I’ve became quiet familiar with the shape of Los Angeles. When, flipping the last page before heading to the office, I bumped in a full color LA Map showing relations between parks diffusion and childhood obesity; I felt that somehow they were talking also about us.
The article goes trough different successful examples of mapping tools that have been used to visualize correlation between different data and places on a map.

The ending is quite evocative:
” Maps don’t change the world - but people who use maps do.”

We couldn’t agree more

Colombia: Why Visit Colombia

2009-06-08T17:06:00.000-07:00

There are many undiscovered reasons why foreigners should visit Colombia .

The weather averages about 65 to 85 degrees Fahrenheit year round in Cali. There is rarely a need for air-conditioning or heat. Medellin is similar, but a little cooler. Bogotá is cool to cold at night; Not what you would expect close to the equator.
Colombia is not as dangerous as it was a few years ago, or as bad as you view on TV.
There are many beautiful beaches; many of the most popular on the mainland are located near Cartagena and Santa Marta, and on the offshore Island of San Andreas.
Colombia is known for its beautiful women.
Colombia’s cost of living is less than most countries.
There are many reasons to visit Colombia. If you visit once, you will want to come back.

Tips:
Acquire a map of the city. Ask for information regarding the safe places to visit together with city information. Exchange enough money into Colombian pesos. ( Note: You will receive a more favorable exchange rate at ATM machines, than when exchanging cash!)

Information, Registration, and Current Travel Alerts! (For US Citizens)
United States Embassy Bogotá web site

If you are considering purchasing property in Colombia.
In the past you were required to have a Colombian Cedula (Colombia ID Card). in order to purchase real estate in Colombia, no more!. You can purchace real estate in Colombia and get title in your name with your passport as long as you have a valid visa. If you purchase real estate/s valued at 100,000 US dollars you will be qualify to get a Cedula as a foriegn investor as long as you register your investment with the Banco de La Republica when you wire the money in. For information about applying for a Colombian Visa, go to the web site of the Colombia Embassy in Washington D.C. ...or the web sites of the Miami or Houston Consulates. Try the Miami and Houston web sites first! When purchasing a property contact the Banco de la Republica first to know how to registed your investment before you wire the money

E-book readers

2009-05-09T05:17:00.000-07:00

Amazon late to e-book game
By Paul Taylor in New York

Published: May 7 2009 18:39 | Last updated: May 7 2009 18:39

Based on the buzz around Amazon’s latest Kindle wireless electronic book reader – the big screen Kindle DX, which will cost $489 – it would be easy to think that the US online book and electronics retailer invented the e-book reader category.

Amazon was rather late to the game. E-book readers began appearing at the end of the 1990s.

EDITOR’S CHOICE
Murdoch challenges Amazon’s Kindle model - May-06Video: Paul Taylor on Amazon’s Kindle DX - Apr-29Tech blog - Nov-02John Gapper: The Kindle DX is a technological curate’s egg - May-06Paul Taylor: Kindle DX – bigger, but mostly better - May-06Boston Globe deal averts shutdown - May-06The big technology breakthrough came with development of ‘electronic ink’ and Electrophoretic Display technology or electronic paper displays (EPD) based on work originally done at MIT’s Media Labs and continued at companies like US-based E-Ink Corporation and Netherlands-based Royal Philips Electronics.

Sony’s LIBrie, launched in Japan in 2004, was the first of the second generation e-readers to use the new EPD – or electronic paper display – technology and was followed by the iLiad developed by iRex Technologies, a spin-off from Philips.

Sony’s latest Reader Digital Books, which retail from $299, have proved popular in both Europe and the US, although they lack the cellar modem built into Kindle machines – a key advantage of the Amazon device. The Kindle is currently only available in the US.

Similarly, iRex’s latest iLiad devices including the Digital Reader 1000 series, the first e-reader to offer a 10.2-inch display designed to be more suitable for reading newspapers than smaller screens, continue to be popular. At least eight companies currently offer e-readers.

Other companies, including Britain’s Plastic Logic, are working on third generation readers likely to be built around flexible and durable plastic displays rather than traditional glass.

Plastic Logic, which was spun out from Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratory, and has raised more than $200m in venture funding to date, is expected to launch its first commercial e-reader early next year.

As the launch of the Kindle DX highlights, the use of larger format e-readers for viewing newspapers, magazines and more graphically complex books like textbooks, could fuel the next wave of e-reader adoption and help determine whether e-readers are here to stay.

In the US, three newspapers – the New York Times, Boston Globe and Washington Post- will offer subsidised Kindle DXs to subscribers outside their traditional newspaper distribution areas while other newspapers, including Gannett’s USA Today and the Financial Times, have signed deals with Plastic Logic.

Other newspaper publishers including the Hearst, which publishes the San Francisco Chronicle and Houston Chronicle, are backing a venture with FirstPaper that is believed to be working on a rival to the Kindle DX targeting newspaper and magazine readers.

US newspapers set to launch Kindle tie-up
By Kenneth Li in New York

Published: May 7 2009 03:00 | Last updated: May 7 2009 03:00

Three leading US newspapers are teaming up with Amazon.com to experiment with a new way of selling their content, modelled on the bundle of hardware and services offered by the mobile phone industry.

The New York Times, the Boston Globe and the Washington Post said on Wednesday that starting this summer they will begin limited tests offering some readers discounts on the new larger version of Amazon's Kindle electronic book reader in exchange for longer subscription terms.

EDITOR’S CHOICE
Murdoch challenges Amazon’s Kindle model - May-06Video: Paul Taylor on Amazon’s Kindle DX - Apr-29Tech blog - Nov-02John Gapper: The Kindle DX is a technological curate’s egg - May-06Paul Taylor: Kindle DX – bigger, but mostly better - May-06Boston Globe deal averts shutdown - May-06The tests would be initially offered only in regions where home delivery of the papers is not available, but the trial represents a big bet that tying content to digital devices can create a new revenue stream for publishers at a time when advertisers are abandoning print and circulation is declining.

"We've known for more than a decade an e-reader product would offer the same satisfying product as ... reading a newspaper," said Arthur Sulzberger, Jr, chairman and publisher of the New York Times. "That dream continues to get closer to realisation."

News Corp has also convened a team of top executives to examine the possibility of investing in an electronic reader for its newspapers, according to a person familiar with the plan.

Pricing for the newspaper trials was not disclosed, but the device is expected to be partially subsidised by publishers in return for the longer subscription terms.

The new venture was announced as Amazon unveiled the new Kindle DX, a larger version of the popular e-book reader with a screen that is two-and-a-half times the size of the original. The Kindle DX will cost $489 and allow readers to rotate the device to read in landscape mode.

Three leading education textbook publishers representing 60 per cent of the education book market have also agreed to offer some of their books for sale on the Kindle.

The publishers are Pearson, owner of the Financial Times, Cengage Learning and Wiley.

In addition, five universities, including Princeton and Arizona State, have agreed to launch trials to test the feasibility of the Kindle DX replacing the load of textbooks that typically weighs down college students as they walk around campus.

Book publishers have made parts of their catalogue available to Amazon's Kindle service and have broadly sought to court digital sales of books, but revenue from such sales are not expected to be meaningful for the next five to 10 years, publishers have said. So far about 275,000 book titles are available.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

The Kindle DX is a technological curate’s egg
May 6, 2009 4:45pm
Another day, another Kindle press conference. Here I am again at a New York launch event for a new Amazon device, only three months after the arrival of the Kindle 2.

This time, Jeff Bezos of Amazon has just enthused about the Kindle DX, which sounds like a small car but is in fact a large screen version of the Kindle electronic paper reading device.

I am not sure whether it is really an improvement.

One good thing is that it has a 9.7 inch display, which makes it easier to read complex documents with photos and graphics embedded - particularly PDFs. PDFs (but not Word documents) can be loaded on directly through a port, rather than having to be e-mailed through Amazon.

That makes it better suited for textbooks and Mr Bezos announced a partnership with three big educational publishers, including Pearson, which owns the Financial Times. The device is going to be tested out by a group of US universities, including Princeton, this autumn.

In theory, it also makes it better for displaying newspapers and magazines. Arthur Sulzberger, chairman of the New York Times Company, was on hand to announce a partnership with Amazon.

But all of this comes at a cost, both financially and physically.

The device is going to retail at $489 when it arrives this summer, which strikes me as pretty expensive for the average college student, even if it would save lugging around textbooks.

It is also heavier than the smaller Kindle 2, at 19 ounces in weight compared with 10 ounces. That takes a toll if you are holding it for prolonged periods.

One market I could see it appealing to is investors and analysts, as a medium for reading complex financial reports. It was notable that the first slide Mr Bezos displayed on stage was of a Merrill Lynch research report on technology.

As to newspaper readers adopting it in droves, I am less sure. Newspaper owners are keen on large-screen electronic paper devices because they more closely mimic the physical version of the paper. But I wonder whether the Kindle DX will deliver what they want.

May 6, 2009 4:45pm in Media, Retail, Technology | 5 comments

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1. The point of the original Punch cartoon of the curate and his egg was that the egg was completely rotten, and in saying that "parts of it are excellent", the curate was merely being deferentially polite to his host, the bishop. So do you mean that the Kindle X is completely rotten, or that that there are some features which are ok?
Posted by: Flying Tiger | May 6 05:29pm | Report this comment
2. I'm impressed by the new Kindle but I'm quite happy with the Kindle 2. I find that reading magazines and books on the Kindle 2 is great, but not newspapers. I still prefer reading the FT through a Web browser (I don't like anything in print). I like the portability of the Kindle 2. Of course, I anticipate even greater developments from the Kindle and admire Amazon for its efforts.
Posted by: John Barker | May 6 05:45pm | Report this comment
3. It's a lot of money, but that is the standard amount I would spend for 'textbooks' in college. I say textbooks because rarely after my first year did I use a giant textbook as we know them. It's true that it's a hefty price tag, but if you use it for a couple of years and you save a lot of books and lugging them around (always a nuisance), it could be worthwhile. I'm more interested to know about it's highlighting and note-taking capabilities. That is key for college, if you ask me.
Posted by: commentor | May 6 06:27pm | Report this comment
4. Flexible OLEDs will be used as wrist band data displays by the military. If costs come down enough for a page size display, they could be carried around as easily as a newspaper and be as easy on the eyes. Apple/LG, Samsung, and Sony are rumored have something like this in development. Perhaps we can roll them up like parchment scrolls.
Posted by: Gary Struthers | May 6 07:08pm | Report this comment
5. what is the meaning of the 'O' in OLEDs ?
Posted by: Battersea Boy | May 7 03:43pm | Report this comment

Biggest Ever List of Graphic Design Blogs?

2009-05-09T04:39:00.001-07:00

The Biggest Ever List of Graphic Design Blogs?

May 5th, 2009 | Great Design Comments Feed So we sat down this morning and decided that we would put together a list of all the graphic design blogs that we follow as a team. We said that we would spend a single working day on it, no more, no less.

By the end of the day we have a list of over 160 blogs covering design, freelancing and Photoshop/Illustrator.

See the full list after the jump

Graphic Design
1stwebdesigner Blog by Dainis Graveris in Latvia covering all things design and freelance.

Abduzeedo Created by Fabio Sasso in Brazil and now one of the most popular design blogs. Includes tutorials, wallpapers, interviews and news. Strong participation from readers.

Andy Sowards Eponymous blog covers cool links from around the world of web design, development and technology.

Anidan Design Dani McDaniel’s blog covering design and development for the web and Wordpress. Dani also set up JustTweetIt with Adelle Charles at Fuel.

Arbenting From Angie Bowen and Robert Bowen, Arbenting covers design tips, tutorials, news and inspiration.

BittBox Great blog from Jay Hilgert focusing on freebies for web designers and developers.

BoagWorld Popular podcast on web design, development and management.

Booooooom Blog from Jeff Hamada in Vancouver. Covers a wide range of creative arts.

Brian Yerkes One of the true “rock star” designers out there (our words not his). Great work and deep insights into the world of design and marketing.

Cats Who Code Is a blog run by Jean-Baptiste Jung, a blogger/web developper/web designer from Belgium. Cats Who Code covers web development, web design, blogging tips and WordPress. Jean-Baptiste also runs WpRecipes.

Colorburned Great blog from Grant Friedman covering many aspects of graphic and web design.

Computer Arts Magazine One-stop shop for professional advice on creating digital art and illustrations.

Coudal Partners The blog from the superstar design outfit based in Chicacgo. Always great features and strong opinions.

Craig Baldwin Cool blog from a student at the Winchester School of Art in England. Gathers a great list of the “best of” from across teh web.

CrazyLeaf Big design blog covering graphic design, web design, Flash, Photoshop, vector graphics, design inspiration, programming, print design, design resources and photography.

Creative Curio Blog from Lauren Marie Krause with some really solid guides to design principles. One of the hidden gems in this list.

CreativeTechs Blog from the folks at Creative Techs who run an awesome set of courses for designers.

CreatticaDaily From teh team at Envato, Creattica provides a broad range of links to articles of interest for designers and creatives.

CSSstyle Edited submission site containing galleries of high quality CSS sites.

CSS Tricks Chris Coyier’s excellent community site covering website design, development, interviews with well known designers and developers and more.

Dacheboard Blog from David Pache, a Swiss designer running a design studio called Dache.

Darkmotion Blog from Pasquale D’Silva in Australia covering illustration and animation. Good humour throughout.

David Airey A well regarded designer and incisive commentator on the design world we live in. Always original. Also moderates LogoDesignLove.

DesignBump Community powered design news. Dig it?

DesignCreme Showcase of good design.

Design Cubicle Brian Hoff’s blog covering a range of great graphic design subjects and personal insights.

Designer Daily A blog for designers and web designers by Mirko Humbert, a Swiss graphic designer who shares his thoughts on design, ressources and tips.

DesignerSide Collation of links to the best graphic design posts.

Designers Who Blog A design blog by Catherine Wentworth for designers, photographers, writers, marketeers, etc., who blog. Lots of reader contributions.

DesignFeedr Portfolios, inspiration, features, news. A broad range of design resources.

DesignFlavr Design inspiration with daily updates of cool design from across the web. UGC, rating and resources. Run by Andrew Greig.

DesignM.ag A community-based website run by Steven Snell for web designers and developers. The site includes a popular blog, a user-submitted news section, a design gallery, and a design job board. Also runs Vandelay Design.

Design Meltdown Really well structured blog on trends in design by Patrick McNeil. Organised in a very innovative way by “chapters” making it a great resource.

Design O’Blog Niki Brown’s views on design, inspiration and tips.

Design Observer Pithy and witty observations on design and the people who do it.

Design Reviver Tutorials, free downloads, sources of inspiration, and articles covering a wide range of web design related topics

Design Shard A valuable resource for designers ranging from design tips, inspiration and free resources such as photoshop brushes or textures to be downloaded.

Desizn Tech Mostly a resource site with themes, wallpaper, icons and freebies.

Dezignus.com Blog with useful freebies such as vectors, PSD brushes and shapes, textures and backgrounds, icons etc.

The Dieline Design blog dedicated to the packaging design industry. Fantastic images and graphics of great packaging design.

Digital Arts Magazine The online version of Digital Arts Magazine. Covers a gamut of subjects including graphic design, 3D, animation, video, effects, web and interactive design, in print and online

DivineCSS CSS showcase. Best described in their own words, “We know the difference between s**t and Shinola and we’re pretty good at sniffing out a website worthy of the Divine CSS showcase gallery”.

Doodlage Unique and funny site dedicated to the art of the doodle. In their own words, “On a quest to elevate doodling to the status of an art form that it deserves!”

Doug Cloud Blog from Doug with tutorials and advice. Doesn’t post frequently, but very useful when he does.

Drawn A collaborative weblog for illustrators, artists, cartoonists, and anyone who likes to draw.

Dwell The online version of Dwell Magazine. Architecture and interior design.

Dzine Yugendran’s blog on design tutorials, inspiration, freebies and more.

Elite By Design Brian Lovin’s blog on web design and Photoshop inspiration.

Elliot Jay Stocks A well known public speaker and personality in the design world. Oh, and cool design work too!

From The Couch Hosted by brothers Marc and David Perel, this online web TV show covers everything web orientated - design, development and more.

Fudge Graphics Blog from Franz Jeitz covering graphic design, sources of inspiration and freebies.

Fuel Your Creativity Awesome resource from the folks at the Fuel Brand Network. Great articles and links to inspirational design resources.

Giackop Blog from Giacomo Coppola, a web and graphic designer from Italy.

GoMediaZine Is a site dedicated to art and graphic design. Includes tutorials, freebies and advice. For example, this post on Thoughts on Design Integrity. Getting what you want from your client.

Graphic Design Blog High quality blog with features, interviews and design inspiration. Loved this article.

The Graphic Mac James Dempsey’s blog containing advice on all things Mac, especially for new Mac users and designers.

HelpDeveloper Simon North’s blog on web design techniques, inspiration and web design business. Simon also runs ReviewMyDesign.net.

Hongkiat A blog from Hongkiat Lim covering Photoshop, web design, Wordpress and much more. Excellent resource.

How Magazine Online magazinefrom the folks at the How group.

I’m Just Creative Logo and brand identity blog from Graham Smith covering a wide range of design topics with an emphasis on logo design and identity. Includes his expanding portfolio.

I am Khayyam Completely original blog from Khayyam Wakil. Check out It took me 25 minutes to design my ultimate business card.

Inspiredology Great blog from Chad Mueller covering a huge range of things web and design related

IxDA The website and forum of the Interaction Design Association, an amazingly active member organisation for IX designers.

Janko At Warp Speed Janko Jovanovic is a solution architect, developer, designer and artist. His blog includes articles, resources and reviews. Check out his new ebook.

Joel on Software The blog from the fabulous Joel Spolsky, founder of Fog Creek Software and immensely respected entrepreneur - may we say “guru”?

Just Creative Design Blog from Jacob Cass, a designer & blogger with a fast-growing following and great design insight. Particularly strong on things logo-related.

Kathryn Corrick Thought provoking blog from Kathryn Corrick, a digital media consultant in the UK.

Larissa Meek Blog from Larissa Meek, creative director at AgencyNet and regular speaker on the conference circuit.

LifeDev Describes itself as “Empowering Creative People”. LiveDev is a genuinely original blog providing advice and ideas about creativity, art and design, for example, Four Reasons Why Fear is a Creative’s Friend.

Line25 Another blog from Chris Spooner of Spoongraphics. Line25 focuses more on web design.

Lines and Colors A blog from Charley Parker about drawing, sketching, painting, comics, cartoons, webcomics, illustration, digital art, concept art, and much more. Charley created the fantastic Argon Zark web comic.

Loon Design Kailoon is from Malaysia and is one of the reviewers for ThemeForest. His blog covers drawing and design, especially Illustrator and Photoshop.

Marketing Fresh Peel Chris Wilson’s blog on marketing, branding and innovation.

MarketingSherpa One of the strongest marketing blogs out there. Not always directly design-related, but impacts design thinking none the less.

MarcoFolio Blog from Marco Kuiper in The Netherlands covering links, cool designs and the great monthly imagedump.

Method to the Mayhem Great blog about marketing, design, self-promotion and business from Calvin Lee at Mayhem Studios, who is also one of the most prolific designers on Twitter.

My Ink Blog Andrew Houle’s fantastic resource for all graphic and web designers. Also, beautifully designed IOHO.

Naldz Graphics Provides tutorials, tips, resources, inspirations, freebies and other interesting things.

Nerd Business Top of the list for innovative, thought provoking and original posts.

.Net Magazine Online version of the UK’s .Net Magazine.

Nettuts+ From the Envato team and aimed at web developers and designers. Offers tutorials and articles on technologies, skills and techniques to improve how we design and build websites.

Noupe For designers and web-developers, Noupe provides news, articles and tutorials on all subjects of design, ranging from; CSS, Ajax, Javascript, web design, graphics, typography, advertising and more.

Observin Cool blog covering design related topics.

Outlaw Design Blog Fresh and inspiring design blog by Danny Outlaw. Great emphasis on passive income, which is an objective of many freelancers.

PointBrake Blog from Ann Edwards, a web designer and developer from the Midwest. Covers topics from web development to freelancing.

Positive Space Blog A great blog from Anthony Zinni with topics that range from the typical inspirational roundup to functional articles based around running a successful agency and working as a professional graphic designer.

Pro Blog Design A more technically focused blog covering many aspects of blog design, creation and development.

Reaction High quality blog from the folks at Etre.

Redswish Great blog from Nathan Beck, a designer working in Manchester, England.

Scene 360 Illusion The illusion project highlights artwork that is “unique”—amazing for its skills, level of creativity and vision.

sCommerce sCommerce is a self-hosted blog site for news and stories on Social Commerce and Social Sourcing.

Sharebrain Great site for web designers from Thomas in Germany. Covers front end web development as much as design.

SiteInspire Blog by Daniel Howells showcasing innovative and high quality website design. Well edited.

Sitepoint One of the biggest and broadest design resources on the web. One of the top 3 most popular ebusiness websites in the world.

Six Revisions Provides great resources for people who design AND code. Founded by Jacob Gube who also writes for Smashing Magazine.

Smashing Apps Describes itself as “Free and useful online resources for designers and developers”.

Smashing Magazine One of the biggest graphic and web design blogs out there. Awesomely original articles covering a huge range of subjects. Known for really in-depth and original pieces.

Snook.ca Blog of Jonathan Snook, well known designer, coder and man-about-web. More technically focused than some blogs on this list.

SpeckyBoy Mostly “top” lists, and very well put together/edited. How lists like this should be done.

SpoonFedDesign Blog from Matt with some genuinely original tutorials and design inspiratons.

Spoon Graphics The blog of Chris Spooner, a well respected designer and blogger, covering a range of design subjects, with an emphasis on vector work and graphic design. See also Line25.

Styl.eTi.me Blog from Roger Byrne, originally from England, now in Egypt. Posts his own tutorials, “best of” lists, etc.

SwissMiss A “must read” blog from Tina Roth Eisenberg, covering an eclectic mix of “design” that is quirky, cool, or simply inspiring. How she finds time to blog and run her design business beats me. Great resource.

That Indie Dude Alex Linebrink’s blog - really forthright views on how design and design blogging is becoming “me too”. Having looked at over 400 design blogs we truly buy into that!

The Design Superhero Blog from Aravind Ajith in Bangalore, the design superhero is a design blog which handles posts on design, CSS, usability, inspiration and tutorials. Also gives away a lot of design freebies.

The Everyday Web Expert Is a blog from The Everyday Web Expert, a full service web design company run by Kyle Reddoch.

ThinkDesign Blog by Nick Pagano of ThinkFour with design resources, freebies and inspiration.

Think Vitamin Great design resource from the folks at Carsonified.

Tianodesign Thought provoking blog from Stephen Tiano that includes design issues and a lot more. Very original thinking.

Tony Naccarato Cool blog with great viewpoints from designer Tony who runs 325studio.

Tracey Grady Design Great blog from Tracey who is based in Hobart, Tasmania (Australia).

Turbomilk Great blog from an icon design team in Samara, Russia. If you are into icon design, this is a must-read blog.

Typographica Awesome resource for typefaces, fonts and typographic design.

Unbeige Mediabistro’s blog about design, “Where designers read design”.

Under Consideration One we missed initially. Oops! Definitely worth including.

UsabilityPost Blog from Dmitry Fadeyev who also writes for Smashing Magazine. Covers tips and insights into good design practice including articles like 8 Characteristics Of Successful User Interfaces.

UXMatters Online magazine about user experience design strategies.

Vandelay Design Blog covering a range of design topics, plus a showcase of design galleries.

Veerle’s Blog Top graphic design blog from Veerle Pieters.

We Are Just Creative UGC blog showcasing, well… anything creative. Run by Graham Smith who also runs I’m just Creative.

WebAppers Blog by Ray Cheung focusing on open source, high quality and free resources for web developers.

Webdesigner Depot A collaboration between leading designers around the world providing a wealth of expertise in all fields of design, such as coding, typography, Photoshop tutorial, etc.

Web Designer Mag Design focused online magazine from the UK.

Web Design Ledger Broad design blog covering design tutorials, resources, inspiration and freebies.

WebDesignerWall Design ideas and tutorials from Nick La of N.Design Studio and who also runs Best Web Gallery.

WebJackaloupe Blog from Glen Stansberry covering a range of web design and development topics such as Taking Back the Homepage: 12 Ways to Design For the Fickle Web User

WebResources Depot Free web resources for web designers and developers.

WebToolkit4Me A blog from Gerasimos based in Thessaloniki, Greece. Lists bookmarks to great resources covering design, frontend development, backend development, SEO and useful apps.

WeFunction The blog from the team at Function, containing interviews, tips, icons and more.

Well Medicated Great blog from Andrew Lindstrom with inspirational links, showcases and freebies.

YouTheDesigner Blog from Gino Orlandi featuring tips, freebies and jobs.

Freelance Life
Blog Perfume Bills itself as a Wordpress related site, but covers a wider range of subjects for designers, writers and bloggers. Always useful.

Escape from Cubicle Nation Blog by Pamela Slim, a coach and writer who helps frustrated employees in corporate jobs break out and start their own business.

Freelance Folder A great collection of articles from an awesome group of writers, including

Freelance Switch This is one of the top blogs for freelancers. It is packed with advice, news and opinion pieces from top freelancers, plus the great Freelance Freedom cartoon series from NC Winters. A great example of the posts is this article on 50 Simple Marketing Ideas All Freelancers Can Use.

Fresh Thinking Ok, this is a product blog by the folks at Freshbooks, but it contains lots of useful information for budding freelancers.

Lifehacker Ever popular blog that features tips, shortcuts, and downloads that help you get things done smarter and more efficiently.

Men With Pens Great blog from the team at Men With Pens focusing on web business for writers, freelancers and online entrepreneurs.

Paul Graham Not really a design blog, but a great inspiration to anyone working as an entrepreneur.

Ronnie Lebow Blog from one of Canada’s leading creative directors. If you are freelancing, this is a MUST.

Photoshop & Illustrator Sites

10Steps.sg Photoshop tutorials, resources and freebies from Johnson Koh in Singapore.

AiBURN Is a site from Sean Hodge who is also a writer for PSDTUTS, Smashing Magazine and GoMediaZine. Centres on vector graphics, but covers a lot more.

BrushKing Brushes and tutorials.What more can we say?

High Resolution Textures Close-up photographs of surfaces such as wood, stone, metal or fabric.

Layers Magazine Magazine for everything Adobe

Lost and Taken Caleb Kimbrough’s fantastic resource of free textures.

Photoshop Creative Provides Photoshop users with lashings of practical advice and inspiration.

PSDFan PSD tutorial site from Tom Ross.

PSDtuts+ From the Envato team and aimed at web developers and designers. Showcases some of the best Photoshop tutorials around.

QBrushes A Photoshop resource site showcasing quality Photoshop brushes from different talented designers.

QVectors Showcase site for free quality vector images from around the net.

RasterVector Wonderful resource for all things Mac and Adobe.

Tutorial9 A group authored site run by David Leggett with tutorials on Photoshop, photography, web design, blogging and more.

TutorialKing A collection of high quality Photoshop tutorials.

Tutzor Photoshop tutorials from Walter.

Vector Diary Vectordiary is a blog on vector illustration. It was created by Tony Soh who is an exclusive vector art contributor to iStockphoto.

Vectips Site by Ryan Putnam (Rype) dedicated to Adobe Illustrator® tips, tricks, and tutorials.

Vector Diary Vectordiary is a blog on vector illustration. It was created by Tony Soh who is an exclusive vector art contributor to iStockphoto.

VectorTuts+ From the Envato team.

Vector Vault Huge collection of vector art and related articles. Includes free downloads, content and tips.

Wake Up Later Blog from Samuel Ryan writing about freelancing and entrepreneurship.

We are not Freelancers Not about freelancers, but about a web design firm in South Africa.Nice approach dubunking the myth that all web designers are freelance.

Web Worker Daily Practical tips and advice for anyone who uses the web for work. Excellent resource for freelance designers.

Advertising Sites
Adrants Round-up of ads and marketing news from around the world, edited by Steve Hall and Angela Natividada.

Ads of the World Community site for people in advertising. Includes a huge archive of ads from around the world, news, a forum and much more.

AdGoodness Advertising showcase created by Frederik Samuel who describes the site as “The best and sometimes the worst around the globe”.

52 comments
Michael Martin says:

Heck of a list there, I wouldn’t be surprised if it really was the biggest ever list of design blogs! Thanks for the mention.

May 5th, 2009 at 8:49 pm

Tracey Grady says:

Thanks so much, I’m very pleased to make the big list! I’m very glad to hear you like my blog.

By coincidence, I read an online review today which said some very positive things about ProofHQ, so I’ll be interested to check it out

May 6th, 2009 at 6:13 am

Rajesh Pancholi says:

Oh Lordy !! What a collection…

May 6th, 2009 at 6:15 am

Marco says:

Holy damn - What a list! I know / have seen many of them, but some are new. I’ll need to update my RSS reader with loads of new feeds .

Also, thanks for including Marcofolio.net - Glad you liked it (incl. the imagedumps!).

Keep up the great work!

May 6th, 2009 at 6:32 am

Garcya says:

Can I “auto-suggest” Web Design Blog, a free vector graphics blog: http://garcya.us/blog/category/free-vector-graphics/ !
Cheers!

May 6th, 2009 at 7:43 am

www.animhut.com-sriganesh says:

great work friend. relly big list. i like it and i will digg it and tweet it.

May 6th, 2009 at 8:23 am

Mariusz says:

Great list! When it comes to design, I could also suggest my own, I’m not writing at a regular basis like those listed, but you can also find some tutorials and inspiration on mine.

May 6th, 2009 at 10:06 am

mayhemstudios says:

Thanks for including me in your mega list of great design blogs.

May 6th, 2009 at 10:20 am

Mike Lewek says:

Great list! Def. will follow a few I’m not already.

May 6th, 2009 at 10:34 am

Jay August says:

All the reasons to just read, and don’t start a new blog Quite an overcrowded market!

May 6th, 2009 at 10:37 am

Conceptguy » Blog Archive » The Biggest Ever List of Design Blogs? : : ProofHQ - Product Blog says:

[…] Original post: The Biggest Ever List of Design Blogs? : : ProofHQ - Product Blog […]

May 6th, 2009 at 10:56 am

kre8iveminds says:

Great list indeed. If it was not a blog list you would have added my website for sure.

May 6th, 2009 at 11:33 am

The Biggest Ever List of Design Blogs? says:

[…] Visit Source. […]

May 6th, 2009 at 11:48 am

olybop says:

nice list !
but you forget my blog i great french blog lol

May 6th, 2009 at 12:06 pm

Edward C. says:

Great List!

Can I ask if Design was here would make it there?

Thanks!

May 6th, 2009 at 12:29 pm

Graham Smith says:

Huge props for a stellar list and of course immense thanks for including me.

I have added this post link to DesignJunkies as well : http://designjunkies.posterous.com/the-biggest-ever-list-of-design-blogs-proofhq

Very awesome of you,
Graham

May 6th, 2009 at 12:42 pm

BeyondRandom says:

Great list! A few I have not been to in a while

May 6th, 2009 at 12:43 pm

The Biggest Ever List of Design Blogs | morguefile says:

[…] has posted the Biggest Ever List of Design Blogs. A list of over 160 blogs covering design, freelancing and […]

May 6th, 2009 at 12:54 pm

mikey says:

man alive… that’s one hell of a list!!!

siteinspire.net is my personal fave… far higher standard than most of the generic, web 2.0, tacky junk that shows up on some of these!

May 6th, 2009 at 2:13 pm

Josh Maxwell says:

Oh my. That’s quite a list. Don’t know if I have time for ‘em all! Haha.

Thanks!

May 6th, 2009 at 2:41 pm

Rodrigo Barba says:

Graphic design you mean.

May 6th, 2009 at 2:44 pm

Valiik from Web Design Ideas Blog says:

Hey what about WebDesignIdeas.org? Also a Web Design Blog. Thanks for the nice list. Going to book mark this for when I need it.

May 6th, 2009 at 2:53 pm

More Design Blogs Than You’ll Ever Need — Aimless Direction says:

[…] has put together the biggest ever list of design blogs that their team follows. After a day of putting together their resources, they ended up with more […]

May 6th, 2009 at 2:56 pm

sreelu says:

Thanks for the list, I am hoping this will help me in finding a freelancer for redoing my blog

May 6th, 2009 at 3:40 pm

redswish - a web design blog » Lots of design blogs says:

[…] This list has been buzzing round the ‘net recently. If you’ve got a few years to spare you might as well check it out, there are some of the best up there (including me hehe!) […]

May 6th, 2009 at 4:31 pm

ProjectCenter says:

Holy Smokers! That’s huge.

May 6th, 2009 at 5:19 pm

2lip says:

what a great list! when I am done digging through the list, I am sure that I will have found some new gems, which I wasn’t aware of yet. and many thanks for including my texture blog! much appreciated

May 6th, 2009 at 5:41 pm

Jonathan says:

Thanks for compiling this list. Clearly, lots else out there. The Dieline is amazing for ideas.

May 6th, 2009 at 6:07 pm

Daniel Groves [HiddenCSS] says:

Thats a list and a half, but you missed one

May 6th, 2009 at 6:53 pm

Niki V. says:

Whoah - how did you leave out Armin Vit’s Under Consideration?

http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew
http://www.underconsideration.com/quipsologies
http://www.underconsideration.com/fpo

May 6th, 2009 at 7:01 pm

Moe Hong says:

Oh come on! Typographica.org, one of the most popular and earliest type & design blogs out there, isn’t even on your list? wth kind of half-assed directory is this?

May 6th, 2009 at 7:03 pm

Moe Hong says:

And yeah, leaving off Under Consideration, possibly the most influential design blog out there, is kind of bizarre. I think your list is more a “desktop publishing” list than a serious design blog list.

May 6th, 2009 at 7:04 pm

Liam McCabe says:

ooo thanks for these

May 6th, 2009 at 8:00 pm

Tom Ross says:

Wow, amazing list guys. Thanks for including PSDFAN.

May 6th, 2009 at 8:31 pm

Jim says:

Thanks for mentioning my site ( thegraphicmac.com ) on your list! Some great resources in this list, a few I’ve never seen before.

May 6th, 2009 at 9:40 pm

James Dempsey :: General :: Made the list! says:

[…] My other site, The Graphic Mac, made ProofHQ’s “largest list of design blogs.” Woo-hoo! Nice to be recognized. You can view the full list here. […]

May 6th, 2009 at 9:46 pm

Ray says:

Great List! I would suggest http://www.photoshoplady.com for the Photoshop section.

May 7th, 2009 at 1:21 am

Craig says:

I would also recommend http://www.designbrawl.com for free vectors and tutorials.

May 7th, 2009 at 2:55 am

Tony Naccarato » Great list of Design Blogs says:

[…] of over 160 blogs covering design, freelancing and Photoshop/Illustrator. Check out there post, The Biggest Ever List of Graphic Design Blogs. Some of the blogs listed include BittBox, BoagWorld, Design Meltdown, Nettuts+, Pro Blog Design, […]

May 7th, 2009 at 5:21 am

Tony Naccarato says:

This is a great list. I now have a lot more sites to start reading and following. Also, thanks for the mention.

May 7th, 2009 at 5:23 am

Ashely Adams says:

I’m overwhelmed. Truly. It’s a list that you don’t get over with in a minute or two. It’s something you bookmark, you cherish and keep returning to time and again. Thanks a ton.

May 7th, 2009 at 6:18 am

Alex | CrazyLeaf Design Blog says:

Thanks for including CrazyLeaf Design in such a great list.

May 7th, 2009 at 8:45 am

Giackop Design / Giacomo Coppola » Blog Archive » Giackop.com featured on “The Biggest Ever List of Graphic Design Blogs” says:

[…] Giackop.com was featured on the ProofHQ Blog under “The Biggest Ever List of Graphic Design Blogs“. […]

May 7th, 2009 at 9:19 am

Fubiz says:

You could add Fubiz - http://www.fubiz.net

May 7th, 2009 at 9:24 am

Brian Yerkes says:

Thanks very much for including my site and the humorous “rock star” description!

May 7th, 2009 at 2:56 pm

Tim says:

Looks like you missed my design blog. 6 Revisions put us in their 30 design blogs to follow! Oops!

Nonetheless, incredibly detailed list, well done.

May 7th, 2009 at 8:37 pm

Patternhead says:

Great resource, thanks for sharing.

How about…

Patternhead for free vector patterns

May 7th, 2009 at 8:39 pm

Daniel Carver says:

3 words: Less is more.

May 7th, 2009 at 8:53 pm

Richard Holt says:

I’m a designer and I have a blog. If you’re interested it’s here: http://www.holster.co.uk/blog

May 7th, 2009 at 11:40 pm

French Blast says:

thanks thanks thanfs!
Lots of new sites to browse Great!

May 8th, 2009 at 3:50 am

syn says:

Wow. I love to browse those sites. Thanks a lot!

May 8th, 2009 at 8:35 am

Nicolewelsh says:

Awesome list… and very inspiring designs too..

May 9th, 2009 at 3:57 am

MBAs vs. Entrepreneurs: Who Has the Right Stuff for Tough Times?

2009-05-09T04:07:00.000-07:00

Bill TaylorWilliam C. Taylor is an agenda-setting writer, speaker, and entrepreneur. His new project, Practically Radical, chronicles the radical shifts transforming business and the practical steps that will determine who wins. His most recent book,Mavericks at Work, has been a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and BusinessWeek bestseller. As cofounder of Fast Company, he launched a magazine that earned a passionate following around the world. He is an adjunct lecturer at Babson College and a former associate editor of Harvard Business Review.

Bill Taylor

MBAs vs. Entrepreneurs: Who Has the Right Stuff for Tough Times?
2:39 PM Monday May 4, 2009

Tags:Entrepreneurship, Financial crisis, Managing uncertainty

The one growth business in this shrinking economy is speculation about where MBAs and other elite students will flock now that Wall Street is a vast wasteland. "What will new map of talent flow look like?" wondered a piece last month in the New York Times. The tentative answer: towards government, the sciences, and teaching, "while fewer shiny young minds are embarking on careers in finance and business consulting."

Just five days after that article, the Times was at it again, chronicling the difficult career choices for business students, including one former Goldman Sachs intern who started her own shoe-importing company, and a Wharton grad contemplating rabbinical studies. (He wound up in real estate.)

Now, I understand the use of students from elite business schools as a proxy for "talent" in the business world. But as the economy experiences the most deep-seated changes in decades, maybe it's time to change our minds about what kinds of people are best-equipped to become business leaders. Is our fascination with the comings and goings of MBAs as obsolete as our lionization of investment bankers and hedge-fund managers? Is it time to look elsewhere for the "best and the brightest" of what business has to offer?

One place to look for answers is the fascinating research of Professor Saras Sarasvathy, who teaches entrepreneurship at the Darden Graduate School of Business at the University of Virginia. It's been a long time since I've encountered academic research as original, relevant, and fascinating as what Professor Sarasvathy has done, in a series of essays, white papers, and a book. Her work revolves around one big question: What makes entrepreneurs "entrepreneurial?" Specifically, is there such as thing as "entrepreneurial thinking" — and does it differ in important ways from, say, how MBAs think about problems and seize opportunities?

The answer, Sarasvathy concludes, is an emphatic yes — and the differences boil down to the "causal" reasoning used by MBAs versus the "effectual" reasoning used by entrepreneurs. Causal reasoning, she explains, "begins with a pre-determined goal and a given set of means, and seeks to identify the optimal — fastest, cheapest, most efficient, etc. — alternative to achieve that goal." This is the world of exhaustive business plans, microscopic ROI calculations, and portfolio diversification.

Effectual reasoning, on the other hand, "does not begin with a specific goal. Instead, it begins with a given set of means and allows goals to emerge contingently over time from the varied imagination and diverse aspirations of the founders and the people they interact with." This is the world of bootstrapping, rapid prototyping, and guerilla marketing.

The more Sarasvathy explains the differences in the two styles of thinking, the more obvious it becomes which style matches the times. Causal reasoning is about how much you expect to gain; effectual reasoning is about how much you can afford to lose. Causal reasoning revolves around competitive analysis and zero-sum logic; effectual reasoning embraces networks and partnerships. Causal reasoning "urges the exploitation of pre-existing knowledge"; effectual reasoning stresses the inevitability of surprises and the leveraging of options.

The difference in mindset, Sarasvathy concludes, boils down to a different take on the future. "Causal reasoning is based on the logic, To the extent that we can predict the future, we can control it," she writes. That's why MBAs and big companies spend so much time on focus groups, market research, and statistical models. "Effectual reasoning, however, is based on the logic, To the extent that we can control the future, we do not need to predict it." How do you control the future? By inventing it yourself — marshalling scarce resources, understanding that surprises are to be expected rather than avoided, reacting to them fast.

Ultimately, she says, entrepreneurs begin with three simple sets of resources: "Who they are" — their values, skills, and tastes; "What they know" — their education, expertise, and experience; and "Whom they know" — their friends, allies, and networks. "Using these means, the entrepreneurs begin to imagine and implement possible effects that can be created with them...Plans are made and unmade and revised and recast through action and interactions with others on a daily basis."

Sounds like a plan to me! So the next time you read an article about what MBAs are doing, don't forget to think about what entrepreneurs are doing as well. They're the ones with the right stuff for tough times.

Whisky Old Parr: Colombia

2009-05-06T19:33:00.000-07:00

Old Parr le apunta al interior del país

Juan Sergio Valcárcel, marketing manager de Diageo, afirma que El Carnaval de Barranquilla, el Festival Vallenato y la Feria de la Montería se llevan el 30% del consumo de Old Parr en el país.

El 70% de los colombianos ha consumido whisky en los últimos doce meses. Cerca del 45% de las botellas que entran al país son de Old Parr, y se ha detectado un crecimiento de un 50% en los últimos cinco años. Esta marca pretende conquistar los mercados del interior.

El whisky que Diageo tiene guardado en Escocia, vale más que toda las reservas de oro de el Banco de Inglaterra. Colombia es el cuarto mercado de whisky, por debajo de Venezuela, México y Brasil. Diageo es el representante en el país de la marca Old Parr, la cual se ha consolidado en la Costa Atlántica y quiere conquistar el mercado del interior. La estrategia se basa en invertir la misma suma que las marcas líderes, en la promoción de un nuevo whisky premium y en poner la bebida en los labios del consumidor.

En el país, Old Parr líder desde hace 10 años en 9 ciudades de la Costa Atlántica, exceptuando Cartagena, definida como un ciudad que tiene mucha población flotante y que varía su consumo de licor, afirma Juan Sergio Valcárcel, marketing manager de Diageo.

Así mismo, afirma que de cada 10 botellas de Whisky Premium (12 años), que se consume en la Costa Atlántica, 8 corresponden a Old Parr. La estrategia de la compañía se basa entonces en reafirmar su presencia en las festividades más importantes de la región para consolidar la marca como las más consumida en toda la costa.

El Carnaval de Barranquilla, el Festival Vallenato y la Feria de la Montería se llevan el 30% del consumo de Old Parr en el país. Diageo calcula que en los cinco días que dura el Festival Vallenato, se vende aproximadamente el 10% del total del consumo en Colombia. “La cultura del vallenato, va de la mano con el consumo de Old Parr”, aseveró. Al parecer El Festival Vallenato y esta marca van de la mano.

Por otro lado, la estrategia de expansión hacia al interior del país aprovechará que el 70% de los colombianos ha consumido whisky durante el último año. La estrategia se fundamenta en tres ideas que se han venido implementando en los pasados cuatro años.

La primera, es la decisión de invertir en la marca un presupuesto igual al de las marcas líderes del país, Buchanan´s y Jhonny Walker Black. El ejecutivo resaltó que las campañas de Old Parr pretenden resaltar los atributos más relevantes de ese licor. “La marca está definida como relajada, tranquila. No es pretenciosa. Nació en un perfil bastante auténtico. Old Parr se caracteriza por su sabor, pureza, aroma y calidad de la malta”, completa Juan Sergio Valcárcel.

La segunda es, la promoción de un whisky Super Premium, Old Parr Superior. Es un licor que se produce dos veces al año, en otoño y primavera y en cantidades limitadas y que tiene como mercado objetivo a las personas entre 28 y 40 años.

La última estrategia se basa en que se conozca el producto. Esto lo hace Diageo encontrando al consumidor en los supermercados, en los bares, en las catas privadas y en los hoteles. “La idea es que la gente este vinculada con la marca y que conozca todo lo que hay alrededor de ella”, concluye el ejecutivo.

Emprendimiento social: John Elkington

2009-05-06T19:32:00.001-07:00

Todo progreso se le debe al hombre irracional”

Entrevista exclusiva con John Elkington autoridad mundial en el campo del emprendimiento social. Elkington es cofundador de la organización SustainAbility y coautor del exitoso libro The Power of Unreasonable People.

¿A qué se refieren cuando habla de una persona irracional en el mundo del emprendimiento social?

El escritor irlandés George Bernard Shaw alguna vez dijo “el hombre racional se adapta al mundo que le rodea; el hombre irracional se obstina en intentar que sea el mundo quien se adapte a él. Por tanto, todo progreso se debe al hombre irracional”. Muchos emprendedores sociales no solo son irracionales, llegan incluso a ser considerados locos por sus familias y amigos. De todas formas una buena parte de un futuro mejor depende de que sean exitosos con sus ideas y modelos de negocios innovadores.

En sus datos América Latina es la segunda región del mundo con mayor número de emprendedores sociales. ¿Por qué es tan fuerte el emprendimiento social en nuestros países?

Las marcadas brechas sociales, la extrema riqueza y la extrema pobreza, que caracterizan la región, crean oportunidades y espacios para ayudar. Históricamente la religión tiene un efecto importante, aunque no soy experto en su influencia directa en el campo del emprendimiento social. A esto debemos sumar que la gente en Sur América y Estados Unidos, suele ser mucho más emprendedora que en el viejo continente.

Ustedes argumentan que los emprendedores sociales son como ventanas al futuro ¿En qué sentido?

Los emprendedores sociales operan en áreas donde los negocios tradicionales han fracasado. Resuelven necesidades que ni siquiera las grandes corporaciones pueden ver. Continuamente están experimentando, incrementando las posibilidades de que nuevas tecnologías y modelos de negocios emerjan con facilidad. En este proceso, llegan a mostrar que las comunidades más necesitadas son capaces de salir adelante por su propia cuenta. Pareciera que los emprendedores sociales vivieran bajo el lema de la marina norteamericana en la segunda Guerra Mundial: "lo imposible sólo toma un poco más de tiempo"

Para alguien que quiera lanzarse al desafío de ser un emprendedor social. ¿Cómo perderle el miedo a dar el primer paso?

De hecho, en el emprendimiento social este primer paso no necesariamente es el más duro. Usualmente los emprendedores sociales quedan atrapados tras un sueño sin inicialmente reconocer qué tan difícil será el camino. La diferencia entre estas “personas irracionales” del resto del mundo, es que entre más duras se ponen las cosas, más determinados son y menos se alejan de sus ideales. Aprenden de sus errores, y se intensifica su pasión por cambiar las cosas.

¿Cómo podemos apoyar mejor a los emprendedores sociales del futuro?

Pienso que el papel del gobierno cada vez tendrá mayor relevancia. En nuestra más reciente investigación The Phoenix Economy: 50 Pioneers in Social Innovation, mostramos la creciente necesidad de “gobiernos inusuales”. Con esto queremos decir que los gobiernos deben permanecer comprometidos en la tarea de crear nuevas soluciones de mercado, pero que no deben tratar de regularlo todo como en el pasado. Todo lo contrario, su trabajo deber ser crear una visión y una estrategia de trabajo, crear los incentivos necesarios, y luego dedicarse a apoyar a otros y controlar cuando sea necesario. Los gobiernos deberían ser los promotores y actores de las mejores prácticas para que luego sean replicadas, por soñadores como los emprendedores sociales.

Businesses Do Well in Latam?

2009-05-06T17:47:00.000-07:00

1) For Goodness Shakes Energy drinks
Van sales
Discount Cpns
internet CRM

http://www.forgoodnessshakes.com/

2) Innocent Smoothies
http://www.innocentdrinks.co.uk/things_we_make/

3) Pret a Manger / Pret Smoothies & No Nasties
http://www.pret.com/

4) Eat ' Chocolate & drinks

5) Patisserie Valerie

6) Patisserie Paul

7) Hackett ' essential british kit

8) Acqiuastum

9) Peak Performance Clothing

10) Red & Green

11) Bergaus

12) North Face

10) Coach ' Briefcases.

Dirty energy threat to green Brazil

2009-04-14T14:12:00.000-07:00

Brazil is a leading producer of biofuels
Brazil boasts of being one of the world's "greenest" energy suppliers, but recent policy initiatives could jeopardise its desire to be a big player in future climate change discussions.

"In the 1970s, Brazil's energy production was dominated by two sources, wood and oil," says Maurício Tolmasquim, president of Brazil's Energy Research Company (EPE).

As its economy has expanded, so has its demand for energy, but even now, 46% of Brazil's energy production is from renewable sources.

This compares with the global average of only 13%, making Brazil one of the greenest countries in the world.

BBC Brasil has been back to its home country as part of a series looking at where the fast-growing Bric economies (Brazil, Russia, India and China) will be in 2020.

But despite a proud record as a green energy producer, it found that Brazil's environmental credentials are under threat.

Hydro-electric power

Much of Brazil's energy comes from hydro-electric plants, but the licensing of these is notoriously difficult.

The result is a push towards thermoelectric plants, which are easier to get permission to build.

"We are being forced to accept more expensive and less environmentally sound plants," argues Maurício Tolmasquin.

Still, fossil fuel's share of Brazil's energy production is small, accounting for only 10% of the total.

But the new thermoelectric plants should take that share up to nearly 17%.

Some experts say they worry about the strategy. They believe that Brazil is giving out the wrong signals.

Brazilian domestic energy consumption is predicted to grow by 3.3% a year on average until 2030, according to a report by Ernst & Young and the economic research institute Fundacao Getulio Vargas (FGV).

Yet its energy production is due to rise by 4.2% a year over the same period.

This means that Brazil is set to become one of the major world energy exporters by 2020 if it keeps building power stations and fulfils its potential as a major biofuel producer.

Booming biofuels

Advocates of Brazil's energy strategy point with pride to its biofuel production.

They are quick to highlight the differences between Brazil's sugar cane ethanol and the corn-based ethanol produced in the United States.

Biofuels are a more environmentally friendly fuel for many Brazilians
While the latter is also an important food, sugar cane is generally considered a more efficient and less power-hungry alternative.

However, Brazilian ethanol is still far from being a global commodity, even though the Ernst and Young report foresees a "gradual reduction" in international trade barriers, such as import tariffs.

There are also expectations that within the next decade, so-called second-generation Brazilian ethanol could become a reality.

Instead of being extracted from sugar cane itself, it would use by-products currently discarded, such as sugar cane's fibrous residue and harvest leftovers.

The Brazilian government forecasts a 150% growth in ethanol production until 2020.

However, ethanol's world market share is still small, with some estimates putting ethanol consumption at only 1% of that of oil.

Oil rush

Compared to the other Bric countries (Russia, India and China), only the Russians have gas and oil reserves large enough to make them liquid fuel exporters.

Recent discoveries of massive underwater oil reserves in an area stretching some 800km along the south-eastern coast of Brazil has raised the possibility that Brazil could also be a big oil exporter.

However, there are also huge technical difficulties to overcome before the oil can be tapped. The reserves are buried some 7km underneath the sea bed - which makes its exploration very expensive.

Some figures put the initial investment for exploration at about $1 trillion, so oil would need to be priced at about $40 (£27) a barrel to make it viable.

You only need to look at the prices of oil and coal to see that their long-term use will be questionable

Carlos Nobre
But with exploration and production costs falling, Brazil seems set to receive a huge economic boost as it heads toward 2020.

Lost opportunity

Carlos Nobre, from Brazil's National Institute for Spatial Research (Inpe), says "a great chance" of making Brazil "the cleanest" country in the world could be lost.

He says that Brazil's strategies for solar, wind and biomass power are poor when compared to developed countries.

"Clean countries will be granted great credibility in the future. They will be leading the world. And Brazil has the potential to do that," he says.

Despite its investment in biofuels, Mr Nobre believes that plans for new thermoelectric plants reflect "very short-term" thinking by the Brazilian government.

"You only need to look at the prices of oil and coal to see that their long-term use will be questionable."

Mr Nobre says that Brazil runs the risk of falling behind technologically by not investing in alternative energy.

"If all countries are walking in the same direction and we're not, we're risking Brazil's technological future," he says.

Compiled by the BBC Brazilian Service team as part of their series on the Bric countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China).

The rise, fall and rise of Brazil's biofuel

2009-04-14T14:11:00.000-07:00

By Robert Plummer
BBC News business reporter

As oil prices continue to hover near the $70-a-barrel mark, amid fears that the world may soon run out of fossil fuels, carmakers and politicians alike are desperate to come up with alternative ways to power the world's motor vehicles.

Sao Paulo's traffic congestion is notorious in Brazil

Even a man as closely linked with the oil industry as President George W Bush is now spreading the message that one day we may be growing our fuel instead of digging it out of the ground.

"An interesting opportunity, not only for here but for the rest of the world, is biodiesel, a fuel developed from soybeans," he said in June last year.

For the owners of today's polluting gas-guzzlers, it is easy to see this as something for the far-distant future, an irrelevance that will not affect their lives for many years to come.

But in Brazil, it is already a reality.

In the mid-1980s - before any other country even thought of the idea - Brazil succeeded in mass-producing biofuel for motor vehicles: alcohol, derived from its plentiful supplies of sugar-cane.

Differently-powered cars were actually in the majority on Brazil's roads at the time, marking a major technological feat.

But the programme that had put the country so far ahead was very nearly consigned to history when oil prices slid back from the high levels seen in the 1970s.

Alcohol-powered cars fell out of favour and languished in obscurity until two years ago, when production picked up again in a big way.

Now Brazilians are flocking to buy cars that give them the chance to mix and match alcohol with regular fuel - and conventional motor vehicles that run purely on petrol are looking old-fashioned once again.

Military-inspired

Brazil's state-run alcohol fuel programme was set up for patriotic, not financial or environmental reasons.

The military government that ran the country from 1964 to 1985 wanted to reduce its dependence on Middle Eastern petroleum during the 1970s oil crisis.

The technology was far from new, having been around since the 1920s, but no country had employed it on such a scale.

Under the Pro-Alcohol programme, farmers were paid generous subsidies to grow sugar-cane, from which ethanol was produced.

The price at the pump was also subsidised to make the new fuel cheaper than petrol, while the motor industry turned out increasing numbers of vehicles adapted to burn pure ethanol.

As a result, in 1985 and 1986, more than 75% of all motor vehicles produced in Brazil - and more than 90% of cars - were designed for alcohol consumption.

But then it all went wrong.

Backlash hits

A combination of factors turned the tide against ethanol:

Under newly-restored civilian rule, governments were less concerned about promoting the fuel for national security reasons

Sugar prices rose, making the ethanol subsidy too costly for the state

Oil prices had fallen from their 1970s highs

State oil company Petrobras had discovered new offshore oilfields, making Brazil more self-sufficient in oil.

Cane and grain are equally good for producing ethanol

There remained the environmental argument in favour of ethanol: unlike petrol, it is free of pollutants such as sulphur dioxide, while the carbon dioxide emissions it produces can be cancelled out by growing another sugar-cane plant.

And in one lasting benefit, ethanol had already replaced lead in conventional Brazilian petrol, putting paid to the worst kind of airborne pollution.

But despite ethanol's green credentials, Brazilian enthusiasm for the fuel reached its lowest ebb in 1997, just as the world was marking five years since Rio de Janeiro hosted the United Nations Earth Summit.

That year, just 1,075 motor vehicles built to run on alcohol rolled off the country's production lines - a mere 0.06% of the total output.

Competition

It was at that very point that the US started to show interest in biofuels, as the authorities in California and other states passed laws forcing car manufacturers to reduce pollution levels.

The US now produces nearly as much ethanol as the Brazilians do, although the raw material it uses is maize rather than sugar-cane, while President Bush's biodiesel made from soybeans offers another alternative to petroleum.

Ethanol has staged a remarkable comeback in Brazil

But Brazilian producers maintain their ethanol is still cheaper to produce - and their market has now received fresh impetus from a combination of tax breaks and technological advancement.

A new generation of alcohol-powered cars entered production in Brazil in 2003, after the government decided that cars capable of burning ethanol should be taxed at 14%, instead of 16% for their exclusively petrol-powered counterparts.

Unlike earlier models, these are "flex-fuel" cars - equally happy with pure alcohol, pure petrol, or any blend of the two.

When the fuel tank is filled, a special computer chip analyses the mixture and adjusts the motor according to how much ethanol and how much petrol it contains.

In 2004, the first full year that "flex-fuel" cars were on sale, they accounted for more than 17% of the Brazilian market.

Last year, they scored an even bigger success, overtaking petrol-driven models for the first time since the 1980s and taking 53.6% of the market for new cars.

But in the wake of the US, other countries are beginning to discover the wonders of crop-based motor fuel - and Brazil has a fight on its hands if it wants to remain the world leader in the field

Real Options Analysis (Links)

2009-04-12T14:41:00.000-07:00

@ Risk

Palisades Software

What is Monte Carlo (MC)?

Decision Trees using multiple NPV's with Uncertainty.

http://www.realoptionsvaluation.com/
http://www.realoptionsvaluation.com/download.html ' White papers & Books

http://unjobs.org/authors/johnathan-mun

http://www.anthony-vba.kefra.com/index.htm

http://vba.wikidot.com/black-schole-european-option-with-greeks

http://www.excel-modeling.com/index_002.htm

http://windale.com/optionsx.php

Online communities

2009-04-12T08:24:00.000-07:00

Archive for the ‘Online communities’ Category.

« Previous EntriesExamples of online communities in healthcare
8th April 2009, 02:53 pm
It is a couple of weeks since our last set of online community examples, with trips to the Marketing 2.0 Conference in Paris and Web Mission 09 in San Francisco taking up much of our time and space on the blog. But we’re returning today with a great set of examples from the healthcare industry.

Online communities in healthcare
On one level, healthcare would seem to be an ideal area where online communities can add real value to professionals, patients, families and carers, friends and others. We’ve written before about how user-generated medical content can add value to people’s lives, and why this online space is a great place for people to be sharing their experiences and stories and also finding and connecting with others in a similar situation to them. Online communities for healthcare can provide real insight and real support as the examples below show.

Mayo Clinic Blogs and Podcasts
There are a number of examples of healthcare providers making good use of social media and online communities, and Mayo Clinic are one of the most notable of these. They describe themselves as the largest not-for-profit practice in the world and treat about half a million people in the US each year. Their use of social media is a great case study of how you can use a number of simple tools to engage your stakeholders and how providing a range of ways to engage you can reach different people. At FreshNetworks we believe that sometimes the best online communities can be quite simple, but effective, and this is the case with Mayo.

There are three main parts of the Mayo Clinic strategy and together they are starting to build an online community of people with a shared interest in the organisation, and in the topics they cover. On their own website they host a blog and a series of video and audio podcasts. Together, these serve both as a way of them communicating internal developments and changes but also their opinion and expertise. Alongside this they run a YouTube channel where you can see expert videos and also videos that give you a real insight into the organisation, their clinics and the people who work for them.

The best online communities are often simple, providing a way to engage people around themes, topics and content that is relevant to them and you. For somebody like Mayo Clinic, this engagement is around their knowledge and expertise as healthcare providers. They also, through their blogs, videos and podcasts open their organisation to outsiders - showing you inside their buildings, putting forward their own experts and putting a human face and interaction on a large organisation. For healthcare organisation this kind of interaction makes all the difference - they’re about social interactions and real stories, online communities help them to show this.

AIDSPortal
AIDSPortal is a knowledge-sharing online community sponsored primarily by the UK’s Department for International Development and aimed at people who are working as part of the response to the global AIDS epidemic. The site provides professional and peer-to-peer networking and an online community where they can share experiences, knowledge and support each other with answers to questions and problems. Part of its purpose is, undoubtedly, to open up policy making and the UK governement sponsorship is a sign of this, but as a service to those working in this area it is a powerful tool.

Whilst the Mayo Clinic case study was about engaging around their expertise and knowledge, AIDSPortal is about 4,500 professionals with knowledge, experience and expertise connecting with each other. They can share knowledge and articles, experiences, blog posts and answers to questions. But one of the strongest elements of this site is how it is organised.

Any online community is only as useful as the way that users can find and AIDSPortal is particularly strong in the way it organises this, allowing you to view data by region and country or by topic area. You let people dive into the content in a way that makes sense for them and organise their own content so that it fits with this. This is a large part of the battle of getting an online community launched and is an important aspect to work out during the pre-launch strategy stage.

Novartis’s CFVoice
CFVoice is an online community for people with Cystic Fibrosis, built and managed by Novartis, a pharmaceutical company. Launched in March 2008, the site has a clear focus on children, teens and young adults and on their families and carers. The site is indeed split into separate areas for each of these user-types, with a different mix of content, activities and games that each of them can do.

This online community is a great example of engaging different people in different ways - using interactive games as a way of younger audiences sharing their information, videos and personal stories for teens and the younger adults and discussion boards and forums for parents and carers. A different way for different members to use and gain benefit from the online community.

And for these members, the benefits are clear. They get to meet and share experiences and stories with people like them, people facing the same challenges and issues and people with similar concerns. And they can do this even if they don’t know anybody in that situation or aren’t able to reach them locally. For Novartis the benefits are also clear. Through the stories, questions, discussions and contributions they are able to get a real granularity of insight into the lives of people with Cystic Fibrosis, and the lives of their carers. This kind of insight has traditionally been difficult for them to obtain and is an area they would probably not have had the same level of understanding about. So benefits on both sides and a clear example of how to use an online community to engage different member-types.

See all our Online Community Examples

Subscribe to updates from the FreshNetworks Blog

Some more reading
Mayo Clinic launches new culture blog (tissuepathology.typepad.com)
Social media experience at Mayo Clinic (fastforwardblog.com)
Engaging Healthcare Consumers using Social Media Tools (thielst.typepad.com)
Sharing Mayo Clinic Goes to Facebook and other Social Networks (ducknetweb.blogspot.com)
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Category: Matt Rhodes, Online Community Examples, Online communities, Social Media | 3 Comments
Our top five posts in March
7th April 2009, 11:09 am
At FreshNetworks we aim to bring you the best posts in social media, online communities and customer engagement online. In case you missed them, find below our most popular posts in March.

1. How to use Twitter for PR
A great presentation from Corinne Weisgerber that outlines how brands can use Twitter for PR. From tracking and monitoring, through live-reporting and activism, to public relations and crisis management. A great introduction for anybody interested in the topic.

2. Social networks and online communities more popular than email
It’s now official. Social networks and online communities are now visited more often online than email. This is reflects the way people are now using the web, and how social media sites actually let us do new things, rather than being an new way of doing old things.

3. Social media ROI: Measuring the unmeasurable?
There is a lot of discussion about how to measure the ROI of social media. Some people claim it isn’t possible, but this just isn’t true. The key is to work out what you need to measure and why, and then work out how to measure it. Too often people don’t do this step.

4. Examples of online communities in the retail industry
As part of our series of online community examples, we looked at examples from the retail industry. Case studies from Wal-Mart, Sainsbury’s and Starbucks.

5. Russia – the fourth largest social networking market in Europe
Whilst we’re all talking about Facebook and MySpace, Russia is becoming a big force in social networking in Europe, with the fourth largest market for users. Sites like Odnoklassniki (Одноклассники) and VKontakte (В контакте) are leading the market there and showing how a relative late-comer to broadband is rapidly becoming one of the fastest growing markets for social networking.

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Category: Matt Rhodes, Online communities, Social Media, Social networks | 3 Comments
Using experts to get real engagement in online communities
3rd April 2009, 01:43 pm
Online communities are about engagement, between consumers and between them and the brand. They bring huge benefits for and brand or organisation, from rich insights through innovation and ideas to word of mouth and advocacy. The question we are often asked is why the consumers would take part. Why would they take part in your online community.

My presentation at the Marketing 2.0 conference in Paris earlier this week addressed this very issue and discussed different ways in which you can incentivise people to take part and which of these we have found to be most successful at FreshNetworks.

1. Pay people to take part
We’ve discussed incentives in online communities before and the simple truth is that if you are building an online community that is about long-term engagement and real dialogue then they don’t necessarily have the impact you want. Online communities are about social interactions and social dynamics. Once you pay people or incentivise them to take part (by giving them, for example, vouchers or entry into a prize draw for completing a minimum number of actions each month) you shift the member’s mindset from this social one into a market one. They make a judgement on what you are giving them and how much effort they are willing to expend for this. And the end result is typically that you don’t get the kind of involvement that you want. Some people may do slightly more, but these will be fairly transactional contributions. And you may even dissuade some people from doing as much as they would otherwise.

2. Feedback from the brand
There is a definite benefit in online communities to real feedback from the brand. You are not leading the online community but taking part in it alongside all of the other members. With this in mind you should take part and respond to people in your online community. Feedback is essential and an online community won’t work, won’t grow and won’t meet your objectives if you don’t take part. It should be seen as a normal part of community management, and the way that you reward people for their comments and contributions. They want to know you’re listening and responding so do this.

3. Using your brand’s expertise
Over and above the importance of listening and responding, there is a real power of using the expertise that is inside every organisation to give something back to your community members. All organisations are experts in something - you may be an insurance company that has a lot of information to help home-owners, or you may be a travel firm that has expertise in travel and making the most of your holiday. Whatever your brand and whatever your product you will have expertise that your customers can use. And there is real power in this. By putting yourself forward as experts you are giving people an insight into your brand and an opportunity to engage directly with you. By answering questions from community members, you are incentivising them within a social dynamic rather than giving them money and making their behaviours more transactional. And video brings all of this to life a lot more.

At the conference, I presented a video we have made to showcase how you can use expertise in a community, and you can see this here:

Social media in action - Using expertise in online communities

So our advice is simple. Don’t incentivise people with money or anything equivalent to this. Rather involve yourself in the community - give them feedback and leverage your internal expertise. It’s the best way to launch, grow and build a real online community.

Read all of our posts based on the Marketing 2.0 Conference here.

Some more reading
What Socrates Can Teach You About Social Media (jessenewhart.com)
The Business of Community Networking Conference (blogstring.com)
The Community Golden Hammer (troysabin.com)
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Category: Marketing 2.0 2009, Matt Rhodes, Online communities, Social Media | 1 Comment
Are online communities all a game?
3rd April 2009, 09:00 am
A number of speakers at the Marketing 2.0 conference (including myself) made analogies (explicitly or implicitly) to games or gaming when talking about their social media strategies. I think that this is a good analogy and very relevant to understanding what we do when we are building and managing online communities at FreshNetworks, and how to motivate people to take part in them.

Most social media strategies, and indeed most online communities that we build, hope to increase a consumer’s engagement with (and exposure to) the brand. This can often mean trying to increase the amount of time spend on site, or increasing the frequency and recency of visit. We see all three of these increase in our online communities (often quite substantially) when compared with other territories that the brand controls online. But to achieve this we need to offer the consumer something compelling, and to some extent enter into a game with them.

This may be in a very traditional sense, and some of the best online support communities that I know of are powered using a similar techniques to those you find in games. Rewarding those who give valuable answers to lots of questions with access to special parts of the site, new challenges to take part in and special avatars so that others can see their position. But in most other online communities this very overt application of gaming techniques would not be as successful. However, there is still much we can learn.

We want to engage people, increase the amount of time they spend with us and the benefits they receive. They want to be entertained, to share their thoughts, to learn and to be heard. To satisfy both sides we can take an influence from games and gaming:

Provide people with new activities to do - Games are based on levels, when you complete one set of activities another opens up, keeping people involved and engaged. The same should be true in an online community. When somebody completes a task we should be providing them with something else to do. If they have uploaded a photo we should be showing them a forum discussion to tell us more, or a set of photos they might be interested in commenting on. We can show them something they might want to do and a new challenge to take part in.
Reveal the community slowly - In a game, as people progress through levels the features available to them increase. In an online community, this approach is also successful; we don’t want people to see all that the community has to offer at once. They may be overwhelmed by the variety of things to do and it can be easier to release content and features more slowly to new members. But it is also good for members to feel a sense of discovery, to find new features the longer they spend on the site and to feel to some extent rewarded each time they come back.
Allow people to play at their own level - Some of the best games are so successful because people can play at their own level. If they are expert gamers or just amateurs, they can enjoy and feel rewarded by spending time with the game. The same is true in an online community. Some people are never going to start a new conversation or propose a new idea. But they may want to vote for a video they like or answer a poll. Allow people to engage with the brand on whatever level is appropriate to them and allow them to benefit from this engagement, at whatever level it is.
Make it fun - Games are fun and online communities should be too. They should be diverting and provide stimulation and excitement for those participating. When you’re building and managing you online community always ask yourself: how are we making this a fun place to be?
Read all of our posts based on the Marketing 2.0 Conference here.

Some more reading
Digital Habitats: Stewarding Technology for Communities (beth.typepad.com)
Social media and B2B marketing (nevillehobson.com)
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Category: Marketing 2.0 2009, Matt Rhodes, Online communities, Social Media | 3 Comments
Big brands in social media: Ford and Southwest Airlines
2nd April 2009, 09:00 am
Image via WikipediaThere are many examples of big brands in social media (in fact you can find a whole range across different industries in our online community examples), but at the Marketing 2.0 conference in Paris it was great to hear some real case studies from the people behind these strategies and campaigns.

Two presentations that particularly stood out were from Scott Monty at Ford and Paula Berg from Southwest Airlines. Both have a strong history of customer engagement and have been, to some extent, pioneers in their use of social media and online communities. And both of their presentations were refreshing in terms of the information they shared. For me, four core themes came from what they said:

It’s about people not firms - social media is about people engaging with people, and firms that want to engage with them all also need a personal touch. You should put faces on the individual people who make up your brand and let people see and engage with them. Of course, from the brand’s perspective it is best to do this is a way that is sustainable even when the individuals leave the firm.
Make things public - social media is a about sharing and it provides a real platform for firms to share their knowledge and information. In fact, Scott Monty told us that Ford, as part of its social media strategy, shared with the public anything that used to appear on its intranet that was not commercially sensitive. This seems to be a great approach - social media and online communities are about openness and honesty. Brands who are open and honest will be most successful.
Connect with people where they are already - don’t make it difficult for people to find and connect with your brand. Rather provide them a route, a way to connect with you. As Scott Monty said “every obstacle we put in the way closes a distribution channel”. The best examples of social media marketing, and the best online communities also engage people where they are - be that on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter or blogs. They engage them and then provide an easy route for them to engagement.
Provide a place for people to go to - whilst engaging people where they are is important, you need to provide something for them to do once you have engaged them and the best examples of big brands in social media provide a place for these people to go to. An online community, web site or other activity that you drive people to where they can really engage with you on a site that you provide and where you benefit from the engagement as much as the consumer does.
Read all of our posts based on the Marketing 2.0 Conference here.

Some more reading
Social Media Marketing: Time Trap or Opportunity Magnet? New Study Reveals the Answers (buildabetterblog.com)
Big brands on Twitter (wheelontheweb.wordpress.com)
Innovators in Social Media (businessweek.com)
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Category: Marketing 2.0 2009, Matt Rhodes, Online communities, Social Media, Social networks | 2 Comments
Engage different consumers in different ways – why segmentation is key
31st March 2009, 09:42 pm
Image via WikipediaOne of the first speakers at the Marketing 2.0 conference in Paris was Conny Kalcher from LEGO, and if anything her presentation was an example of how good segmentation and really understanding your different consumer persona types can make a real difference to a successful social media strategy.

At LEGO, the core target is a young boy, and they group their customers into six groups

Lead Users - people LEGO actively engage with on product design
1:1 Community - people whose names and addresses they know
Connected Community - people who have bought LEGO and also been to either a LEGO shop or LEGO park
Active Households - people who have bought LEGO in last 12 months
Covered Households - people who have bought LEGO once
All Households - those who have never bought LEGO
These six types of customers are defined based on the strength and depth of their relationship with the brand - from having no experience with the brand to being actively involved in it not just as a product but as a business. There are fewer Lead Users than there are Covered Households and when volume and closeness to the brand are combined like this it lends itself to neat segmentation of the marketing (and indeed the social media strategy).

Indeed LEGO uses a different approach for the top three segments than for the bottom three. This is the cut-off point at which customers become truly engaged. They are not just entering into a transactional relationship, but they actually care about the brand. LEGO uses social media to work with these three segments - from co-creating online with the Lead Users to engaging the Connected Community and 1:1 Community in online communities and social networks. These are, perhaps, the easiest and best people to engage and empower online and so the most efficient use of social media. They are the people LEGO wants to feel special, and the people they want to test new ideas and products with. They are also the people to keep engaged and close to the brand - the people who will spend most and be your biggest advocates.

Proper customer segmentation and persona profiling helps you to understand how your customers differ and how their needs differ. Social media and online communities let you treat different people in different ways and also to engage with them in the way they want to be engaged with.

Read all of our posts based on the Marketing 2.0 Conference here.

Some more reading
Community Marketing: three things to do differently (thecustomercollective.com)
Some brands will love the new Facebook (sharemarketing.wordpress.com)
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Category: Marketing 2.0 2009, Online communities, Social Media | 4 Comments
The lies behind online ratings and reviews
27th March 2009, 12:41 pm
Ratings and reviews lie. Simple, subtle lies, but lies all the same. And I suspect most people will never know.

This is Part2 in a series about Ratings and Reviews. To read Part1 click on: Introduction to Ratings and Reviews

“Professional” reviews

The first time I realized what a con ratings could be was when I visited Dubai. I was travelling with a group of friends and one of them booked the hotels. It was quite a surprise to hear we’d booked into a 5-star hotel for what seemed like a 3-star price. It transpired that this was not because my friend had negotiated a great deal, but because hotel stars in Dubai are dispersed as liberally as banking bonuses. Dubai is the land of the 7-star hotel and I’m afraid that has nothing to do with the Burj Al Arab being better than the 5-star Carlyle in New York or Cipriani in Venice.

Thankfully, one of the great things about online consumer-generated Ratings and Reviews is their potential to overwhelm organisational bias assuming a large number of “real people” comment. However even apparently unbiased people give biased reviews. Alongside a trick of averages, these biases help cloud the validity of ratings and reviews.

So how do online ratings and reviews lie?

There are four key ways in which ratings and reviews lie. There may be more but these are the ones that jump out at me.

1. There is no “zero” score.
Ask most people “When is a product good or bad?” and they’ll say above 2.5 is good and below 2.5 is bad. The assumption is that 2.5 is the mean average score that can be awarded. However that’s simply not the case. The vast majority of five-point scales force you to allocate 1,2,3,4,or 5 stars. If you thought a product or service was rubbish, you cannot give it zero; that does not count as a rating. As a result the mean score that can be awarded is 3 not 2.5. This is great for retailers who have ratings and reviews on their site as most items will appear to be better than average even when they are not.

2. Self-selection bias in ratings and reviews
There are three kinds of purchase bias that add to “the lie”. The first is self-selection bias. Ask me to rate the restaurant behind my office and I won’t. I’ve never eaten there because I don’t like the way it looks. As a result I have selected myself out of being able to review its food or service.

Thus, ratings and reviews’ second lie comes from the self-selection bias inherent in the need for people to have experienced a product or service before rating it. I know that restaurants which sell all you can eat buffets for £3.50 serve poor quality meat, so I’m not going to buy and I’m not going to review. The people who do review are those who for a given product or service had a reasonable expectation that it would fulfill their needs when making the purchase. Hence the group of potential reviewers is biased from the outset.

3. Choice-supportive bias
The second type of purchase bias comes post-purchase. Choice-supportive bias describes our tendency to recall positive feelings or memories to the choice we made. We tend to remember the positive things about the options we chose more than we remember the positive attributes of the alternatives we did not select.

4. Post-purchase rationalization
The third and final purchase bias is post-purchase rationalisation. This bias comes from our tendency to retrospectively justify our decisions as rational ones. We humans prefer to feel that we made good selections not poor ones. So if you ask me whether or not I liked a product that I just spent my hard earned money on, you’re going to get a positive review more frequently than you get a negative one – we like to feel our past choices have been rational and well made.

It is the sum of these biases that results in an average five-star review of 4.3. That’s a long distance from 2.5.

Despite the lies, Ratings and Reviews are great

I’ve had a bit of a go at Ratings and Reviews, but that does not stop me from liking them. They are excellent tools for online retailers and they do a great service to customers. Just like a review on the back-cover of a book or a politician’s statistics, we should always treat claims with care. And so long as that’s done everyone still stands to benefit. For one thing, if ratings and reviews are considered on a relative basis (as is often the case) then the absolute number does not matter in the least.

And let’s be honest, right now, anything that encourages people to buy more is a good thing for the economy and for all of us.

What do you think?

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Category: Charlie Osmond, Online communities, Social Media, Word of Mouth | 3 Comments
Ratings and Reviews - a great way to kick start community
25th March 2009, 04:26 pm
Ratings and reviews are having a massive impact on our online behaviour. They are great for shoppers and great for retailers. But they are also a little bit evil. This is the first of a two-part blog about ratings and reviews (a general introduction). Click to read part 2: The lies behind online ratings and reviews.

The Growth of online ratings and reviews

There has been explosive growth in sites offering customer ratings and reviews across the web. Ratings and reviews are an excellent way to build a sense of community on a website, to improve customer service and increase loyalty. They have also proven to be a great way for retailers to increase sales.

A key part of their growth stems from the escalating importance of Word-of-Mouth (WOM):

Trust in a “person like me” tripled to 68% in 2008 v’s 2004 (Edelman, 2008)
84% of consumers now trust user reviews more than critics’ reviews (MarketingSherpa, 2007)

Furthermore, their presence has driven a significant change in behaviour – Most of us are now using online ratings and reviews before making purchasing decisions:

“76% use online reviews to help make purchase decisions” (Forrester Research, 2007).

78% say consumer recommendations are the most credible form of advertising (Nielsen, 2007),

What retailers have come to realise is that their customers trust each other more than they trust the brand. So providing that your products aren’t junk, it’s far better to let consumers advocate your products to one another than to attempt to persuade them by shoving marketing messages down their throats.

The result? Retailers have been adding ratings and reviews to their websites. and they have:

helped customers make better decisions
increased sales
reduced the number of returns because consumers were able to make a better buying decision
Concerns about negative ratings and reviews

Despite all the evidence, we at FreshNetworks still run into uncertainty when discussing ratings and reviews with online retailers. Especially amoung UK-based retailers, there first reaction is often nervousness.

“Surely people only write a review when they’re really annoyed about something. So if we allow reviews we’ll end up with loads of nasty comments…”

It’s an understandable concern, however it’s baseless. When it comes to online reviews for products consumers are far more generous than you might think. Assuming ratings are on a scale from 1 to 5, we’d expect 2.5 to be the average score for reviews. With this in mind, it’s rather impressive that the average score across the web is actually more like 4.3 (BazaarVoice, 2008).

Even if you do get negative reviews, there is strong evidence that negative reviews are good for retailers – preventing returns and giving more credibility to websites. Woot is a great example of this.

Ratings and reviews in the transaction process

Ratings and reviews are often the best way to incorporate the benefits of the social web into transactional websites. If you’re moving consumers towards a purchase then you want to keep them focused and on the critical path. Offering user videos or photos or support conversations could provide a potential disruption.

Ratings and reviews however, offer a neat way of incorporating social elements into a transaction whilst supporting the desire to buy without taking consumers off the critical path.

Ratings and reviews are also a quick and simple way to entice customers into engaging with your brand online with minimal effort. As a result they can act as a great way to start building a sense of online community around your brand or e-commerce offering.

However they really are only the start of a thriving community. Beyond reviews and comments you can build deeper engagement if customers are talking about how they use products, or about the features or innovations they’d like to see in future products (MyStarbucksIdea.com sinnovation community is a great example of this).

That’s the brief introduction. Read more in part 2: The lies behind online ratings and reviews

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Category: Charlie Osmond, Online communities, Social Media | Comment
Examples of online communities in the telecoms industry
24th March 2009, 01:02 am
This week we are turning our attention to the telecoms industry for our series of online community examples. If you have industries you’d like included in future weeks please vote in our poll or contact me on Twitter.

Online communities in the telecoms industry
There are not as many examples of good online communities for the telecoms industry as in some of the other industries we have covered so far in the series. Part of the reason for this is that the nature of the industry is one that facilitates communication - they don’t provide content but allow people to communicate over their networks or using their products. Therefore many example of their use of social media are actually of them allowing people to communicate in social networks and on other sites. This means that you miss out on the benefits that online communities bring and is a shame - as the great examples below show the ways in which they can really support brands in the telecoms industry.

Telstra’s nowwearetalking
Telstra’s nowwearetalking has attracted some criticism in Australia as being too evidently a PR vehicle, but it is a good example of how a telecoms firm can build and run an online community and begin to have a different dialogue with shareholders and others with an interest in the firm.

The online community was originally built to provide a new dialogue with shareholders at Telstra, many large firms struggle with shareholder engagement and nowwearetalking was a way of overcoming this. The site also aims to increase the level of public debate across Australia on the future of telecommunications. Telstra want to engage and interact with their shareholders and also to discuss and debate bigger issues in the industry. For both of these an online community is a good solution.

Whether nowwearetalking has achieved these aims is not clear, but what is clear is that the online community is a great example of how to combine activity on the community and also on other sites - a hub-and-spoke model. Alongside the blogs and discussions on the site, there are videos on YouTube and podcasts to download. Telstra are engaging both on their own community and also distributing content across other social media domains. This can be a very successful strategy - you engage with people where they are and also provide a place for them to come to that you manage.

Sprint’s Buzz About Wireless
Support forums can be a great way to build a community, and there are a number of great examples of these in the telecoms industry. Sprint’s Buzz About Wireless is a particularly good example. The site is designed for people to share experiences and ideas with each other, rate and review services and also to ask and answer questions in the forums. This is predominantly a support forum, but it provides a number of other ways for people to interact which both creates a fuller experience for members but also allows people to engage in the way appropriate to them at any given time. Sometimes you will want to ask a question or answers ones that have already been raised; other times you might just want to look at and rate ideas.

What makes Buzz About Wireless really work, however, is the forum area. Support and problem solving is an important component of customer service in the telecoms sector and one that many firms spend large amounts of time and resources on. What Sprint have done is to build an online community that takes away some of these time and resources. Rather than Sprint answering questions and solving problems, they provide a space where consumers can answer each other’s questions and solve each other’s problems.

The power of this should not be overlooked. Even a community of modest size could have a real impact if its members are motivated to respond to and answer problems. A community the size of Buzz About Wireless must have a large impact indeed. What Sprint need to do, and what they do do, is to provide different ways for people to engage but also to encourage people to support each other and answer questions. In a support forum it can be advantageous to create different user types to both reward people who answer a lot of questions, and also to highlight the potential weight and importance of any answers they give. A community like this needs a lot of work to get the planning and strategy right, and the success of Buzz About Wireless suggests that Sprint did just this.

T-Mobile’s Sidekick Wiki Community
Where online communities can support telecoms providers is to allow people to extend and enhance the experience they have of using their service. For mobile providers this can be a case of providing people with a place to discuss their handsets to to share advice and tips about using them, or content created with them. This is what T-Mobile did with their Sidekick Wiki.

The Sidekick Wiki site has been running since 2006, and is an online community where Sidekick owners can exchange ideas about using and customising the handset, solve each other’s problems, share tips on how to make the most of the equipment. The site is a Wiki and over the last three years has grown to include a vast quantity of content. All created by users, with the only noticeable presence from T-Mobile in the forums where they help to answer questions, and on the homepage and in the news sections where they provide an office T-Mobile presence. The rest of the site is what a Wiki is at its best - a customer-curated experience of ideas and experiences.

This online community shows how telecoms companies can add real value to their equipment and products, and also how they can extend the life of and interaction with them. Many people will move from one mobile handset (for example) to another quite quickly. This will be either because they want the new features, want to keep up with the latest trend or, in many cases, because they feel they have got all they can out of their existing handset. Sites like the Sidekick Wiki are designed to constantly show how you can get more from your handset, making you retain it for longer and so increasing customer loyalty and decreasing switching.

See all our Online Community Examples

Subscribe to updates from the FreshNetworks Blog

Some more reading
Is Social Media an Industry? (mashable.com)
Social Media ROI: Measuring the unmeasurable? (socialmediatoday.com)
Experiments in Social Media Marketing: Apple vs #Skittles (brilliantthinking.net)
Youth Marketing Statistics: Mobile social networking in US up … (jonggunlee.tistory.com)
Social media is here to stay… Now what? (vator.tv)
10 Great Reasons To Start Your Own Social Community Site (raunchyjohnson.com)
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Category: Matt Rhodes, Online Community Examples, Online communities, Social Media | 1 Comment
Social Media ROI: Measuring the unmeasurable?
22nd March 2009, 09:52 pm
Image via WikipediaOn Friday we posted about an experiment running on one of our online communities, comparing paid and organic search strategies. This is just one of the ways that our clients measure the ROI of their online community - by increased traffic from organic search or significant savings on their paid search bills.

Measuring ROI is an important topic in social media, all the communities that we build at FreshNetworks have very clear ROI cases. We spend time during the planning and strategy phases working on the objectives of the online community and how we can measure this. This may be increased sales, a specific number of new ideas generated for the business, increased retention rate, traffic to an ecommerce platform, savings in market and consumer research spending… The areas where online communities can contribute to business objectives can be vast and depend on the specific needs of the business. Time spent working on this is time well spent.

That’s why this week’s Required Reading is a great presentation on Social Media ROI from Egg Co. I particularly like the way that they break down an ROI measure into a Success Metric and then into a Goal. This is very similar to the way we work with clients at FreshNetworks, and the examples in the presentation show how this approach to ROI can show the real impact social media can have.

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Some more reading
Social media is here to stay… Now what? (vator.tv)
Five ways to use an online research community in 2009 (freshnetworks.com)
Should We Even Consider ROI in Social Media? (kylelacy.com)
10 practical questions about Social Media (webnomena.com)
What is the value of listening to social media channels for your organization? (beth.typepad.com)
Is 2009 the year of social media & return on investment? (socialmediatoday.com)
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Category: Matt Rhodes, Measurement, Online communities, Required reading, Social Media | 8 Comments
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Spreadsheet Modelling - xml

2009-04-12T07:57:00.000-07:00

http://www.spreadsheetml.com/products.html

Articles and Links for SpreadsheetML

Dive into SpreadsheetML Part 1 Part 2
by Erika Ehrli (Microsoft Corporation TM)

Simple SpreadsheetML file Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
by Brian Jones (Microsoft Corporation TM)

Open XML Explained e-book
(by Wouter Van Vugt)

Final Drafts for Ecma Office Open XML File Formats Standard

Ecma whitepaper on Open XML

Ecma Office Open XML Formats frequently asked questions

Links

OpenXML Developer

Microsoft Office Excel 2007

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa662188(office.11).aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa662189(office.11).aspx

Modelling - Named Ranges

2009-04-12T07:40:00.000-07:00

http://www.accountingweb.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=175623&d=1032&h=1033&f=1026

http://www.accountingweb.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=29393&d=1032&h=1033&f=1026

http://www.accountingweb.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=26680
http://www.ion.icaew.com/itcounts/14353

http://www.ion.icaew.com/itcounts/14726

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Excel 2007: Is the upgrade worth it?

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Experts

2009-04-12T07:35:00.000-07:00

Tang Kok Kwai

Tang Kok Kwai is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales as well as a Fellow of the Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Singapore (ICPAS).

Mr Tang has wide experience in banking, heavy industry and investment management, after spending many years in senior management positions in leading publicly listed companies in Singapore. He served as a Council member of ICPAS from 2002 to 2006 and is currently the Chairman of its IT Services Committee. He has also served on the Governing body of XBRL International, a consortium to develop and promote the XBRL standard for electronic financial reporting.

Dashboards - Microsoft

2009-04-12T07:33:00.001-07:00

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa972194.aspx#Office2007ExcelServicesOverview_BI

How to understand risk in 13 clicks

2009-04-12T06:46:00.000-07:00

How to understand risk in 13 clicks
GO FIGURE
Different ways of seeing stats

What are we to make of all those stories that warn of lifestyle dangers and slap a giant "%" sign in the headline? Michael Blastland introduces the Risk-o-meter to his regular column.

In response to your e-mails after the last column, and the everyday fog of statistics about risks, I've produced what I hope is a better way to see the numbers.

From bacon to booze, risks often make headlines: "CANCER UP X PERCENT IF YOU DO Y" - you know what I'm talking about. So I've devised a simple but different way of seeing stories, with a click-by-click Risk-o-meter. Click through the examples below to see why those percentages easily mislead - and why it pays to ditch percentages and talk instead about the numbers of real people.

Two caveats. First, links between a food and a health hazard (or benefit) do not always indicate a direct cause. Second, some studies have produced different numbers to the ones here. The benefit of moderate alcohol, for example, is at the conservative end of estimates. Some studies suggest it can be far more beneficial.

We'll bring out the Risk-o-meter if stories like these have drifted into abstract meaninglessness and we'll convert them into something more human.

To be fair, governments and epidemiologists (people who study patterns of illness and their causes) do need to know the percentages - but don't need the media to tell them. The rest of us, who might rely on the news for guidance, deserve something more relevant.

• Go Figure hopes from time to time to bring you arresting ways of seeing data. How the numbers look often changes how we understand them. New ideas for data visualisation - like animation in graphs - are causing a buzz among people who use lots of stats, among them the news media. Not everything we offer will be cutting edge, but we hope it will stimulate.

Here's an idea (see image below) called parallel sets, designed to show data with categories that divide into other categories. This one shows passengers on the Titanic, male and female, by class of ticket, and by survival, and is designed by Robert Kosara of the University of North Carolina. Take a moment to explore it and let us know what you think.

Below is a selection of your comments.

Brilliant!- I work as a CFO of a bank and this graph would be ideal in understanding risk across a portfolio for example. You could depict numerous dimensions on a single page rather than labor through the numerous tables dissecting the data.. Would definitely use it at my workplace! Thomas George, Kuwait

This graph is a very rich in information and provides terrific comparisons. It reveals so much about the times. I'd love to see one like this on newspaper front pages explaining wealth distribution, health care and insurance in the USA, contributions to and extent of environmental change...etc. Pete, Portland, Oregon

What an excellent series of articles - I never knew they existed! It's especially good to see these on the BBC site as, I'm afraid to say, the BBC are often rather casual in their approach to science reporting. Thanks for that. Ian Gray, Brighton, UK

It seems a bit bias to only look at colorectal cancer, breast cancer and coronary heart disease. It is possible to pick the diseases accordingly so the outcomes turn out in favor/against, when comparing percentages to numbers. What about the +/- effects of alcohol on all other sorts of diseases? For it to be relevant for the average person like myself, it would make sense to look at the +/- of alcohol and bacon relative to all cancers/diseases in general as oppose to 2 or 3. Emad, Calgary, Canada

As a visual learner I thought this was a very clear and easy way to read and understand the data. Brilliant! Sue Baker, Leek, GB

This is the first time I've seen this way of representing sets, and it's nicely intuitive. However, the vertical axis introduces a mental bias - the impression that travel class was the most influential factor in outcome, which may or may not be true, given the information displayed. I also would suggest it would make more sense to keep the most coincident sets lined up vertically ie: move the male dominated crew category to the far right and move the survived category dominated by females to the left. Lisa K, Durham NC

My first impression was "What a mess!" - it is not immediately clear what is being shown, and we are used to "a picture being worth..." But after spending some time on it, I was shocked to see that almost no second class men survived, while almost all first class women did. I'm still not convinced that this one diagram is preferable to three diagrams concentrating on sex v class, class v survival, and sex v survival. Roy Sayers, Leeds

In looking for clear and concise methods of communicating quantitative data I'd suggest looking at Japanese books and newspapers. Their level of maturity in the use of graphical techniques is way better than ours, and they have many great ways to communicate in diagrams and figures. My experience is that the Japanese public are much more educated in the use of graphs and visual aids, and we could learn a lot from them. Peter Cumpson, Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Ooh, I like this - it makes me really think about what this image is trying to convey. Rather than just skimming my eyes over another bar graph. This tells us things like a majority of the male crew did not survive, and about half of the female crew members perished. I just realised that I can't stop thinking in percentages though - must be the lack of numbers. Hena Faqurudheen, Mumbai, India

I applaud you innovative risk visualisation approach. I have seen friends and family drop needed medications or change diets because of a news story that discusses substantial percent risk changes that only if you investigate turn out to be changes in low overall risks. Your idea of displaying overall risk is right on and might help people key in on changing behaviour related to their highest overall risk factors. Bravo. John Shanklin, Shoreham, New York

It is visually a beautiful graph but lacks an immediate content message. It may work for technical presentations, but not for the average reader. A graph should help CLEARLY and QUICKLY convey a message better (or more efficiently) than text would. This is asking too much of the reader because it takes too much time to understand the message. It may work for a technical paper where you are interested in the analysis, but not necessarily in a mass-media publication where the reader is largely interested in gaining awareness. Ruben Moreno, Oakton, VA USA

Florence Nightingale's original pie charts were much easier to read than this. Caroline Keef, W Yorks

Really like the parallel sets graph, took me about five seconds to work it out, then I realised it's a really good way to present complex data sets. When will my spreadsheet software be able to produce one of these for me? Simon, Bristol, UK

I have absolutely no idea how to read that graph. My guess is as follows - it looks at though possibly the highest percentage of survivors within a group/class is if you were travelling in first class (looks as though roughly a third, or just under a half survived)? Paul Spargo, Cardiff, Wales

I took a little time to understand the image. It is so unlike any data presentation I personally have seen before that my first reaction was to be puzzled. After a minute or two to read the headings, it wasn't at all hard to understand and I thoroughly enjoyed following the various strands. I found it gave me a lot more information in one place that I normally see in reports and gave me the opportunity to start linking variables together and getting a better overall picture of the data. J Howe, Bolton UK

I like the way you can look at the dynamic from different perspectives like "what type of people survived" or "did all of first class survive and everyone else perish". A surprise for me is the sheer numbers of crew compared to passengers and the chances of survival of a male first class passenger was about 1 in 4. Remarkable way of showing the data and engages debate. I think I'll take a copy. Dave Tyrer, Leeds

Visualisation is the key to understanding complex (and somewhat obscure) dataset, especially in statistics. This graph demonstrates that if you really want to commute by Titanic you better be female and pay an hefty fee for your ticket. Armando Forlani, London

It took a moment to understand the Titanic chart but once it "clicked" it made good sense. Its hard to put that much data in one chart and it was an intelligent and clever way to do it. I also liked the way the risk data was presented in the story. Risk is sometimes a difficult subject to explain as there is often more than one reason for the outcome (similar to the Titanic data). Joel Baumbaugh, San Diego, California

I remember a geography professor in a lecture deliberately misusing statistics: "70% of Finland is forest & 35% of Finland is water. This does not leave much room for the Finns." Duncan Peet, Edinburgh

Great way to show stats. But how about actual figures? It tells me that third class male passengers were way more than female passengers and most of them did not survive. But there is no clue as to how many male passengers actually survived. Don't parallel sets display actual figures and numbers? Sourav Basu, Salt Lake City, Utah

Very interesting way of showing multi-faceted data. Takes a little time to figure it out but worth the effort. It would be improved if you could mouse over or select in some way so that one group became highlighted. Or perhaps show the numerical data in a similar fashion? Geoff, Caledon, Canada

I studied statistics as part of my degree in the late 70s, qualified as a chartered accountant and am now a finance director. All this has taught me to ask the right questions when statistics are quoted at us. Too few people question, or are in a position to question the stats. What questions were asked? What was the population? What was the sample? Is the pronounced interpretation of the result the only one that can be placed upon it? I have now got my children questioning the information they are fed: and this is where education really needs to get children thinking, so that they ask the right questions and not just repeat the information given as if it is "the truth". As for this chart, it took some understanding but I liked it and it is a useful way of showing certain types of multi-layered data in a two-day chart. Interesting. Richard Wyatt, Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire

Interesting article proving that percentages really mean nothing unless put it to context. Every week a new statistic (normally as a percentage) comes out telling us we are all going to die sooner, but as shown above the effect is normally very small on a personal level. On another note the parallel sets diagram is an amazingly concise way of showing the data, I may start using it myself. Aly, Scotland

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/magazine/7937382.stm

Published: 2009/03/11 12:18:39 GMT

© BBC MMIX

Gramática e curiosidades

2009-04-07T04:46:00.000-07:00

Gramática e curiosidades

Provérbios e ditos populares
(e os equivalentes em inglês)

A caridade começa em casa. / Charity begins at home.
A cavalo dado não se olham os dentes. / Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
A fruta proibida é mais gostosa. / Forbidden fruits are sweetest.
Águas silenciosas são mais perigosas. / Still waters run deep.
A honestidade é a melhor política. / Honesty is the best policy.
A mentira tem perna curta. / Lies have short legs.
Amigo de todos, amigo de ninguém. / Everybody’s friend, nobody’s friend.
A necessidade faz o frade. / Necessity is the mother of invention.
À noite todos os gatos são pardos. / At night all cats are grey.
Antes pouco do que nada. / Half a loaf is better than none.
Antes tarde do que nunca. / Better late than never.
Ao bom entendedor meia palavra basta. / A word to the wise is sufficient.
A ocasião faz o ladrão. / The opportunity makes the thief.
A palavra é prata, o silêncio é ouro. / Speech is silver, but silence is gold.
A prática faz a perfeição. / Practice makes perfect.
A pressa é inimiga da perfeição. / Haste and quality do not go together.
A pressa é inimiga da perfeição. / Too much hurry spoils everything.
A razão é sempre enganada pela emoção. / The mind is always deceived by the heart.
A última gota faz transbordar a xícara. / The last drop makes the cup run over.
A união faz a força. / Many hands make light work.
A união faz a força. / Union is strenght.
A vida é a melhor escola. / Experience is the best teacher.
As ações valem mais do que as palavras. / Actions speak louder than words.
As aparências enganam. / First appearances are often deceiving.
As paredes têm ouvidos. / The walls have ears.
Atravesse o rio onde é mais raso. / Cross the stream where it is shallowest.
Ausência de notícias é boa notícia. / No news is good news.
Cada coisa a seu tempo. / Don’t have too many irons in the fire.
Cada macaco no seu galho. / To each his own.
Cada um por si e Deus por todos. / Everybody for himself, and God for all.
Cada um por si e Deus por todos. / Paddle your own canoe.
Cada um puxa a brasa para a sua sardinha. / Everybody pulls for his own side.
Cada um sabe onde lhe aperta o sapato. / Every man knows where his shoe pinches.
Cada um tem seu fardo para carregar. / Everyone has his own burden to bear.
Caiu na rede é peixe. / All is fish that comes to the net.
Cão que ladra não morde. / Barking dogs seldom bite.
Cavalo velho não pega andadura. / You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
Com dinheiro tudo se arranja. / Money makes the mare to go.
Cozinheiro demais entorna o caldo. / Too many cooks spoil the broth.
Cria fama e deita na cama. / As you make your bed so you must lie in it.
Criança mimada, criança estragada. / Spare the rod and spoil the child.
De boas intenções o inferno está cheio. / The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
De boas intenções o inferno está cheio. / Hell is full of good will.
De grão em grão, a galinha enche o papo. / Little by little the bird builds its nest.
Dê-lhe a mão e ele tomará o braço. / Give him an inch and he’ll take an ell.
Depois da casa arrombada coloca-se a tranca. / It is easy to be wise after the event.
Depois da luta vem a recompensa. / After battles come rewards.
Depois da tempestade vem a bonança. / After a storm comes a calm.
Desgraça pouca é bobagem. / Misfortunes never come singly.
Deus ajuda a quem cedo madruga. / God helps the man who gets up early.
Deus dá nozes a quem não tem dentes. / God gives candies to those who can not chew them.
Devagar se vai ao longe. / More haste, less speed.
Deve-se comer para viver, não viver para comer. / One should eat to live, not live to eat.
Diz-me com quem andas e eu te direi quem és. / Birds of a feather flock together.
Dois proveitos não cabem num sofá. / You can’t have your cake and eat it.
Duas cabeças pensam melhor do que uma. / Two heads are better than one.
É melhor pouco do que nada. / A little is better than none.
É melhor prevenir do que remediar. / A stitch in time saves nine.
É melhor prevenir do que remediar. / Prevention is bettter than cure.
É melhor ser pobre que ignorante. / Better be poor than ignorant.
É melhor um covarde vivo do que um herói morto. / Better a living dog than a dead lion.
É melhor um pássaro na mão do que dois voando. / A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
É nas horas difíceis que se conhecem os amigos. / A friend in need is a friend indeed.
É preciso aproveitar a maré. / Time and tide wait for no man.
Ele faz tempestade em copo d’água. / He makes a storm in a tea cup.
Ele nasceu em berço de ouro. / He was born with a silver spoon in the mouth.
Em boca fechada não entra mosquito. / Flies do not enter a shut mouth.
Em terra de cego quem tem um olho é rei. / Among the blind the one-eyed man is king.
Enquanto há vida, há esperança. / While there is life, there is hope.
Errar é humano, perdoar é divino. / To err is human, to forgive divine.
Eu vendo o peixe como comprei. / I tell the story as it was told me.
Gato escaldado tem medo de água fria. / To the scalded dog cold water seems hot.
Lobo não come lobo. / Dog does not eat dog.
Longe dos olhos, longe do coração. / Out of sight, out of mind.
Longe dos olhos, perto do coração. / Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Malhe o ferro enquanto está quente. / Strike while the iron is hot.
Mulher doente, mulher para sempre. / A creaking gate hangs long.
Nada de novo sob o sol. / There is nothing new under the sun.
Nada se espalha mais rápido do que um escândalo. / Nothing travels as fast as a scandal.
Não adianta chorar sobre o leite derramado. / It is no use crying over spilt milk.
Não adianta pôr tranca depois que a casa foi roubada. / It’s useless to lock the stable door after the horse is stolen.
Não celebre o triunfo antes da vitória. / Do not celebrate a triumph before victory.
Não conte com o ovo no fiofó da galinha. / Do not count your chickens before they are hatched.
Não cutuque a onça com vara curta. / Let sleeping dogs lie.
Não dê o passo maior do que a perna. / Cut your coat according to your cloth.
Não faças aos outros o que não queres que te façam. / Do as you would be done by.
Não faça tempestade em copo d’água. / Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill.
Não faça um cavalo de batalha de algo tão simples. / Don’t make an elephant out of a fly.
Não há fumaça sem fogo. / There is no smoke without fire.
Não há glória sem sacrifício. / There is no victory without suffering.
Não há mal que sempre dure, nem bem que nunca se acabe. / There is no ill that lasts forever, nor any boon that never ends.
Não há recompensa sem esforço. / No pain, no gain.
Não há rosas sem espinhos. / There is no rose without its thorns.
Não julgue um livro pela capa. / Don’t judge a book by its cover.
Não ponha o carro na frente dos bois. / Don’t put the cart before the horse.
Não ponha todos os seus ovos num único cesto. / Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
Não se brinca com fogo. / One does not play with fire.
Não se faz omelete sem quebrar ovos. / You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.
Não se pode assobiar e chupar cana. / You can’t run with the hare and hunt with the hounds.
Não se tira leite das pedras. / You can not get blood out of a turnip.
Nem só de pão vive o homem. / All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Não sofra por antecipação. / Don’t cross a bridge until you come to it.
Nem tudo que reluz é ouro. / All that glitters is not gold.
Nunca deixe para amanhã o que você pode fazer hoje. / Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.
Nunca é tarde para aprender. / You are never too old to learn.
O amor é cego. / Love is blind.
O começo é sempre difícil. / Every beginning is difficult.
O diabo não é tão feio como o pintam. / The devil is not as bad as he is painted.
O hábito faz o monge. / Fine feathers make fine birds.
O hábito não faz o monge. / Clothes do not make the man.
O homem propõe, Deus dispõe. / Man proposes, God disposes.
O homem que dorme com cachorro acorda com pulga. / The man who sleeps with dogs wakes up with fleas.
Olho por olho, dente por dente. / An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
O lobo muda de pele, mas não muda de ação. / The wolf changes his fur, but not his nature.
O mais difícil é o primeiro passo. / The first step is the hardest.
Onde há fumaça, há fogo. / Where there is smoke, there is fire.
O pensamento cala-se quando a vontade é firme. / The wish is father to the thought.
Os olhos são o espelho da alma. / The face is the mirror of the soul.
O tempo tudo revela. / Time reveals everything.
Paixão e fumaça não se encondem. / Love and smoke cannot be hidden.
Para bom mestre, ferramenta ruim não é desculpa. / A bad workman always blames his tools.
Passarinho que acorda cedo bebe água limpa. / The early bird catches the worm.
Pedra que muito rola não cria limo. / A rolling stone gathers no moss.
Pode-se levar o cavalo à fonte, mas não se pode obrigá-lo a beber. / You may lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink.
Quando o gato sai, o rato faz a festa. / When the cat is away, the mice will play.
Quando uma porta se fecha, uma janela se abre. / Where one door shuts another opens.
Quando um não quer dois não brigam. / It takes two to make a quarrel.
Quanto mais alto o coqueiro, maior é o tombo. / The bigger they come, the harder they fall.
Quem espera sempre alcança. / Everything comes to him who waits.
Quem ri por último ri melhor. / He laughs best who laughs last.
Quem tem boca vai a Roma. / You can go to Rome by many roads.
Quem vê cara, não vê coração. / Beauty is only skin deep.
Querer é poder. / Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
Ri-se o roto do rasgado. / The pot calls the kettle black.
Roma não se fez num dia. / Rome was not built in a day.
Roupa suja se lava em casa. / Wash your dirty linen at home.
Sempre é tempo para voltar atrás. / It’s never too late to mend.
Se você não pode vencê-los, junte-se a eles. / If you can’t beat them, join them.
Só a experiência comprova. / The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
Todos os caminhos levam a Roma. / All roads lead to Rome.
Tudo está bem quando acaba bem. / All’s well that ends well.
Tudo o que é bom dura pouco. / All good things come to an end.
Uma andorinha só não faz verão. / One swallow does not make a summer.
Uma chave de ouro abre qualquer porta. / A key of gold opens any door.
Uma desgraça nunca vem só. / It never rains but it pours.
Uma mão lava a outra. / Scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.
Uma vez alcoólatra, sempre alcoólatra. / Once a drunkard always a drunkard.
Um é pouco, dois é bom, três é demais. / Three is a crowd.
Um erro não justifica o outro. / Two wrongs don’t make a right.
Um homem casado é um burro amansado. / A married man is a tamed ass.
Vão-se os anéis, ficam os dedos. / Better lose the saddle than the horse.
Vem fácil, vai fácil. / Easy come, easy go.
Vender a alma ao diabo. / To sell one’s soul to the devil.
Você deve dançar conforme a música. / You have to dance to the music.

Proverbs and popular sayings
(and the equivalents in Portuguese)

A bad workman always blames his tools. / Para bom mestre, ferramenta ruim não é desculpa.
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. / É melhor um pássaro na mão do que dois voando.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder. / Longe dos olhos, perto do coração.
A creaking gate hangs long. / Mulher doente, mulher para sempre.
Actions speak louder than words. / As ações valem mais do que as palavras.
A friend in need is a friend indeed. / É nas horas difíceis que se conhecem os amigos.
After a storm comes a calm. / Depois da tempestade vem a bonança.
After battles come rewards. / Depois da luta vem a recompensa.
A key of gold opens any door. / Uma chave de ouro abre qualquer porta.
A little is better than none. / É melhor pouco do que nada.
A married man is a tamed ass. / Um homem casado é um burro amansado.
A rolling stone gathers no moss. / Pedra que muito rola não cria limo.
A stitch in time saves nine. / É melhor prevenir do que remediar.
A word to the wise is sufficient. / Ao bom entendedor meia palavra basta.
All good things come to an end. / Tudo o que é bom dura pouco.
All is fish that comes to the net. / Caiu na rede é peixe.
All roads lead to Rome. / Todos os caminhos levam a Roma.
All’s well that ends well. / Tudo está bem quando acaba bem.
All that glitters is not gold. / Nem tudo que reluz é ouro.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. / Nem só de pão vive o homem.
Among the blind the one-eyed man is king. / Em terra de cego quem tem um olho é rei.
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. / Olho por olho, dente por dente.
As you make your bed so you must lie in it. / Cria fama e deita na cama.
At night all cats are grey. / À noite todos os gatos são pardos.
Barking dogs seldom bite. / Cão que ladra não morde.
Beauty is only skin deep. / Quem vê cara, não vê coração.
Better a living dog than a dead lion. / É melhor um covarde vivo do que um herói morto.
Better be poor than ignorant. / É melhor ser pobre que ignorante.
Better late than never. / Antes tarde do que nunca.
Better lose the saddle than the horse. / Vão-se os anéis, ficam os dedos.
Birds of a feather flock together. / Diz-me com quem andas e eu te direi quem és.
Clothes do not make the man. / O hábito não faz o monge.
Charity begins at home. / A caridade começa em casa.
Cross the stream where it is shallowest. / Atravesse o rio onde é mais raso.
Cut your coat according to your cloth. / Não dê o passo maior do que a perna.
Do as you would be done by. / Não faças aos outros o que não queres que te façam.
Dog does not eat dog. / Lobo não come lobo.
Do not celebrate a triumph before victory. / Não celebre o triunfo antes da vitória.
Do not count your chickens before they are hatched. / Não conte com o ovo no fiofó da galinha.
Don’t cross a bridge until you come to it. / Não sofra por antecipação.
Don’t have too many irons in the fire. / Cada coisa a seu tempo.
Don’t judge a book by its cover. / Não julgue um livro pela capa.
Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. / A cavalo dado não se olham os dentes.
Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill. / Não faça tempestade em copo d’água.
Don’t make an elephant out of a fly. / Não faça um cavalo de batalha de algo tão simples.
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. / Não ponha todos os seus ovos num único cesto.
Don’t put the cart before the horse. / Não ponha o carro na frente dos bois.
Easy come, easy go. / Vem fácil, vai fácil.
Every beginning is difficult. / O começo é sempre difícil.
Everybody for himself, and God for all. / Cada um por si e Deus por todos.
Everybody pulls for his own side. / Cada um puxa a brasa para a sua sardinha.
Everybody’s friend, nobody’s friend. / Amigo de todos, amigo de ninguém.
Every man knows where his shoe pinches. / Cada um sabe onde lhe aperta o sapato.
Everyone has his own burden to bear. / Cada um tem seu fardo para carregar.
Everything comes to him who waits. / Quem espera sempre alcança.
Experience is the best teacher. / A vida é a melhor escola.
Fine feathers make fine birds. / O hábito faz o monge.
First appearances are often deceiving. / As aparências enganam.
Flies do not enter a shut mouth. / Em boca fechada não entra mosquito.
Forbidden fruits are sweetest. / A fruta proibida é mais gostosa.
Give him an inch and he’ll take an ell. / Dê-lhe a mão e ele tomará o braço.
God gives candies to those who can not chew them. / Deus dá nozes a quem não tem dentes.
God helps the man who gets up early. / Deus ajuda a quem cedo madruga.
Half a loaf is better than none. / Antes pouco do que nada.
Haste and quality do not go together. / A pressa é inimiga da perfeição.
He laughs best who laughs last. / Quem ri por último ri melhor.
Hell is full of good will. / De boas intenções o inferno está cheio.
He makes a storm in a tea cup. / Ele faz tempestade em copo d’água.
He was born with a silver spoon in the mouth. / Ele nasceu em berço de ouro.
Honesty is the best policy. / A honestidade é a melhor política.
If you can’t beat them, join them. / Se você não pode vencê-los, junte-se a eles.
I tell the story as it was told me. / Eu vendo o peixe como comprei.
It is easy to be wise after the event. / Depois da casa arrombada coloca-se a tranca.
It is no use crying over spilt milk. / Não adianta chorar sobre o leite derramado.
It never rains but it pours. / Uma desgraça nunca vem só.
It’s useless to lock the stable door after the horse is stolen. / Não adianta pôr tranca depois que a casa foi roubada.
It’s never too late to mend. / Sempre é tempo para voltar atrás.
It takes two to make a quarrel. / Quando um não quer dois não brigam.
Let sleeping dogs lie. / Não cutuque a onça com vara curta.
Lies have short legs. / A mentira tem perna curta.
Little by little the bird builds its nest. / De grão em grão, a galinha enche o papo.
Love and smoke cannot be hidden. / Paixão e fumaça não se escondem.
Love is blind. / O amor é cego.
Man proposes, God disposes. / O homem propõe, Deus dispõe.
Many hands make light work. / A união faz a força.
Misfortunes never come singly. / Desgraça pouca é bobagem.
Money makes the mare to go. / Com dinheiro tudo se arranja.
More haste, less speed. / Devagar se vai ao longe.
Necessity is the mother of invention. / A necessidade faz o frade.
Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today. / Nunca deixe para amanhã o que você pode fazer hoje.
No news is good news. / Ausência de notícias é boa notícia.
No pain, no gain. / Não há recompensa sem esforço.
Nothing travels as fast as a scandal. / Nada se espalha mais rápido do que um escândalo.
Once a drunkard, always a drunkard. / Uma vez alcoólatra, sempre alcoólatra.
One does not play with fire. / Não se brinca com fogo.
One should eat to live, not live to eat. / Deve-se comer para viver, não viver para comer.
One swallow does not make a summer. / Uma andorinha só não faz verão.
Out of sight, out of mind. / Longe dos olhos, longe do coração.
Paddle your own canoe. / Cada um por si e Deus por todos.
Practice makes perfect. / A prática faz a perfeição.
Prevention is better than cure. / É melhor prevenir do que remediar.
Rome was not built in a day. / Roma não se fez num dia.
Scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. / Uma mão lava a outra.
Spare the rod and spoil the child. / Criança mimada, criança estragada.
Speech is silver, but silence is gold. / A palavra é prata, o silêncio é ouro.
Still waters run deep. / Águas silenciosas são mais perigosas.
Strike while the iron is hot. / Malhe o ferro enquanto está quente.
The bigger they come, the harder they fall. / Quanto mais alto o coqueiro, maior é o tombo.
The devil is not as bad as he is painted. / O diabo não é tão feio como o pintam.
The early bird catches the worm. / Passarinho que acorda cedo bebe água limpa.
The face is the mirror of the soul. / Os olhos são o espelho da alma.
The first step is the hardest. / O mais difícil é o primeiro passo.
The last drop makes the cup run over. / A última gota faz transbordar a xícara.
The man who sleeps with dogs wakes up with fleas. / O homem que dorme com cachorro acorda com pulga.
The mind is always deceived by the heart. / A razão é sempre enganada pela emoção.
The opportunity makes the thief. / A ocasião faz o ladrão.
The pot calls the kettle black. / Ri-se o roto do rasgado.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. / Só a experiência comprova.
Three is a crowd. / Um é pouco, dois é bom, três é demais.
There is no ill that lasts forever, nor any boon that never ends. / Não há mal que sempre dure, nem bem que nunca se acabe.
There is no rose without its thorns. / Não há rosas sem espinhos.
There is no smoke without fire. / Não há fumaça sem fogo.
There is nothing new under the sun. / Nada de novo sob o sol.
There is no victory without suffering. / Não há glória sem sacrifício.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. / De boas intenções o inferno está cheio.
The walls have ears. / As paredes têm ouvidos.
The wish is father to the thought. / O pensamento cala-se quando a vontade é firme.
The wolf changes his fur, but not his nature. / O lobo muda de pele, mas não muda de ação.
Time and tide wait for no man. / É preciso aproveitar a maré.
Time reveals everything. / O tempo tudo revela.
To each his own. / Cada macaco no seu galho.
To err is human, to forgive divine. / Errar é humano, perdoar é divino.
Too many cooks spoil the broth. / Cozinheiro demais entorna o caldo.
Too much hurry spoils everything. / A pressa é inimiga da perfeição.
To sell one’s soul to the devil. / Vender a alma ao diabo.
To the scalded dog cold water seems hot. / Gato escaldado tem medo de água fria.
Two heads are better than one. / Duas cabeças pensam melhor do que uma.
Two wrongs don’t make a right. / Um erro não justifica o outro.
Union is strenght. / A união faz a força.
Wash your dirty linen at home. / Roupa suja se lava em casa.
When the cat is away, the mice will play. / Quando o gato sai, o rato faz a festa.
Where one door shuts another opens. / Quando uma porta se fecha, uma janela se abre.
Where there is smoke there is fire. / Onde há fumaça há fogo.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way. / Querer é poder.
While there is life, there is hope. / Enquanto há vida, há esperança.
You are never too old to learn. / Nunca é tarde para aprender.
You can go to Rome by many roads. / Quem tem boca vai a Roma.
You can not get blood out of a turnip. / Não se tira leite das pedras.
You can’t have your cake and eat it. / Dois proveitos não cabem num sofá.
You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. / Não se faz omelete sem quebrar ovos.
You can’t run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. / Não se pode assobiar e chupar cana.
You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. / Cavalo velho não pega andadura.
You have to dance to the music. / Você deve dançar conforme a música.
You may lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink. / Pode-se levar o cavalo à fonte, mas não se pode obrigá-lo a beber.

Verbos irregulares em inglês /
Irregular Verbs in English

* Forma usada apenas em determinadas acepções. / Form only used in certain senses.

Simple Form Past Past Participle
abide abided, abode* abided,abode*
arise arose arisen
awake awoke, awaked awaked, awoken
backbite backbitten backbitten
be was, were been
bear bore borne
beat beat beaten
become became become
befall befell befallen
beget begot begotten
begin began begun
behold beheld beheld
bend bent bent
bereave bereaved, bereft bereaved, bereft
beseech besought, beseeched besought, beseeched
beset beset beset
bespeak bespoke bespoken
bestride bestrode bestridden
bet bet, betted bet, betted
bid bade, bid* bidden, bid*
bind bound bound
bite bit bitten
bleed bled bled
blend blended, blent blended, blent
bless blessed blessed, blest
blow blew blown, blowed*
break broke broken
breed bred bred
bring brought brought
broadcast broadcast broadcast
build built built
burn burnt, burned burnt, burned
burst burst burst
bust bust, busted bust, busted
buy bought bought
cast cast cast
catch caught caught
chide chided, chid chided, chid, chidden
choose chose chosen
cleave clove, cleft cloven, cleft
cling clung clung
clothe clothed, clad clothed, clad
come came come
cost cost cost
countersink countersank countersunk
creep crept crept
crow crowed, crew crowed
cut cut cut
deal dealt dealt
dig dug dug
dive dived, dove dived
do did done
draw drew drawn
dream dreamt, dreamed dreamt, dreamed
drink drank drunk
drive drove driven
dwell dwelt, dwelled dwelt, dwelled
eat ate eaten
fall fell fallen
feed fed fed
feel felt felt
fight fought fought
find found found
flee fled fled
fling flung flung
floodlight floodlighted, floodlit floodlighted, floodlit
fly flew flown
forbear forbore forborne
forbid forbade, forbad forbidden
forecast forecast, forecasted forecast, forecasted
foresee foresaw foreseen
foretell foretold foretold
forget forgot forgotten
forgive forgave forgiven
forsake forsook forsaken
forswear forswore forsworn
freeze froze frozen
gainsay gainsaid gainsaid
get got got, gotten
gild gilded, gilt gilded, gilt
gird girded, girt girded, girt
give gave given
go went gone
grind ground ground
grow grew grown
hamstring hamstringed,
hamstrung hamstringed,
hamstrung
hang hung, hanged* hung, hanged*
have had had
hear heard heard
heave heaved, hove heaved, hove
hew hewed hewed, hewn
hide hid hidden, hid
hit hit hit
hold held held
hurt hurt hurt
inlay inlaid inlaid
input input, inputted input, inputted
inset inset inset
interweave interwove interwoven
keep kept kept
ken kenned, kent kenned
kneel knelt, kneeled knelt, kneeled
knit knitted, knit* knitted, knit*
know knew known
lay laid laid
lead led led
lean leant, leaned leant, leaned
leap leapt, leaped leapt, leaped
learn learnt, learned learnt, learned
leave left left
lend lent lent
let let let
lie lay lain
light lit, lighted lit, lighted
lose lost lost
make made made
mean meant meant
meet met met
melt melted melted, molten
miscast miscast miscast
misdeal misdealt misdealt
mislay mislaid mislaid
mislead misled misled
misread misread misread
misspell misspelt, misspelled misspelt, misspelled
misspend misspent misspent
mistake mistook mistaken
misunder- misunder- misunder-
stand stood stood
mow mowed mown, mowed
outbid outbid outbid
outdo outdid outdone
outfight outfought outfought
outgrow outgrew outgrown
output output, outputted output, outputted
outrun outran outrun
outsell outsold outsold
outshine outshone outshone
overbid overbid overbid
overcome overcame overcome
overdo overdid overdone
overdraw overdrew overdrawn
overeat overate overeaten
overhang overhung overhung
overhear overheard overheard
overlay overlaid overlaid
overpay overpaid overpaid
override overrode overridden
overrun overran overrun
oversee oversaw overseen
overshoot overshot overshot
oversleep overslept overslept
overtake overtook overtaken
overthrow overthrew overthrown
partake partook partaken
pay paid paid
plead pleaded, pled pleaded, pled
prepay prepaid prepaid
prove proved proved, proven
put put put
quit quitted, quit quitted, quit
read read read
rebind rebound rebound
rebuild rebuilt rebuilt
recast recast recast
redo redid redone
relay relaid relaid
remake remade remade
rend rent rent
repay repaid repaid
rerun reran rerun
resell resold resold
reset reset reset
retake retook retaken
retell retold retold
rewrite rewrote rewritten
rid rid, ridded rid
ride rode ridden
ring rang rung
rise rose risen
rive rived riven
run ran run
saw sawed sawn, sawed
say said said
see saw seen
seek sought sought
sell sold sold
send sent sent
set set set
sew sewed sewn, sewed
shake shook shaken
shave shaved shaved, shaven
shear sheared sheared, shorn
shed shed shed
shine shone shone
shit shitted, shat shitted, shat
shoe shod shod
shoot shot shot
show showed shown, showed
shrink shrank, shrunk shrunk, shrunken
shrive shrove, shrived shriven, shrived
shut shut shut
sing sang sung
sink sank sunk, sunken
sit sat sat
slay slew slain
sleep slept slept
slide slid slid
sling slung slung
slink slunk slunk
slit slit slit
smell smelt, smelled smelt, smelled
smite smote, smit smitten, smit
sow sowed sown, sowed
speak spoke spoken
speed sped, speeded sped, speeded
spell spelt, spelled spelt, spelled
spend spent spent
spill spilt, spilled spilt, spilled
spin spun, span spun
spit spat, spit spat, spit
split split split
spoil spoilt, spoiled spoilt, spoiled
spotlight spotlit, spotlighted* spotlit, spotlighted*
spread spread spread
spring sprang sprung
stand stood stood
stave staved, stove* staved, stove*
steal stole stolen
stick stuck stuck
sting stung stung
stink stank, stunk stunk
strew strewed strewn, strewed
stride strode stridden
strike struck struck
string strung strung
strive strove striven
sublet sublet sublet
swear swore sworn
sweep swept swept
swell swelled swollen, swelled
swim swam swum
swing swung swung
take took taken
teach taught taught
tear tore torn
tell told told
think thought thought
thrive thrived, throve thrived, thriven
throw threw thrown
thrust thrust thrust
tread trod trodden, trod
unbend unbent unbent
underbid underbid underbid
undercut undercut undercut
undergo underwent undergone
underlie underlay underlain
underpay underpaid underpaid
undersell undersold undersold
understand understood understood
undertake undertook undertaken
underwrite underwrote underwritten
undo undid undone
unfreeze unfroze unfrozen
unsay unsaid unsaid
unwind unwound unwound
uphold upheld upheld
upset upset upset
wake woke, waked woken, waked
waylay waylaid waylaid
wear wore worn
weave wove, weaved* woven, weaved*
wed wedded, wed wedded, wed
weep wept wept
wet wet, wetted wet, wetted
win won won
wind winded, wound* winded, wound*
withdraw withdrew withdrawn
withold withheld withheld
withstand withstood withstood
work worked, wrought* worked, wrought*
wring wrung wrung
write wrote written

Conjugação dos verbos auxiliares e regulares em português /
Conjugation of Auxiliary and Regular Verbs in Portuguese

Verbos auxiliares: ser, estar, ter e haver

SER
Infinitivo ser
Gerúndio sendo
Particípio sido

Indicativo
Presente
eu sou
tu és
ele é
nós somos
vós sois
eles são

Pretérito imperfeito
eu era
tu eras
ele era
nós éramos
vós éreis
eles eram

Pretérito perfeito
eu fui
tu foste
ele foi
nós fomos
vós fostes
eles foram

Pretérito mais-que-perfeito
eu fora
tu foras
ele fora
nós fôramos
vós fôreis
eles foram

Futuro do presente
eu serei
tu serás
ele será
nós seremos
vós sereis
eles serão

Futuro do pretérito
eu seria
tu serias
ele seria
nós seríamos
vós seríeis
eles seriam

Subjuntivo
Presente
eu seja
tu sejas
ele seja
nós sejamos
vós sejais
eles sejam

Pretérito imperfeito
eu fosse
tu fosses
ele fosse
nós fôssemos
vós fôsseis
eles fossem

Futuro
eu for
tu fores
ele for
nós formos
vós fordes
eles forem

Imperativo
Afirmativo
sê tu
seja você
sejamos nós
sede vós
sejam vocês

Negativo
não sejas tu
não seja você
não sejamos nós
não sejais vós
não sejam vocês

ESTAR
Infinitivo estar
Gerúndio estando
Particípio estado

Indicativo
Presente
eu estou
tu estás
ele está
nós estamos
vós estais
eles estão

Pretérito imperfeito
eu estava
tu estavas
ele estava
nós estávamos
vós estáveis
eles estavam

Pretérito perfeito
eu estive
tu estiveste
ele esteve
nós estivemos
vós estivestes
eles estiveram

Pretérito mais-que-perfeito
eu estivera
tu estiveras
ele estivera
nós estivéramos
vós estivéreis
eles estiveram

Futuro do presente
eu estarei
tu estarás
ele estará
nós estaremos
vós estareis
eles estarão

Futuro do pretérito
eu estaria
tu estarias
ele estaria
nós estaríamos
vós estaríeis
eles estariam

Subjuntivo
Presente
eu esteja
tu estejas
ele esteja
nós estejamos
vós estejais
eles estejam

Pretérito imperfeito
eu estivesse
tu estivesses
ele estivesse
nós estivéssemos
vós estivésseis
eles estivessem
Futuro
eu estiver
tu estiveres
ele estiver
nós estivermos
vós estiverdes
eles estiverem

Imperativo
Afirmativo
está tu
esteja você
estejamos nós
estai vós
estejam vocês

Negativo
não estejas tu
não esteja você
não estejamos nós
não estejais vós
não estejam vocês

TER
Infinitivo ter
Gerúndio tendo
Particípio tido

Indicativo
Presente
eu tenho
tu tens
ele tem
nós temos
vós tendes
eles têm

Pretérito imperfeito
eu tinha
tu tinhas
ele tinha
nós tínhamos
vós tínheis
eles tinham

Pretérito perfeito
eu tive
tu tiveste
ele teve
nós tivemos
vós tivestes
eles tiveram

Pretérito mais-que-perfeito
eu tivera
tu tiveras
ele tivera
nós tivéramos
vós tivéreis
eles tiveram

Futuro do presente
eu terei
tu terás
ele terá
nós teremos
vós tereis
eles terão

Futuro do pretérito
eu teria
tu terias
ele teria
nós teríamos
vós teríeis
eles teriam

Subjuntivo
Presente
eu tenha
tu tenhas
ele tenha
nós tenhamos
vós tenhais
eles tenham

Pretérito imperfeito
eu tivesse
tu tivesses
ele tivesse
nós tivéssemos
vós tivésseis
eles tivessem

Futuro
eu tiver
tu tiveres
ele tiver
nós tivermos
vós tiverdes
eles tiverem

Imperativo
Afirmativo
tem tu
tenha você
tenhamos nós
tende vós
tenham vocês

Negativo
não tenhas tu
não tenha você
não tenhamos nós
não tenhais vós
não tenham vocês

HAVER
Infinitivo haver
Gerúndio havendo
Particípio havido

Indicativo
Presente
eu hei
tu hás
ele há
nós havemos
vós haveis
eles hão

Pretérito imperfeito
eu havia
tu havias
ele havia
nós havíamos
vós havíeis
eles haviam

Pretérito perfeito
eu houve
tu houveste
ele houve
nós houvemos
vós houvestes
eles houveram

Pretérito mais-que-perfeito
eu houvera
tu houveras
ele houvera
nós houvéramos
vós houvéreis
eles houveram

Futuro do presente
eu haverei
tu haverás
ele haverá
nós haveremos
vós havereis
eles haverão

Futuro do pretérito
eu haveria
tu haverias
ele haveria
nós haveríamos
vós haveríeis
eles haveriam

Subjuntivo
Presente
eu haja
tu hajas
ele haja
nós hajamos
vós hajais
eles hajam

Pretérito imperfeito
eu houvesse
tu houvesses
ele houvesse
nós houvéssemos
vós houvésseis
eles houvessem

Futuro
eu houver
tu houveres
ele houver
nós houvermos
vós houverdes
eles houverem

Imperativo
Afirmativo
há tu
haja você
hajamos nós
havei vós
hajam vocês

Negativo
não hajas tu
não haja você
não hajamos nós
não hajais vós
não hajam vocês

Modelos de verbos regulares: cantar, vender e partir

CANTAR (1.a conjugação)
Infinitivo cantar
Gerúndio cantando
Particípio cantado

Indicativo
Presente
eu canto
tu cantas
ele canta
nós cantamos
vós cantais
eles cantam

Pretérito imperfeito
eu cantava
tu cantavas
ele cantava
nós cantávamos
vós cantáveis
eles cantavam

Pretérito perfeito
eu cantei
tu cantaste
ele cantou
nós cantamos
vós cantastes
eles cantaram

Pretérito mais-que-perfeito
eu cantara
tu cantaras
ele cantara
nós cantáramos
vós cantáreis
eles cantaram

Futuro do presente
eu cantarei
tu cantarás
ele cantará
nós cantaremos
vós cantareis
eles cantarão

Futuro do pretérito
eu cantaria
tu cantarias
ele cantaria
nós cantaríamos
vós cantaríeis
eles cantariam

Subjuntivo
Presente
eu cante
tu cantes
ele cante
nós cantemos
vós canteis
eles cantem

Pretérito imperfeito
eu cantasse
tu cantasses
ele cantasse
nós cantássemos
vós cantásseis
eles cantassem

Futuro
eu cantar
tu cantares
ele cantar
nós cantarmos
vós cantardes
eles cantarem

Imperativo
Afirmativo
canta tu
cante você
cantemos nós
cantai vós
cantem vocês

Negativo
não cantes tu
não cante você
não cantemos nós
não canteis vós
não cantem vocês

VENDER (2.ª conjugação)
Infinitivo vender
Gerúndio vendendo
Particípio vendido

Indicativo
Presente
eu vendo
tu vendes
ele vende
nós vendemos
vós vendeis
eles vendem

Pretérito imperfeito
eu vendia
tu vendias
ele vendia
nós vendíamos
vós vendíeis
eles vendiam

Pretérito perfeito
eu vendi
tu vendeste
ele vendeu
nós vendemos
vós vendestes
eles venderam

Pretérito mais-que-perfeito
eu vendera
tu venderas
ele vendera
nós vendêramos
vós vendêreis
eles venderam

Futuro do presente
eu venderei
tu venderás
ele venderá
nós venderemos
vós vendereis
eles venderão

Futuro do pretérito
eu venderia
tu venderias
ele venderia
nós venderíamos
vós venderíeis
eles venderiam

Subjuntivo
Presente
eu venda
tu vendas
ele venda
nós vendamos
vós vendais
eles vendam

Pretérito imperfeito
eu vendesse
tu vendesses
ele vendesse
nós vendêssemos
vós vendêsseis
eles vendessem

Futuro
eu vender
tu venderes
ele vender
nós vendermos
vós venderdes
eles venderem

Imperativo
Afirmativo
vende tu
venda você
vendamos nós
vendei vós
vendam vocês

Negativo
não vendas tu
não venda você
não vendamos nós
não vendais vós
não vendam vocês

PARTIR (3.a conjugação)
Infinitivo partir
Gerúndio partindo
Particípio partido

Indicativo
Presente
eu parto
tu partes
ele parte
nós partimos
vós partis
eles partem

Pretérito imperfeito
eu partia
tu partias
ele partia
nós partíamos
vós partíeis
eles partiam

Pretérito perfeito
eu parti
tu partiste
ele partiu
nós partimos
vós partistes
eles partiram

Pretérito mais-que-perfeito
eu partira
tu partiras
ele partira
nós partíramos
vós partíreis
eles partiram

Futuro do presente
eu partirei
tu partirás
ele partirá
nós partiremos
vós partireis
eles partirão

Futuro do pretérito
eu partiria
tu partirias
ele partiria
nós partiríamos
vós partiríeis
eles partiriam

Subjuntivo
Presente
eu parta
tu partas
ele parta
nós partamos
vós partais
eles partam

Pretérito imperfeito
eu partisse
tu partisses
ele partisse
nós partíssemos
vós partísseis
eles partissem

Futuro
eu partir
tu partires
ele partir
nós partirmos
vós partirdes
eles partirem

Imperativo
Afirmativo
parte tu
parta você
partamos nós
parti vós
partam vocês

Negativo
não partas tu
não parta você
não partamos nós
não partais vós
não partam vocês

Relação dos verbos irregulares, defectivos ou difíceis em português / List of Irregular, Defective and Difficult Verbs in Portuguese

O símbolo > significa conjugar como

A
abastecer > tecer.
abençoar > soar.
abolir Indicativo: presente (não existe a 1.a pessoa do singular) aboles, abole, abolimos, abolis, abolem. Imperativo: abole; aboli. Subjuntivo: presente não existe.
aborrecer > tecer.
abranger Indicativo: presente abranjo, abranges, abrange,
abrangemos, abrangeis, abrangem. Imperativo: abrange, abranja, abranjamos, abrangei, abranjam. Subjuntivo: presente abranja, abranjas etc.
acentuar > suar.
aconchegar > ligar.
acrescer > tecer.
acudir > subir.
adelgaçar > laçar.
adequar Indicativo: presente adequamos, adequais. Pretérito perfeito adeqüei, adequaste etc. Imperativo: adequai. Subjuntivo: presente não existe.
aderir > ferir.
adoçar > laçar.
adoecer > tecer.
adormecer > tecer.
aduzir > reduzir.
advir > vir.
advogar > ligar.
afagar > ligar.
afeiçoar > soar.
afligir > dirigir.
afogar > ligar.
agir > dirigir.
agradecer > tecer.
agredir > prevenir.
alargar > ligar.
alcançar > laçar.
alegar > ligar.
almoçar > laçar.
alongar > ligar.
alugar > ligar.
amaldiçoar > soar.
amargar > ligar.
ameaçar > laçar.
amolecer > tecer.
amontoar > soar.
amplificar > ficar.
ansiar > odiar.
antepor > pôr.
antever > ver.
aparecer > tecer.
apegar > ligar.
aperfeiçoar > soar.
aplicar > ficar.
apodrecer > tecer.
aquecer > tecer.
arcar > ficar.
arrancar > ficar.
assoar > soar.
atacar > ficar.
atear > recear.
atenuar > suar.
atingir > dirigir.
atordoar > soar.
atrair Indicativo: presente atraio, atrais, atrai, atraímos, atraís, atraem. Pretérito imperfeito atraía, atraías etc. Pretérito perfeito atraí, atraíste, atraiu, atraímos, atraístes, atraíram. Pretérito mais-que-perfeito atraíra, atraíras etc. Imperativo: atrai, atraia, atraiamos, atraí, atraiam. Subjuntivo: presente atraia, atraias etc. Pretérito imperfeito atraísse, atraísses etc. Futuro atrair, atraíres, atrair, atrairmos, atrairdes, atraírem.
atribuir > possuir.
atuar > suar.
autenticar > ficar.
avançar > laçar.

B
balançar > laçar.
balear > recear.
barbear > recear.
bendizer > dizer.
bloquear > recear.
bobear > recear.
bombardear > recear.
brecar > ficar.
brigar > ligar.
brincar > ficar.
bronzear > recear.
buscar > ficar.

C
caber Indicativo: presente caibo, cabes, cabe, cabemos, cabeis, cabem. Pretérito perfeito coube, coubeste, coube, coubemos, coubestes, couberam. Pretérito mais-que-perfeito coubera, couberas etc. Imperativo: não existe. Subjuntivo: presente caiba, caibas etc. Pretérito imperfeito coubesse, coubesses etc. Futuro couber, couberes etc.
caçar > laçar.
cair > atrair.
carecer > tecer.
carregar > ligar.
castigar > ligar.
cear > recear.
certificar > ficar.
chatear > recear.
chegar > ligar.
classificar > ficar.
coagir > dirigir.
cobrir > dormir.
coçar > laçar.
comparecer > tecer.
competir > ferir.
compor > pôr.
comunicar > ficar.
condizer > dizer.
conduzir > reduzir.
conferir > ferir.
conhecer > tecer.
conjugar > ligar.
conseguir > seguir.
constituir > possuir.
construir Indicativo: presente construo, constróis, constrói, construímos, construís, constroem. Pretérito imperfeito construía, construías etc. Pretérito perfeito construí, construíste etc. Pretérito mais-que-perfeito construíra, construíras etc. Imperativo: constrói, construa, construamos, construí, construam. Subjuntivo: presente construa, construas etc. Pretérito imperfeito construísse, construísses etc. Futuro construir, construíres, construir, construirmos, construirdes, construírem.
consumir > subir.
continuar > suar.
contradizer > dizer.
contrapor > pôr.
contribuir > possuir.
convir > vir.
corrigir > dirigir.
crescer > tecer.
crer Indicativo: presente creio, crês, crê, cremos, credes, crêem. Imperativo: crê, creia, creiamos, crede, creiam. Subjuntivo: presente creia, creias etc.

D
dar Indicativo: presente dou, dás,
dá, damos, dais, dão. Pretérito imperfeito dava, davas etc. Pretérito perfeito dei, deste, deu, demos, destes, deram. Pretérito mais-que-perfeito dera, deras, dera etc. Futuro darei, darás etc. Imperativo: dá, dê, demos, dai, dêem. Subjuntivo: presente dê, dês, dê, demos, deis, dêem.
Pretérito imperfeito desse, desses etc. Futuro der, deres etc.
decair > atrair.
decompor > pôr.
deduzir > reduzir.
deferir > ferir.
delinqüir > abolir.
demolir > abolir.
depor > pôr.
descobrir > cobrir.
desaparecer > tecer.
desconhecer > tecer.
descrer > crer.
desdizer > dizer.
desembaraçar > laçar.
desencadear > recear.
desfalecer > tecer.
desfazer > fazer.
desimpedir > pedir.
desligar > ligar.
desmentir > ferir.
despedir > pedir.
despentear > recear.
despir > ferir.
desprevenir > prevenir.
destacar > ficar.
diferir > ferir.
digerir > ferir.
diluir > possuir.
dirigir Indicativo: presente dirijo, diriges, dirige, dirigimos, dirigis, dirigem. Imperativo: dirige, dirija, dirijamos, dirigi, dirijam. Subjuntivo: presente dirija, dirijas etc.
disfarçar > laçar.
dispor > pôr.
distinguir Indicativo: presente distingo, distingues etc. Imperativo: distingue, distinga, distingamos, distingui, distingam. Subjuntivo: presente distinga, distingas etc.
distrair > atrair.
distribuir > possuir.
divertir > ferir.
dizer Indicativo: presente digo, dizes, diz, dizemos, dizei, dizem. Pretérito perfeito disse, disseste, disse, dissemos, dissestes, disseram.
Pretérito mais-que-perfeito dissera, disseras etc. Futuro direi, dirás, dirá, diremos, direis, dirão. Futuro do pretérito diria, dirias etc. Imperativo: diz, diga, digamos, dizei, digam. Subjuntivo: presente diga, digas etc. Pretérito imperfeito dissesse, dissesses etc. Futuro disser, disseres etc.
dormir Indicativo: presente durmo, dormes, dorme, dormimos, dormis, dormem. Imperativo: dorme, durma, durmamos, dormi, durmam. Subjuntivo: presente durma, durmas etc.

E
efetuar > suar.
empregar > ligar.
encadear > recear.
encobrir > dormir.
enfraquecer > tecer.
engolir > dormir.
enjoar > soar.
enriquecer > tecer.
ensaboar > soar.
entrelaçar > laçar.
entreouvir > ouvir.
entrever > ver.
envelhecer > tecer.
equivaler > valer.
erguer Indicativo: presente ergo, ergues, ergue, erguemos, ergueis, erguem. Imperativo: ergue, erga, ergamos, erguei, ergam. Subjuntivo: presente erga, ergas etc.
escassear > recear.
esclarecer > tecer.
escorregar > ligar.
esquecer > tecer.
estar Veja verbo conjugado.
estragar > ligar.
estremecer > tecer.
excluir > possuir.
exercer > tecer.
exigir > dirigir.
expedir > pedir.
explodir > abolir.
expor > pôr.
extrair > atrair.

F
falecer > tecer.
fatigar > ligar.
favorecer > tecer.
fazer Indicativo: presente faço, fazes, faz, fazemos, fazeis, fazem. Pretérito perfeito fiz, fizeste, fez, fizemos, fizestes, fizeram. Pretérito mais-que-perfeito fizera, fizeras etc. Futuro farei, farás etc. Futuro do pretérito faria, farias etc. Imperativo: faz, faça, façamos, fazei, façam. Subjuntivo: presente faça, faças etc. Pretérito imperfeito fizesse, fizesses etc. Futuro fizer, fizeres etc.
ferir Indicativo: presente firo, feres, fere, ferimos, feris, ferem. Imperativo: fere, fira, firamos, feri, firam. Subjuntivo: presente fira, firas etc.
ficar Indicativo: presente fico, ficas, fica, ficamos, ficais, ficam. Pretérito perfeito fiquei, ficaste etc. Imperativo: fica, fique, fiquemos, ficai, fiquem. Subjuntivo: presente fique, fiques etc.
fingir > dirigir.
fluir > possuir.
flutuar > suar.
folhear > recear.
frear > recear.
fugir Indicativo: presente fujo, foges, foge, fugimos, fugis, fogem. Imperativo: foge, fuja, fujamos, fugi, fujam. Subjuntivo: presente fuja, fujas etc.

G
golpear > recear.
graduar > suar.
grampear > recear.

H
habituar > suar.
haver Veja verbo conjugado.
hipotecar > ficar.
homenagear > recear.

I
impedir > pedir.
impelir > ferir.
impor > pôr.
incendiar > odiar.
incluir > possuir.
indispor > pôr.
induzir > reduzir.
ingerir > ferir.
inserir > ferir.
insinuar > suar.
instituir > possuir.
instruir > possuir.
interferir > ferir.
interpor > pôr.
interrogar > ligar.
intervir > vir.
introduzir > reduzir.
investir > ferir.
ir Indicativo: presente vou, vais, vai, vamos, ides, vão. Pretérito imperfeito ia, ias, ia, íamos, íeis, iam. Pretérito perfeito fui, foste, foi, fomos, fostes, foram. Pretérito mais-que-perfeito fora, foras etc. Imperativo: vai, vá, vamos, ide, vão. Subjuntivo: presente vá, vás etc. Pretérito imperfeito fosse, fosses etc. Futuro for, fores etc.

J
jejuar > suar.
julgar > ligar.
justapor > pôr.

L
largar > ligar.
ler > crer.
ligar Pretérito perfeito liguei, ligaste, ligou, ligamos, ligastes, ligaram. Imperativo: liga, ligue, liguemos, ligai, liguem. Subjuntivo: presente ligue, ligues etc.
lotear > recear.

M
magoar > soar.
maldizer > dizer.
manter > ter.
medir > pedir.
mentir > ferir.
merecer > tecer.
moer Indicativo: presente môo, móis, mói, moemos, moeis, moem. Pretérito imperfeito moía, moías etc. Pretérito perfeito moí, moeste, moeu etc. Imperativo: mói, moa, moamos, moei, moam. Subjuntivo: presente moa, moas etc.

N
nascer > tecer.
nortear > recear.

O
obedecer > tecer.
obrigar > ligar.
obter > ter.
odiar Indicativo: presente odeio, odeias, odeia, odiamos, odiais, odeiam. Imperativo: odeia, odeie, odiemos, odiai, odeiem. Subjuntivo: presente odeie, odeies, odeie, odiemos, odieis, odeiem.
oferecer > tecer.
opor > pôr.
ouvir Indicativo: presente ouço, ouves, ouve, ouvimos, ouvis, ouvem. Imperativo: ouve, ouça, ouçamos, ouvi, ouçam. Subjuntivo: presente ouça, ouças etc.

P
padecer > tecer.
parecer > tecer.
passear > recear.
pedir Indicativo: presente peço, pedes, pede, pedimos, pedis, pedem. Imperativo: pede, peça, peçamos, pedi, peçam. Subjuntivo: presente peça, peças etc.
pegar > ligar.
pentear > recear.
perder Indicativo: presente perco, perdes, perde, perdemos, perdeis, perdem. Imperativo: perde, perca, percamos, perdei, percam. Subjuntivo: presente perca, percas etc.
permanecer > tecer.
perseguir > seguir.
pertencer > tecer.
poder Indicativo: presente posso, podes, pode, podemos, podeis, podem. Pretérito perfeito pude, pudeste, pôde, pudemos, pudestes, puderam. Pretérito mais-que-perfeito pudera, puderas etc. Imperativo: não existe. Subjuntivo: presente possa, possas etc. Pretérito imperfeito pudesse, pudesses etc. Futuro
puder, puderes etc.
poluir > possuir.
pôr Indicativo: presente ponho, pões, põe, pomos, pondes, põem. Pretérito imperfeito punha, punhas etc. Pretérito perfeito pus, puseste, pôs, pusemos, pusestes, puseram. Pretérito mais-que-perfeito pusera, puseras etc. Imperativo: põe, ponha, ponhamos, ponde, ponham. Subjuntivo: presente ponha, ponhas etc. Pretérito imperfeito pusesse, pusesses etc. Futuro puser, puseres etc.
possuir Indicativo: presente possuo, possuis, possui, possuímos, possuís, possuem. Pretérito imperfeito possuía, possuías etc. Pretérito perfeito possuí, possuíste, possuiu, possuímos, possuístes, possuíram. Pretérito mais-que-perfeito possuíra, possuíras etc. Imperativo: possui, possua, possuamos, possuí, possuam. Subjuntivo: presente possua, possuas etc. Pretérito imperfeito possuísse, possuísses etc. Futuro possuir, possuíres, possuir etc.
precaver Indicativo: presente precavemos, precaveis. Imperativo: precavei. Subjuntivo: presente não existe.
predispor > pôr.
predizer > dizer.
preferir > ferir.
pressentir > ferir.
pressupor > pôr.
prevenir Indicativo: presente previno, prevines, previne, prevenimos, prevenis, previnem. Imperativo: previne, previna, previnamos, preveni, previnam. Subjuntivo: presente previna, previnas etc.
prever > ver.
produzir > reduzir.
progredir > prevenir.
propor > pôr.
prosseguir > seguir.
proteger > abranger.
provir > vir.

Q
querer Indicativo: presente quero, queres, quer, queremos, quereis, querem. Pretérito perfeito quis, quiseste etc. Pretérito mais-que-perfeito quisera, quiseras etc. Imperativo: quer, queira, queiramos, querei, queiram. Subjuntivo: presente queira, queiras etc. Pretérito imperfeito quisesse, quisesses etc. Futuro quiser, quiseres etc.

R
rasgar > ligar.
reagir > dirigir.
reaver Indicativo: presente (apenas a 1.a e a 2.a pessoas do plural) reavemos, reaveis. Pretérito perfeito reouve, reouveste etc. Pretérito mais-que-perfeito reouvera, reouveras etc. Imperativo: reavei. Subjuntivo: presente não existe. Pretérito imperfeito reouvesse, reouvesses etc. Futuro reouver, reouveres etc.
recair > atrair.
recear Indicativo: presente receio, receias, receia, receamos, receais, receiam. Imperativo: receia, receie, receemos, receai, receiem. Subjuntivo: presente receie, receies etc.
rechear > recear.
recobrir > dormir.
recompor > pôr.
reconhecer > tecer.
recuar > suar.
redigir > dirigir.
reduzir Indicativo: presente reduzo, reduzes, reduz, reduzimos, reduzis, reduzem. Imperativo: reduz ou reduze, reduza, reduzamos, reduzi, reduzam.
refletir > ferir.
reforçar > laçar.
regredir > prevenir.
reler > crer.
repor > pôr.
reproduzir > reduzir.
requerer Indicativo: presente requeiro, requeres, requer, requeremos, requereis, requerem. Pretérito perfeito requeri, requereste etc. Imperativo: requer, requeira, requeiramos, requerei, requeiram. Subjuntivo: presente requeira, requeiras etc.
restituir > possuir.
reter > ter.
retribuir > possuir.
rever > ver.
rir Indicativo: presente rio, ris, ri, rimos, rides, riem. Imperativo: ri, ria, riamos, ride, riam. Subjuntivo: presente ria, rias etc.
roer > moer.

S
saber Indicativo: presente sei, sabes, sabe, sabemos, sabeis, sabem. Pretérito perfeito soube, soubeste etc. Pretérito mais-que-perfeito soubera, souberas etc. Imperativo: sabe, saiba, saibamos, sabei, saibam. Subjuntivo: presente saiba, saibas etc. Pretérito imperfeito soubesse, soubesses etc. Futuro souber, souberes etc.
sacudir > subir.
sair > atrair.
satisfazer > fazer.
seduzir > reduzir.
seguir Indicativo: presente sigo, segues, segue, seguimos, seguis, seguem. Imperativo: segue, siga, sigamos, segui, sigam. Subjuntivo: presente siga, sigas etc.
sentir > ferir.
ser Veja verbo conjugado.
servir > ferir.
simplificar > ficar.
situar > suar.
soar Indicativo: presente sôo, soas, soa, soamos, soais, soam. Imperativo: soa, soe, soemos, soai, soem.
sobrepor > pôr.
sobressair > atrair.
sobrevir > vir.
sorrir > rir.
suar Indicativo: presente suo, suas, sua, suamos, suais, suam. Pretérito perfeito suei, suaste etc. Imperativo: sua, sue, suemos, suai, suem. Subjuntivo: presente sue, sues etc. Pretérito imperfeito suasse, suasses etc. Futuro suar, suares etc.
subir Indicativo: presente subo, sobes, sobe, subimos, subis, sobem. Imperativo: sobe, suba, subamos, subi, subam.
substituir > possuir.
subtrair > atrair.
sugerir > ferir.
sumir > subir.
supor > pôr.
surgir > dirigir.

T
tapear > recear.
tecer Indicativo: presente teço, teces, tece, tecemos, teceis, tecem. Imperativo: tece, teça, teçamos, tecei, teçam. Subjuntivo: presente teça, teças etc.
ter Veja verbo conjugado.
tossir > dormir.
traçar > laçar.
trair > atrair.
transgredir > prevenir.
transpor > pôr.
trazer Indicativo: presente trago, trazes, traz, trazemos, trazeis, trazem. Pretérito perfeito trouxe, trouxeste, trouxe, trouxemos, trouxestes, trouxeram. Pretérito mais-que-perfeito trouxera, trouxeras, trouxera, trouxéramos, trouxéreis, trouxeram. Futuro trarei, trarás, trará, traremos, trareis, trarão. Futuro do pretérito traria, trarias, traria, traríamos, traríeis, trariam. Imperativo: traz, traga, tragamos, trazei, tragam. Subjuntivo: presente traga, tragas etc. Pretérito imperfeito trouxesse, trouxesses etc. Futuro trouxer, trouxeres etc.

U
usufruir > possuir.

V
valer Indicativo: presente valho, vales, vale, valemos, valeis, valem. Imperativo: vale, valha, valhamos, valei, valham. Subjuntivo: presente valha, valhas etc.
ver Indicativo: presente vejo, vês, vê, vemos, vedes, vêem. Pretérito imperfeito via, vias etc. Pretérito perfeito vi, viste, viu, vimos, vistes, viram. Pretérito mais-que-perfeito vira, viras etc. Imperativo: vê, veja, vejamos, vede, vejam. Subjuntivo: presente veja, vejas etc. Pretérito imperfeito visse, visses etc. Futuro vir, vires etc.
vestir > ferir.
vir Indicativo: presente venho, vens, vem, vimos, vindes, vêm. Pretérito imperfeito vinha, vinhas etc. Pretérito perfeito vim, vieste, veio, viemos, viestes, vieram. Pretérito mais-que-perfeito viera, vieras etc. Imperativo: vem, venha, venhamos, vinde, venham. Subjuntivo: presente venha, venhas etc. Pretérito imperfeito viesse, viesses etc. Futuro vier, vieres etc.
voar > soar.

Tabela de Conversão de Pesos e Medidas Imperiais para Métricas / Conversion Table from Imperial Weights and Measures to the Metric System

Linear Measure / Medidas de Comprimento
1 inch (in) - 2,54 cm
1 foot (ft) - 12 in - 30,48 cm
1 yard (yd) - 3 ft - 91,44 cm
1 pole, rod, perch - 5 _ yards - 5,03 m
1 chain (ch) - 4 poles - 20,12 m
1 furlong (fur) 200 yd - 10 chains (40 rods) - 201,17 m
1 mile (mi) 1,760 yd - 8 fur (5280 ft) - 1,609 km
1 league - 3 mi - 4,828 km

Mariners’ Measure / Medidas Náuticas ou Marítimas
1 fathom - 6 ft - 1,83 m
1 nautical (or sea) mile - 1000 fathoms (approx.) - 1,853 km
1 nautical (or sea) league - 3 nautical miles - 5,559 km

Surveyors’ Measure / Medidas de Agrimensor
1 link - 7.92 in - 20,12 cm
1 chain - 100 links - 20,12 m
1 mile - 80 ch - 1609,34 m
1 acre - 10 sq ch - 0,4047 ha

Square Measure / Medidas de Superfície
1 square inch (sq in) - 6,45 cm2
1 square foot (sq ft) - 9,29 cm2
1 square yard (sq yd) - 0,84 m2
1 square pole (Amer: rod) - 25,29 m2
1 perch (Brit) - 10 square poles - 252,93 m2
1 rood (Brit) - 40 square rods - 1011,71 m2
1 acre (USA) - 160 square rods - 0,4047 ha
1 acre (Brit) - 4 roods - 0,4047 ha
1 square mile (sq mi) - 640 acres - 259,00 ha ou 2,590 km2

Cubic Measure / Medidas de Volume
1 cubic inch (cu in) - 16,39 cm3
1 cubic foot (cu ft) - 1,728 cu in - 28,32 dm3
1 cubic yard (cu yd) - 27 cu ft - 764,53 dm3

Liquid Measure / Medidas de Capacidade para Líquidos
1 minim (Brit) - 0,0592 ml - 0,0000592 1
1 minim (USA) - 0,0616 ml - 0,0000616 1
1 fluid dram (Brit) - 60 minims - 3,552 ml
1 fluid dram (USA) - 60 minims - 3,697 ml
1 fluid ounce (Brit) - 8 fluid drams - 28,47 ml
1 fluid ounce (USA) - 8 fluid drams - 29,57 ml
1 pint (Brit) - 20 fluid ounces - 569,4 ml
1 pint (USA) - 16 fluid ounces - 473,12 ml
1 pint (Brit) - 4 gills - 0,5682 1
1 quart (Brit) - 2 pints - 1,1364 1
1 gallon (Brit) - 4 quarts - 4,5459 1
1 gallon (USA) - 3,785 1
1 peck (Brit) - 2 gallons - 9,092 1
1 bushel (Brit) - 4 pecks - 36,368 1
1 quarter (Brit) - 8 bushels - 2,909 hl
1 barrel (USA) - 31 _ gallons - 1,43198 hl
1 hogshead (USA) - 2 barrels - 2,86396 hl

Dry Measure / Medidas de Capacidade para Secos
1 pint (Brit; abbr.: pt) - 4 gills - 568,3 ml
1 pint (USA) - 473,2 ml
1 quart (USA; abbr.: qt) - 2 pt - 0,9464 1
1 gallon (Brit; abbr.: gal) - 4 qt - 4,546 1
1 gallon (USA) - 4,41 1
1 peck (Brit; abbr.: pk) - 2 gal - 9,092 1
1 peck (USA) - 8,810 1
1 bushel (Brit; abbr.: bu) - 4 pk - 36,37 1
1 bushel (USA) - 35,24 1
1 barrel (Brit) - 36 gal - 1,637 hl
1 barrel (USA) - 1,192 hl
1 quarter (Brit) - 8 bu - 2,909 hl
1 quarter (USA) - 2,421 hl

Apothecaries’ Weight / Pesos de Farmácia
1 grain (Brit; abbr.: gr) - 20 mites - 64,80 mg
1 scrupel (USA) - 20 gr - 1,296 g
1 dram (Brit, abbr.: dm) - 1/256 lb - 1,772 g
1 drachm - 3 scrupels - 3,888 g
1 ounce (Brit; abbr.: oz) - 16 dm - 28,35 g
1 ounce (USA) - 8 drachms - 31,10 g
1 pound avoirdupois (lb) - 16 oz - 453,6 g
1 pound avoirdupois (lb) - 12 oz - 372,4 g

Avoirdupois Weight / Pesos Comerciais
1 ounce (Brit; abbr.: oz) - 16 drams 437 _ grains troy - 28,35 g
1 ounce (USA; abbr.: oz) - 31,10 g
1 pound (Brit; abbr.: lb av) - 16 oz - 453,6 g
1 stone (Brit) - 14 lb - 6,350 kg
1 quarter (Brit) - 28 lb - 12,70 kg
1 quarter (USA) - 25 lb - 11,34 kg
1 hundredweight cental (cwt sh) - 100 lb - 45,36 kg
1 hundredweight long (Brit) - 4 quarters 112 lb - 50,80 kg
1 short ton - 2,000 lb - 907,2 kg
1 long ton - 2,240 lb - 1.016,064 kg

Tabela de Conversão de Pesos e Medidas Métricas para Imperiais /
Conversion Table from Metric Weightsand Measures to the Imperial

Medidas de Comprimento / Linear Measures
1 milímetro (mm) - 0,001 m - 0.03937 in
1 centímetro (cm) - 0,01 m - 0.3937 in
1 decímetro (dm) - 0,1 m - 3.937 in
1 metro (m) - 100 cm - 39.37 in
1 quilômetro (km) - 1.000 m - 0.62137 mi
1 miriâmetro (Mm) - 10.000 m (10 km) - 6.2137 mi

Medidas de Superfície / Square Measures
1 milímetro quadrado (mm2) - 0,000001 m2 - 0.00155 sq in
1 centímetro quadrado (cm2) - 0,0001 m2 - 0.155 sq in
1 decímetro quadrado (dm2) - 0,01 m2 - 15.50 sq in
1 metro quadrado (m2) - 0,01 are - 1.1960 sq yd
1 are (a) - 100 m2 - 119.6 sq yd
1 hectare (ha) - 100 ares - 2.471 acres
1 quilômetro quadrado (km2) - 10.000 ares - 247.104 acres

Medidas de Volume / Cubic Measures
1 milímetro cúbico (mm3) - 0,000000001 m3 - 0.000061 cu in
1 centímetro cúbico (cm3) - 0,000001 m3 - 0.0610 cu in
1 decímetro cúbico (dm3) - 0,001 m3 (1 litro) - 61.023 cu in
1 metro cúbico (m3) - 1.000 dm3 (1.000 litros) - 1.308 cu yd

Pesos Comerciais / Avoirdupois Weights
1 quilate métrico - 0,2 g - 3.09 gr
1 miligrama (mg) - 0,001 g - 0.0154 gr
1 centigrama (cg) - 0,01 g - 0.154 gr
1 decigrama (dg) - 0,1 g - 1.543 gr
1 grama (g) - 0,001 kg - 15.432 gr
1 decagrama (dag) - 10 g - 0.352 oz
1 quilograma (kg) - 1.000 g - 2.204 lb
1 arroba métrica - 15 kg - 33.07 lb
1 quintal métrico (q) - 100 kg - 220.4 lb
1 tonelada (t) - 1.000 kg - 2,204 lb

Medidas de Capacidade / Measures of Capacity
1 centilitro (cl) - 0,01 l - Br.: 0.352 fluid ounce / Am.: 0.338 fluid ounce
1 decilitro (dl) - 0,1 l - 6.1025 cu in
1 litro (l) - 1 dm3 - 61.025 cu in
1 decalitro (dal) - 10 l - 610.25 cu in
1 hectolitro (hl) - 100 l - Br.: 22 gallons / Am.: 26.418 gallons
1 quilolitro (kl) - 1.000 l - 35.315 cu. ft

Medidas Antigas / Ancient Measures

Medidas Itinerárias / Itinerary Measures
1 milha brasileira - 2.200 m - 1.36 mi
1 milha portuguesa - 2.066 m - 1.28 mi
1 milha marítima (nó) - 1.852 m - 1,013 fathoms
1 légua brasileira - 6.600 m - 4.10 mi
1 légua portuguesa - 6.200 m - 3.85 mi
1 légua marítima - 5.555 m - 3 nautical miles

Medidas de Comprimento / Linear Measures
1 ponto - 0,2 mm - 0.007874 in
1 linha - 2,3 mm - 0.09 in
1 polegada - 2,75 cm - 1.08 in
1 palmo - 22 cm - 8.66 in
1 pé - 33 cm - 1.08 ft
1 côvado - 66 cm - 25.98 in
1 vara - 1,10 m - 43.31 in
1 braça - 2,20 m - 86.62 in

Medidas de Superfície / Square Measures
1 braça quadrada - 4,84 m2 - 5.7886 sq yd
1 alqueire (Norte do Brasil) - 27.225 m2. - 32,560 sq yd
1 alqueire (Minas, Rio, Goiás) - 48.400 m2 - 57,886 sq yd
1 alqueire paulista - 24.200 m2 - 28,943 sq yd

Pesos / Weights
1 quilate - 199 mg - 3.07 gr
1 onça - 28,691 g - 1.012 oz
1 libra - 459,5 g - 1.013 lb
1 arroba - 14,689 kg - 32.38 lb
1 quintal - 58,758 kg - 129.50 lb
1 tonelada - 793, 238 kg - 1,748.70 lb

Números

Numerais Cardinais / Cardinal Numbers

0 zero zero, nought, nothing, O
1 um one
2 dois two
3 três three
4 quatro four
5 cinco five
6 seis six
7 sete seven
8 oito eight
9 nove nine
10 dez ten
11 onze eleven
12 doze twelve
13 treze thirteen
14 quatorze, catorze fourteen
15 quinze fifteen
16 dezesseis sixteen
17 dezessete seventeen
18 dezoito eighteen
19 dezenove nineteen
20 vinte twenty
21 vinte e um twenty-one
22 vinte e dois twenty-two
23 vinte e três twenty-three
24 vinte e quatro twenty-four
25 vinte e cinco twenty-five
26 vinte e seis twenty-six
27 vinte e sete twenty-seven
28 vinte e oito twenty-eight
29 vinte e nove twenty-nine
30 trinta thirty
40 quarenta forty
50 cinqüenta fifty
60 sessenta sixty
70 setenta seventy
80 oitenta eighty
90 noventa ninety
100 cem a hundred
101 cento e um a hundred and one
110 cento e dez a hundred and ten
120 cento e vinte a hundred and twenty
200 duzentos two hundred
300 trezentos three hundred
400 quatrocentos four hundred
500 quinhentos five hundred
600 seiscentos six hundred
700 setecentos seven hundred
800 oitocentos eight hundred
900 novecentos nine hundred
1000 mil a thousand
1001 mil e um a thousand and one
1010 mil e dez a thousand and ten
2000 dois mil two thousand
10,000 dez mil ten thousand
100,000 cem mil a hundred thousand
1,000,000 um milhão a million
2,000,000 dois milhões two million
1,000,000,000 um bilhão a billion

Numerais Ordinais / Ordinal Numbers

1st primeiro first
2nd segundo second
3rd terceiro third
4th quarto fourth
5th quinto fifth
6th sexto sixth
7th sétimo seventh
8th oitavo eighth
9th nono ninth
10th décimo tenth
11th décimo primeiro eleventh
12th décimo segundo twelfth
13th décimo terceiro thirteenth
14th décimo quarto fourteenth
15th décimo quinto fifteenth
16th décimo sexto sixteenth
17th décimo sétimo seventeenth
18th décimo oitavo eighteenth
19th décimo nono nineteenth
20th vigésimo twentieth
21st vigésimo primeiro twenty-first
22nd vigésimo segundo twenty-second
23rd vigésimo terceiro twenty-third
24th vigésimo quarto twenty-fourth
25th vigésimo quinto twenty- fifth
26th vigésimo sexto twenty-sixth
27th vigésimo sétimo twenty-seventh
28th vigésimo oitavo twenty-eighth
29th vigésimo nono twenty-ninth
30th trigésimo thirtieth
31st trigésimo primeiro thirty-first
40th quadragésimo fortieth
50th qüinquagésimo fiftieth
60th sexagésimo sixtieth
70th septuagésimo seventieth
80th octogésimo eightieth
90th nonagésimo ninetieth
100th centésimo one hundredth
101st centésimo primeiro one hundred and first
200th ducentésimo two hundredth

Numerais Multiplicativos / Multiplicative Numbers

2 duplo, dobro double, twofold
3 triplo, tríplice triple, threefold
4 quádruplo quadruple, fourfold
5 quíntuplo quintuple, fivefold
6 sêxtuplo sextuple, sixfold
7 séptuplo septuple, sevenfold
8 óctuplo octuple, eightfold
9 nônuplo ninefold
10 décuplo decuple, tenfold
11 undécuplo elevenfold
12 duodécuplo twelvefold
100 cêntuplo centuple, hundredfold

Numerais Fracionários / Fractional Numbers

2 meio, metade half (plural: halves)
3 terço third
4 quarto quarter, fourth
5 quinto fifth
6 sexto sixth
7 sétimo seventh
8 oitavo eighth
9 nono ninth
10 décimo tenth
11 onze avos, undécimo eleventh
12 doze avos, duodécimo twelfth
100 centésimo hundredth

Tabela de conversão de temperaturas em graus Celsius e Fahrenheit

ºC ºF ºC ºF
1 33.8 26 78.8
2 35.6 27 80.6
3 37.4 28 82.4
4 39.2 29 84.2
5 41.0 30 86.0
6 42.8 31 87.8
7 44.6 32 89.6
8 46.4 33 91.4
9 48.2 34 93.2
10 50.0 35 95.0
11 51.8 36 96.8
12 53.6 37 98.6
13 55.4 38 100.4
14 57.2 39 102.2
15 59.0 40 104.0
16 60.8 41 105.8
17 62.6 42 107.6
18 64.4 43 119.4
19 66.2 44 111.2
20 68.0 45 113.0
21 69.8 46 114.8
22 71.6 47 116.6
23 73.4 48 118.4
24 75.2 49 120.2
25 77.0 50 122.0
51 123.8 76 168.8
52 125.6 77 170.6
53 127.4 78 172.4
54 129.2 79 174.2
55 131.0 80 176.0
56 132.8 81 177.8
57 134.6 82 179.6
58 136.4 83 181.4
59 138.2 84 183.2
60 140.0 85 185.0
61 141.8 86 186.8
62 143.6 87 188.6
63 145.4 88 190.4
64 147.2 89 192.2
65 149.0 90 194.0
66 150.8 91 195.8
67 152.6 92 197.6
68 154.4 93 199.4
69 156.2 94 201.2
70 158.0 95 203.0
71 159.8 96 204.8
72 161.6 97 206.6
73 163.4 98 208.4
74 165.2 99 210.2
75 167.0 100 212.0

Fatores de Conversão / Conversion Factors

Celsius into / para Fahrenheit: (ºC x 9) / 5) + 32
Fahrenheit into / para Celsius: (ºF - 32) x 5) / 9

SAIBA MAIS

Créditos
Apresentação
Organização do dicionário
Abreviaturas
Gramática e curiosidades
© 2000-2007 Editora Melhoramentos Ltda. © 2009 UOL - O melhor conteúdo. Todos os direitos reservados

Colombia:Top Adverising Agencies

2008-10-15T09:00:00.001-07:00

Top Adverising Agencies (Colombia)

McCann-Erickson Colombia, Bogota
Propaganda Sanche, Bogota
Atlas Publicidad, Bogota
Leo Burnett-Colombia, Bogota
FCB/Puma, Bogota
Atenas/BBDO, Bogota
Estera Publicidad, Bogota
BSB Meza, Bogota
Centrum Ogilvy & Mather, Bogota
J. Sanchez Asociados, Bogota
Aser Publicidad/Y & R, Bogota
Lintas:Colombia, Bogota
Y&R Colombia, Bogota
McCann-Erickson Corp., Bogota
Atlas Thompson, Bogota
Leo Burnett-Colombia, Bogota, MJ
Centrium, O&M, Bogota
Propaganda sancho, Bogota/Manziales
Esfera Grey, Bogota
Marca Lintas, Bogota
FCB, Bogota
Demo Bozell, Bogota
Leo Burnett-Colombia, Bogota,
Atlas Publicidad (JWT) , Bogota
Michel Arnau y Cia (DDBN), Medelin
Demo Publicidad, Santale de Bogota

Colombia: El aula digital

2008-10-15T08:47:00.001-07:00

El aula digital

Para la mayoría, el aprendizaje en el colegio habría sido más agradable sin el polvillo de la tiza -que disparaba las alergias- o la tragedia de que el profesor borrara el tablero sin que algunos hubieran podido copiar la información. En educación el refrán de "todo tiempo pasado fue mejor" parece no aplicarse. "A mí me habría gustado no tener que imaginarme las figuras geométricas sino verlas en 3D, o entender un conflicto viendo los mapas interactivos de hoy y no tener que disecar el sapo sino poder ver su aparato digestivo en un simulador", dice Andrés Jiménez, gerente de Educación de Microsoft.
Su cargo le ha hecho ver las ventajas que tienen los alumnos de hoy, pues en algunos colegios la tecnología ha sido invitada al aula para fortalecer los procesos de aprendizaje. En lugar del viejo tablero verde, las aulas tienen uno electrónico que envía la información escrita vía correo electrónico. También hay software para hacer más comprensibles materias complicadas como la física o ahorrar tiempo en el dibujo de planos cartesianos. La geometría se puede ver en tres dimensiones, la geografía se aprende con fotos reales y herramientas como Google Earth, y un conflicto en Chechenia se entiende más fácilmente con una enciclopedia Encarta en línea.

En el Colegio Alemán de Cali, uno de los contados en Colombia que se han metido de lleno en la experiencia de e-learning, sus directivas han decidido no tener una asignatura llamada informática, sino llevar los computadores y otros dispositivos electrónicos a clase para que los alumnos puedan sacar provecho de su potencial. En otras palabras, dejaron de usar el computador como fin, para convertirlo en un medio para el aprendizaje. Para ello no sólo tuvieron que establecer una red interna, Internet inalámbrica y un sitio web, sino adquirir aulas móviles, es decir, armarios con rodachinas que tienen 25 computadores portátiles, videobeam y una serie de programas que incluyen enciclopedias, mapas, editores de video y otras herramientas pensadas para el colegio. "Nuestro sueño es que en 10 años cada alumno venga con su computador",dice Holger Rieck, rector del colegio.

No sólo resulta más divertido para los estudiantes, sino que el maestro, que antes gastaba mucho tiempo pintando gráficas y mapas en el tablero, ahora puede concentrarse en otros procesos. "Yo tenía que pintar el plano cartesiano a mano", dice Héctor Fabio Solarte, jefe de área de matemáticas. Como el computador hace esa tarea en segundos, él ahora se dedica a analizar la resolución del problema con los alumnos. En el gimnasio campestre Los Cerezos, en Bogotá, este año empezaron a integrar la tecnología al aula. Cuando un alumno no puede ir al colegio se conecta desde su casa y a través de cámaras de video se integra a la clase.

Incluso el celular, considerado el mayor enemigo en los colegios, ha pasado a ser un aliado. En Estados Unidos, los niños con problemas para aprender ciencias y matemáticas usan dispositivos 3G, como el iPhone o las PDA, para ver estas asignaturas en lugares diferentes al salón de clase. Un programa piloto se llevó a cabo en un estadio durante un partido de béisbol. "En la pantalla donde están los marcadores, ellos veían una pregunta como '¿una bola de béisbol corre más rápidamente en un terreno mojado o en uno seco

' y debían contestar en un mensaje de texto. Si era correcta, se le enviaba una siguiente pregunta a su celular", dice Robert Sanregret, experto estadounidense que vino la semana pasada al II congreso de e-learning en Bogotá. Según él, el celular no sólo sirve para enseñar, sino para evaluar. El alumno recibe un cuestionario por correo electrónico que debe enviar de vuelta con las respuestas.

Muchos pensarán que este sistema propicia la copia, pues un estudiante con un aparato conectado a Internet puede buscar en segundos las respuestas de un examen. Pero los expertos consideran que el sistema de aprendizaje se debe adaptar a las nuevas circunstancias. "Pelear contra el celular es absurdo", dice Ramiro Aponte, presidente de Latined, una franquicia de e-learning en Colombia que organizó el evento. "El modelo de evaluación tiene que cambiar. Un examen de conocimientos es anticuado y lo que se debe evaluar ahora es el proceso, el análisis", agrega. Casi todos los entrevistados por SEMANA consideran que los niños de hoy son diferentes y el maestro debe "hablar el lenguaje de ellos, y no al contrario, dice Solarte. El profesor debe sentarse en el computador y aprender por qué debe cambiar de paradigma", agrega.

La mayoría de los expertos coincide en que el temor es el principal motivo por el cual los colegios y los profesores sienten rechazo hacia la tecnología. "Los estudiantes saben más de estos temas y van más rápido, lo que hace sentir al maestro en desventaja", dice Aponte. Una anécdota en Los Cerezos habla por sí sola. Al demostrar cómo usar el tablero electrónico, los instaladores tuvieron un problema y un niño de 9 años logró resolverlo. "Ellos vienen con el chip digital en la cabeza", dice Jiménez.

Pero también está el miedo al costo, pues muchos colegios creen que hacer el cambio requiere una gran inversión, mientras la realidad muestra que hay muchas facilidades para los colegios. Estos mitos hacen que el tema no tenga la importancia debida. Sergio Quiceno, gerente de Los Cerezos, cuenta que fue invitado a comienzo del año a una reunión para hablar sobre la importancia del e-learning y la mayoría de los colegios envió como representante al profesor de informática, cuando "este tema debería ser primordial para las directivas".

Los estudios han demostrado que integrar la tecnología en el aprendizaje es crucial no sólo para mejorar la calidad de la educación, sino para acortar la brecha digital que existe entre los países pobres y los ricos. "Permite crear un mayor espíritu de investigación y un mejor diálogo con el maestro", dice Piedad Caballero, investigadora del tema de la Universidad Pedagógica. Sanregret menciona un estudio realizado en West Chester, Pensilvania, entre 500 niños, la mitad de los cuales tuvo que hacer una tarea de la manera tradicional, con papel y lápiz, mientras la otra mitad usaba aparatos tecnológicos. Los niños de este último grupo tuvieron mejores respuestas. Para Sanregret, la explicación es que hacer la tarea con estos aparatos resulta más divertido para los jóvenes y le da al profesor mejores mecanismos de seguimiento para cerciorarse de que la hicieron. "Además, es probable que la gente no tenga un computador en casa, pero casi todos tienen un celular, de modo que es una gran oportunidad para explotar". Jiménez señala que este aparato es muy útil para mantener a la comunidad enterada, pues un e-mail puede informar que se canceló una clase o que mañana hay una tarea para entregar.

La ignorancia es tal en ciertos lugares del país, que cuando se le pide al profesor que suba el mouse en la pantalla, éstos lo levantan de la mesa. Pero Caballero ha visto que cuando el maestro se acerca a la tecnología, se vuelve más creativo. Por eso el principal tema hoy es capacitarlos. Según Claudia Zea del Ministerio de Educación, ya hay 75.000 docentes formados -de 300.000- en colegios públicos y existe una cobertura del 80 por ciento de salas digitales en dichos planteles. Aunque destaca estas buenas intenciones y muchas experiencias interesantes, Caballero asegura que se requiere una política más contundente y agresiva para estar al mismo nivel de otros países latinoamericanos como Chile y Argentina, donde comenzaron estos programas mucho antes que en Colombia. "El problema es de acceso a la tecnología, pues cuando al maestro se le explica, se entusiasma y quisiera tener un computador. Aclara que no se trata de usar la tecnología sólo por usarla. El profesor tiene que saber que usar Excel o cualquier otro programa es efectivo y tiene un significado en el proceso de enseñanza", enfatiza.

Tradicionalmente la escuela ha estado regazada de los procesos tecnológicos, pues es una institución conservadora. De hecho, hay todavía sectores renuentes a creer que la tecnología ayuda. Consideran que los niños se pueden distraer con estos aparatos y dedicarse a chatear o a otras cosas. Pero quienes ya han hecho el clic dicen que este peligro se puede evitar al controlar estrictamente que el celular o el computador sólo se usen en ciertos momentos. "El profesor es un facilitador fundamental en el proceso", dice Jiménez. Esto es indispensable para que los alumnos no tengan que aprender como él lo hizo, de una manera pasiva, sino en forma interactiva y divertida. Los recursos están allí para aprovecharlos.
Apretaditos’ en las viviendas de interés social

Apretaditos’ en las viviendas de interés social

Para que una vivienda sea digna, debe estar ubicada en un lugar seguro y libre de cualquier tipo de violencia. Debe tener acceso a servicios de salud, seguridad, agua, energía, aseo y drenaje de desechos. Debe estar cerca de mercados o tiendas. Debe representar gastos que pueda cubrir la persona que vive en ella. Y debe ser un lugar habitable, con cierta comodidad, higiénico, que proteja del frío, el calor, la lluvia, la humedad y de amenazas para la salud.
Eso implica que debe haber espacio suficiente para evitar el hacinamiento y para gozar de zonas verdes que permitan un buen ambiente alrededor. Como quien dice, no se trata simplemente de un techo. En el caso de las Viviendas de Interés Social (VIS), además de todas esas condiciones, debe haber una muy comprensible: que sea comprable.

Pareciera que la condición del bajo precio riñera con las exigencias que tiene una vivienda digna. De hecho, el gobierno señala como responsables del déficit de VIS “primero, el alto valor del suelo construible y segundo, a las exigentes normas urbanísticas”.

En un intento por eliminar esos obstáculos, el artículo 15 de la Ley 388 de 1997 establece que “las normas para la urbanización y construcción de vivienda no podrán limitar el desarrollo de programas de vivienda de interés social, de tal manera que las especificaciones entre otros de loteos, cesiones y áreas construidas deberán estar acordes con las condiciones de precio de este tipo de vivienda”.

Pero la norma se va de un extremo para otro. Ahora, condiciona la construcción de VIS solamente al precio y no obliga a que se cumplan las condiciones que debe tener una vivienda digna. Además, es como un bumerán que se devuelve hacia la misma raíz del problema: encarece el precio de la tierra. Lo paradójico es que termina beneficiando a los propietarios de ésta y no a los más pobres que habitan las VIS.

Poco espacio

Por eso, un grupo de académicos del Centro de Estudios de Derecho, Justicia y Sociedad (Dejusticia), y la organización Fedevivienda demandaron la norma ante la Corte Constitucional, por considerar que va en contra del derecho a la vivienda digna. La idea con el proceso jurídico que iniciaron es que la Corte declare la inconstitucionalidad de la norma y ordene modificarla.

En el texto de la demanda, se explica que “la mejor prueba de que la mención exclusiva del precio que hace la norma acusada conduce a ignorar los demás atributos del derecho a la vivienda digna es que la misma ha servido de sustento para que se expidan normas sobre áreas mínimas de tamaño de lotes para la construcción de vivienda de interés social como el decreto nacional 2060 de 2004...”.

Ese decreto establece que los lotes mínimos para una vivienda unifamiliar son 35 metros cuadrados. En realidad, este tamaño no equivale al espacio interior habitable por la familia porque es necesario incluirle un antejardín y un patio. O sea que, en la práctica, se estarían construyendo viviendas de 26 metros cuadrados. Eso quiere decir que la norma, por privilegiar el bajo precio, no tiene en cuenta la cantidad de personas que van a habitar la vivienda.

El espacio es muy reducido si se tiene en cuenta que en Colombia, las familias tienen en promedio cuatro personas y, como están las cosas, a cada habitante le corresponden 6,5 metros cuadrados para vivir. Un estudio de la Universidad Javeriana calcula que en sitios donde habitan cuatro personas, cada una debe tener la menos 14 metros cuadrados para vivir.

Además, en esas diminutas viviendas debe haber baño, cocina, patio, lavadero, espacios como sala-comedor y cuartos separados porque, es importante tener en cuenta que para el desarrollo de la familia, es conveniente que los dormitorios de los padres estén separados de los de los hijos.

La implementación de esta norma ha demostrado que imponer un mínimo de área termina convirtiéndose en el tope máximo ofrecido en el mercado. Por ejemplo, “varios municipios que habían establecido estándares de vivienda de interés social superiores a los señalados en el Decreto 2060 de 2004 como Medellín, Cali y Cartagena, modificaron recientemente sus Planes de Ordenamiento Territorial (POT) para ajustar sus estándares a lo contenido en el decreto”, argumenta la demanda de los académicos.

Ahora bien, una vivienda tan pequeña, ¿protege del clima a los pobladores de tierras calientes?, ¿ayuda a evitar el contagio de enfermedades?, ¿se presta para un ambiente higiénico cuando habitan varias personas? Difícilmente, aunque sí resulta económica.

A este respecto, Beatriz Uribe, presidente ejecutivo de Camacol, comenta que "la vivienda de interés social debe ser vista tanto desde su dimensión social como desde su dimensión económica, sin desconocer una a favor de la otra, sino buscando un equilibrio que la haga viable. Inclinarse exclusivamente a lo económico podría amenazar el postulado de vivienda digna con desarrollos de dudosa calidad, e inclinarse únicamente a lo social, desconociendo que este segmento se encuentra supeditado a la asignación de recursos limitados y a los altos costos de construcción (que incluyen el capital, la tierra, la mano de obra, la capacidad empresarial y administrativa), la podría hacer imposible de realizar".

"Por esto - agrega- la visión aislada de los factores que se deben interrelacionar armónicamente permite sacar conclusiones desfiguradas de la realidad de la vivienda y del espíritu de disposiciones y medidas que buscan hacerla viable y también digna, como el decreto que establece el tamaño mínimo de vivienda para proteger al comprador, y que no limita a los municipios para exigir volúmenes superiores".

Esto ocurre desde las puertas hacia adentro de la vivienda. Pero hacia fuera, las cosas no son mejores.

Se reduce el espacio público

Cada vez que se va a hacer una construcción en el país, el dueño del lote debe ceder una porción para uso público, como vías, andenes, parques o zonas verdes, que aportan a que la vivienda sea digna. O sea que implican un sacrificio de las áreas construibles. Pero como la idea es no desincentivar la construcción de VIS, las normas ayudan a que disminuya el área de uso público. Por eso, dice la ley que cuestionan los académicos, la única condición para esta zonas es, también, el precio.

Como consecuencia, el decreto 2060 reglamentó que en un lote donde se vaya a hacer un edificio de VIS, el área de uso público debe ser de entre el 20 y el 30 por ciento del terreno, sin tener en cuenta la cantidad de personas que van a habitar allí.

“Esto es problemático porque permite que los habitantes de VIS tengan acceso a un espacio público (...) más reducido por habitante que las personas que habitan en viviendas de otro tipo”, dice el texto de la demanda. Tal situación ocurre porque, como las VIS se pueden hacer pequeñas, en un solo lote caben más viviendas y van a vivir más personas en él que en los lotes de viviendas comerciales.

¿Quién gana?

Esa situación no sólo impide que las personas usen suficientes espacios para caminar y divertirse, una condición fundamental para la conviviencia pacífica. Además termina beneficiando a los mismos propietarios del terreno. ¿Por qué? Porque las VIS tienen subsidios que impiden que los constructores vendan por encima de un precio límite. Entonces ellos tienden a construir más cantidad para vender más y sustentan sus ganancias en el volumen de VIS, mas no en su calidad.

Otros que ganan son los propietarios de los predios, porque el precio del suelo se calcula con base en lo que se pueda hacer en él. Así que si en un lote se van a construir, por ejemplo, 100 viviendas, termina teniendo un valor económico superior a otro en el que sólo se puedan construir 50.

En últimas, la disminución de la calidad de las VIS no beneficia a las personas de bajos recursos, que son quienes la habitan. Al contrario, las perjudica porque sus viviendas no cumplen las condiciones de dignidad, según la demanda, que busca cambiar las leyes por otras que permitan mejorar las condiciones de las VIS y hacer se las personas de bajos recursos las verdaderas beneficiarias.

Beatriz Uribe, de Camacol, opina que el sector empresarial tiene mucha responsabilidad en la construcción de VIS y argumenta que quienes no respetan las condiciones de habitabilidad son quienes ofrecen viviendas de manera ilegal.

"Es evidente que el sector empresarial tiene una gran responsabilidad y un gran compromiso en el desarrollo de la vivienda de interés social, ya que no sólo es el mayor protagonista para su concreción, sino que es la contracara de la oferta ilegal de vivienda (que es la que realmente no cuenta con espacios urbanos, ni condiciones mínimas de habitabilidad) y que aparece cuando los demandantes de vivienda no tienen más alternativa", explica Uribe.

Desde la Presidencia

El panorama de la estrechez en las VIS que demandan los académicos se presenta en todo el país porque son directrices nacionales. Para los académicos demandantes, no debería ser así, porque los concejales, diputados y las administraciones locales son las que deberían definir el uso de sus suelos y las condiciones de vivienda de sus habitantes.

Pero la Ley 3 de 1991 por la cual se crea el Sistema Nacional de Vivienda de Interés Social, “les arrebata a las entidades territoriales la competencia de regular el uso del suelo y las características de la vivienda de interés social”, según los académicos, que también demandaron esta norma. El argumento es que “amenaza la descentralización administrativa y además puede implicar retrocesos en los avances que los municipios han hecho en este campo (el del uso del suelo)”.

Respecto de dicha demanda, el viceministro de Vivienda, Luis Felipe Henao, dijo que “al Ministerio de Ambiente, Vivienda y Desarrollo Territorial no le ha sido comunicada la demanda sobre estas normas que llevan cerca de 20 años de vigencia. Tan pronto como se produzca esta comunicación, la evaluaremos con detenimiento y nos pronunciaremos en profundidad”.
Lula "molesto" con Ecuador
Martes 14 Octubre 2008

El presidente de Brasil, Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva, ordenó congelar por tiempo indeterminado los proyectos de infraestructura que discute con el gobierno de Rafael Correa, tras la decisión de su colega de expulsar a la constructora brasileña Oderbrecht.

En un comunicado oficial, difundido por la cancillería brasileña, se informa que los proyectos de integración vial que se desarrollan entre Brasil y Ecuador quedan suspendidos, a raíz de que Correa ratificara este miércoles que Odebrecht no podrá permanecer en Ecuador por un supuesto incumplimiento de contrato.
La medida brasileña tiene como efecto inmediato la postergación, sin fecha fija, del viaje que una misión ministerial brasileña tenía programada realizar a Quito la semana próxima.

La misión la encabezaba el ministro de Transporte, Alfredo Nascimento, y debía negociar la participación brasileña en el desarrollo de proyectos de infraestructura vial en Ecuador.

Oferta "insuficiente"

Este jueves el gobierno ecuatoriano notificó a Oderbrecht que rechazaba una oferta para solucionar los problemas en la construcción de una empresa hidroeléctrica inaugurada a fines del año pasado y que tuvo que ser paralizada en junio por fallas en el diseño.

En septiembre el presidente Rafael Correa pidió a Odebrecht asumir los costos de la reparación de la hidroeléctrica San Francisco, pero ante la falta de respuesta militarizó sus instalaciones y ordenó su salida del país.

Entonces Odebrecht propuso pagar las reparaciones, extender la garantía del proyecto y realizar un depósito de US$43,8 millones hasta que una auditoría internacional decidiera si se ameritaban nuevas multas.

Pero el gobierno ecuatoriano consideró insuficiente la oferta, por lo que ratificó su decisión de quitarle las obras de construcción de otra central hidroeléctrica, una carretera, un aeropuerto en la región amazónica y un proyecto de recuperación de aguas, que también tendrían irregularidades según la evaluación hecha por técnicos ecuatorianos.

"El presidente ha cedido mucho, pero en definitiva (Odebrecht) no puede estar en el país (...) Hemos analizado todo y creemos que no es posible continuar con ella", dijo el miércoles el ministro de Sectores Estratégicos, Galo Borja, instantes después de tomar posesión de su cargo.

Fracasó Manaos

Lula y Correa analizaron el caso de Oderbrecht la semana pasada en la cumbre de Manaos, ciudad amazónica brasileña en la que se reunieron con sus colegas de Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, y de Bolivia, Evo Morales.

La nota presentada este jueves por la cancillería en Brasilia señala que la ratificación de la expulsión de la empresa brasileña "contrasta con las expectativas de una solución favorable", que habían surgido tras el encuentro en Manaos.

Durante aquella reunión el presidente venezolano alabó los trabajos que Oderbrecht realiza en su país, como un puente sobre el río Orinoco y una nueva línea del Metro de Caracas.

Por cierto que no ha quedado claro si la decisión de Lula de congelar los proyectos con Ecuador incluye a uno de los planes que motivaron la reunión en Manaos: el llamado "Eje Multimodal Manta-Manaos", un proyecto vial para unir la ciudad amazónica con el puerto ecuatoriano.

Y Petrobras también

Pero Oderbrecht no parece ser la única empresa brasileña que atraviesa un mal momento en Ecuador. También a la petrolera Petrobras podría complicársele las operaciones en el país andino.

En medio de su política de renegociación de contratos con las empresas petroleras internacionales, el lunes pasado el entonces ministro de Minas y Petróleos, Galo Chiriboga, advirtió que Petrobras tendría que cumplir con la política de su gobierno o negociar su retiro del país.

Este miércoles el presidente Lula se refirió al tema al decir que Quito tiene que definir si quiere hacer negocios con Petrobras y que la empresa debe analizar si "le interesa invertir allá por la cantidad de reservas de Ecuador".

"Petrobras va a buscar otro camino y Ecuador va a buscar otros socios", sentenció Lula en caso de que ambas partes no puedan seguir trabajando juntas.

En el caso petrolero las tensiones podrían tener mejores perspectivas de solución, ya que Petrobras anunció este miércoles que aceptaría cambiar su contrato en el llamado Bloque 18 como aspira el gobierno ecuatoriano.

Sin embargo, hay otros puntos potencialmente problemáticos porque la empresa opera otros bloques en los que el gobierno ecuatoriano dice haber identificado supuestas violaciones de leyes ambientales.

Padilla reitera que no hubo negociación en 'Jaque'

Con el paso de los días, a la operación Jaque que logró el rescate exitoso de 15 secuestrados (entre ellos 11 militares, tres norteamericanos y la ex candidata presidencial Íngrid Betancourt), le siguen saliendo más “creadores” que desmienten las versiones de militares colombianos que aseguran que ésta es 100% nacional.
Esta vez, el Nuevo Herald consultó a dos abogados colombianos que aseguran haberse craneado la liberación de un grupo de secuestrados a través negociaciones con funcionarios de Colombia y Estados Unidos. Dice Gonzalo Guillén, autor de la nota, que Carlos Arturo Toro López y un colega suyo contactaron a la embajada de Estados Unidos en Bogotá luego de haber recibido una propuesta de intermediarios de las Farc “para la liberación del grupo de secuestrados”.

Aunque la nota de El Nuevo Herald no hace explicito que 'Jaque' haya sido una una negociación y no una liberación de los secuestrados, presenta las gestiones que realizaban por la misma época dos abogados y en su títular "Detalles inéditos de la Operación Jaque", da entender que esas gestiones fueron parte de la operación.

Igualmente muchos de los detalles de como estaba planeada la negociación, coinciden con la forma como se dió la Operación Jaque.

"Ellos van a dar unas coordenadas a las que hay que llegar en helicópteros, los dos guerrilleros se subirán con los rehenes, se producirá la liberación y se les debe garantizar que no van aser extraditados a Estados Unidos", relató el contacto principal que mantuvo el puente entre lso abogados y los dos carceleros de las Farc.

Según los abogados, "se comunicaron con funcionarios de agencias federales de inteligencia de Estados Unidos, incluido el Buró Federal de Investigaciones (FBI), así como con una fiscal colombiana especializada de la división de antiterrorismo y un agente especial del CTI (Cuerpo Técnico de Investigaciones de la Fiscalía General de Colombia) que estuvo al tanto durante todo el proceso".

También contactaron al abogado penalista de Atlanta, Georgia, Jeffrey Manciagli, quien agregó al grupo a un socio suyo. Ambos aceptaron encargarse de llevar el caso ante las autoridades norteamericanas, porque ‘si tú negocias aquí (Colombia) y no negocias con los gringos, no has negociado nada’”, le dijo el socio de Toro López al periodista Guillén, quien asegura haber conocido un cruce de correos electrónicos para la preparación de la entrega de secuestrados. (Vea versión completa de la nota del Nuevo Herald)

No es la primera vez que hay dudas sobre la originalidad de la Operación ‘Jaque’. Por eso el gobierno nacional salió nuevamente a desmentir estas versiones a través del comandante de las Fuerzas Militares, general Fredy Padilla de León, quien dijo a través de un comunicado que la operación “fue adelantada por personal de Inteligencia Militar, previa supervisión, control y direccionamiento del alto mando militar y aprobación del gobierno nacional”.

El oficial reconoce que diferentes organismos estaban adelantando gestiones para liberar a estos secuestrados, pero asegura: “llama la atención que con una tardanza de más de 100 días de efectuada la humanitaria misión de rescate, algunas personas traten de propalar, con inexplicables y desconocidos propósitos, nuevas versiones de los hechos a través de las cuales se busca demeritar el resultado exitoso de la misma”.

UGO CHAVEZ CALIENTES
ME PERMITO CONTESTARLES A DON RICARDO Y A DON DOMINGO: HAY QUE ENTENDER Y RECORDAR EL INTERES DESMESURADO DEL GOBIERNO FRANCES POR INGRID B. Y ADEMAS LA RESPONSABILIDAD DEL GOBIERNO COLOMBIANO ANTE LOS EEUU POR LOS GRINGOS SECUESTRADOS. SUS VIDAD ESTABAN LATENTES ANTE UN ERROR COMO EL QUE OCURRIO CON LOS DIPUTADOS. LA GUERRILLA Y SU BARBARIE NO PERDONO. HABIA QUE ENTRAR EN NEGOCIACION Y PARA ESO ESTUVO PRESENTE CANO QUIEN, AL PARECER ES MAS ACCEQUIBLE QUE LOS TESTARUDOS TIROFIJO Y REYES. QUE GANO LA GUERRILLA? PUES DOLLARES, QUE MAS QUIERE, A ESA GENTE NO LES IMPORTA NADA MAS. AHI NO HUBO NINGUNA OPERACION, LO QUE HUBO FUE AFANA DESMESURADO DE LA CUPULA MILITAR PARA HACERLE CREER AL PAIS DE SUS EXITOS CUANDO NUESTRO EJERCITO COLOMBIANO, ME REFIERO A LOS QUE SI ESTAN PONIENDOLE EL PECHO A LA BRISA CON SUS VIDAS, NO NECESITA DE ESTAS PAYASADAS PELICULESCAS, ESO SE QUEDA PARA LOS QUE ESTAN DETRAS DE LOS ESCRITORIOS EN BUSCA DE MEDALLITAS.

Brasil: La lengua como tesoro cultural LULA DA SILVA

2008-10-15T08:45:00.000-07:00

La lengua como tesoro cultural LULA DA SILVA
Un Brasil bilingüe
J. R. M. 14/10/2008
"Un político de verdad es el que sabe gobernar la polis, la ciudad. Y el presidente Lula lo es. Es un hombre de Estado extraordinario que tiene energía y el conocimiento para darle a su país el lugar que Brasil merece en América Latina y en el mundo". Así hablaba ayer Carlos Fuentes de Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, con el que comparte Premio Internacional Don Quijote. Y es cierto que, oyéndole hablar, parece que le sobran ideas y energía a este antiguo sindicalista nacido en Garanhuns, Estado de Pernambuco, hace casi 63 años. En medio de la ola de admiración, él recuerda que perdió varias veces las elecciones antes de instalarse en el palacio presidencial de Planalto, en Brasilia, por primera vez, y por abrumadora mayoría, en 2002. Cuatro años después repitió en el que había sido el primer título "universitario" de su vida, el de presidente.

Lula suele recordar que de sus años de experiencia sindical le quedó una idea: nadie respeta a un interlocutor que no se respete a sí mismo. Por eso, para ganar en prosperidad y en respeto internacional, ha decidido estrechar lazos con sus vecinos de Latinoamérica. Y por eso optó por impulsar en su país la Ley del Español, que obliga a todos los centros de enseñanza secundaria de Brasil a ofrecer como optativa la lengua castellana. El resultado es que se prevé que el millón de alumnos que actualmente cursa español se convierta en 12 millones en los próximos cuatro años. Para ello harán falta, además, 30.000 profesores. Todo ello sin contar con los nueve centros que el Instituto Cervantes tiene desplegados por la geografía de un país de 180 millones de habitantes y dimensiones continentales.
El Brasil bilingüe, pues, tiene hora de despegue, algo que Lula, lejos de ver como una amenaza, ve como una oportunidad. "Integración" es la palabra que más repite el presidente brasileño al explicar sus planes. "Y no puede haber integración sin hablar la misma lengua". Él fue el primero en construir un puente entre su país y Perú. Y lo mismo hizo con Bolivia. Le gusta, además, recordar que Brasil tiene miles de kilómetros de frontera con todos los países de Suramérica menos con Ecuador y Chile. No tenía sentido vivir con los ojos puestos en Estados Unidos, un país que, por lo demás, acaba de superar a España en el número de hispanohablantes.
Lula sólo habla portugués, pero se le entiende todo lo que dice. Tiene las ideas claras y un viejo objetivo: impulsar la educación y mitigar la pobreza de sus conciudadanos. En lugar de ponerse, como tantas veces, en manos de la providencia, él se ha puesto a trabajar: Brasil se lleva 90 de cada 100 dólares de inversión extranjera que llegan a Suramérica. Por si acaso, él suele decir que Dios es brasileño. Es decir, que dentro de unos años, Dios hablará español

2008-10-15T08:44:00.000-07:00

Brazil set to avoid worst of turmoil

By Jonathan Wheatley in São Paulo
Published: October 15 2008 00:04 | Last updated: October 15 2008 00:04
At Fábio Marangoni’s printing works in São Paulo, pages of glossy magazines emerge almost silently from modern printing presses imported from Germany.
Asked how much he borrowed to install the presses, Mr Marangoni replies with an air of self-satisfaction.
“Nothing,” he says. “We used our own capital.” His family-owned business will be 50 years old next year. “During that time we’ve seen the currency go wildly up and down. Our raw materials and machinery are priced in dollars, so we’ve always taken care to use our own money. It means we have grown more slowly than otherwise. But it’s worth it. Look what’s happening now.”
Mr Marangoni’s caution has not shielded him entirely from the chaos in the world’s financial system. Credit conditions have tightened and consumers and businesses are putting spending plans on hold.
Nevertheless, Brazil should emerge relatively unscathed. Economists who previously expected growth of between 4.5 and 5.5 per cent next year now expect between 2.5 and 3.5 per cent – by no means bad compared with the global outlook.
Not all companies have been as conservative as Mr Marangoni’s. Grupo Votorantim, an industrial conglomerate, said on Friday it had paid R$2.2bn ($958m) to liquidate positions in currency derivatives. It was the third large company to announce big losses on currency bets and is unlikely to be the last.
Local media are talking of “the Brazilian subprime”. Some observers expect to see bankruptcies as more exporters are forced to admit that they exposed themselves beyond sensible limits to currency contracts that worked in their favour during the real’s long rally from R$3.95 to the US dollar in October 2002 to R$1.56 in May this year but which turned against them during its subsequent fall.
On the whole, however, Brazilian companies are much less indebted than their foreign competitors. The total amount of credit in Brazil was equal to 38 per cent of gross domestic product in August, much less than in many developed countries. where credit reaches multiples of GDP.
Economists and business leaders have long been calling on the government to enact spending reforms to release more money to finance investment and consumption through credit. There has indeed been a consumer-led acceleration of growth in the past few years, as lower interest rates, rising employment and enduring economic stability have encouraged borrowing.
But interest rates are still very high by international standards. Anefac, an association of finance executives, says rates offered to consumers by retail outlets averaged 105 per cent in August, while the average credit card rate was 230 per cent. Companies were paying an average of 60 per cent for working capital. At the international level, too, Brazil is relatively unexposed.
The government has paid down much of its foreign debt and is now a net creditor to the rest of the world. Less than 10 per cent of bank credit is raised overseas. Imports are equal to just 9 per cent of GDP and exports, about 12 per cent.
“Usually it is bad but in the current circumstances very fortunate that Brazil is relatively isolated from the rest of the world,” says Nathan Blance of Tendências, a consultancy in São Paulo. “If this crisis had happened 10 years from now we would have been much more leveraged.”
Brazil’s good fortune is not all down to luck. The banking system is solid following a state-sponsored restructuring in the 1990s, with conservative rules on lending. Risky activities such as short selling are rigorously controlled – although the “Brazilian subprime” suggests tighter rules might have been needed for over-the-counter derivatives trades.
But the central bank has generally been alert to danger and quick to respond. It has repeatedly relaxed Brazil’s stringent reserve requirements, allowing banks to lend more of their deposits and provide relief to companies short of credit.
“I’m not saying we won’t get hit or even only marginally hit,” says Jean-Marc Etlin of Itaú BBA, a São Paulo investment bank.
“But when the dust settles Brazil is going to come out of this better than a lot of other places.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

Chile and Argentina brace for crisis
By Jude Webber in Buenos Aires
Published: October 14 2008 21:12 | Last updated: October 14 2008 21:12
Chile has unveiled an $850m package to keep credit flowing to small exporters, and Argentina is stepping up customs controls to protect local firms from a feared flood of cheap imports.
The moves aimed to protect each nation’s economy from the fallout of the global financial crisis.
The Chilean package is the latest in a string of government and central bank interventions to shore up liquidity in the financial system and came after the Chilean peso sink to a five-year low against the dollar last week.
The measures, announced this week, include increasing guarantees on export financing loans and extending them to businesses which would usually be exempt and a $500m injection into the financial system to enable banks to offer small businesses loans for investment projects.
Andrés Velasco, Chile’s finance minister, said it was important ”in the current circumstances for [exporters and smaller companies] to continue to have normal access to credit flows so they can continue working, continue employing staff and continue investing”.
Argentina is also keen to prevent extra pain for businesses in the form of unfair competition from undervalued imports. The customs authority says it will step up controls on the entry of products including textiles, clothing, toys, shoes and leather goods which are considered sensitive imports, in order ensure that national industries are not prejudiced.
Argentine business leaders fear that slumping global demand caused by the financial crisis and fears of recession could spark an influx of cheap imports into Argentina from countries who are finding their usual markets drying up. They warn that could put Argentine jobs at risk.
The government is reportedly considering a raft of broader measures including higher import tariffs especially on Chinese goods, trade barriers, a weaker currency and an informal pact with businesses and unions to avoid layoffs.
Argentina is already suffering falling prices for its key farm commodities – it is the world’s number-three soy exporter – and fears lower demand will translate into lower sales, which in turn means lower revenue for the government which taxes commodities exports heavily.
Fernando Fraguío, industry secretary, said Argentina wanted to work with its partners in the South American Mercosur trade union. ”The idea is none other than to use all the tools we have to protect our industry, our market and the jobs of Argentine people,” he said at a trade seminar.
Juan Carlos Lascurain, head of the Argentine Industrial Union, the influential business lobby, says the country’s business competitiveness is being eroded and wants to see a peso weaker than the current level of around 3.25 per dollar, though he declined to offer his desired level.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
Votorantim spends R$2.2bn to cancel swaps
By Jonathan Wheatley in São Paulo
Published: October 10 2008 23:51 | Last updated: October 10 2008 23:51
Grupo Votorantim, a Brazilian conglomerate with interests that include paper and pulp, cement, chemicals and agribusiness, said on Friday it had spent R$2.2bn to liquidate positions in derivatives acquired as protection against the appreciation of Brazil’s currency.
Votorantim is the third Brazilian company to announce substantial losses arising from bets on the currency as the real has plummeted in value over recent weeks.
Sadia, a meat processor, said it had lost R$760m and fired its financial director after revealing positions in currency derivatives that exceeded limits stipulated by its board.
Aracruz, a paper and pulp company in which Votorantim is a controlling shareholder, said it had unrealised losses that would have totalled R$1.95bn had its positions in currency derivatives been liquidated by September 30. It did not say what its actual losses were, nor whether the positions had been liquidated.
Votorantim said its foreign exchange exposure through the derivatives in question had been “totally eliminated”.
Large Brazilian companies have made substantial profits from currency derivatives in recent years, as the real strengthened from a low of R$3.95 to the US dollar in October 2002 to R$1.56 in May this year.
But the real has devalued sharply against the dollar in recent weeks as the crisis on global financial markets has caused a wave of panic selling. It reached R$2.48 to the dollar during intraday trading last Wednesday and closed on Friday at R$2.33, falling 5.6 per cent during the say in spite of four dollar auctions by the central bank.
Foreign investors have taken R$20.8bn from the São Paulo Stock Exchange (BM&FBovespa) since June. The main Bovespa index fell from a peak of more than 73,000 points in May to 35,609 at Friday’s close, having fallen by 20 per cent during last week alone.
Votorantim said its losses would be covered by its cash holdings of about R$10bn. It said it generated R$8.1bn in cash in 2007 and expected to generate R$8.4bn this year, on net profits of R$30.9bn and R$34bn, respectively
Brazil raises rates 0.75 percentage points
By Jonathan Wheatley in São Paulo
Published: July 23 2008 20:42 | Last updated: July 24 2008 00:49
Brazil’s central bank raised the country’s core interest rate by 0.75 percentage points on Wednesday, more than expected by most economists and confirmation of the bank’s increasing concern over inflation that has spread across the economy, fueling demands for pay rises especially among public sector workers.
The move followed two rate rises of 0.5 points since April, when the bank began raising rates after three years of monetary loosening.
Most economists expected the bank to increase its so-called Selic target overnight rate by the same amount on Wednesday. But several economists predicted the bigger increase after detecting a more hawkish tone in recent comments by Henrique Meirelles, president of the central bank, along with a broadening and quickening of inflationary pressures.
“The balance of risks has worsened,” Alexandre Lintz, an economist at BNP Paribas in São Paulo, said on Wednesday in a note to clients.
Mr Meirelles told the Financial Times recently that inflation was the greatest threat to the Brazilian and global economies and called on other central bankers to concentrate more attention on inflation than on the risk of recession. He has since spoken of the need to “act vigorously” to keep inflation in check.
Consumer price inflation was running at an annual rate of more than 6 per cent in the 12 months to June, above the government’s core target of 4.5 per cent. Most economists expect it to reach 6.5 per cent by the end of the year, the upper limit of the government’s target range.
More pressure on consumer inflation is expected to come from quickly rising prices in the wholesale sector and from imported goods.
Rising inflation expectations are also having an impact on wage negotiations. This week, the government stepped in to end a three-week strike by postal workers, conceding a number of demands that had been rejected by management, including a 30 per cent pay rise to compensate for the dangers faced by workers making street deliveries and a one-off bonus.
Workers at Petrobras, the government-owned oil company, went on strike last week for more pay and are expected to resume industrial action next month.
In his interview with the FT, Mr Meirelles said: “There is significant pressure for pay increases among public sector workers and evidently we are very concerned about that because these are permanent expenses.”
Recent comments by Mr Meirelles and other ministers have indicated a recognition that monetary policy alone cannot overcome inflationary pressures and that there is a need for tighter fiscal policy to curb overall demand by cutting government spending. But the government’s budget proposal sent to Congress this week proposes increases rather than cuts in public spending.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
Brazilian ethanol plants to get $260m loan
By Richard Lapper in São Paulo
Published: July 22 2008 22:16 | Last updated: July 22 2008 22:16
Latin America’s biggest development institution is prepared to defy growing environmental concern about biofuels by lending money to a $1bn-plus Brazilian ethanol project.
The board of the Inter-American Development Bank is set on Wednesday to approve proposals to provide a 15-year loan of $260m (€164m, £130m) to three new ethanol plants being built by Santa Elisa Vale do Rosario, a Brazilian company, and US private equity groups.
The facility – which will sit alongside a $360m commercial bank credit – would be the biggest ever by a multilateral institution for a green fuel initiative. But it may not be popular among the IADB’s European minority shareholders. “It is a hard project for the IADB,” said Sylvia Larrea, the executive managing the project at the bank. “There are heated debates in the market.”
Steady rises in the international oil price have spurred interest in green fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel, but initiatives have become increasingly controversial in recent months as a result of steep rises in the prices of grains and other basic foods.
Ban Ki-Moon, United Nations secretary-general, last week warned about the impact of growing crops for biofuels, suggesting that it was contributing to increased food prices.
Latin American supporters of biofuels such as Ms Larrea, however, argue that Brazil produces its ethanol from sugar cane rather than edible grains such as maize, a process widely regarded as being more energy-efficient.
They also reject accusations from environmental critics that Brazilian ethanol-related sugar production is contributing to deforestation of the Amazon, saying sugar is grown largely in the south and centre of the country, thousands of miles from the rainforest.
“The choice isn’t really between food and fuel,” said Luis Alberto Moreno, president of the IADB. “The choice is between sustainable and unsustainable biofuels. We’re convinced that certain Latin American countries have ideal conditions for producing biofuels in a sustainable way.”
Ms Larrea noted that interest in the new fuels was growing in Colombia, and sugar growers in Central America and the Caribbean had also invested in alternative fuels.
She justified the bank’s support for the project by arguing that offering longer-term finance on more flexible terms would allow the project’s managers to invest more in rapidly evolving new technologies.
The plant will include a facility to convert into energy the waste material produced after sugar cane is crushed, helping to increase overall efficiency.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

Brasil

Surfing a big wave of confidence
By Jonathan Wheatley and Richard Lapper
Published: July 8 2008 00:29 | Last updated: July 8 2008 00:29
Brazil’s prospects, it seems, have never been better. Economically and politically stable, the country has become a poster child on international financial markets – the most fashionable, perhaps, of the so-called Bric group of large emerging markets that also includes Russia, India and China.
At a time of rising global demand for food and energy, Brazil is uniquely placed. Already the world’s biggest producer of almost any farm product you like to mention, including ethanol made from sugar cane, Brazil is the fourth biggest manufacturer of cars and will soon become an important oil exporter.
Its home markets are booming and have become a huge magnet for foreign direct investment. Its capital markets are attracting massive inflows from overseas. Meanwhile, Brazilian society is being transformed as incomes rise and inequality falls.
Much of this has been made possible by reforms enacted over the past 15 years that have borne fruit during the past few years. It has all been helped along by international conditions that, for Brazil, have never been so benign.
It is no exaggeration to say that Brazil is on the verge of superpower status. But it is not there yet, nor is that status guaranteed. Things have been going so well – President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is the most popular president in Brazilian history – that there is a powerful temptation among the country’s leaders to let things take their course. But the task of transforming Brazil is far from complete.
The country’s infrastructure is a mess. Public health and education services are persistently inadequate. Businesses must still struggle through a mass of red tape and Brazilians seem addicted to a large and spendthrift public sector. The cost of failing to address these issues will be another generation of lost opportunities.
Even so, the momentum for change is strong. On the streets of Brazil’s towns and cities, the feelgood factor is hard to ignore. Consumer and business confidence are riding high. In São Paulo, a spectacular new suspension bridge completed last month seems to typify the mood – brash, daring, brightly lit and monumentally confident.
Among the steel and glass towers of the business district around it, new buildings are sprouting like so much tropical undergrowth.
But it is among the lower-income groups and in some of Brazil’s poorest states in the north-east that the most important changes are taking place. The Bolsa Família, an income-support programme developed under Fernando Henrique Cardoso, president from 1995 to 2002, and vastly expanded since then under Mr Lula da Silva, has brought a quarter of Brazil’s nearly 190m people into the consumer market for the first time.
Across the country, though, there has been a rapid expansion of jobs and credit. Many new jobs – though far from all – are the result of migration from the informal to the formal sectors: workers who previously had no registration or rights are now tax-paying citizens with generous employment benefits.
“The creation of formal jobs is far outpacing that of informal ones,” says Cristiano Souza of Dynamo, a Rio de Janeiro investment manager. “Companies are hiring better-educated and more productive people.”
One reason for the rise of the formal sector is that government inspectors are cracking down on tax dodgers. But there are many other factors. Any owner of a company thinking of going public, of selling part or all of their business, of opening franchises, or of applying for credit, must be able to show a genuine, clean set of books. Increasingly, companies demand the same of their business partners and suppliers.
By coming within the law, of course, many businesses have given up a huge competitive advantage of not paying taxes. This has forced them to work harder to achieve productivity gains. “If you talk to companies you see there has been a real change in expectations,” Mr Souza says.
Partly because of Brazil’s history of economic turbulence and recent memories of runaway inflation, companies have always been survivors, quick to adapt to changing circumstances. In the past, they spent much of that energy on maximising financial gains from inflation and other market distortions. Now, after decades of stagnant productivity, they are becoming more efficient and competitive.
With less likelihood of finding themselves unemployed, Brazilians have been able to plan for the future. They have also been able to take out longer-term loans for big-ticket items, especially cars. Changes in the law allowing lenders to foreclose on non-payers have helped a rapid expansion of credit, as have new forms of lending, especially arrangements under which instalments are deducted directly from borrowers’ pay packets – or, commonly, their pensions. A new “positive register” of people with good credit histories will help lending expand further.
Such advances are even making a dent in Brazil’s notorious income inequality. At the same time, stability has also brought more consistent rates of growth. Between 1990 and 2003, growth was extremely erratic and averaged out at less than 2 per cent a year. Over the past four years, the average has been more than 4 per cent. In the 12 months to the first quarter of this year, it was 5.8 per cent – and this at a time when the US economy has been growing at less than 1 per cent.
In the past it was said that when the US caught a cold, Brazil got pneumonia. “Now the US is in intensive care and we haven’t even sneezed,” says Aloizio Mercadante, a senator for Mr Lula da Silva’s PT (Workers’ party) and one of his economic advisers.
The foundations of Brazil’s new prosperity were laid under the Cardoso administration and loudly denounced by the then opposition PT. But, in government, Mr Lula da Silva and his advisers have seen the value, especially to the poor, of low inflation and a stable economy.
A floating exchange rate, primary budget surpluses (before debt payments), inflation-targeting and central bank independence: these form the basis of stability which few question. “There is no longer any room in Brazil for populist adventurers,” Mr Mercadante says.
His PT and Mr Cardoso’s Social Democratic party may be on opposite sides of what remains of the political divide, but both agree that stability must be preserved.
Even so, Brazil faces some big challenges. When Mr Cardoso’s government took office in 1995, it presented a list of priorities for change. Many of them were enacted. But others – especially reform of the pensions, tax and labour systems – remain to be done. Sérgio Vale, an economist at MB Associados, a São Paulo consultancy, says that Brazil is now reaping the rewards of past reform. “To grow long term, we need to continue with the reforms,” he says.
One of the main problems is that the shape of Brazil’s expensive state sector is still an obstacle to development.
The cost of maintaining over-generous pension and other provisions for the middle class means that Brazil is still heavily indebted and has some of the highest interest rates in the world. Even though external debt has been virtually eliminated, net public debt in domestic currency is officially equal to 41 per cent of gross domestic product, a rate much higher than that of many of Brazil’s peers. Fiscally pressed, the government still invests too little in roads, energy and ports.
The country’s soya exports – more than a third of those traded in the world – often travel thousands of miles from farm to port by lorry along potholed highways, at great cost to competitiveness. The threat of electricity rationing, last introduced in 2001-2002, looms on the horizon.
Yet many fear that the government – and even a future PSDB government, should one be elected – has little stomach for the political cost of carrying out the necessary changes. “To do reforms you have to burn up your own political capital,” says Mr Cardoso. “But the gains come only over time.”
Partly as a result, the reform agenda is subtly shifting, away from what Mr Cardoso calls “hard” issues such as pensions to “soft” ones such as education and security.
Yet the last thing Brazil can afford now is complacency. There are already signs that its macroeconomic stability is coming under threat. After years of surpluses, Brazil has recently developed a current account deficit, likely to reach $21bn by the end of this year. For the time being this is being more than covered by foreign direct investment, although the speed with which the deficit has emerged is causing concern. At the same time, inflation is creeping up and may end the year at as much as 6.5 per cent, two points above the centre of the government’s target range.
In spite of such worries, Brazil’s advances were rewarded this year with investment-grade ratings from Standard & Poor’s and Fitch, two of the world’s main ratings agencies. Such recognition, many both inside and outside the government feel, was long overdue. But such a view suggests that Brazil has laid the foundations of growth and that all it need do now is to avoid going backwards.
Yet some of the foundation stones of faster, sustainable growth, which is well within Brazil’s potential, are still lacking. Leaving them out of place will risk stagnation – something Brazil well deserves to be rid off.
Brazilians, who could so easily enjoy European standards of living, will go on putting up with second best.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
The economy: An impressive list of policy achievements
By Jonathan Wheatley
Published: July 8 2008 00:29 | Last updated: July 8 2008 00:29
Back in the bad old days around the turn of the century, when Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the former president, was routinely harangued by Workers’ party militants with cries of “FHC out, IMF out”, the economic agendas of Brazil’s government and opposition could hardly have been further apart.
Now, as in so many mature societies, it often seems difficult to slide a white paper between them. Mr Cardoso’s policies, until quite recently accused by his successor President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of bequeathing the county a “cursed inheritance”, are now credited with having laid the basis of Brazil’s current stability. Many investors who, on the eve of Mr Lula da Silva’s first election victory in 2002, dumped Brazilian assets in panic that he would overspend the country into debt default, now regard his Workers’ party administration as the bastion of that same stability.
Few in government or opposition doubt that Brazil owes much of its current prosperity to orthodox economic policies such as a floating exchange rate, inflation targeting and fiscal restraint.
The danger, many observers say, is that now those policies are established and their benefits are being enjoyed, policymakers may regard their job as done. But just as Brazil’s prosperity is the result of reforms carried out over the past 15 years, they argue, its future prosperity depends on keeping the reform agenda moving.
“In the current climate of global stagflation, the only way to keep Brazil out of trouble is to address the issues that have been swept under the carpet by this government and the previous one,” says Winston Fritsch, a former secretary for economic policy at the finance ministry and now head of investment banking at Lehman Brothers in São Paulo. He says action must be taken on the central issues of tax reform, an overhaul of restrictive labour laws, and cutting government spending.
Yet ministers can counter such arguments with an impressive list of achievements. Guido Mantega, finance minister, says Brazil has made a “qualitative leap”, from growth that averaged 1.6 per cent between 1990 and 2003 to an average since then of more than 4 per cent. More importantly, he says, the stop-and-go growth pattern of the past has been replaced by consistency.
Asked if the government still has an agenda of reforms, he points out that spending on payroll is lower as a share of gross domestic product than it was in 2002, the last year of Mr Cardoso’s government, and that the deficit in the pensions system, while it rose to the end of 2006, has since fallen back.
Paulo Bernardo, planning minister, says the focus has switched from macroeconomic issues to microeconomic ones. He points to new regulations on credit that have driven a rapid expansion of lending.
Other examples are the recent breaking of the state monopoly on reinsurance to allow private-sector participation, and forthcoming bills to improve the quality of anti-trust regulation. A recent change of environment minister, he says, is likely to speed the process of granting licences to infrastructure projects, one of the main obstacles to investment.
Yet Mr Bernardo admits to concern over a lack of macroeconomic reform. “I am in favour of coming back to pensions reform in the future,” he says. The same applies to labour reform and to cutting government spending. The government would like to move forward with the reforms,” he says. “But we have to involve the opposition in their formulation. [Cutting spending] is not easy to do, there is still a very strong culture in Brazil of thinking that you need to earmark spending to priority areas like health, education and welfare. But this creates demands for more money. It’s true that this is a problem for Brazil’s development.”
Henrique Meirelles, president of the central bank, says the proposed creation of a sovereign wealth fund demonstrates the government’s concern over the impact of public spending on stability. The fund will initially set aside half a percentage point of GDP – about R$14bn ($8.7bn) – to be invested in public debt as a counter-cyclical contingency fund. This is the equivalent of increasing the size of the primary budget surplus (before debt payments) from 3.8 to 4.3 per cent of GDP.
Many critics say that, since the surplus is already running at more than 4.5 per cent over the past 12 months, the benefit of the implied cut in public spending will not accrue. Mr Meirelles agrees, but says the increased surplus is still important.
“Yes, the increase has already taken place,” he says. “But there was a concern that, if the surplus had gone back to 3.8 per cent by the end of this year, there would have been a big stimulus [to inflation], and that’s not going to happen.”He says the central bank is keeping a close watch on the expansion of credit – and on the sharp fall in unemployment, down to 8 per cent from 12 per cent four years ago.
Mr Meirelles was about to enter politics as a member of Mr Cardoso’s centrist party, the PSDB, when he was invited to head the central bank from 2003.
The fact that he is still in the job as one of the most determined defenders of orthodox monetary policy after six years of Mr Lula da Silva’s administration is as clear a sign as any of Brazil’s new policy consensus. Yet he agrees that fiscal policy lags behind monetary policy in creating the conditions for sustained growth. “We would welcome a little more help,” he says.

Upwardly mobile: Increasingly cheerful about the future
By Richard Lapper
Published: July 8 2008 00:29 | Last updated: July 8 2008 00:29
School fees, health insurance, bills for two mobile phones, regular monthly payments for a new Fiat Palio bought last year and an occasional evening sipping a caipirinha cocktail or two at the local dance hall: the demands on the R$3,000 ($1,900) that Edilma Silva and her partner, Neno, bring home each month keep growing.
Even so, Ms Silva, a 25-year-old self-employed manicurist, is delighted with her lot, which she says has changed beyond all recognition since she left her home in the rural north-east 12 years ago. “There are many more options, many more opportunities,” says Ms Silva, who owns a modest two-bedroom house in the eastern São Paulo suburb of Jardim Angela. “Now I am much more independent and have so much more self-esteem.”
Ms Silva is a typical beneficiary of Brazil’s economic advance. Since she arrived in the more economically advanced south-east, Brazil has seen more than a decade of financial stability, steady if unspectacular growth and a sharp fall in unemployment. Social assistance programmes, originally introduced by former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, have been expanded radically, with 13m families benefiting from the Bolsa Família, a plan that makes welfare payments dependent on children attending schools and clinics. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has steered through a 50 per cent plus increase in the minimum wage since 2004. And credit has become much more widely available, with loans rising from the equivalent of 22 per cent of economic output in 2004 to 36 per cent this year.
The result has been a dramatic expansion in spending power among lower-income groups, with no fewer than 6m Brazilians moving out of poverty in 2006 alone. At the same time, the perspectives of many low-income groups have been transformed.
A survey last year by Ipsos, a opinion polling group, showed that the “C” social class – a category defined by income, assets and educational attainment – has grown quickly in the past two years, while the numbers of less well-off Ds and Es have shrunk. Families in the C group represented only about 34 per cent of the total in 2005 but that number had increased to 46 per cent by the end of last year.
By contrast, Ds and Es, who made up 51 per cent of Brazil in 2005, dropped to 39 per cent in 2007.
Although the average income of Cs is only R$1,200, the widespread availability of credit has transformed living standards. “It is a very significant phenomenon,” says Franck Vignard-Rosez, executive director of Cetelem, a marketing organisation which worked with Ipsos on the survey. “It is as if we had seen a population twice the size of Portugal entering the consumer economy.”
Poorer Brazilians – like Ms Silva, who opened a bank account only two years ago – have suddenly been presented with a range of offers to borrow money. Televisions, DVDs, refrigerators and other white goods, computers and cars are available on credit and although rates are relatively high, repayment periods are long.
While there is some concern that the credit expansion could prove to be temporary, another recent trend that has helped improve living standards could prove to be more durable: the remarkable growth in the formal economy. Even though Brazil is still an expensive and bureaucratic place to do business, the country has witnessed a stunning expansion in formal employment over the past couple of years.
Improved tax collection and an expansion in public-sector employment are partly responsible. But hundreds of Brazilian companies are choosing to regularise their affairs with the tax authorities in order to access capital more easily.
Some 1.6m new jobs were created last year – the highest ever level – and an additional 850,000 new positions in the first four months of 2008, an increase of 27 per cent compared with 2007. “Brazil is creating jobs at unprecedented speed,” says Marcelo Neri, director of the Centre of Social Policy at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Rio de Janeiro.
Already, the momentum is leading many businesses to adapt their commercial strategies in order to meet the needs of newly empowered consumers. Retailers such as Casas Bahia or Insinuante in the north-east have expanded quickly by offering credit to poorer customers. Consumer goods companies are tailoring their sales offers to the less well off, mirroring the tactics of Indian companies that have pioneered sales to the bottom of the pyramid.
Nestlé, for example, sells powdered milk in affordable sachets rather than more expensive cans and employs working-class women to sell yoghurt and dairy products door-to-door, reaching consumers for whom a journey to the supermarket is prohibitively expensive.
All this seems to be producing growing optimism among Brazilians. A recent survey by Gallup, sponsored by the Inter-American Development Bank, found that Brazilians were increasingly confident about the future, with a greater proportion expecting their levels of happiness to increase over the next five years than among the citizens of any other nation in the world.
In São Paulo, Ms Silva is emblematic of that trend too.
She plans to study to be a nurse or a pedologist as soon as she finishes a course that will allow her to complete an interrupted basic schooling. “I think it will improve even more,” she says.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
Infrastructure: Smooth path in jeopardy
By Jonathan Wheatley
Published: July 8 2008 00:29 | Last updated: July 8 2008 00:29
Economic growth in Brazil has often been likened to the flight of a chicken – short, noisy, and ending with an ungainly fall to earth.
Until recently, every time the economy achieved lift-off, it quickly ran into the barrier of capacity constraints and, as a result, rising inflation. If growth did not collapse on its own, the central bank would be forced to bring it down with higher interest rates.
Now, Brazil’s trajectory is altogether more elegant, largely as a result of many years of stable macroeconomic policies and of the increase in investment such policies have encouraged. Brazil’s investment rate remains low by many standards but it is rising quickly.
From 16.9 per cent of gross domestic product at the end of the first quarter of 2007 it jumped to 18.3 per cent this year. It is expected to be more than 25 per cent by 2015.
Foreign direct investment is expected to be $35bn this year, or about 2 per cent of GDP. Local companies are investing too. Industrial production rose by 7.3 per cent in the year to the first quarter, faster than overall economic growth of 5.8 per cent. In the auto industry, output raced ahead by 21.7 per cent, with no sign of slowing.
But while Brazil is quickly emerging as one of the world’s most promising markets, it still faces barriers to growth from a woeful lack of infrastructure.
With rare exceptions, its highways are atrocious, adding to transport costs and eating into competitiveness. Its ports are overburdened and in need of modernisation. Electricity generation once again risks falling behind growth in demand, raising the threat of rationing, last used in 2001-02.
The government has sought to show eagerness to tackle this with a programme known as the PAC, or accelerated growth programme. It proposes investments of more than $300bn by 2010, although the bulk of the money is expected to come from the private sector and it includes many projects already under way.
Paulo Godoy, head of Abdib, an association of companies in infrastructure and basic industries, says the rate of investment, though rising, is still short of Brazil’s needs. Abdib recently produced figures showing that, at 2007 prices, investment in infrastructure rose from R$53.6bn ($33.3bn) in 2003 to R$84.3bn last year, and was expected to reach R$86.6bn this year.
That is still short of the R$108.4bn Abdib says is necessary each year over the next decade to keep pace with growth. “What was lacking in the past and that we are beginning to have now is the prospect of continued economic growth, and that stimulates investment,” says Mr Godoy. But he warns that the increase in demand for infrastructure is moving more quickly than the supply.
One of the most common complaints is a lack of regulatory certainty. The electricity industry is one example.
Saturnino Sérgio, head of infrastructure at the São Paulo State Federation of Industry (Fiesp), says the lack of clear rules means that companies investing in generation in Brazil demand an internal rate of return of 15 per cent, compared with 8 per cent in Chile.
Some progress has already been made. The government recently put stretches of federal highway out to concession, in a much-delayed but well-managed auction. But critics say it has only reluctantly agreed to private sector involvement.
“If it could, the government would do the investment itself,” says Armínio Fraga, a former president of the central bank who now runs Gávea, an investment management company in Rio de Janeiro.
“But it has spent all its money on things like social security so it has no alternative but to work with the private sector.”
Others say Brazil’s traditional leaning towards a state-led economy is far from over. Adriano Pires of CBIE, an energy consultancy in Rio de Janeiro, says the government is seeking to expand the involvement of state-owned electricity companies in the construction of new generating capacity.
“There is a clear tendency for the government to strengthen the role of state companies and increase the government’s control over the sector, to encourage migration from the free to the regulated market,” he says.
Brazil embarked on privatisation in the 1990s and several sectors – steel, mining, telecommunications, electricity transmission and distribution (though so far little generation) – have delivered huge improvements in services and efficiency. The government’s apparent unwillingness to complete the job puts at risk the smooth path to growth in the future.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
Credit crunch ‘echoes Latin debt crisis’
By Richard Lapper in Santiago
Published: August 11 2008 23:17 | Last updated: August 11 2008 23:17
US financial regulators are making the same mistakes as their Latin American equivalents in the debt crisis of the early 1980s, according to Andrés Velasco, Chile’s finance minister.
Public guarantees for private financial activities had to be coupled with strong regulation, he said, while regulators and credit ratings agencies should have been more vigilant about the risks associated with new financial instruments.
“You learn the hard way,” Mr Velasco told the Financial Times. “This is a more modern and a much bigger version of what we have seen in emerging markets over the last couple of decades.
“The US has made, on a different scale of course, some of the same mistakes Latin America made two decades ago. The US [is living] through [the] movie whose end in Latin America we know full well.”
Like several other countries in Latin America, Chile suffered a devastating debt crisis 25 years ago. But the country – arguably the region’s most successful economy in recent years – has remained largely immune from recent instability on global financial markets.
It has, however, been hit by rising food and energy prices, with annual inflation standing at 9.5 per cent. This is significantly lower than in Argentina, Bolivia and Venezuela but high by its own recent standards.
Mr Velasco stressed that Chile would persevere with its tough counter-cyclical fiscal policies, but argued that $22bn (€15bn, £11bn) of scheduled investment in energy generation would also be needed to reduce inflationary pressure.
Chile imports a big chunk of its energy and food requirements and has been hard hit by a recent drought that affected hydroelectric generation capacity and a cut in supplies from Argentina. Mr Velasco said the 3 percentage-point difference between Chile’s inflation and the lower rates in Brazil and Peru was principally due to these twin shocks.
“We are doing a tremendous amount to increase energy supply. You look at private forecasts of energy supply and they see prices falling at the end of the decade,” said Mr Velasco. Two new liquid natural gas plants are scheduled to come on stream by the end of 2009.
The fight against inflation would take place on a number of additional fronts, claimed Mr Velasco, with the government looking for support from employers and trades unions. “Business will have to think twice about increasing margins,” he said.
Meanwhile, the government would keep faith with its tough fiscal policy; the 2008 rate of increase in public spending is expected to tail off slightly compared with what had been expected earlier this year.
“Fiscal policy has been extremely tight,” said Mr Velasco. “We have run a surplus of 7 percentage points or more for three years running. We have paid back every penny of public debt. You would be hard pressed to find any country in the world with better public finances.”
Fiscal savings have been injected into offshore stabilisation funds, which now hold more than $21bn.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

Brasil - Brazil’s BOVESPA & World Economies: Hanging in the Balance

2008-10-09T09:00:00.001-07:00

September 30th, 2008
Brazil’s BOVESPA & World Economies: Hanging in the Balance
Hello all,

Few words can describe the global economic turmoil of Monday, September 29th. Even for those who have lived through a number of economic crises, the rejection of the US bailout and the international plummet of dozens of world exchanges can easily compete as one of the worst in recent history. An article entitled: “Global Markets Suffer worst day in 38 years” by Financialpost.com leads with a picture of two BOVESPA traders looking ashen as they watch the ticker boards, and cites how the market fell by 9.4% on Monday (it also cites Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dropping 4.3% and London’s FTSE falling 5.3%). Another grimly titled article: “Overview: Fear Grips Global Markets” at FT.com, cites the same widespread turmoil, only briefly mentioning the fact that the BOVESPA trading was suspended, a fact that would normally have made global headlines alone. In fact, looking at Emerginvest’s global heat map at the end of Monday, you were hard pressed to find any developed country in the green (Saudi Arabia was up approximately 6% which was the only one above 2.0%). Only a handful of emerging and frontier economies were positive, including Egypt and Uganda - up less than 1.0%, but up nonetheless.

Of course, with the Senate scheduling a vote on Wednesday for a revised version of the House-defeated bailout package, world markets soared once again on Tuesday. An article from Reuters: “Brazil stocks, currency rebound from historic rout” describes how the BOVESPA soared 7.63% with the news.

This kind of gargantuan pendulum swinging of world markets must get under control however. Aside from the worldwide impact on investors’ blood pressure, it is demonstrating how risky even major market economies like the US, Germany, and Japan are. I would also like to point out that while many investors hold the belief that the less developed an economy is, the more risky it is (frontier markets come to mind), many of the frontier markets had relatively small losses. According to Emerginvest, Argentina was only down 0.9%, Nigeria was down 0.5%, to name only two. If anything, this stresses to me the importance of diversification, as well as a horrific reminder that developed markets can be just as risky as emerging or frontier.

In summation, it seems like Brazil’s BOVESPA, and virtually all of the other major world economies hang in the balance with the US Senate vote tomorrow on the revised bailout plan. I won’t inject my own personal leanings on the matter, however it is clear that no matter what side of the argument you are on – it is certainly one of the most important financial decisions the world has seen in recent history.

See you on the other side,

Jonathan

Filed under: Commentary on World Financial News, Emerging Markets, Jonathan (Marketing), World Market Analysis

Brasil - Frontier Markets

2008-10-09T08:57:00.000-07:00

October 6th, 2008
WSJ on Emerging Markets: Look to Frontier Markets in Africa & Middle East
Hello all,
Last week, the Wall Street Journal produced an article entitled: “Brave New Stocks,” with the header: “Fund Firms broaden their horizons as India, Brazil, and China become yesterday’s news. The quest: markets that zig when the U.S. zags.”
The article describes, partly as a result of the highly correlated behavior of the emerging markets to the U.S in the recent financial turbulence, that investors who seek diversification need to be looking at frontier markets.
The argument is that if investors want to be truly diversified, frontier markets such as Peru, Oman, Qatar, and Vietnam, offer the most uncorrelated equities. In addition, the article describes that infrastructure spending will fuel extremely positive growth (despite recent turbulence) in the long term horizon (5, 10, 15 years).
I couldn’t agree more. I don’t think that investors need to have an extremely significant portion of their assets in frontier markets due to some of the risks positioned there. However, after looking at the Emerginvest heat map all week, I think the recent shock waves to the global markets sends a clear message that merely holding Chinese or Indian equities does not constitute a diversified portfolio.
The article puts particular emphasis on the Middle-Eastern and African Markets. It cites Nigeria and Qatar as some of the most promising prospects: “Mr. Upton [senior portfolio specialist for Morgan Stanley’s Frontier Emerging Markets Funds] says …Nigeria, for instance, has a population of 150 million, but just 10 million have bank accounts. ‘It’s like investing in Brazil or Poland 10 to 15 years ago.’” It brings up an astute point in that the main commodity staples of a region, aren’t necessarily what you hope to buy with a frontier fund:
“Ironically, investing along the frontier often bypasses the products for which these countries are known. For example, the best opportunities in the Persian Gulf aren’t in oil, Mr. Upton says. Oil is a commodity and the companies in that industry are mostly based outside of the Middle East; oil and energy-materials companies only account for 10% of Gulf states’ markets.
But oil money fills the Gulf states’ coffers. “Infrastructure spending is set for years to come,” Mr. Upton says. In addition to construction, other promising sectors in the region include telecommunications and financials.”
For these two regions, it highlights respective funds: Market Vectors Africa ETF (AFK) from Van Eck Associates, which has holds stakes in Egyptian telecom, Nigerian banks/breweries, and South African gold-mining, and Rowe Price Africa & Middle East Fund (TRAMX), which holds positions in Commercial Bank of Qatar, and the Dubai Financial Market.
It does note the illiquidity of some of these markets, and inherent political risks with most of the frontier, however it states that most investors need to be looking ahead to the 5, 10, and 15 year timeline, where most of the growth will come from.
Other vehicles to enter emerging markets outlined in the article are:
T Claymore/BNY Mellon Frontier Markets (frontier markets ETF introduced in June) (XFRNX)
and
PowerShares MENA Frontier Countries (invests mainly in Kuwait, and UAE) (PMNA)
Best,
Jonathan

Brasil: New Funding Methods

2008-10-09T02:40:00.000-07:00

Latin America's Meltdown Is the Mother of Invention (int'l edition)
Cash-hungry Latin companies find new sources of financing

For Panamerican Beverages Inc. (PB), Latin America's largest Coca-Cola bottler (COKE), time was short. With $360 million in debt due in December and January, the Mexican company had seen interest rates on emerging-market securities and bank loans climb above 10%. Deciding against an expensive bond issue, Panamco turned to a funding source it had never needed before: Coca-Cola Financial Corp. Coke responded with a three-year credit of $200 million, and Panamco was able to roll over the rest of the debt. ''We paid off the banks, and they reduced their Latin exposure,'' says Paulo Sacchi, Panamco's chief financial officer. ''The strategy worked out best for everybody.''

From Mexico to Chile, Latin American companies are having to find new ways to raise cash. Spooked by the Asian and Russian meltdowns, bond investors are fleeing the region, and global banks are running for cover. Big rollovers and new syndications can't be entirely replaced, of course, but in the current climate, they cost dearly. And with slow growth or recession now forecast for the Latin economies, the vise on local corporations is unlikely to slacken anytime soon.

As a result, cash-strapped companies across the region are tapping new financing sources. And they are coming up with techniques they never would have imagined when money was easier. Some companies are turning to local investors with novel convertible-debt offerings. Others are looking for minority shareholders, securitizing receivables such as customer borrowing, and putting their dollar-denominated revenues in hock. No companies are immune, it seems--neither blue chips such as Panamco, nor the region's many well-run, competitive exporters with professional management and transparent finances. ''These are first-tier companies with magnificent strategic franchises,'' says Morris W. Offit, chairman of Offitbank, a New York investment management bank that runs a $140 million emerging-market debt fund. ''They are certainly very creditworthy.''

There's no arguing with that. Take Petroleos Mexicanos, an established borrower on global markets. With falling oil prices threatening its ambitious investment program, the state-owned oil company last December sold $1.5 billion in bonds backed by Pemex' contracts with U.S. refiners that buy Mexican crude. The offering attracted a broad range of investors, who liked the fact that Pemex customers paid their bills to an offshore company that services the debt. Pemex even insured $900 million of the bonds with MBIA Inc. (MBI) and Ambac Assurance Corp., specialized insurance companies, giving them a triple-A investment rating.

DOING DOUBLE DUTY. Simpler strategies can be just as effective. Local investors, who know companies and their products well, are another promising source of finance for companies long accustomed to looking abroad. For instance, Gener, a Chilean power company that is expanding throughout South America, needed to roll over debt and finance new projects late last year. Instead of an international bond issue or a bank syndication, Gener's management decided to go for a $500 million convertible bond offering. Local investors, led by private pension funds, snapped up $415 million of it--making it a record debt placement in the Chilean capital market.

Such deals can do double duty by providing debt instruments while developing nascent financial markets. Mexico privatized its pension system a year and a half ago--creating a pool of investors. When Grupo Elektra, a $900 million Mexican appliance and electronics retailer, securitized its consumer loans, the funds proved an important new source of capital that provided $100 million. ''If there's a good deal, there's a market for it,'' says Elektra CFO Luis Echarte.

Even smaller companies are banking on local markets to raise cash through well-designed new instruments. This month, Angel Estrada & Co., an $85 million Argentine manufacturer of school stationery and textbooks, is selling $10 million of securitized receivables to finance the credit it grants stores stocking up for the southern hemisphere's back-to-school sales. ''Before, we used bank credits,'' says Roberto Brigante, Estrada's finance manager. ''But this protects me against any uncertainties in the country.''

Foreign investors haven't completely deserted the region, of course. But increasingly they are looking for equity stakes. Indeed, private equity funds are likely to acquire a higher profile in the region simply because they can afford to take a longer-term view. Last August, Mexican conglomerate Desc sold 18% of its two retail food companies for $50 million to J.P. Morgan Capital Corp., a J.P. Morgan & Co. (JPM) investment fund. The deal enabled Desc to secure a cash infusion to buy new food brands just as the Russian crisis panicked the markets. ''It's one source of financing that is still available,'' says Tim Purcell, head of Morgan Capital for Latin America. ''This is the type of deal you should expect to see a lot more of, especially in Mexico and Brazil.''

GUIDEPOSTS. But private equity funds can't begin to pick up the slack for some of Brazil's big debtors. Brazilian companies have some $26 billion in foreign debt falling due this year. Atop the list: utilities such as Light Servicos de Eletricidade, Rio de Janeiro's electricity distributor, which has an $875 million bridge loan that matures in April. The company is negotiating a rollover with several banks, but it will certainly have to pay a lot more than the 9% it is paying now.

Thanks to the hard-won experience garnered by Mexican companies after the 1994 peso crash, Brazilian and other Latin companies have some guideposts. Back then, Mexican exporters used their sales abroad to back bond issues. Brazilian exporters may need to do the same in a quite aggressive fashion in coming months.

When emerging-market worries eventually subside, Latin companies will find themselves all the stronger. The days of easy money may return, but chief financial officers--with more options to choose from--will be a lot more careful about how they use it.

By Elisabeth Malkin in Mexico City