How many entrepreneurs have sat down and thought to themselves, “If only the Chinese would buy my product…Heck, if only one in 10 Chinese would buy my product, I’d be rich!”  Call it the China Dream. It has a long history.

James McGregor wrote a book in 2005 on doing business in China called One Billion Customers. If the title sounds familiar, it may be because a man named Carl Crow wrote a book called 400 Million Customers, back in 1937. You see, the dream only gets bigger over time!

For the most the part, this dream remains a mere dream. But sometimes, someone, somewhere, figures it out. Carl Crow was someone who figured it out, and it made him a rich man.

Carl Crow led an adventurous life. Born in Highland, Missouri, in 1884, Crow started out as a newspaperman. Eyeing his fortune, he started China Press in Shanghai in 1911. But

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BrandPartners Group Inc. has 25 years of experience designing retail environments and retail communications programs for more than 2,000 clients at 30,000 retail locations worldwide. The company’s particular focus has been on the financial services industry.

BrandPartners announced that it has formed a strategic alliance with Rockefeller Consulting Group/Insight Capitalists, a firm that specializes in identifying and implementing strategic growth opportunities for clients across a broad range of industries. Through this exclusive partnership, the two companies will create integrated engagement teams that deliver a complete strategy-to-translation solution to clients.

Bob Raleigh, CEO of Rockefeller, stated, “With this alliance, clients do not have to choose and separately manage a traditional management consultancy, an advertising agency, and a branding and design firm. Our one integrated team approach provides one point of contact for the client.”

David Vazdauskas, Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer for BrandPartners, commented, “With the Rockefeller consulting Group/Insight Capitalists expertise in identifying

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With oil prices dropping, Russia's talks with a weakened OPEC produce a pledge of greater cooperation, while admitting that "Russia is not a member of OPEC." Google, meanwhile, was thwarted in its effort to purchase the Moscow-based advertising agency, Begun. "The government urged support for Russian Internet resources and said strategic assets shouldn't be sold cheaply into foreign hands," said Olesya Vlasova, an analyst at UralSib Financial in Moscow. In moments of crisis, the contrarians can make for fun reading, while the realists can be a bit depressing. Nothing a strong beer can't, er, handle, or better yet, chocolate.

The above is a spoof of what the Yahoo home page might look like if Microsoft took over Yahoo. Can you see where to log into Yahoo mail? Can you see where to do a web search?It may sound heresy to say this, especially since I own Yahoo (YHOO) at a loss, but maybe it is just as well that the company didn't get taken over by Microsoft (MSFT), which I also own. Have you looked at the Vista operating system? No wonder so many companies are unwilling to upgrade. Or even Office 2007. Have you upgraded from 2003? Do you like losing all the menus? Have you tried looking for Headers and Footers in Microsoft Word 2007? Have you tried looking for cell borders in Excel 2007, or tried doing charts the old fashioned way? Why would Microsoft ...