On Thursday, Donald Trump will walk into the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, shake Xi Jinping's hand, and declare it a great meeting. There will be announcements. There will be numbers — billions of dollars in Chinese purchase commitments, a new bilateral mechanism with an important-sounding name, possibly a joint statement on Iran. Trump will post on Truth Social. Markets will rally briefly. Pundits will argue about who won. None of that will tell you what actually happened. What is actually happening in Beijing this week is something more consequential and more uncomfortable than the summit theatre will reveal: two leaders of two deeply mutually dependent superpowers, both of whom need this meeting to succeed for entirely different reasons, sitting across a table in a world that has already moved past the assumptions that defined their last nine months of negotiations. The Iran war changed the equations. The rare earth gambit changed the power balance. Taiwan is sitting in...
Shopkick is a San-Francisco based company that has just released it's iPhone App . The whole idea is actually quiet simple. You download the App onto your phone and then walk in to any store that partner's with Shopkicks and you can collect "Kickbucks" just for walking in. (Your phone automatically connects with Shopkick offers from a device pre-installed in the store). This applies to people who love and hate shopping. Shopkick says that you need to be rewarded just for visiting stores and get product offers from companies that really matter to you. Its early partners include nationwide chains like Best Buy, American Eagle Outfitters, Macy's, and the Sports Authority, as well as shopping-mall outfit Simon Property Group. Shopkick is right now based in the US and has not yet gone international. Once inside a store you can earn kickbucks for scanning the barcodes of products and special offers related to the product will get pushed to you. What do you do with ...