Recent Interesting Blogs from Datamyne’s Mine of Data and Posts; PoL v#3.5

Datamyne leads the pack of TI providers in the use of social media. They publish over 200 articles a year on various aspects of world trade data and application. Since we will have featured a couple of articles about them this week, it seems fitting to fetch a few yummy feeds from their blog kitchen-like we do for our weekly Pick of the Litter series.  In this case perhaps better entitled Best of Breed.  Anyway, here are some samples published within the last 90 days:

Topping the list must be the article heralding the release of Datamyne’s new interface cleverly named Datamyne 2.0. Also, available for viewing is a video demo of their new product.

Since they use frozen tilapia as the chosen product (from tens of thousands of possible candidates) to demonstrate the power of their new interface, their recent blog post “Cluck-cluck Cutlet of the Sea” about tilapia is appropriate. Wow, Americans consume 1/2 billion pounds of Tilapia per year. For more fishy facts, check out this post.

From fish to fruit, this post indicates that the U.S. buys 37% of all the fruit exported by Chile with neigh to half a million metric tons of table grapes consumed annually. My daughter loves grapes. Every week, we buy several pounds for her alone. We like to do our part in supporting the global economic growth of our southern cousins. Top Pick: Chilean Fresh Grapes

This recent blog post on Selling Med Equipment in Brazil highlights Datamyne’s capacity to look into the trading patterns of other markets particularly those of Latin America. With the exception of PIERS, no other TI provider (to my knowledge) collects and disseminates transactional data of this sort. This is great for U.S. Exporters who are looking for markets to the south.

Who’s Open for Business? World Bank’s annual report is a treasure trove of free information. This is an interesting post that references a report on 183 countries that ranks the overall ease in doing business overseas. For instance, it takes an average of 7 documents, 17 days and $1,730 per container to comply with the governmental procedures required to export a shipment from the U.S. to Brazil.

Americas Barometer 2010– Taking the measure of democratic values and the impact of the downturn, do our Latin American Neighbors believe Free Trade Works? This blog article, featuring a attractive and descriptive graphic, charts the percentage of people (organized by country) that think “free trade” has helped their economy. What do you think? Does it?