Hi ,

Hope you've been able to enjoy peak summer and have some lemonade

On Monday I wrote about the last piece of writing Congressman John Lewis published before his death. More interesting than my analysis is the actual New York Times piece. A topic that I've seen come up again and again is authenticity, which he articulates as standing up for what you believe in regardless of the consequences.

This week I wrote a post that looks at SMS for business. It profiles how it is used and what the outlook is within the next few years. SMS is an old technology who's capabilities are becoming dated. It's predecessor is called RCS messaging; RCS offers options like integrations with WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, works over WiFi and can even allow live maps to be sent as messages. RCS is now offered on Android phones, with murmurings that Apple is waiting to see how it received. These are the first stages of the technology, but there is massive long term opportunity within this advancement.

This week I found a tool called OEC (Observatory of Economic Complexity) and it lets you examine economic data from various countries and industries. It's fascinating to see how different countries have various export balances. An interesting pattern I saw had to do with the trade balance between China & South America. I expected to see massive import numbers from China to countries like Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Brazil. Instead the numbers showed that China is a net importer from these countries. Most of the products that are imported to these South American countries are electronics & manufactured products and they're exporting natural resources like crops & coal. Another fun, Cambodia imports about $500 million in flavored water every year.

I hope you had a fantastic weekend!

Julian 🦕