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Localization of an e-commerce site goes much further than just dealing with customers and payment methods. "In the US, local merchants are unsophisticated, you can't imagine how unsophisticated they are in the third world. With all due respect, it's rough. You're not dealing with the most cutting edge people in the world. They're old school. You have to know the dynamic of the local merchant. Every local merchant has a different psychology - how much can you push and pull, how in touch are they with new modern ways of doing business." Dealing with local merchants has been an educational experience, for all involved. Offerna has been playing a significant role in giving merchants new and dynamic ways of dealing with their customers, and in the process, building a loyal consumer base.

At the end of the week, there was a business competition.The four winning companies were: Bey2ollak - An iPhone app that provides live user-generated reports of traffic conditions on the streets of Cairo. It already has more than 50,000 subscribers and a partnership with Vodafone -- one of the largest mobile phone operators in Egypt. Inkezny (translation: rescue me) - An iPhone app enabling travelers to make emergency calls in any location in the world without having to know the local emergency phone number, as well as seeing GPS directions to and phone numbers for the nearest hospitals  Crowdit - A digital collaborative storytelling platform using real-time pictures, video, and social media reports to reinvent the way stories are told and shared online SuperMama.me - The iVillage of the Middle East, creating a community of mothers designed to connect and empower the women of the Middle East/North Africa region

"Educity", as the Johor complex is called, reflects Malaysia's grand strategy to become a centre for Western education. The country wants to meet strong demand among Asia's new middle classes for English-language schooling. It also worries about its brain drain (over 300,000 university-educated Malays work abroad). Having watched Asian children flock west to spend a lot of money on British and American schools, the government decided a few years ago to try to reverse the trend. It has campaigned to persuade Western schools and colleges to come and set up branch campuses. The Malaysian proposition to Asian parents is simple and beguiling: come to these famous schools and universities in our country and get the same degrees and qualifications as in Britain or America for half the price.

Cheyef7alak takes a name-and-shame them approach to outing irresponsible drivers. Rather than put up with small traffic violations that are run of the mill in Beirut's streets, Cheyef7alak encourages users to snap photos and shoot video as the violation is happening. These then get saved for posterity on the Web for everyone to see.

The merger of globalization and I.T. is driving huge productivity gains, especially in recessionary times, where employers are finding it easier, cheaper and more necessary than ever to replace labor with machines, computers, robots and talented foreign workers. It used to be that only cheap foreign manual labor was easily available; now cheap foreign genius is easily available.