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Recent years have seen China as the must-win battleground for global brands, from all industry sectors. The predominate fights have been in the luxury goods, financial, electronic and automobile markets. The need to win new consumers and their loyalty has been so fierce that some leading luxury brands having launched China specific brands, Hermes' Shang Xia and Shiseido's DQ are a few such examples. And in the last year the attention has turned to all the other industries, even online social networking as seen by the recent meetings between the leaders of Facebook and Baidu.

China has been the most talked about country in the last decade and with all eyes concentrating on the country over the next decade as it strides to become the biggest economy in the world, right now is the perfect time for China to really drive its own brands onto the world stage.

Presently many of the established giants like Lenovo, Huawei, ZTE, Haier and Midea have a strong global presence with expansion strategies already stretching into many countries. Other big brands that are expected to push into oversea markets include China Telecom, Bank of China, PetroChina, Ping An, Gome and Tencent QQ.

It's likely that the most successful exports will be in the electronics, telecoms and power and industry markets. However, there are opportunities for companies that may not do so well domestically to really succeed on foreign soils. Li Ning is a good example, the company produces high-quality but low-cost athletic shoes and sporting equipment. This puts them in the firing line of Nike, Adidas, Reebok and other many others. The company is taking head on the US basketball market, the cornerstone of Nike and Air Jordan. With a number of NBA stars, including Shaquille O'Neal, Baron Davis and Evan Turner already endorsing the brand, it'll be interesting to see how much of an impact Li Ning is going to make there.

As mentioned earlier, the hardest battles are being fought in the luxury goods market, where the emerging mass-affluent Chinese fashionistas are spending the vast majority of their disposable incomes on high priced western brands, mainly because of the status attached to them. This makes it extremely difficult for local brands, such as Omnialuo, S.Deer and NE Tiger to find their voice and succeed within its own borders. Having said that, I think there are ample opportunities for these companies to sell their idea of 'Chinese Luxury' to a western audience that so easily buys into eastern cultures and philosophies. Shanghai Tang started to make leeway a while back, but it's now run by the powerhouse conglomerate Richemont.

It's about selling the brand concept better and to a wider audience, and Chinese brands should be exploiting a history and culture steeped in richness and diversity.

Zink is a new technology that allow full colour printing without the need for ink cartridges or ribbons. All you require is some Zink Paper and a Zink-enabled printing device, such as the Polaroid PoGo. How does this all work? Well, the Zink paper is composed of coloured dye crystals inside, which is activated from the heat within a Zink-enabled device, that's it. But will it catch on??

I've been hopping around the globe recently and here are some of the best websites and apps around.

Invented by Jane ní Dhulchaointigh, Sugru is a fantastic new product that mouldable like Play-Doh, except that it cures at room temperature into a tough, waterproof flexible silicone with good heat resistance, which makes it perfect for creative modelling, DIY repairs and for ergonomically personalising pretty much anything.

In these difficult and uncertain economic times, with governments pushing spending cuts on all fronts and all of us having to tighten our purse strings, there's no better time then right now to make some money out of our idle assets.

For a few years now, website services like Zilok in the US, have allowed us make money from our assets, such as cars and holiday homes, by renting them when they are not in use. So instead of leaving your car un-used in your driveway, your seldom-used items like Karaoke machines, fancy dress costumes or DIY power tools sitting in your basement or shed, why not offer them to local people, who have been vetted by the web company.

Most of these sites let the renter determine the amount charged for every hour, day or week of use and their visits would pick whichever good that fit their needs is most affordable, apt or convenient for them. It's a bit like eBay, but for renting instead of buying, with the process from displaying the good through to the payment being pretty much the same. The web service normally take a percentage of the rental fee from the renter, which usually includes insurance for the item.

I personally like the idea of renting something that I don't need to buy, but would have a use for on occasions, for example; if my niece and nephew where visiting for a weekend and I know they like to ride bicycles, instead of buying a couple of bikes (say for £500) i'd much prefer to rent them for a few days of someone locally (say for £20), and I would bet that someone locally would have two bikes not in use, wouldn't mind renting them out for a brief time and would like a few extra quid in their pockets too.

Anyway, here are a few UK sites to get you started. Erento, Rent Not Buy and Loanables lets you rent pretty much anything, but there are plenty of specialist sites that have popped up recently like: Spareroom for renting a room in your house; or Spareground if you have some spare storage space available; if you're not using your parking space, try Parkatmyhouse; and Whipcar for renting your car.

The single page website has been a growing trend and one that is likely to grow significantly. Single page sites have in the past been used particularly for promotions (although these are mainly Flash based sites) and over the last couple of years for apps, such as TapTapTap and Gelfgolf for the iPhone.

Users today tend to demand all the information and fast, and the single page site is a great way to deliver them everything at once, without them having to drill down and lose interest. As such, single page sites have recently been adopted by companies where the quantity of content does have to be much, see sites like Think Green Meeting, Omnitech, Fish Marketing and Bullet PR.

What's interesting from a design viewpoint is the challenge of crystallising everyone into a single space, which is an opportunity for designers to get really creative and to really make effective use of space. What single page sites have to do is immediately create a good impression of the brand and the product/service, catch the users attention and keep their interest throughout, keep content simple and straight to the point, allow users to clearly decide what to do and allow them to act on it.

Although single page sites do not work for the vast majority of websites, they are a useful tool for condensing information and for homepage construction.