Back in action

Where to start? There was a hurricane and an earthquake (5.1) in Hawaii. I'm now in Taipei which is cleaning up from Typhoon Sepat which made a real mess when it hit the east coast of China.

I've spent the last couple of days catching up on industry news from while I was aware and I'm not sure what to focus on first. Alibaba continues its pre-IPO blitz of new features and deals with the launch of the Alimama ad exchange service. No need to make fun of that Ali-everything name. It does that all by itself.

Or, maybe it should be the Analysys report that China's online advertising hit over Rmb1.6 billion in the second quarter of the year, up a healthy 31.3%.

Or, my friend Jimé Essink getting the job as CEO of CMP Asia. In some ways, this is a 'return to base' for Jimé with whom I first worked in the mid-1990s when he was Managing Director of Expoconsult in the Netherlands, another United Business Media company which became part of Miller Freeman and is now the European bit of CMP Information that was not sold to Reed Exhibitions in 2000. He's coming in from VNU Exhibitions Europe and Asia which, as a joint venture with Jaarbeurs from Utrecht, is a bit of an oddball in the private equity-controlled Nielsen world.