There are increasing signs that China's heading for big economic changes, and that will likely fuel an increase to the market chaos. The most recent speculation involves a potential upward revaluation of the Chinese Yuan against foreign currencies. Goldman Sachs Chief Economist Jim O'Neill (no lightweight) -- says that something is brewing in China as they may be preparing the revalue the Yuan higher by as much as 5%. This would represent another leg of Chinese monetary tightening. China has been tightening its monetary policy by requiring banks to increase reserves. It has a history of raising reserves repeatedly when it goes into a tightening mode. A Yuan revaluation would represent a big move to cool off growth and stave off inflation, which has been increasing in China. Marketwatch reports that real-estate prices on the Chinese vacation island of Hainan have increased 30% in one week.  That's almost the definition of hyperinflation.

An interesting little battle is  developing on the mobile front with video. You see, as many people complain, the Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPhone does not include Flash support. Neither does the iPad. Coincidence? I think not. Steve Jobs has not masked his disdain for Adobe. Today, Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) announced a series of products designed for Google's Android platform, trying to hush the noise over the "Apple ban" and throw its support behind the "more open" mobile platform. Here is an excerpt of some good analysis from ReadWriteWeb:

Today at the Mobile World Congress 2010, Adobe announced several initiatives designed to cement their company's relevance in a world where Apple, one of the top smartphone players, has banned Adobe software from inclusion on all mobile devices including the iPhone, iPod Touch and the soon-to-launch iPad. Without Adobe's Flash runtime, thousands of websites don't work, streaming videos won't play and a number of online casual games are broken. Apple, of course, is fine with this, having worked around the issue thanks to the 150,000+ iPhone applications that deliver the same functionality...although sometimes for a fee. Adobe, meanwhile, is focusing on the other up-and-coming smartphone platform, Google's Android OS, with the launch of their "AIR for Android" offering. With this and the newly announced Flash Player 10.1, wannabe mobile developers don't need to learn specialized code, but can instead leverage their existing development skills to build Flash and AIR-based applications. They can then have those apps run anywhere: PCs, Macs, Linux and mobile...including, surprisingly, the iPhone.

You can read the whole story here. The Adobe propaganda is here. Funny how these little techno-political battles get in the way of making users happy, isn't it? A while back, Jeremy Allaire, the founder and CEO of Brightcover, published a very good overview of the strategic battle brewing between Adobe and Apple on the mobile video front. It's going to get nasty. With the growth in mobile and an explosion of video on the Web, it's only natural that the two of them come together. That means positioning your company for mobile video growth is so strategic. Will HTML 5 win because of Apple's ban? It's probably going to be messy for years to come. That's bad for the consumer, which nowadays is forced to chose among a variety of propietary formats for mobile video. I like Jeremy Allaire's conclusion:

While it is easy to take a binary position in the future of content applications and run-times, it is evident that the competing interests of platform vendors, consumers and app and content publishers will ensure that this remains a fragmented and competitive environment for many years to come.

His full column: The Future of Web Content -- HTML5, Flash & Mobile Apps

6:00PM Pre-Olympic coverage featuring Bob Costas 6:10:00--6:20PM Bob Costas: exclusive Apolo Ohno interview 6:20PM Figure Skating: Doubles long-form 6:30PM Profile: Apolo Ohno, gifted child. A touching mini-documentary of Apolo Ohno's elementary school experience, featuring an interview with his math teacher.

Had a frustrating weekend trying to tune the family into the Olympics. Eventually I may work out the bugs in our "personal Olympics experience," but it is amazing to me that this day and age of "advanced interactive video" technology, it is so difficult as a consumer to find what you want. Here's a list of problems I've encountered:

Did you ever wonder about how things like the Home Shopping Network are so successful? That's right, because people are gullible. Lots of people. That's why there are so many rich people who sell things on TV. I am a regular reader of Guy Kawasaki's blog, and I came across this funny piece on his blog today, "How to Avoid Gullibility. Unfortunately, if you are trading or try to invest in the stock market, there are pitfalls of gullibility ever day. First step: Turn off CNBC.

Who among us have not fallen for a stupid idea, pitch, or proposal? At some level, we’re all gullible where “gullibility” is defined as “an unusual tendency toward being duped or taken advantage of.” Fortunately, Stephen Greenspan has written a book called Annals of Gullibility: Why We Get Duped and How to Avoid It. In the conclusion of his book, Greenspan explains how to become less gullible:

Read the rest of "How to Avoid Gullibility."