The other day I was reading startup news in Abu Dhabi and I came across an interesting article written by an American Startup that moved to Abu Dhabi. One part of the story written by the founder of CompanyEgg that caught my attention was the comment about how the UAE is in many ways a startup itself: In less than 50 years, the country has become one of the most advanced and forward thinking countries in the entire world.

A unit of France’s defence electronics group Thales, Thales Emarat Technologies, and Abu Dhabi’s Hub71 are joining forces. The two have joined teams to support innovation in the Emirates. According to AbuDhabuStartup.com: Hub71 is community of founders, investors and business enablers that form a unique technology ecosystem strategically located in Abu Dhabi. Named after the UAE’s formation in 1971, Hub71 is creating the optimal environment for transformative tech companies looking to maximize success, produce outstanding tech innovations and scale globally.

Here are the latest global trends! In this issue, the UAE trends are mentioned in 3 sections – social media, technology & digital and culture. The third edition of The Quarterly is the JCPR report covering the latest trends from around the globe including social media, technology & digital, brand & marketing, culture, good purpose, fashion & luxury, retail, food & drink, health & beauty and travel. These reports come from colleagues from across the world including UK, Germany, USA, Canada, Mexico, Africa, Belgium, Netherlands, UAE, India, Singapore, China and Australia.

We recently came over to the UAE to attend the 2011 Abu Dhabi Media Summit. Here’s what he had to say: Abu Dhabi played host to a clutch of media and telecomms executives from around the world at its second annual media summit last week. It’s a sign of a rapidly developing media environment in the Middle East that James Murdoch, Tom Glocer from Thomson Reuters, Jean-Bernard Levy of Vivendi and Hollywood luminaries like director James Cameron and Jim Gianopulos, Chairman and CEO of Fox were there.

Living in a country where the sun shines pretty much 360 days of the year I’m often surprised at the waste of this super (and dependable) resource. When half the homes in Wiltshire in the UK (authors exaggeration of the truth) are laden with solar panels (trying to warm a kettle the two times a year the sun comes out to play) it seems insane that no-one really bothers out here.