Tap into the right resources and the world can become your oyster. We wrote about one way to track your competitor's suppliers a while back here (excerpt):

Another excellent way to tap new geographical markets, to minimize your expenditure of time, money, and energy, and to help focus your overseas sales and marketing efforts is to use the Port Import/Export Reporting Service (PIERS). PIERS (www.piers.com) is the only information service that provides names of U.S. consignees or shippers as well as overseas suppliers, along with detailed descriptions of import or export shipments for the commodity of your choice. This information is taken from ships' manifests by a nationwide corps of reporters and is loaded weekly into a computer database.

I once used PIERS on behalf of an American window blind manufacturer to find customers who were importing window shades into Capetown, South Africa. My client wanted to effectively compete with an industry giant already exporting to Capetown. After securing a list from PIERS that showed who was buying the competitor's goods there, we created a direct mail package specifically for those customers. Using the PIERS list gave us the competitive advantage we needed to show the South African prospects the superiority of my client's product and win them over as customers.

This week we stumbled upon a new resource that appears to be similar to PIERS: Import Genius -- a search engine for U.S. customs data. We have no experience with it so we leave it up to you to explore.

Another resource is The Journal of Commerce which has been around forever. They have lots of useful global transportation (commerce) information too.

We suggest you check out all of the above, compare capabilities and let us know what you think.

And if you know of other best-kept secrets, please share (comment). Or maybe you prefer to keep the secret to yourself?

We are delighted to have been selected to be highlighted (RSS feed) in the Commerce page of globalpost! According to John Wilpers, Global Blog Coordinator, they had a hard time finding really good global business blogs, especially about global small business, and ours really stood out.

globalpost is a new international news organization that launched on Jan. 12. They have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, MSNBC, MediaShift on PBS, the Columbia Journalism Review, the Online Journalism Review, and many more. Here's what else they told us:

By appearing on Global Post’s exciting new international news website, your words, viewpoints, and pictures would gain worldwide exposure. In barely two months, we have had 250,000 unique visitors and 1.1 million page views. Our readers have come from every country in the world except North Korea, Chad, and Eritrea!

Your posts would not only appear instantly on globalpost.com but also possibly on the sites of our partners, including the Huffington Post (7.8 million U.S. and 9.7 million global monthly unique visitors) and other news and information websites.

We are thrilled to be a part of this exciting consortium of international news sources.

Take a peek when time permits.

An exhibition coordinated by the Reunion des Musees Nationaux in collaboration with The Andy Warhol Museum and sponsored by LVMH / Moët Hennessy / Louis Vuitton (Paris).

United States exports rose in February for the first time in seven months. Is this a sign of better times ahead?

• Exports increased to $126.8 billion in February from $124.7 billion in January. Goods were $84.7 billion in February, up from $82.2 billion in January, and services were $42.1 billion in February, down from $42.5 billion in January. ~ Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Foreign Trade Statistics, April 9, 2009

Let's hope so. Read more here.

Exim Bank of the United States named water purification equipment supplier Aquatech International Corp. of Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, its 2009 Small Business Exporter of the Year.

"In today's challenging global economic environment, Ex-Im Bank support of our exports gives us opportunities that we otherwise would not have," said Aquatech President and Chief Executive Officer Venkee Sharma.

Congratulations to Aquatech! Read more here and here.

Photo: Aquatech's engineers in Hartland designed these towers for the Enel SpA energy utility in Brindisi in southern Italy. The plant uses desalination technology to recycle large volumes of water.

Just posted "Turning Limes to Limeade: Entrepreneurship Can Surface in Many Ways," over at the OPEN Forum by American Express OPEN.

See what you think.

What is the biggest global dance hit (keep your volume down on your computer!) of the past year?

We won't keep you guessing. Go here. You never know when your local efforts will go global.

Pictured: South African DJ and producer Mujava