renaissance chambara | Ged Carroll

Are we getting back to work? | The Irish Times – Sat, Dec 07, 2013 – the brain drain is likely to cripple future economic growth

Knight Lab’s Joe Germuska: “We have to find room for the big experimental ideas” | IJNet – interesting experiments going from publishing to search and visualisation

The Meaning of China’s Crackdown on the Foreign Press : The New Yorker – it’s about internal image and the failure of soft power to deliver results

Britain’s Autumn Statement: The butterfly effect? | The Economist – UK looks to screw over Chinese and other property investors

Modelling for Taobao, what a way to make a living｜WantChinaTimes.com – unstable work and due to poor social opinion of models a personally challenging roles for the Taobao girls – 21st century catalogue models

Chinese smartphone firms fear ‘patent troll’ litigation｜WantChinaTimes.com – insiders worry that in the wake of the acquisition, Nokia may cash in on its patent assets in an even more radical manner, alleging that the company may become a “patent troll” by recklessly suing mobile-phone firms worldwide, in a bid to maximize its royalty income

Standard Chartered warns 2014 is ‘make-or-break’ for China – a lot rides on economic reform

David Cameron comes under fire in China – FT.com – The Cameron administration should acknowledge that the UK is not a big power in the eyes of the Chinese. It is just an old European country apt for travel and study – ouch got to love the Global Times

3G mobile phone licence controversy looms for Hong Kong regulators | South China Morning Post – China Mobile, the world’s biggest telecoms operator with 750 million subscribers, is the only party interested in obtaining a new 3G licence in Hong Kong.The big four Hong Kong 3G mobile operators – HKT (PCCW), SmarTone, CSL (One2free) and 3 Hong Kong (Hutchison Telecom) – I was advised against China Mobile when getting my phone because it’s network was supposed to be poor, so not surprised it wants another licence (paywall)

Jessica Lessin talks about paywalls, The Information and the virtues of knowing who your audience is – professionals will pay for useful content (i.e. media as a work tool), which increases competition on analyst firms

Samsonite sets its sights on acquisitions in China – FT.com – interesting mid-market rather than luxury play (paywall)

Enormous world exploration sim ‘No Man’s Sky’ announced from ‘Joe Danger’ creator Hello Games | The Verge – the procedural generation aspect of the game is interesting

Inside Story Of Yahoo Acquisition Ptch – Business Insider – not terribly surprising, interesting that it wasn’t an acquhire

How To Display Real-Time Like Counts For Your Facebook Page On An Ipad – Locations such as retail outlets that want to display real-time like totals can use Fliike from French startup Smiirl if they opt for a stand-alone counter device, or LikeScreen from Pretty.

Academia.edu slammed with takedown notices from journal publisher Elsevier

Twitter’s Dorsey Vies With SoftBank’s Son for Japan Shops: Tech – Bloomberg – my money is on SoftBank unless Square gets a heavy hitting JV partner in Japan

Microsoft Vs Apple Mobile: Microsoft Said to Overtake Apple in 3 Years | BGR

U.S. Media Firms Stymied in China – WSJ.com – challenging regulatory environment but big potential business

What Can We Expect From Generation Z? – PSFK, with The Curve Report from NBCUniversal Content Innovation and Creative Marketing, is examining the future of Gen Z.

Data point: In search of Immersive Experiences | JWT Intelligence

A First Hand Account Of New York’s Clubs In The ’70s and ’80s » Sabotage Times – or why New York now doesn’t impress me

Should You Be Ditching A Ton Of Your Facebook Fans? Here’s Why Burger King Did Just That | Co.Create

Pushed Out of a Job Early – NYTimes.com – ageism in the work place

UK aims to attract more Chinese tourists given 2013 surge in spending – the amount of cash Chinese tourists spent in the UK surged in the first half of 2013, with the UK government set to launch a campaign to attract more visitors from the nation.

China sees renewed enthusiasm for Confucius – the Chinese President’s recent remarks on reviving the country’s traditional culture have refocused attention on Confucius and sparked vibrant discussions about how the ancient sage can inspire modern China.

Club Med will fight falling profits by moving upmarket, and away from the Mediterranean – moving emphasis from Mediterranean to Asia which accounts for less than 20% of their properties but 2/3rds of their operating profit.

Typists who clear 70 wpm can’t even say where the keys are | Ars Technica – I guess its like knowing your way around your neighbourhood but not knowing that many street names

Google says 91.4% of non-spam emails sent to Gmail users are now authenticated using antiphishing standards – The Next Web

Smartphone Penetration in Japan: WTF | PixelBits – Mona Nomura with some interesting adoption data

Reactive Grip Wants Your Video Game Experience to Get Physical [VIDEO] – interesting move in haptics for gaming experiences

Interesting: HP nixes Amazon EC2 API support — at least in its public cloud – will this get ugly?

Foreign automakers profiteering in China, says CCTV – China’s state broadcaster China’s state broadcaster, China Central Television (CCTV), has accused some foreign automakers, auto makers, including Land Rover, Subaru and Audi, of profiteering

China’s cigarette output soars despite tobacco controls – China’s anti-smoking efforts in the past decade have failed to limit the explosive growth of the country’s cigarette producers, according to a new report.

Hongkongers feel more ‘negatively’ towards mainland Chinese than Japanese, survey shows – relatively positive view of the Japanese isn’t surprising when you look at how Japanese style and products are consumed in Hong Kong. However when this headline is read through a mainland perspective it becomes more confrontational

China-EU Bilateral Investment Treaty: Can It Be Achieved? – Analysis

HKMA warns against use of Bitcoin – The Hong Kong Monetary Authority says the virtual currency, Bitcoin, cannot be considered as a means of payment or an electronic currency. The statement comes a day after the mainland ordered banks not to deal in Bitcoin.

China’s favorite basketball star unveils the Nike Kobe 9 Elite shoe – Nike is so beholden to China for sales

Is the yuan going global, or just masking more shady Chinese banking? – An obscure trade report about China is raising eyebrows about the swift rise of the country’s currency. After accounting for a mere 1.9% of financing for global trade in January 2012, the yuan now makes up a whopping 8.7% in October 2013

Moody’s to Apple: Don’t Listen to Carl Icahn – avoid “significantly more debt” or “face heightened credit risk”

Why Microsoft needs three—or more—operating systems | Ars Technica

Moore’s Law isn’t making chips cheaper anymore

Philips & Samsung among firms in EU raid – Philips and Samsung Electronics said they were among the companies visited by EU officers this week on suspicion of breaking competition rules.

Facebook Admits Organic Reach of Brand Posts Is Dipping | Advertising Age – buy more ads

Mobile Tracking at Dealerships Drives Consumer Data to Mazda | Advertising Age

You have too many chat apps. Can Layer connect them? | The Verge – Jabber for OTT?

See you on the golf course, John, Cisco is in trouble – I, Cringely – intereasting analysis

8 Brands Rocking Snapchat | Mashable

RIM oral history

Hong Kong consumers spend on luxuries rather than personal vehicles

Disney revives MVNO

Facebook admits organic reach is low

Facebook revamps power editor

Chinese government says Bitcoin can’t be used

Really nice bit of creative for LINE – amazing Thai advert

Apple finally signs deal with China Mobile, just in time for there LTE-like network

Socialize: November 2013 | Common Sense

What are Danish Consumers Doing Online?

Shipping containers | The Atlantic

Xiaomi – iPhone is still best phone on the market

Google Puts Money on Robots, Using the Man Behind Android – NYTimes.com

Landor’s 2014 trends forecast – WPP

Giant electronic hands let runners high-five people online

Where are the market researchers on Cameron’s trade delegation to China? | – How digital research methods can overcome challenges to researching

Making Mobile Ads That Work – Harvard Business Review  – when mobile ads actually work

Dating agencies to help Hong Kong’s career women find a husband | South China Morning Post – damn some of this is brutal

News: Mobile Trends to Keep In Mind | Monday Note – some nice slideware fodder

Cheap Central Bank Money Contributes to Dangerous Bubbles – SPIEGEL ONLINE – Spiegel predicting another crash

Xaxis and 24/7 Media make media buying platform behemoth – programmatic buying yada yada

Graphene in Telecommunications | Ericsson Labs

Teenagers say goodbye to Facebook, adding street cred to WeChat – not terribly surprising, Facebook has had its weaknesses baked in from early on

Chinese authorities conduct unannounced inspections of Bloomberg News – Term Sheet – Bloomberg has made a right mess of things

Judge: MPAA can’t call Hotfile founders “pirates” or “thieves” at trial | Ars Technica

Mobile Shopping Trends in the UK – comScore, Inc

How the world will progressively look weirder to us – big data begats big noise

Hong Kong’s Troubling Shortage of Men – Atlantic Mobile – from the little I have seen this is down to a two factors: Hong Kong has an aging population and the tension between tradition and western lifestyles. Many women are much more empowered and want more, by comparison men look for more traditional attributes in a woman

Lessons on radical innovation from Bell Labs, the grandfather of inventiveness – why hard innovation no longer happens in the west

Social Business and the McKinsey 7S Model – not terribly surprising

BCG Index Documents The Power Of Brand Advocacy

Yahoo Acquires Natural Language Processing Company SkyPhrase To Help Drive Intent Identification | TechCrunch

China To Account for 30% Global Smartphone Market in 2017 — China Internet Watch

Apple Gets “Significant Bounce” On 5c, 5s iPhones; Android Still Trumps With 71% Share Of All Sales (Ingrid Lunden/TechCrunch)

Tom Daley uses social media to come out, and bypass media and PR | The Wall Blog

Secret Weapon in Mall Battle – NYTimes.com – mobile applications

W Hotels: Social media done right | Rapt Cat – nice case study here based on the experience of Yi Chen

Techies vs. NSA: Encryption arms race escalates

Korea Insights Data Download | InMobi – interesting report on Korean movie going habits (reg wall)

Windows 8 falls to 6.66% share as Windows 8.1 hits 2.64%, but combined the duo barely grows to 9.3% – PC platform maturation, touch lack of a compelling reason to upgrade?

prosthetic knowledge — 252 Byte Demos of P01 Visual coding experiments… – inspirational

Nobel prize winning economist warns against US bubble

App Publish | Mobile Advertising – InMobi – simplified app store

Black Friday 2013 Report – IBM – PDF

Wolfram’s next thing – sentient applications

New Linux worm targets routers, cameras etc

The fall (and rise?) of Yahoo!

Could Social Media Storytelling Help Apparel Retailers Stave Off the Discounts This Christmas? – Analyst Insight from Euromonitor International

Samsung’s ads are working, but not as well as it wants – Relentless advertising has helped Samsung take top spot in the global smartphone market, but it’s also given the company another title: it’s one of the biggest ad spenders around

Renren announces third quarter loss – reduced revenue from advertising and gaming, down some 5.6% year-on-year

Bigger (Data) Is Not Always Better – In2

R Kelly sets up ‘Black Panties hotline’ to promote new album – Callers can sign up to receive eight messages a month from US R&B star – old school marketing channel

Samsung execs to discuss ‘crisis awareness’ at huge company meeting. – Samsung’s management team is meeting from December 17th through the 20th to discuss its plans for the next year, and one of the main topics is “crisis awareness,” ZDNet reported. – PR opportunity?

Mac vs Chromebook: Google employees instructed to use OS X computers | BGR

Harvard Materials Scientists Invents 3D Printing Tech for Batteries – A materials scientist from Harvard University named Jennifer Lewis and her team have invented a new ink and printing process that allows or the manufacture of 3D printed batteries at room temperature. The scientists say that the tech is still at an early stage, but shows promise.

How Important are the MINT Countries to the Global Economy? – This acronym stands for Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey.

India probing Ericsson over essential patents – India’s antitrust regulator has launched a probe into Ericsson over allegations the company is making excessive royalty demands for standards-essential patents.

You lost the love…. are mobile operators the new banks in terms of branding

A Beautiful Mystery - IDEO’s Spark app

Remote gambling in Singapore facing heavy restrictions - Online and other remote betting activities within Singapore will be illegal, subject to “specific exemptions”, under plans to be drawn up by the Government in the country.

Yahoo! Hong Kong Deals Most Popular Coupon site in Hong Kong, Groupon and Taobao Juhuasuan show strong growth - The coupon sector in Hong Kong has seen a healthy growth of 14.7% from 1.24 million unique visitors in April 2013 to 1.42 million unique visitors in September 2013.

Seattle Diner Booting Customers For Wearing Google Glass – Forbes

Samsung’s marketing splurge doesn’t always bring bang-for-buck | Reuters

Slide fodder: APAC internet penetration and social-media use – Campaign Asia

Samsung’s massive ad spend | Open (minds, finds, conversations)… - compensating for maturity in smartphone design and differentiation

Why a plain packaging U-turn from UK.gov could cost £3bn a year - According to friendly “leaks” passed to newspapers overnight, the government may force cigarette manufacturers to sell their wares in plain packaging after yet another review, despite rejecting the policy earlier this year.

Ministers will order ISPs to block terrorist and extremist websites | The Guardian - Great Britannic Firewall

Great Japanese burger wrapper design

270 million Android users in China

Xiaomi sold 150,000 handsets in 10 mins on Weixin

Microsoft admits it has ‘too many operating systems’ - Likely will merge Windows RT and Windows Phone

ISPs should block ‘pirate’ websites, says European Court of Justice - Advocate General Cruz Villalón hints at the future

Samsung’s curved Galaxy Round smartphone fails to sell - Firm can’t raise a glass, no one is buying a Round

Latest global comparison of household Internet speeds | Trends in the Living NetworksTrends in the Living Networks

How To Mail Hard Copies When Traveling Without a Printer

China launches antitrust probe into Qualcomm | Telecom Asia

British Airways brings British etiquette to China – Mumbrella Asia

There will be almost 200 million mobile augmented reality users by 2018 - putting pressure on battery technology currently solves by external battery packs and in-car charging

103 Compelling Social Media And Marketing Statistics For 2013 (and 2014) – Business 2 Community - slidefodder

My good friend Stephen Holmes is looking for a middleweight designer for his agency near Old Street: it’s a small operation that works with some large brands.

Here is the full spiel:

Middleweight Graphic Designer
Bloodybigspider is a small design agency in East London working across a huge variety of local and global campaigns, both digital and print. We’re looking for a middleweight designer to join our small team and help out with our ever expanding work load!

You’ll need to have:

• Strong portfolio of design across branding, literature and digital
• Hawkeye for detail
• 3 years+ agency experience
• Strong CS skills
• Client facing experience (there’ll be phone calls and meetings)
• Ability to manage your own time / prioritise workflow across multiple projects
• Ability to work on your own and in a team
• Ability to prepare artwork for print and check proofs
• Initiative and common sense and be a self starter

It would be great (though not essential) if you also have:

• Basic HTML
• AfterEffects

In return, as a small agency, we can offer an opportunity to really make your mark and step up in terms of responsibility and projects – some of which you’ll be running.

Salary
£27 – £30K DOE

To start as soon as possible

Portfolios under 5MB

* Thanks but no agencies please *

Drop them an email talent@bloodybigspider.com