I will be in Boston for work week of March 24, contact me if you would like to catch up for coffee or have recommendations on things I should see and do there.
The photo comes from the City of Boston archive and was taken in 1973, yet another reason why I love Flickr’s embrace of Creative Commons.
Posted in hygiene
How Silence Became a Luxury Product | New Republic
A vast hidden surveillance network runs across America, powered by the repo industry | BetaBoston
Corning exec slams sapphire — rumored for Apple device | CNET News – sounds a bit defensive?
Programmatic Methods to Measure Offline Sales | Xaxis blog
African-Americans Prove Particularly Receptive to Advertising | Marketing Charts – Via Experian
Surveillance by Algorithm | Bruce Schneier
RuPaul Trolls Pirates With Fake Album Leak on The Pirate Bay | TorrentFreak – so funny
China to allow private capital in more state projects | out-law.com
Carl Icahn 2014 Explains How Carl Icahn 2011 Has Terrible Business Ethics | Marc Andreessen
A New App Helps You Find Those Cool Boots You Saw On The Subway | Co.Design
Facebook Drones to Battle Google Balloons in the War of Airborne Internet | Wired.com
Design Pirate Cody Foster Tries To Buy Victim’s Silence | Co.Design – apparent blatant IP infringement
FreedomPop’s “Snowden Phone” Is Similar To The Blackphone, But Way Cheaper | Fast Company – it doesn’t include the Silent Circle subscriptions
T-Mobile’s BlackBerry Promo: 94 Percent Traded for a Different Smartphone | Re/code – ahh not great news for BlackBerry
You’ll never have a sink full of dirty dishes if you follow Toyota’s productivity secret – Quartz
Microsoft’s Nadella Manages Legacy of Ballmer-Board Split – Bloomberg
Qualcomm CEO Mollenkopf Says Smartphone Growth in Infancy – Bloomberg – really, I thought it was heading towards saturation?
Haier Partnering with Indesit Would Benefit Both Companies – Euromonitor International
Should Coca Cola reconsider it’s content marketing strategy with Journey? | RaceTalk PR and Social Media Blog – (disclosure colleague blog post)
Consensus on new EU laws that promise to lower high-speed broadband deployment costs | out-law.com
Stop thinking ‘traditional’ vs. ‘new’ | Marketing Interactive
U.K. Internet porn filters architect arrested for child porn | BGR – oh the irony
Singapore to legislate against cyber bullies | out-law.com
Microsoft’s Siri Competitor ‘Cortana’ Is Seen In Action For The First Time | Search Engine Journal
Pornhub To Attempt National Ad Campaign – Business Insider
WeChat Payment Now Open to All Businesses | TechNode
Analysis on China’s Top Mobile Messenger Apps — China Internet Watch
Do Men Use Facebook Differently Than Women? | Social Media Today
Bulgari supports Italian fashion ties with exhibit at London museum – Luxury Daily
Q&A with Socialbakers CEO and founder Jan Rezab – Campaign Asia – (paywall)
Location-based marketing gets detailed: warc.com
Forbes Billionaires 2014 List – Women Break Records (Vogue.com UK)
European Brands See U.S. as Growth Market – WWD.com (paywall)
Tips for optimising your email campaigns for mobile – Smart Insights
Gucci focuses on handbags with sci-fi social video – Luxury Daily
Wynn Las Vegas celebrates signature production via Instagram contest – Luxury Daily
Mobile innovation is headed for consumer engagement – Luxury Daily
Why Mark Penn is the best person to lead Microsoft’s strategy | Two Thirds Done – ouch
Chopard named the Official Timing Partner of Porsche Motorsport – Luxury News – interesting given that Porsche has its own watch brand made by Eterna
Jing Daily: A-list stylist Mix Wei talks chic celebs and Chinese brands
Finding value in a turbulent world | nicolasrapp.com
China’s Domestic Bond Market May See First Default – NYTimes.com – small solar company
Google to Korean app makers: use our brand, bypass Kakao tax | Techinasia
Octopus app will make cash transfers to friends easy as sending WhatsApp message | South China Morning Post – interesting move by Octopus (paywall)
Linux crypto flaw leads hundreds of apps vulnerable | Daring Fireball
Average U.S. Household has 6.7 Connected CE Devices | Park Perspectives
China Consumption Trends 2014 by MEC – WPP
The designer who thinks music streaming should be a conversation – Quartz
Groovy: DeNA shuts down music streaming service | Techinasia
Sinopec stake sale signals move to privatise state-owned enterprises | SCMP (paywall)
RMB volatility not ochestrated by government: regulator｜Economy｜News｜WantChinaTimes.com
Biggest Billionaire Losers in Crimea Crisis: Russians and Louis Vuitton – Businessweek
Don’t believe the headlines about the “world’s most expensive city” – Quartz
How To Use Analytics To Build A Smarter Mobile Website | Smashing Mobile
Competing with Content Marketing [Infographic] | Smart Insights
Posted in hygiene
China marketers lengthening agency relationships: R3 | CampaignAsia – CHINA – The nation’s marketers work with fewer agencies and stick with them for longer, finds an R3 study. Digital now 18% of marketing spend
The Internet Of Things: The Real Money Is The Internet, Not The Things – the big money will derive from business services that pull data from those IoT networks
Native Advertising Is Becoming The Essential Social Ad Format | BusinessInsider – Mobile is where all social networking activity is going, and it’s why native advertising is becoming such a critical piece of social networks’ strategies.
Mt.Gov – hit by hackers or seized by US Government? | Dazed Digital – even if the US government didn’t seize them whilst digging into the Silk Road, no one would believe them anyway
Can Telegram Beat WhatsApp with a Public API? – it really depends who gets behind it, but why not? Telegram doesn’t have to beat it they just have to be on the phone
Does J. Crew Fit in Japan’s Fast-Fashion Empire? Bloomberg Businessweek – J. Crew’s estimated value of $5 billion may be a little rich
Labour calls for BIG OVERHAUL of UK super-snoop powers in ‘new digital world’ – there doesn’t seem to be recognition by Labour of consumers right to privacy, instead we will end up with something like the former Eastern Bloc
Dear Google, am I pregnant? | Charlie Stoss – Here in the UK, we are a signatory to the European Convention of Human Rights, which among other things includes an explicit right to privacy (considerably stronger than the implicit privacy rights acknowledged in the US, which are not enumerated directly by the US constitution) – a right mess
Report: Apple poaching engineers in Asia to speed product development and launch more devices | GigaOM – Apple is on a hiring spree, according to the Wall Street Journal. A report on Monday says the company is “hiring hundreds of new engineers and supply chain managers in China and Taiwan” in order to increase the speed of product development and “launch a wider range of devices.”
Youku Launches Individual Channels. Chinese Video Sites Seek Diversity | TechCrunch – Youku-Tudou, one of the biggest online video streaming services in China, just launched Individual Channels. The platform has been open to user-generated videos and announced a revenue-sharing plan in June of last year.It will now offer Individual Channel owners tools to better show their videos, manage followers and analyse metrics
LukeW | Data Monday: What Percent of Page Views Share on Social Media? – thanks to Matt Morrison for the link
Oppo Find 7 50 mega-pixel photo sample! | GizChina – With only 16 days to go until the official launch of the Oppo Find 7, a photo sample released by Oppo themselves tells us the new phone will have a 50 mega-pixel rear camera! – Nokia’s photo advantage has just evapourated, if Oppo can do it others will
Jaguar weighing Saudi factory | City AM – already has a factory in China and one due to open in Brazil. Interesting that Saudi has come up as a potential site
London is second priciest city for firms to locate staff | CityAM – Hong Kong cost 123,000 USD per year to locate staff according tothis survey
Nadella Shakes Up Microsoft (MSFT) | Business Insider – Microsoft’s new CEO Satya Nadella has started reshaping the company’s senior executive ranks. Tony Bates going kind of makes sense, I am less sure about Mark Penn as chief strategy officer
Ericsson: China Ranked No.1 in New Mobile Subscriptions in Q3 2013 | China Internet Watch – According to the mobility report released by Ericsson, the global mobile subscriptions increased 110 million in the third quarter, reaching about 6.6 billion in Q3 2013. The subscription kept growing steadily, with the YoY growth of 7% and QoQ growth of 2%
Shell seeks audience interaction – Royal Dutch Shell, the Anglo-Dutch energy giant, is seeking to build up its established global brand with a renewed focus on digital and social media engagement, the company’s deputy head of marketing has said. – only a decade after Facebook launched…
Luxury brands scale back in China |WARC – based on interesting analysis of store openings last year versus brand planned openings
China’s 2014 outlook: CCTV economist | WantChinaTimes – A Chinese economist sees both risks and opportunities in the Chinese economy in 2014 and has predicted that the nation’s real estate market will see excess supply in 2017.
Apple, Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo go on a Carplay iPhone roadtrip | The Inquirer – in-car integration showcased at Geneva roadshow. Concerned that there is more to go wrong however and hope that it all runs off a real time OS a la WindRiver or QNX
Ellen Degeneres Samsung selfie breaks tweet record, but she uses iPhone backstage | Slate – I imagine the Samsung marketers aren’t happy
Navy’s Tiny 5-Pound Missile Packs a Big Punch | Danger Room | Wired.com – relies on commercial-off-the-shelf components such as cellphone camera technology
WPP PR Revenues Drop 1.7% In 2013 | Holmes Report – WPP positions itself primarily as a media investment management business (media buying) PR is less core to this offering. There would be a benefit in tighter integration with the media buying and advertising agencies which isn’t happening as much as it should outside Ogilvy
2013 Global Tech Exits Report – CB Insights – 2/3 OF TECH FIRMS DID NOT RAISE INSTITUTIONAL CAPITAL PRIOR TO EXIT – you then realise how the VC model has changed so dramatically with less businesses that they can take a bet on, further restricting the chances of picking winners
Sheet-like Rechargeable Battery Developed Using New Principle | Nikkei TechOn
Watson Head’s Departure Raises Questions About IBM Moonshot – WSJ – just read Bob Cringely’s articles on IBM over the past few years and this will start to make sense
Counterfeit luxury goods move further upmarket in China | WantChinaTimes – better fakes at serious money
TCL announces strategy to add services to products | WantChinaTimes – going for the Apple / Google / Xiaomi integrated digital services model
Alipay shuts down WeChat API payment gateway | WantChinaTimes
China Mobile to launch integrated communications services | WantChinaTimes
Facebook taps WhatsApp’s appeal – Jana Mobile – whats interesting about this is the emphasis on responsiveness
14 Charts to Profile China Internet in 2013 — China Internet Watch
WSJ Runs Excerpt From ‘Haunted Empire’ – hatchet job on Tim Cook and Apple
Apple to maintain phone profit lead through years of ‘enormous transition’ – report – Windows Phone the rising star? – not convinced by Windows rise, but the profit share vs. market share split makes sense in these numbers. I think that the other could be bigger as Chinese vendors look for Android alternatives due to Google’s heavy hand and non-cooperation
Posted in hygiene
I must admit I was quite skeptical when I first saw this video as my reaction was ‘yet another journalist jumping on the information security bandwagon’. But Peter Warren Singer’s talk isn’t a bad overview for the man in the street and some of the questions from the Googlers are not bad, (I must admit I thought I might see some more nuanced questions and points from them).
Posted in online, security, technology
Less Than Half Of IT Pros At RSA Conference Say NSA Went Too Far – DarkReading – it is a pity that an aggregate nationality break down wasn’t run on this survey to see what US versus foreign IT professionals thought
The Eurozone’s Economy Slow to Recover | Euromonitor – moderate shocks could push the eurozone into another recession
Why China is 10 years ahead in social commerce | Marketing-Interactive – social media platforms are moving to e-commerce, and e-commerce players are developing their own social platforms in an epic clash of the titans between heavyweights Alibaba and Tencent
Telcos to lose $386b from OTT VoIP: Ovum | TelecomAsia
Trouble in China’s food service sector | Euromonitor
Seniors left stranded as China’s cab drivers prefer app subsidies | WantChinaTimes
It costs 5 times more than it did in 1970 to visit Disney World | Quartz
Babel Street picks up $2M to serve as your international data interpreter | VentureBeat
Korea is Asia’s key test market for global tech companies, including Facebook | VentureBeat – There has been much talk about Facebook’s inability to crack the tough, localized Asian market, but in an interview with Facebook’s top brass in Korea, this situation seems to be improving – but KakaoTalk is still way ahead of Facebook
At the RSA Security Conference, Things Get Testy and Then They Get Awkward – NYTimes.com
Web changes the way women shop for consumer goods | CampaignAsia
Cheung Kong profits up 10% | RTHK
Cheil UK creates camera bot for Samsung
Apple readies improvements for TouchID | VentureBeat
Tor is building an anonymous instant messenger | daily dot
How a Hacker Intercepted FBI and Secret Service Calls With Google Maps | Valleywag
Shanghai Tang CEO: why Chinese luxury for Chinese consumers isn’t a hard sell | Jing Daily
Hilton claims it is taking share from rivals in China | Jing Daily
China’s internet giants eye acquisitions to plug service gaps | SCMP – (paywall)
The mobile Internet’s consumer dividend | McKinsey & Company
Euro zone, employment and inflation stable | Time.com
Elon Musk’s giga factory dependent on two high-risk assumptions | Quartz
Hong Kong Triads Have Lower Profile | TIME.com
Cheaper luxury brands gain appeal in China | SCMP
Google Analytics – from Classic to Universal | Hong Kong Web Analytics
Inside the Army’s First Field Manual for Cyber Electromagnetic War | DefenceOne – The Army’s first-ever electromagnetic warfare field manual shows that, for the military, IEDs and spam have a lot in common
Xiaomi Mi2 price cut to just $212 in China | Gizchina – Xiaomi’s popular Snapdragon 600 phone, the Xiaomi Mi2S has had it’s price slashed from 1699 Yuan to just 1299 Yuan!
6 Industries That Will Profit From Global Warming | Wired
Qantas and its ilk are losing the Asian skies to oil money and penny pinchers – Middle Eastern airlines on international routes and discount airlines on short haul routes
GlobalWebIndex: China Had The Highest Mobile Internet Penetration – data showed that 65% of netizen worldwide accessed internet via mobile phone, while the percentage was even higher in specific country-China had 83% mobile internet penetration with approximately 383 million netizens. China had the highest tablet internet penetration as well
China Smartphone Shipments Dropped Slightly in Q4 2013 – According to IDC quarterly report on China smartphone shipments, PRC smartphone shipments dropped for the first time in Q4 2013 after 9 quarters of consecutive explosive growth
Why WhatsApp’s Founder Hates Being Called An Entrepreneur | BusinessInsider
New Mg-air Fuel Cell Developed for Emergency Use | Nikkei TechOn – by The Furukawa Battery Co Ltd
Facebook Messenger for Windows will Shut Down on March 3 – the future is mobile for Facebook
The party’s over: IDC predicts sharp decline in smartphone market growth, with no replacement in sight – hence the commotisation and fight at the bottom, probably with Apple maintaining some premium share
UK spy agency intercepted webcam images of millions of Yahoo users (Guardian) – UK spy agency intercepted webcam images of millions of Yahoo users — • Optic Nerve program collected Yahoo webcam images in bulk — • 1.8m users targeted by GCHQ in six-month period alone - the cynical may draw a comparison to 1984 and the unblinking eye of Big Brother in every home, on balance it must make for deeply boring content
adidas Goes High Concept in China to Get an Edge On Nike’s Trashy Strategy
Nokia X hands on: An ugly but surprisingly functional $120 smartphone
Delta Changes Rewards to Dollars Spent, Not Miles Flown | Bloomberg – achieving elite status in a carrier’s loyalty program has come to reflect customers’ revenue yield, not how many miles they fly
U.S. Companies in China Cite Corruption Challenges in Survey | BloombergBusinessweek – the most common problems: sales kickbacks to customers, followed by employee fraud
Hands-on with Samsung’s Tizen OS: An impressively capable Android clone | Ars Technica
The Rise of Mother-Daughter Team Shoppers – The Cut
Time Inc. Taps Google For Programmatic Sales | MediaPost – The new platform, powered by Google’s DoubleClick Ad Exchange, will give advertisers programmatic access to brands including Time, People and Sports Illustrated
Samsung Reportedly Tried to Suppress a Film Critical of Its Safety Record – like as if you need more proof to show what a nasty piece of work Samsung can be
Nokia Hopes Developers Write for Its Branched Android – Now that it has adopted Android, Nokia hopes that developers will come running to create apps for its new smartphones. Nokia claims that for app creators to adjust their existing apps to work on the Nokia X, X+, and XL will be no big deal
Rolls-Royce Drone Ships Challenge $375 Billion Industry: Freight – Bloomberg – interesting move, however are crews really that expensive?
xkcd: Now – great time hack just refresh
Japan’s Line denies report of talks to sell stake to SoftBank | Reuters
Men Open to New Brands; W-O-M and Ads Key for Awareness | Marketing Charts – More than 6 in 10 men aged 18-49 said they’re open to choosing new brands across several categories when shopping for the household, according to a new report from Defy Media
The Billion Dollar Divorce: Kraft and Mondelez Two Years On | Euromonitor
Hong Kong marketers to boost spending for online, new free-TV options: HK2A and Nielsen – Forty-two per cent of advertisers indicated they will increase advertising spending in 2014, with internet advertising accounting for much of the growth, according to the latest survey on advertising spending projections by the Hong Kong Advertisers Association (HK2A) and Nielsen
CIC 2014 China Social Media Landscape – Where to Play & How to Play? – brilliant for social media landscape
Why instant coffee is so hot in Columbia? | Quartz
360 million newly stolen credentials on black market: cybersecurity firm | Reuters
Stolen from tech writer, Google Glass dutifully records the suspect | VentureBeat – Sarah Slocom shouldn’t have been recording the general public like this anyway, the violence was uncalled for, but I have little sympathy for Sarah Slocom either
How America fell out of love with orange juice | Quartz
Pantech looks to restructure debt – Pantech have done some innnovative things such as gesture control years before Samsung
Chinese video sites fight for exclusive rights to US dramas | WantChinaTimes.com
Posted in hygiene
Brands are as much totems of who we are online as in real-life, which is why Becks and Newcastle Brown became popular in the early 1990s as consumers could use the bottle to show that they had great tast and why Burberry has almost 17 million followers on Facebook. (Unfortunately many of those followers couldn’t afford Burberry apparel but want to be associated with the brand).
Associating with brands help to enforce the way we would like to be perceived. There is a similar kind of phenomenon at play with online communities. We are less of a global village, but instead flock to communities that allow us to self-reinforce our passions in a way that wasn’t possible before.
This is further reinforced by algorithms to provide the audience with only the world view they want to see like Facebook’s news feed algorithm it becomes harder to break out beyond your bubble.
This has impacts from a societal point of view in terms of social mobility and integration of communities. From a brand perspective it provides yet another barrier for a campaign to spread and increases the importance and power of nodes who may have a place in a number of communities.
More information
Race and Social Network Sites: Putting Facebook’s Data in Context | danah boyd/apophenia
The Demographics of Social Media Users — 2012 | Pew Research Internet Project
Teenagers and social network sites: Do offline inequalities predict their online social networks | June Ahn
Teenagers’ Experiences With Social Network Sites: Relationships to Bridging and Bonding Social Capital | June Ahn
Eight trends for the future
Eight trends for the future: digital interruption
Eight trends: Immersive as well as interactive experiences
Eight trends for the future: Social hygiene
Eight trends for the future: contextual technology
Posted in hygiene
The Next Big Thing You Missed: How to Rebuild Computer Security From the Ground Up | Wired.com
Modelling Nokia X Scenarios and the Level of Desperation it Reveals | Tomi Ahonen
Nokia’s new Windows Phone strategy is guaranteed to confuse everyone – How is Nokia going to explain the differences between its Asha feature phone application system, the Windows Phone 8 app system and the new Asha/Windows/Android app system to consumers in emerging markets?
Google Fiber’s potential Achilles’ heel | BGR – Wi-Fi to device is the bottle neck in home broadband set-ups
Nilay Patel: ‘The Internet Is Fucked’ | The Verge – not terribly surprising
Battle Builds Over Shampoo Prices | WSJ – Unilever’s plans to get ahead in U.S. hair care have run into a problem: a price war with Procter & Gamble. (Paywall)
Matt Cutts Answers If Google Uses EXIF Data From Pictures As A Ranking Factor | Search Engine Journal – probably not at the moment but could be used in the future, which would make sense
Cybernorms research department – Lund University – great set of whitepaper resources
Economic Demographics of U.S. iPhone Buyers | CNN Money – One third of Apple’s U.S. sales in 2013 were to Americans making more than $100,000 a year, and of that group, Apple’s share was 65%, according to NPD (which did not provide a spreadsheet supporting that number).
China’s Young Billionaires ‘Shoot Up’ Global Rich List | Jing Daily
Disney Is Launching Its Own Movie Streaming Service | Time.com – In a bid to convince more people to purchase digital versions of movies, Disney today launched its own movie streaming service. The new platform, called Disney Movies Anywhere, allows customers to purchase Disney films through iTunes and then stream them through their web browser or on iPhones – this is huge
Introducing Matrix Class For Glass™ – PRNewswire – beauty brand Matrix is part of L’Oreal uses Google’s abortion bucket of wearable computing Glass
BrandZ 2014 China’s top brands | MillwardBrown
Find the person behind an email address with Vibe for Mac and Chrome
Discriminatory approach to Singapore online gambling rules would encourage legal challenge, warns expert | out-law.com – The Singapore government would open itself up to a potential legal challenge by some of the biggest betting operators if they were discriminatory in banning those companies from offering remote gambling in the country, an expert has warned
Plus size fashion in Japan | RocketNews
Sina posts big profits ahead of potential Weibo IPO, but we wouldn’t invest in it | Techinasia
Nokia’s Androids not strong enough to compete in Asia | Techinasia
McDonalds to do all-day breakfasts? | BloombergBusinessWeek
IT giants to protect Chinese users after Windows XP shutdown | WantChinaTimes
Germany leaning on neighbours for growth | Quartz
New attack completely bypasses Microsoft zero-day protection app | Ars Technica
India to block U.S. trade probes, ready for fight at WTO | Reuters
Element 14 Holding Orders Based On US Government Watch List | EEVblog
Spritz – getting information across fast with speed-reading software
Why Apple’s Recent Security Flaw Is So Scary | Gizmodo
BlackBerry Announces New Phones, Services | Time.com
Chinese version of LinkedIn launched | RTHK – the two key things here are: lack of a Chinese national champion and harmonisation of content for Chinese government compliance
Survey finds Chinese see US as the “ideal country” | beyondbrics – (paywall)
Telco industry needs to invest up to $1.7trn to meet data demand | TotalTele.com
ARPA-E Deputy Director Cheryl Martin Interview on EV Batteries | The Energy Collective
Hutchison Telecom eyes improved mobile business after decline last year | SCMP – aims to improve its mobile business despite increased competition from the merger between HKT and CSL New World Mobility. (Paywall)
Why so many “activist” investors are barraging companies with money-making schemes | Quartz
Property prices are “castrating the whole notion of city life” – the rising cost of property in city centres is causing the “biggest crisis” facing architects and urbanists, according to critic Joseph Rykwert, the recipient of this year’s RIBA Royal Gold Medal
HTC launches new project donating processor power to scientific research | The Verge
Samsung and Apple: two flavors of innovation
Blackphone Launches At Mobile World Congress 2014 – PRNewswire`
Apple sues China govt body over Siri – US technology giant Apple is suing a Chinese government agency and a domestic company over patent rights for its “Siri” personal assistant
Study: Digital Return on Investment Undervalued | Advertising Age
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Posted in hygiene
I have advised the founders of the Today Club in Shenzhen since January. Here is a video explaining what they do far more eloquently than I can
More details on their website.
The trouble with ‘Mumennials’ // Weber Shandwick
WeChat era’ killing intellectual property: academic – Creativity Originality and intellectual property in China are at risk of extinction given the rampant illegal copying and reproduction of information and original content in what has been dubbed the “WeChat era,”
HSBC can’t shrink its vast banking empire fast enough to satisfy investors | Quartz
Ford Sync Said to Drop Microsoft in Switch to BlackBerry – Craig Trudell and Jeff Green, reporting for Bloomberg: Ford Motor Co., struggling with in-car technology flaws, will base the next-generation Sync system on BlackBerry Ltd.’s QNX and no longer use Microsoft Corp.’s Windows, according to people briefed on the matter. – It makes sense, despite BlackBerry’s problems QNX is a robust real-time operating system
How a German Soda Became Hackers’ Fuel of Choice | Motherboard – “If we run out,” she said, “it’s a problem.” – Soundcloud on their fridge of caffienated soda
Acid house and the dawn of a rave new world | Music | The Observer – “Whenever it hit a new town, the first people in that town felt like they had the best secret ever. But it was a very evangelical secret, so they had this desperate itch to tell everyone and spread the word.” – Terry Farley
Qualcomm unveils its 64-bit, eight-core mobile processor family | VentureBeat – Not so long ago, Anand Chandrasekher – a (now former) Qualcomm marketer dismissed 64-bit mobile processors as “marketing gimmicks.”
Unilever partners with Facebook alliance Internet.org to reach millions in India – investing in ways to better reach consumers
GSMA World 2014 in Barcelona, time to end the show? | Digital Evangelist – The global get together that is GSMA World rolls into Barcelona this week and I am left with the feeling that as with Telecoms World before it no longer fits a purpose
Shenzhen property heads for dizzy heights | FT – Southern Chinese city is posting double-digit rises in house prices thanks to the emergence of big technology companies such as Foxconn and Huawei
6 Ways to Brown Nose Your Way to the Very Top | TIME.com
Turning Japan into global gambling hotspot maybe just the thing for Abenomics
Nokia gives in to Android phones – I get using Android to replace S40, but how can Microsoft Windows have a premium position when the other Windows partners are all low-end phone makers?
Chinese slang ‘diaosi’ causing social instability: official | Nanfang Insider – otaku is probably the closest translation I think of for diaosi
A Global Snapshot of the Dietary Supplements Category – Euromonitor International
Tactics Cloud – really useful for Twitter social media campaigns
The Beginner’s Guide to Growth Hacking – via the Digital Orange Concentrate newsletter
Tizen signs up new allies, but still no real phone | Mobile World Congress – CNET Reviews – the Tizen Association on Sunday talked up its 15 new partners, including notable names such as Japanese carrier SoftBank, Sprint, Baidu, and ZTE
Microsoft announces new Windows Phone partners & spring update for Windows 8.1 – interesting that there is a bunch of tier two Chinese phone makers, ZTE and LG
MICROSOFT: This Is Our Newest Plan To Get People To Love Our Controversial Windows 8 Design (MSFT)
In a First for Spain, a Woman Is Convicted of Inciting Terror Over Twitter
★ On the Timing of iOS’s SSL Vulnerability and Apple’s ‘Addition’ to the NSA’s PRISM Program
Anything You Can Do, Icahn Do Better | BusinessInsider – just like the 1980s and junk bonds; the striking point is that it suggests the technology sector has reached an inflection point from being growth to value businesses – time for entrepreneurs to look for a new frontier
WhatsApp, Facebook, Google and the acceleration of the Network Effect in a Mobile World
Xiaomi makes profit on smarter strategies | WantChinaTimes
Veronica 2 Gopher search engine
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Posted in hygiene
Let’s start with a little journey through internet history; the first search engine the way we would understand it was rolled out in 1990, which downloaded directory indexes from different FTP sites and allowed manual browsing (the web was a small place at the time). A year later there was proper keyword searches for Gopher files. Gopher was a precursor to the web and HTTP as we now know it.
When I started using the web at college, internet portals started to come into their own. I used to use Excite.com which I configured the news from a number of sources, stock prices of companies I followed (a sickly Apple Computer and Silicon Graphics, which was on the the rise at the time). Think of it as being like the front page of a newspaper designed by me to mirror my interests at the time. The search business back then was to sell giant black boxes called search appliances made by companies like Inktomi; which provided a search box at the top of the page of your web portal of choice. The advertisements that funded the portals were similar to the display ads that we see today.
Two developments changed the way that we look at information, firstly Google built upon work done in the 1950s at the University of Pennsylvania and the HITS algorithm created at IBM’s Almaden Research Centre and came up with the PageRank algorithm that provided a superior search experience in comparison to competitors like HotBot and AltaVista.
GoTo.com came up with the paid for placement model which changed the way search engines made their money from selling search appliances to selling advertising inventory. The paid-for placement model combined with a search engine that was pretty good at delivering what people wanted changed things dramatically; suddenly understanding the context of the user became the centre of the world’s most lucrative advertising technology business.
Google says that its mission is:
…to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
This means putting context on every aspect of ones life. Mobile devices and the increased accessibility of data allows internet services to provide increased context. Location could be pulled together from services like Skyhook Wireless which used cell tower triangulation, Google uses a directory of Wi-Fi MAC addresses to enhance location based on phone GPS-derived co-ordinates.
At the simplest level you will have noticed this in the desktop web experience you get when visiting websites like Google and Yahoo! which will try and direct you to the local site for the country it thinks you are currently in.
Things get a bit more sophisticated when location is cross-referenced with other data. Burton Snowboards had functionality on its website back in 2011 which suggested products based on your local weather at that time.
This may not be great if I live in Wolverhampton and want to shop for items that will be ideal for my trip to Snowbombing this April.
Now contextual technology is becoming ubiquitous, the latest version of iOS now appends weather information based on your current location to the ‘at a glance view of your diary and other updates.
Retail information and location is being used by Verifone and Brightmove Media’s taxi advertising services that allow geo-fencing of advertisements and even changes in content based on contextual information like footfall, retail locations, weather to provide tailored messages.
There are hints to where this will go next as more part of one’s life are connected together; the coffee shop that gets your order ready as they know you are close by, the house that turns it’s heating on as it knows you are on your way home from the commute. Wired magazine called this the programmable world. Without contextual technology the Internet of Things is largely useless technology.
Like all technological developments contextual technology has a dark side to it, you can be tracked, hacked and marketed to. Our smartphones will be like unwitting black boxes, their data used against us in an opaque and apparently arbitrary manner. Pricing strategies can be gained against you as an individual to wring the maximum amount of revenue out of it. The price of umbrellas or ice cream can be varied in near real-time based on footfall and local weather.
More information
Eight trends for the future
Eight trends for the future: digital interruption
Eight trends: Immersive as well as interactive experiences
Eight trends for the future: Social hygiene
PageRank myths
Google – About Google
Welcome to the programmable world | Wired
Posted in ideas, technology, telecoms, web of no web, wireless
Only in Indonesia: Twitter votes come at a price on popular TV show – how did they manage to charge for tweet vote entries?
Spain exporting it’s way out of trouble | Quartz – something the UK could learn from, Spain still has a long way to go however
Homoglyphs for SEO | Terence Eden
Benedict Evans InContext Keynote | A VC – worth a watch during your lunch hour
Boots to sell Puritane e-cigarettes from Imperial Tobacco subsidiary | Marketing Magazine
Tim Cook on Big Acquisitions: ‘We Have No Problem Spending Ten Figures for the Right Company’
Lecture: Trust and the Fall of Public Relations | Jericho Chambers
US v China: is this the new cold war? – FT.com
Surprise, you’ve got a Windows Phone app! Microsoft irks big brands in bid to stock mobile store – GeekWire – is this dodgy from an IP point-of-view? One has to view their app numbers with skepticism
Intel, Sun vet births fast, inexpensive 3D chip-stacking breakthrough | The Register – a way to allow communication in 3D stacked chips without the expense and fabrication hassles of creating physical connections
How strategists level up — Undercurrent Collection
Huawei has created the world’s ugliest smartwatch | BGR
Google reportedly forcing Asus to ax Android/Windows tablet project
Digital Intelligence :: Europeans spend 18% more time using apps than Americans – report – the European user base launched their apps more than their US counterparts
These Are The Metrics That Really Matter For Social Media | BusinessInsider – Many brands are finally realizing that social media isn’t a transactional engine or sales machine in the traditional sense. As they do, they’re dropping half-baked indicators and letting go of the idea of social ROI
Custom-Order ‘Mix-In’ Ice Cream Chains Realize They’re a Rip-off
Sophisticated Brands for Sophisticated Consumers | Wolff Olins – how Chinese consumers are altering the requirements for their brands
Facebook, Twitter and the User Narrative | GroupM Next
There are six kinds of Twitter conversations, and here they are | io9 – researchers say they’ve found six distinct shapes that Twitter conversations take
Apple Confirms Burstly Buy – owner of the popular iOS beta testing platform TestFlight
How To Build (And Sustain) A Remote Workforce | FastCompany
Chinese brand equity makes for stock hits | beyondbrics – who says that China doesn’t get brand. I think that many Chinese companies don’t understand the difference between sales and marketing but that’s changing
Esprit embraces “fast fashion” in China turnaround | beyondbrics
The European banking system still is a mess: RBS edition | Quartz
China is spending a fortune on science—and is getting robbed blind by corrupt scientists | Quartz
China’s giant pile of copper is inflating its credit bubble | Quartz – China’s import data surprised many today when it revealed that its traders bought397,459 tonnes (438,124 tons) of refined copperin January, just shy of the record 406,937 tonnes imported in December 2011, and up 63.5% on January 2012
Can the Same Manager Sell Pampers and Pantene? P&G Says No | Wall Street Journal – beauty needs specialist management
Gucci is selling too much to the wrong people | Quartz
Lookout study: hackers target mobile attacks by region | PCWorld
Life Before (and After) Page Numbers | The Atlantic
Social media is making you stupid | Time
WhatsApp is the first of several big acquisitions for Facebook – I, Cringely
Nokia may consider merging with Juniper: report – German outlet Manager Magazin Online has reported that Nokia Solutions and Networks (NSN), the bits of Nokia Microsoft didn’t buy, is considering a transaction of some sort with Juniper Networks.… – interesting move, I think that this is better than Alcatel Lucent
South Korea green lights Stuxnet-like code weapons to nark NORKS – how successful would this really be against North Korea? Also given that South Korea is one of the most connected countries on earth and reliant on poor quality security enshrined in law based around ActiveX, retaliation would be devastating
I am out of tune with these times |Bronte Capital – …but the valuation has to make sense on fairly modest assumptions before I get excited. I owned Facebook in the twenties. I could make the per-subscriber numbers work – interesting read, I imagine Warren Buffett’s take would be similar
Chartered Institute of Public Relations – State Of The Profession – once you take account of their natural bias to flog CPD and qualifications it makes an interesting read (PDF)
Want to sell luxury handbags to Chinese tourists? Open more stores in Paris – Steadily growing throngs of spendthrift Chinese tourists have been one of the lone bright spots for consumer economies around the world – luxury tax, tax avoidance by business people and a desire for experiences drive overseas purchases
Jolla’s Sailfish OS and smartphones are commercially ready and heading into new markets – smart of them to get this new out in advance of MWC media scrum
Android users will get to install Jolla’s rival Sailfish OS, bit by bit – Jolla’s Sailfish OS isn’t Android – not even an Amazon-style fork – but it can run Android apps and manufacturers can put it on the same hardware they use for Android devices – now if they could get this running on Huawei hardware so you can bin the crap Emotion UI…
What to do if your organisation is the victim of a fraud attack | Out-Law.com
David Beckham a role model for Hong Kong househusbands | CampaignAsia – Describing the inner life of a misunderstood species of Hong Kong consumer. (Paywall)
E-cigarette lets you smoke, take calls, and play music | Irish Examiner – The new Supersmoker Bluetooth e-cigarette, you’ll be able to receive calls right from your e-cig. For €79, the Supersmoker also acts as a speaker for your music. – wrong, just wrong
China-based social marketing service Kmsocial raises ‘tens of millions’ – good quality near real-time measurement and analytics tools that actually work in China are a big need. Marketing automation than then follow
NTT DoCoMo on 5G mobile – (PDF)
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Posted in hygiene
At the moment in the UK, there is an ongoing exchange of ideas in the media and by politicians in favour of, and against Scotland becoming an independent country outside the union of the United Kingdom. What I have noticed during my short time in country is the vast difference between London and the rest of the UK.
For as long as I can remember there were different scenes in London compared to the North. Rare groove was a very London thing, whilst acid house started to percolate through the clubs in the North of England. (Admittedly Colin Dale doesn’t get enough credit in his work championing early house in London). Going back further, the Ska revival came out of the Midlands and Northern Soul was called that because it was played from Wigan to Stoke-on-Trent. All Around The World Records regularly charts with singles and compilation albums that seem crass and unsophisticated to a London audience, precisely because they are aimed at audiences outside the capital.
This cultural divide extends online, tools like Foursquare have a much lower adoption rate outside the M25, part of this is down to poor mobile infrastructure – which is worse than the Swiss cheese nature of networks in London.
The disparity between London and the rest of the country reminded me of the old city states in Greece, I don’t want to flatter London by comparing it Athens, (lets face it Tower Hamlets, Newham and Hackney are more akin to Sparta), but the difference between London and the hinterlands hints at a de-facto independence.
So what does all this mean for social media marketers? This is something that I have pondered the past few days. I think that there is a case for a definite segmentation in the approach; targeted advertising is a given so the change would more in terms of owned media. Outside London; mature platforms like Facebook, with less focus on mobile marketing. In London, a more experimental approach perhaps incorporating WhatsApp to capture mobile phone numbers (which are a more reliable ID than email addresses which can be easily churned).
I would be interested in hearing other people’s ideas on this, please feel free to put any thoughts in the comments box below.
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Posted in consumer behaviour, culture, online, technology, telecoms, wireless
WhatsApp and the Erosion of the Network Effect – not too sure that the network effect no longer applies, the utility increases as your social circle congregate on one platform
The architect of Qualcomm’s tech licensing empire invests in networking upstart MagnaCom
Yandex Reports Revenue Up 37% In Q4, Ad Network Revenue Nearly Doubles – Russian search giant Yandex reported a strong Q4 2013 today, with overall revenue up 37 percent from Q4 2012 and continued growth in text-based advertising
Can someone explain WhatsApp’s valuation to me?
Microsoft cries out to UK government against open source – self-serving bullshit
This Map Shows The Countries Where WhatsApp Is Used The Most
Unlocking the Future Connected Home
Chitika: Chrome OS web usage share doubles, but is still minuscule overall
Digital Intelligence :: Top 10 YouTube brand channels in the Philippines – Smart Corporate, Nestle, and Unilver’s Ponds were the top three most views YouTube brand channels in the Philippines during 2014, according to new data via SocialBakers
How A Post-90 Chinese Girl Built A Successful Brand
China’s manufacturing hits 7-month low | RTHK
WeChat is nothing like WhatsApp—and that makes it even more valuable | Quartz
The price is right | Asymco – interesting assessment on the value of computing devices
Mark Zuckerberg – I’m excited to announce that we’ve agreed to acquire WhatsApp – in Zuck’s own words
Facebook to buy WhatsApp for $19 billion in deal shocker | Reuters
HSBC flash China PMI falls to lowest in 7 months | South China Morning Post – more on what this could mean later
Facebook to Buy WhatsApp for $16 Billion
Here’s the strategy the mobile industry will announce in Barcelona next week – mobile and identity sounds like a winner, because people never lose their smartphones do they?
Yahoo Debuts Gemini Native Ad Product for Mobile Search – Yahoo introduced Yahoo Gemini today, which it is calling the “first unified marketplace for mobile search and native advertising.”
2014 PR Trend Forecast: Consumer Marketing
Glaxo Memo Shows Drug Industry Lobbying on E-Cigarettes – Bloomberg – Nicorette threatened by e-cigarettes, wants to protect lucrative business
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Posted in hygiene