renaissance chambara | Ged Carroll

Television Advertising Continues To Reign Supreme | AdPulp - not terribly surprised if one looks at a prominent FMCG brand business like Colgate | Palmolive the overwhelming majority of their advertising spend is television

Qualcomm, MediaTek in Two-Horse Race, Says CLSA; Game Over for BRCM, Etc. | Barrons

The Box Blog » Announcing Box Open Source - good for OSS movement

How Does Facebook Handle Graph Search Queries In A Timely Fashion? | AllFacebook - interesting primer on Facebook’s back-end technology

Wolff Olins Global CEO Karl Heiselman Leaves to Join Apple | Advertising Age - interesting that Apple is hiring so many digital agencies. AKQA is particularly interesting given its longstanding relationships with Microsoft and Google

Need for speed: Testing the networking performance of the top 4 cloud providers | GigaOm - I was one of the original non-US beta testers for WeberWorks – an online environment / workflow tool for doing and running PR programmes with real-time reporting and the thing that kept killing my usage of the tool was network latency, it was like working in treacle. Interesting to see GigaOm bringing this up as a key performance indicator

Global wearable device shipments to triple in 2014: IDC | WantChinaTimes

QQ reaches 200 million users - surprising how it’s still climbing in the face of WeChat

WeChat Campaign in China Offers Glimpse into the Future of Communications | Hoffman - nice case study on integrating WeChat into online and offline campaign elements

Beijing’s first 24-hour bookstore turns first page | WantChinaTimes.com - I wish London still had the 24-hour Borders on Oxford Street

Digital Intelligence :: Online ad revenue overtakes TV for first time in US

China Mobile Browser Industry Analysis in 2013 | China Internet Watch

Bits Blog: Amazon Buys ComiXology | NYTimes.com - well that’s the comic industry screwed then

Another Chinese Counterfeit Product: Social-Media Followers | Advertising Age - One Asian ad exec who asked not to be named described buying fake fans to give an ego jolt to a new venture in China. The rate, he said, was about 5 U.S. cents for a zombie that’s just a name, and 16 cents for higher-quality fakes with some content on their profiles. In addition to zombie fans, there’s a market for faux re-tweets and comments too

Wonga faces social media storm after forcing Twitter to remove satirical material | Brand Republic – cack-handed handling of satire that would have gone way over the heads of the working poor that Wonga preys upon has as its customer base

Top 100 UK advertisers: BSkyB increases lead as P&G, BT and Unilever reduce adspend | Brand Republic

WeChat opens its image-recognition tech to the public | VentureBeat

Nike+ Fuel Lab opens to expand fitness tracking platform to third parties starting w/ RunKeeper, Strava, MyFitnessPal | 9to5Mac

Chow Tai Fook loses lustre amid poor sales in Hong Kong and Macau | SCMP

China Third-Party Online Payment Market in 2013 | China Internet Watch

Alternatives to Paid Search on Baidu | L2 ThinkTank

32% of men using VPNs to access the internet – GlobalWebIndex – it seems really high

On Beacons and proximity | BBH Labs

Slideshow: 10 Things I Saw at Bluetooth World | EE Times

Sony Curves Images Sensors & TSMC Stacks Them | EE Times - interesting design moves

China’s Quest for ‘MIPS in Wearable’ | EE Times – interesting move, China considers the broader internet of things to be strategically important wearables are just part of it

U.S. teens prefer Instagram over Twitter, Facebook - no real surprises here

Mandarin Oriental readies its photo-sharing social app | Marketing Interactive

Chinese Exports and Imports Unexpectedly Fell in March | NYTimes - the significance of the data for the Chinese economy was clouded by uncertainty over the extent to which exporters and importers were timing shipments to profit from currency market shifts (paywall)

Japanese company invents “Spring Santa” – We love the concept, but it’s actually a little creepy… - social gifting concept in Japan

1 million preorders of new HTC flagship phone on Chinese sites | WatchChinaTimes - not a bad start at all

Apocalypse Now in Hong Kong | WSJ - interesting new film (paywall)

Sneakernomics: When Will The “Sneaker Cycle” End? | Forbes - not so sure about never, but interesting read

Samsung Gear 2 Teardown – iFixit - interesting teardown

Itamar Simonson and Emanuel Rosen: How the Digital Age Is Rewriting the Rule Book on Consumer Behavior | Stanford Graduate School of Business

Ok so this is actually a day late, but here are the things that have made my day this week.

I love this spot for Thai life insurance that has been doing the rounds on Facebook for a week or so

Oreo partnering with a gourmet food truck operator to come up with new creative ways of using Oreos and trying to engage audiences on the Oreo Tumblr account

A custom-made arcade ride and Oculus Rift glasses provide this awesome hacked together Tron lightcycle gaming experience. The game itself came from from Overflow Interactive

Starck Design came up with functioning libary designed around flight cases for troubled regions that I think would be awesome as office furniture or as a home work space.

Finally the new Liverpool kit launch had pre-occupied the office this week and was a multi-channel effort with experiential, PR and online channels all being used to build an event that reverberated around the world

4 reasons why Asian tech companies are using flash sales to sell their stuff

Nobody Cares What You Think Unless You’re Rich | Mother Jones

Jing Daily | China’s Sketchy ‘Daigou’ Luxury Market Is A Hotbed For Fakes

Microsoft Ventures GM: ‘There will not be a WhatsApp-style acquisition again’ | VentureBeat - a bit harsh, I don’t think that you can categorise WhatsApp as pre-revenue or a dogs shit company – but the valuation is indicative of bubble behaviou

Here’s Google’s Smart Plan To Sell Its Computerized Glasses To Businesses (GOOG) | Business Insider - I would still be unhappy seeing Google Glass in a frontline customer services role like Virgin Atlanti

Jing Daily: How Lane Crawford’s ‘unique’ business model defies China’s anti-graft drive

Jing Daily: Zaha Hadid’s next high-profile China stop: Macau

How Real-Time Does Real-Time Marketing Need To Be? Sysomos Blog - according to marketers surveyed. It does beg the question what does real time marketing actually mean to them first of all

Mobile adspend doubles to break £1bn barrier, says IAB report

Samsung S5 Teardown: Loaded With Sensors | EE Times

Five examples of how marketers are using iBeacons | Econsultancy

China Email Marketing Industry Report in 2013 | ChinaInternetWatch

Watchmakers woo women to boost flagging sales | Reuters

Bosch Plans Connectivity Push to Challenge Google’s Lead – Bloomberg

STB defends promotional video for Filipinos | Marketing Interactive - how much do you localise a campaign when the content ends up online whether you want it there or not?

INTERNET OF CARING THINGS | trendwatching.com - emotional design

German companies and China: Mittelstand and Middle Kingdom | The Economist

Twitter CEO’s China Visit Is Interesting, but Not for the Reason You Think – China Real Time Report – WSJ - looking for Chinese innovation to emulate

Is Qualcomm losing its edge in the application processor market? | TechRadar - interesting that this question is being asked

How mobile is contributing to show rooming | Marketing Interactive

‘No Pain’ McFlame fronts social campaign for Zippo | Marketing Interactive

As competition heats up, retailers urged to innovate | Marketing Interactive

Asian Champions of Design: Tiger Balm | Campaign Asia - strident classic design that it seems to shy away from on new products (paywall)

The Army v. The Press | Time.com

Beware of Normcore | Slate - desperately wanting to be average

Users Engage with Major Social Networks Predominantly via Mobile | comScore

How to tell if a merger rumor will come true – Quartz - or how good are journalists?

Toyota is becoming more efficient by replacing robots with humans | Quartz

David Beckham Wants to Launch a Clothing and Lifestyle Brand | Vanity Fair - interesting that Li & Fung are being linked with this

Mobile adspend rockets in Korea | WARC

SK-II promotes pop-up skincare studio via geo-targeted mobile ad

Michael Kors Beating European Brands on Their Home Turf – Bloomberg

Airbnb Becoming a Stronger Competitor to Hotel Brands | L2 Think Tank

54% of tablet users share their device with others | GlobalWebIndex

Are Mobile Operators Asking the Right Questions of their Subscriber Big Data? | Euromonitor Internaitional

VAT on telecoms, broadcasting and electronic services to be charged at rate of consumer’s country not that of supplier from 2015

Media Publications Database | We find the best Media/Advertising publications for you. – great research resource

Nearly half of Arab youth keen to embrace modernity | Burson-Marsteller – presumably in conjunction with PSB

Home · enyojs/mochi Wiki · GitHub - design resources on user experience by the WebOS design team

The NSA Archive | American Civil Liberties Union - Snowden leaks become searchable

Microsoft’s open sourcing of .Net: The back story | ZDNet

Qualcomm’s newest mobile chips offer a clear glimpse at 2015′s killer gadgets | VentureBeat

The Art of Generating Market Research Insight – Euromonitor International - reg wall for whitepaper

B2C Customer acquisition costs 2014 | Smart Insights - information from DMA

Data point: Beacons, retail apps and targeted messaging | JWT Intelligence

Mobile Growth Opportunity for China Beauty Brands | L2 Think Tank

Mobile phone maker ZTE announces direct sales platform | WantChinaTimes.com

Hubspot, Marketo, Eloqua: New data shows marketing automation market share in unprecedented detail | VentureBeat

Economic View: Automation Alone Isn’t Killing Jobs | New York Times - complex interaction of technology, education and market demands (paywall)

On The 20th Anniversary – An Oral History of Netscape’s Founding | Internet History Podcast

The Richest Rich Are in a Class by Themselves | Bloomberg BusinessWeek

Developing Asian Manufacturing Capacity from a China Operational Base | Little Red Blog

Writing on the wall | The Economist - China’s uniquely open approach to graffiti art compared to the repressed west (paywall)

Demystify Alibaba’s Money Fund Yu’E Bao — China Internet Watch

Which Activities are Getting Sportswear Consumers off their Couches? – Euromonitor International

Asia’s Messaging Apps Like WeChat and Line Follow Similar Path – WSJ - going on Nokia’s Android handsets

For older Americans, tablets and e-readers are the new cell phones with huge buttons - More Americans age 65 and older own either a tablet or an e-reader (27%) than own smartphones (18%)—the reverse of the proportions for the general public, according to the Pew Internet Project’s latest study on how people access the internet.

Talk gets cheaper | The Economist - Of the 1.2 billion smartphones that will be shipped this year, almost half will cost less than $200 and one-fifth will cost less than $100

Are single-page apps becoming the norm? – Software Development News - thanks to Javascript

Perovskite, a New Meta Material, Turns Light Into Power, Lasers | EE Times

New DARPA Office Merges Biology & Technology | EE Times

THE INTERNET OF EVERYTHING: 2014 [SLIDE DECK] SAI – Business Insider

Analyst: I’m In China, And iPhone 5S Demand Is ‘Disappointing’ People (AAPL) | BusinessInsider - Chinese brands demand catching up on Samsung and Apple

Google Keep OCR | Google System - so useful

iiMedia Research: China Social Sharing Report in 2013 — China Internet Watch

The radio trumps online services for music discovery | MacNews – I guess record companies need to bring back the art of plugging

Do People Complain More On Twitter Or On Facebook? | Forrester Blogs – the sample size is small but it is interesting since it challenges the social customer service truism that Facebook was generally positive and Twitter was the place consumers raged

Consumer Behavior Data Could Put Predictive Analytics in Government Crosshairs | Adweek

Survey Shows Twitter Users Find Ads On The Network Irrelevant, Random | MarketingLand – there are limitations of this kind of research but the data is interesting nonetheless, a greater degree of matching context would increase performance rather than being seen as interruption marketing

STUDY: Senior Citizens’ Use Of Facebook, Other Social Networks Slowly Climbing | AllFacebook

Samsung Claims Progress on the Next Wonder Material – Digits – WSJ - Graphene for flexible displays (paywall)

Public Wi-Fi speeds to get a boost from Qualcomm’s new antenna technology | PCWorld

Apple, Crown Castle, Splunk: Gaggle of Internet of Things Players in Morgan Stanley Report | Tech Trader Daily

Dayre.me - mobile blogging / Tumblr like platform

A Korean TV Show Caused a YSL Lipstick Shortage – The Cut

European Parliament passes strong net neutrality law, along with major roaming reforms – GigaOm

NASA Spinoff Database - database of space age stuff

Matt Cutts Explains How Google Separates Popularity From True Authority | Search Engine Journal

2014 China smartphone market and industry – Digitimes - China market to reach 422 million smartphones in 2014, with 278 million units contributed by China-based smartphone vendors. The continued expansion by international vendors Samsung and Apple will push up their sales to almost 144 million units, accounting for nearly 4% growth from 2013 (paywall)

Ssshhh! Secret and Whisper get cloned in China - it will be interesting to see how these get harmonised by the Chinese regulatory system

Chinese mobile phone users have a sneaking suspicion they’re being ripped off – Quartz - the complexity of wireless economics

Google distances itself from the Pentagon, stays in bed with mercenaries and intelligence contractors | PandoDaily

Siri’s Psychological Effects on Children | New Republic - interesting ethics questions touched on as well in terms of how we relate to technology

Why Microsoft Is Giving Windows Away on Small Devices | Recode - because Android’s chink in its armour is tier-2 handset manufacturers on razor thin margins making no money and getting no cooperation from Google

Google Plus adds view counter to profile pages | Marketing Pilgrim - something to take account of when thinking about influence

The Next WhatsApp? | Forbes - nice overview of WeChat, Momo et al

China already makes up 60% of E-commerce spending in Asia.

GWI Commerce: the latest figures for buying online – GlobalWebIndex

16-24s least likely to use search engines – GlobalWebIndex - tend to engage more with than other ages with Q&A sites, suggests that search has to work on context and user intent more?

Hong Kong government spending millions developing apps that no one downloads | South China Morning Post

Infographic Snapshot: The Real Story of LGBT and Millennials | Ypulse

Japanese manufacturers focused on high performance – Deloitte Perspectives

How China is trying to get its citizens to censor themselves | Quartz - is this any different to how western governments try to interact with media to influence consumer opinion?

Meet Microsoft’s Cortana, a More Personal Siri – NYTimes.com - no comparison with Google | Android eco-system, interesting

Jing Daily: Chinese Blogger Peter Xu Brings Us Baselworld’s Hottest China Trends - focus on fashion amongst younger consumers

China’s Unstoppable Gold-Buying ‘Aunties’ Move Onto Bitcoins | Jing Daily

Rise of the tech-savvy mother: who says their place is in the kitchen? | Techinasia – I am middle-class, hear me roar

VNG’s quest to build a mobile ecosystem for Vietnam | Techinasia

Here are 3 ways you can pay using smartphones in the Philippines | Techinasia

DATA POINTS: Adspend trends in South Korea | Campaign Asia - Ad spending in the country edged up 2.2 per cent in 2013 led by a doubling of mobile spending, according to Cheil Worldwide

BlackBerry Ends Licensing Agreement With T-Mobile – WSJ.com - surprised BlackBerry is cutting off its nose to spite it’s face unless T-Mobile are consumer customers and they are trying to focus on the enterprise??

Cisco, Nokia: Huawei a ‘Growing Challenge,’ Say Raymond James, UBS - no real surprise

Deloitte Report: Emerging Market Leaders Are More Confident in Their Organization’s Outlook | PR Newswire

Weibos, WeChat & Renren: how to approach social marketing in China | Econsultancy

WiFi Chip Tracks Indoor Location | EE Times

The chip in the iPhone 5s is way more powerful than it needs to be—and that’s bad news for Intel – Quartz

Wearables: one-third of consumers abandoning devices | theguardian.com – this seems to be an issue of design as much as technology as the form factor doesn’t match the use case

Rethinking Carbonates: Potential in Un-Soda – Euromonitor International

Consumers Want More Mobile Data, But Simply Don’t Want to Pay | Parks Associates

Office for iPad: There are no incumbents in mobile | VentureBeat - interesting comparison between the original MacWrite programme and Office for iPad

There’s a Class War Going On and the Poor Are Getting Their Butts Kicked | TIME - interesting Time has written a piece on what would be considered social democrat leanings

China PMI edges up to 50.3 | South China Morning Post - (paywall)

Things that have made my day this week:

Favela football documentary shot on behalf of Expedia last summer doesn’t seem to have got the visitors that it deserve

Metamorphosis, an Hermès story is a beautiful short that is a cut above the norm usually done by luxury brands

A tremendous documentary that pays tribute to Hong Kong’s unique and disappearing neon landscape and the people who made it. 霓虹的製作 The Making of Neon Signs was put together for Hong Kong Museum

Google’s high budget Pokemon Master April Fool got great product placement and high geek creed. Kudos to Nintendo for presumably licensing this to Google for the April Fool

Thoughtful China addressed consumer trust this week in a great advert for Edelman. It addressed the serious issue of a brand’s relationship with Chinese consumers

Jing Daily: Are TV Ads Still Relevant In China? – interesting discussion on where TV fits into Chinese content marketing

Mobile money revolution spreads to Europe as Vodafone brings M-Pesa to Romania — GigaOM

HTC One (M8) benchmark tests cheating explained | BGR – pulling a Samsung apparently, it won’t end well

TelecomTV | Stormclouds gather around US cloud computing suppliers after Snowden revelations.

Interview: Huawei Official Sees ‘Watershed’ Moment for Worldwide Cyber-Security Rules | Asia Society – not sure this is of much help

China’s high-speed rail is so popular, it’s hurting the domestic airline industry – Quartz

Notes on TV — Benedict Evans – interesting analysis of US versus EU markets

Sony Blazes Paperless Trail with Innovative New Digital Paper | Sony – odd, beautifully engineered and ridiculously expensive

Qualcomm to Get Boost as China Mobile Pushes Fast, Global Phones – Bloomberg

Swiss watchmakers say they have no time for tech groups’ advances – FT.com – Swiss watch companies have a plethora of intellectual property to deploy against smart watch vendors (paywall)

How Virtual Reality is Hard and Where It Might Be Going | Valve Software – (PDF)

Xiaomi’s Hugo Barra: True world phones in 2 years, Android all the way – CNET

How the NSA Can Use Metadata to Predict Your Personality – Defense One

Huawei vows its “crawling” tortoise will triumph over the Elon Musks of tech – Quartz – errrr no I don’t think that their handsets will win out whilst they are aiming at the premium end of the market they need to fight it out in the bottom end versus MicroMax etc

Censors take aim at US shows on Chinese streaming websites｜WantChinaTimes.com – this is because Tudou and Youku have been too effective a competition for state television and is bad news for US media companies

Tesla Motors is overrated: Goldman Sachs｜WantChinaTimes.com

‘Nubia’, not iPhone, is Chinese first lady Peng Liyuan’s latest choice of smart phone | South China Morning Post – it is more of a kick in the nuts to Huawei in particular which would think of itself as a premium handset manufacturer and national champion (Oppo and Xiaomi are more domestically focused at the moment). Interesting that Chinese netizens are viewing this almost like a Xi dynasty royal warrant (paywall)

Domestic service robots: Seal of approval | The Economist – Producing something reliable and likeable that can be sold in large numbers and does not get its makers sued may prove a lot more difficult than simply developing the required robotic skills (paywall)

Cloud Denialism Precedes Aereo Case | DisCo (Disruptive Competition)

Welcome mat out overseas for Japanese engineers ‹ Japan Today – the irony is that 30 years ago Japan would have been accused of similar things. It does reinforce Japan’s decline in industrial products. What I find most concerning is that there isn’t a similar Japan attitude to quality in the major Chinese companies that I have seen

As advertisers phase out cookies, what’s the alternative? — GigaOM

Are Chinese celebrities stoking resentment against Malaysia over MH370 disaster? | South China Morning Post – Mainland travel agencies have reported a sharp drop – some as much as 50 per cent – in the number of Chinese visitors to Malaysia compared to the same period last year (paywall)

The Science of Emotion in Marketing: How We Decide What to Share and Whom to Trust | Buffer blog