The golden age + more news

‘The Golden Age of Silicon Valley Is Over, and We’re Dancing on its Grave’ – Derek Thompson – Business – The Atlantic – the golden age of Silicon Valley is considered over because it is now chasing the easy money. In reality this decline from the golden age is an evolution rather than a radical change. The golden age started its end when anufacturing left the valley decades ago. A sign of the golden age being over is that no one owns a silicon fab anymore. The reality is that the knowledge of design is wrapped up in the knowledge of making. A bigger end of the golden age sign is that even coding is outsourced to India. The migration from the golden age, to funding cheap low-hanging innovation over hard innovation is long-term. But the decline of the golden age isn’t anything you can blame Zuckerberg for, he’s merely a beneficiary

Business

Panasonic loss balloons 10-fold ‹ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion – betting on convergence (doing it badly) and forgetting about quality. They made the mistake of thinking that people buy their brand for being the company logo rather than a complex sum of ‘Made in Japan’ quality, product design that delighted and high performance. They also tried to go for blockbusters rather than niches

Sony sees return to profit, aims to halve TV losses| Reuters – but sees (hopes for?) rebound to profit as Hirai restructures

Zuckerberg’s Hoodie a ‘Mark of Immaturity,’ Analyst Says – Bloomberg

China

As venture capitalists turn their backs on China, funding dries up | VentureBeat

Consumer behaviour

Next generation brands – FT.com – brand preference shifting amongst groups

Poll: Half of Americans Call Facebook a Passing Fad | TIME.com

Keep Gen-Xers Engaged | TIME.com

Culture

Fantazia – An inside view: Creamfields sold again – James Barton takes over LiveNation’s dance offerings and the private equity investors get an exit

The U.S. Government Interviews Isaac Asimov in 1975 | Motherboard

Design

Goodbye, hardwired switches and circuits: we’ll miss you (maybe)“But there’s a downside to the indisputable efficiency of the soft key and touch screen approaches: it’s a much longer path, functionally, from initiation to final action. Perhaps we feel more removed from the consequences of our actions and how they are implemented; that’s a psychological aspect which is hard to assess.” – interesting that EET is talking the man machine interface so seriously on this

Economics

Varying Rates of Growth in the G-20 – Graphic – NYTimes.com
economics

Nick Hanauer TED Presentation About Why Rich People Aren’t Job Creators – Business Insider

Chart of the week: which way next for China’s trade surplus? | FT.com

Ethics

The Facebook-Free Baby – WSJ.com – Should parents just not share any baby photos on Facebook at all?

Finance

Is Insider Trading Part of the Fabric on Wall Street? – NYTimes.com – not terribly surprising when as an industry banks invest millions to get an edge on speed of trades for a small commercial lever

SecondMarket banks on rising tech stars, new markets | Bootstrap – CNET News

Citi: HSBC No Longer World’s Local Bank – Deal Journal – WSJ

Financial Crisis “Speeding Up” Yuan Liberalization – WSJ

How to

11 Tips for a Winning Gamification Strategy | Marketing Technology Blog

Fluid UI – iPhone & Android Mobile Mockups

Ideas

Missives for Developers & Founders – Freemium is a Money Burning Business Model, Cheapium is Better

Is the 1,9,90 Rule Outdated? – Only Dead Fish – models aren’t accurate predictors but ways that we get our heads around concepts, we take them too seriously. Despite this premise some interesting data here consumer behaviour

Health and Wellness: Games Can Motivate Players To Achieve Personal Goals | Latitude Research°

The Dishonored Sex: German Writer Pleads For Male Emancipation – WorldcrunchMen’s greatest mistake was not claiming a place of their own. Three words sum up the male life story: career, competition, collapse.” This may sound subjective, perhaps a tad sniveling, but statistics back up what the author writes. On average, men in Germany die six years earlier than women. Interestingly, the author points out that where the lifestyle of both sexes is equivalent — among monks and nuns, for example, or those living in Israeli kibbutzim – there is no such difference in life expectancy.  Interesting perspective.

It’s Time to Rethink Continuous Improvement – Harvard Business Review – interesting more nuanced viewpoint

Innovation

Researchers tout efficiency breakthrough with new ‘inexact’ chip — Engadget

Samsung pushes graphene one step closer to silicon supremacy — Engadget

Rough Type: Nicholas Carr’s Blog: The hierarchy of innovation

Ex-Microsoftie Robbie Bach: I wouldn’t have made Zune MP3 players, we were just ‘chasing Apple’ — Engadget – makes you wonder about the innovation message you keep seeing in the media about Microsoft

Canon Eyes Robot-only Production for Cameras | TIME.com

DARPA’s TransTac, BOLT, and other machine translation programs search for meaning. – Slate Magazine

Russia’s RVC: maritime navigation and other high-tech investments | FT.com – state VC operation starts to see returns after five years of investments

Why China? – interesting op ed on Chinese innovation

Ireland

Central Bank boss says US is partially to blame for Ireland’s economic crisis | Irish News | IrishCentral“without the complacent expansion of credit by the globally integrated financial market countries like the United States, then Ireland and Britain wouldn’t be in the trouble that they find themselves today”

Luxury

[INFOGRAPHIC] Individual is Better Than Exclusive: Why Luxury Brands Should Embrace Social Media | Chinwag – connecting digital people

Paul Smith plans fresh move into China – FT.com – experience in East Asia should be pretty useful

The Affluent Male Shops And Spends Online – US men

Louis Vuitton asks for SOPA-like seizure of hundreds of websites — GigaOm – smart lawyering or is the law being broken by enforcement agencies?

Jing Daily: The Business of Luxury and Culture in China – report: China To Lead Luxury Demand “For Years To Come”

Marketing

How To Get a Girl’s Number? China’s Touchmedia Has it Figured Out – Scene Asia – WSJ – interesting that Chinese marketers more interested in mobile numbers than email or home addresses. The mobile number has greater longevity

Media

German privacy official warns potential Facebook investors – latimes.com

I, Cringely » Blog Archive Why Facebook isn’t embarrassed by its IPO – Bob Cringely on Facebook’s optimally priced IPO

IP-Address Can’t Even Identify a State, BitTorrent Judge Rules | TorrentFreak

GM Says Facebook Ads Don’t Pay Off – WSJ.com – (paywall) not terribly surprising. Its hard to model attribution for car sales and the context isn’t great

Facebook isn’t working for marketers, says Forrester | The Wall Blog

WPP chief Sir Martin Sorrell has ‘fundamental’ doubts over whether Facebook can carry adverts – Telegraph

People Click on About One of Every 2000 Facebook Ads They See – The Atlantic – you could argue that this is about brand awareness but that means Facebook is getting screwed by selling ads on CPC and the reality is that Facebook ads are poor at brand building

The world’s hottest digital markets: a music map — paidContent

Does Facebook Have a Trust Problem? – The Atlantic – you betcha

Facebook to Brands: You’re Posting Stuff Wrong | Digital – Advertising Age – conversational stuff doesn’t convert and Facebook isn’t a brand building platform

Finnish court rules open WiFi network owner not liable for infringement | Ars Technica

What’s a Movie Cloud? That’s up to you – I, Cringely – interesting attack on the movie industry oligopoly

German Online Newspapers Attract High Income Audience

Foursquare looks to merge check-ins with coupons | Econsultancy

Julu Mobile Aims to Transform the Mobile Ads Experience | Tech in Asia

Getting Sensitive: Sina Weibo Proposes New Content Rules – WSJ

Online

Google Gets Back to Its Roots With New Search Update – The Atlantic

[Rakuten, Inc.] Rakuten Leads Investment In Pinterest – press release

How Yahoo Killed Flickr and Lost the Internet – its not dead but its not growing and its attached to a rotting corpse, a bit like Yahoo! Finance and Sports. Everything else outside Asia should be lit up and burnt

Flickr Bickr – broadstuff – interesting take on Gizmodo’s flickr article

YouTube’s Video Views Are Falling – Advertising Age

UK Email Usage Shifting from Computer to Mobile – interesting data from comScore

With New Look, Bing Gets More Organized, Social – Technology Review

Between – An intimate space for two – a social network for two

Here’s Why Google and Facebook Might Completely Disappear in the Next 5 Years – Forbes – they won’t “completely disappear” though

Evernote Launches in China With Separate Service, Yinxiang Biji | Tech in Asia

Search engines have same speech rights as the New York Times, says Google report — paidContent

Retailing

Mexican bribery scandal threatens to undo years of work by Wal-Mart to repair reputation powered by Industry Intelligence

CHART OF THE DAY: eBay Vs Etsy – Business Insider

Security

How To Keep Those Marketers From Spying On Your Phone – BYTE

NTT DOCOMO Unveils 19 New Mobile Devices— Wide range of models with enhanced support for extra-secure operation — NTT DOCOMO Global – really interesting focus on security

Software

What app problem? Microsoft is developing a service to migrate all your Android apps to a new Windows Phone » Unwired View

Daring Fireball Linked List: Microsoft Antitrust Finding Specific to Windows on Intel? – is ARM a licence for Microsoft to be evil?

Technology

The Apple-Intel-Samsung Ménage à Trois | Monday Note

New Baidu Cloud phone unveiled: Changhong H5018 with 300GB of cloud storage – Engadget – the phone is the PC for many Chinese hence the large amount of storage

Telecoms

Fundamental Progress Solving Bufferbloat « jg’s Ramblings

TelecomTV | What’s happening to Telefónica? – interesting converged services developments likely to squeeze Microsoft and Nokia

Web of no web

How can you tell if you’re chatting with a bot?

Wireless

Worries mount as Nokia burns through cash | Reuters – bit of a non-story. If Nokia doesn’t turn things around in the next 24 months, it’s game over anyway whether they still have cash in the bank or not. Microsoft can’t wait that long

Gartner: Q1 2012 Phone Sales Declined 2%, Dragged Down By Asia-Pacific. Samsung Leads All | TechCrunch

Wireless Emergency Alert system goes live this month, delivers location-based SMS warnings — Engadget

NTT DOCOMO to Launch Public Tender Offer for Buongiorno | NTT DOCOMO Global – interesting expansion move by NTT

Nano-SIM update: Apple design modified to fix concerns, standard will be decided this month | The Verge

Smartphones top computers for U.S. Facebook time | Reuters – mobile users spend 50 minutes more a month on Facebook than computer users