Harlem Shake
Baauer’s ‘Harlem Shake’ Hits No. 1 With Unlicensed Samples – NYTimes.com – just like the early 1990s again. It reminds me of all the tracks who used vocals from the Accapellas Anonymous series of records on DJ Essentials Inc. Some of the Harlem Shake samples are from Philadelphyinz – T&A Breaks 3: Moombahton Loops & Samples – which in turn sampled at least five other tracks including one by Pitbull. Harlem Shake also sampled Plastic Little’s miller time
Consumer behaviour
Your Neighborhood Is Why You’re Fat – urban planning and health. Summary – suburbs and kitchen sink estates without mass transit system links and cycle-friendly roads are bad for you
Why Koreans Love Tumblr, And Other Social Network Surprises – not so much why but interesting insights none-the-less
FMCG
Pepsi Unveiling New Bottle Design – first tune-up since 1997
Nando’s nation: the chicken that conquered Britain – Telegraph – interesting article on the phenomena of fast casual eating
Yum Brands Rebounds From Chicken Scare in China – Bloomberg
How to
Looking for a Google Alerts Alternative? Try This
Innovation
Recharging Japan’s Dominance in Lithium-ion Batteries – PARC blog
China Is Engineering Genius Babies | VICE United Kingdom – not exactly but interesting take on how China is putting effort into biotechnology
Luxury
Lane Crawford employs 3D scanning for spring/summer campaign – Campaign Asia
Media
Ireland’s newspapers suffer hard times – FT.com
What If The Google Reader Readers Just Don’t Come Back? | TechCrunch
Third of digital ads ‘may never be seen’ (Infographic) – Digital Intelligence
Apple is finally making money on content
Social media, a blank canvas for your brand | IAB UK
This Is the Scariest Statistic About the Newspaper Business Today – Derek Thompson – The Atlantic – in 2012, newspapers lost $16 in print ads for every $1 earned in digital ads. And it’s getting worse, according to a new report by Pew. In 2011, the ratio was just 10-to-1
If Superheroes Were Sponsored By Famous Brands – brilliant. Branding could be a way for the comic book industry to survive the disruption of digitisation
Did eBay Just Prove That Paid Search Ads Don’t Work? – Harvard Business Review but only if you an have incredibly strong organic search programme going on. What people failed to take away from this is the rather unique nature of eBay’s business. Don’t give up on spending for SEM just yet. Few organisations can boast of having a site with as strong an organic search marketing as eBay.
Online
Another Reason Google Reader Died: Increased Concern About Privacy and Compliance – Liz Gannes – News – AllThingsD – boils down to mainstream vs. niche
Social | Facebook Events Join the Contextual-Computing Party – location data used well
The man behind Flickr on making the service ‘awesome again’ | The Verge – making the site more responsive would be a good start
Digg Blog, We’re Building A Reader – Digg going after the Google Reader community
How Many People Really Use Sina Weibo – WSJ
The Bing operating system: Microsoft bets on deep search integration to beat Google | The Verge – leveraging desktop presence
Official Google Blog: A second spring of cleaning – highest profile casualty is Google Reader
Google Illiterate | MetaFilter – pissed off Google Reader users
LinkedIn to Buy Pulse Newsreader for More Than $50M – AllThingsD – interesting acquisition
Retailing
The week in charts – Economist – interesting data points on Alibaba
Amazon Optimus Prime – AllThingsD – impressive growth in Amazon Prime, the Kindle Fire looks like the 21st century of the Argos catalogue
China’s e-tail revolution | McKinsey & Company
Software
China Mobile: Let the Market Decide How to Charge Tencent for WeChat
Why I’m Switching (Back) to Firefox – campaul [dot] net – I never switched away
Insight: On Facebook, app makers face a treacherous path | Reuters
Smartest of the Ambient Apps at SXSW 2013 | SiliconANGLE
Technology
Apple’s Data Centers Now Running on 100% Renewable Energy, Corporate Facilities at 75% – Mac Rumors
Web of no web
Wireless
Android Owners Aren’t Real Smartphone Owners – Business Insider