Cookie Tracking
Google, Microsoft Threaten End to Cookie Tracking – WSJ.com – Microsoft quietly announced in a blog post that the company will give marketers the ability to track and advertise to people who use apps on its Windows 8 and 8.1 operating system on tablets and PCs. The company will do this by assigning each user a number—a unique identifier—that monitors them across all of their apps. (The system doesn’t block cookies in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer Web browser.) Industry players think Microsoft-powered smartphones and Xbox game consoles will be a natural extension of the system – cookie tracking is effectively going into everything with this technology. I do wonder how Microsoft will continue cookie tracking moving forwards as its business moves away from advertising, to software and services focus, primarily for businesses.
Business
WPP CEO Martin Sorrell Talks Candidly About Mergers, Mayhem—and His Own Demise | Adweek – we live in a world where people don’t want to take risks, a world where the average CEO lasts five years and an average CMO in America two years. There are good examples of people prepared to invest, willing to take risks, but they have to unfortunately deal with quarterly performance, non-executive directors, corporate governance, regulators.
Design
A Better Backpack: Sustainable Design – Sustainable Future by Daniel Eckler — Kickstarter – nice bit of heirloom design
China’s Building Push Goes Underground. – WSJ.com – interesting standardised approach to building mass transit systems
Economics
How Bank of England measures economic uncertainty from newspaper cuttings | Westminster blog – press clippings are not a meaningful economic measure
The British economy continues to do better. British people, not so much – Quartz
White Paper: Reaching the Emerging Middle Classes Beyond BRIC – Euromonitor International
FMCG
Reasons Why Tesco Mobile, Jaffa Cake, Yorkshire Tea, Cadburys And PhileasFogg WIN At Twitter
How to
How to Get the Emoji Keyboard on Your iOS or Android Device | Gadget Lab | Wired.com
How to Get the Classic Mac Sounds Back Into OS X Mountain Lion – genius
Ideas
Why US Airlines Have Been Consolidating – Analyst Insight from Euromonitor International
Can Computers Negotiate? Win-Win Negotiations in a Virtual World | INSEAD Knowledge
What’s an Active User worth? | – the interesting bit here is how much Twitter and iPhone users are worth respectively
A Marine Grunt’s Take on GPS, Compasses, Radios and the ‘Golden Hour’ – Defense One – interesting insights into human adoption of technology and common sense
Innovation
Japan to tap technology for military use, another step away from pacifism – AJW by The Asahi Shimbun – also could kickstart Japanese innovation which has been lacking
Japan
Apple Finds Surprising Growth Market in Japan – WSJ.com
Marketing
Adobe® Analytics | 2013 Trends for the B2C CMO
Easy Social Media Analytics & Measurement | Simply Measured
Media
Google Is Bigger Than Magazines And Newspapers – Business Insider
Group of China Internet firms say to sue Baidu over copyright violations | Reuters
Messaging App Line Now Brings In Nearly $100M A Quarter, But No Official Word On An IPO | TechCrunch
Online
JPMorgan’s Twitter session that went horribly wrong
WeShare – Site – Hong Kong blogging platform to replace Yahoo! blogs
True Social Metrics: Social media analytics
WeChat’s growth is slowing but it’s finally set to start making money – Quartz
Retailing
WeChat helps Tencent make over HK$637m in Single’s Day sales | South China Morning Post – “Shopping habits in the mobile space are different from the PC space,” Song Yang, Tencent’s deputy general manager for e-commerce, explained to STCN.com. “The PC space is more search driven while the phone space is meant to be simple, convenient, and good for quick decision-making… For [WeChat], rather than showing all models, we decided to go with a selection of the year’s best-selling goods instead.
CONSUMER BAROMETER – insights in online & offline purchase behavior – some great international data points here
Christmas 2013: Consumers in Europe – Analyst Insight from Euromonitor International
Security
Next-gen HTTP 2.0 protocol will require HTTPS encryption (most of the time) | PCWorld
Impatient Beijing subway commuters get the better of German fare machines | South China Morning Post – not understanding the user context
Software
Jolla spurns Google, picks Yandex’s alternative Android app store for its smartphones – The Next Web
Open sourcers can’t create new penguins – Mules of the IT world | TechEye
App Maker – Make an app with Conduit Mobile
Taiwan
Taiwan’s ‘White Shirt Army,’ spurred by Facebook, takes on political parties – The Washington Post
Technology
Amazon opens doors to Kinesis: The Hotel California of the cloud • The Register
Telecoms
Cisco Systems Q1 2014 earnings transcript – interesting thing here is how Cisco is winning deals and then having the wins cancelled in China
Web of no web
Apple maps: how Google lost when everyone thought it had won | Technology | theguardian.com
Wireless
What do we actually do on our phones? « PRmoment Blog
Elop Microsoft CEO Strategy Analysis: Can execs prevent killing spree? | BGR – this is a rare spectacle — much like “Game of Thrones” but without dragons or magic or glamor or sex or nobility or physically attractive people
Apple Surpassed ZTE To Rank The Fifth in China — China Internet Watch
Smartphones take lead with 55% of mobile phone sales | Mobile – CNET News