Happy
Pharrell Williams – Happy – despite the insanity of having a 24-hour video, Happy just works. Happy as a song works uniquely well as a loop In addition the time visualisation is lovely. Simple flat design that feels a bit like HUD (head up display). My favourite clip kicks in at 4:20PM. Happy was an ear worm before the 24 hour video. The soundtrack of my dreams last night was Happy.
Beauty
Behind the Lancôme Digital Experience | L2’s The Daily
Business
Consumer Appliances 2014 Edition – The State of the Market – Euromonitor International
Managing expectations is more important than actual performance for CEOs – Quartz – And PR has it’s role to play
Consumer behaviour
Brands need to reassess Gen Y – focus on experiences, not really surprising given how many ‘objects’ have been obliterated by digital economy
Design
Great Japanese burger wrapper design
FMCG
High Protein Trend Set to Revive Peanuts – Analyst Insight from Euromonitor International
Starbucks is now selling 46% more things an hour than it was five years ago – Starbucks product sales
Finance
Unintended Consequences of Mobile Payment – Euromonitor International
How to
How To Mail Hard Copies When Traveling Without a Printer
Luxury Brands and the Lure of Social Media – Euromonitor International
Cool Websites & Tools – PDF Search Engine, Brain Teasers, & Real-Time Filesharing – PDF Fetch – is a search engine for finding PDF files. According to the site, it fetches PDF files, eBooks, digital publications, presentations and electronic documents. Simply type what kind of PDF file you are searching for – yes there is a Google shortcut but people may find this easier
Luxury
ROLEX Facebook page – really nice terms of service that the brand shines through
Marketing
Why a plain packaging U-turn from UK.gov could cost £3bn a year – According to friendly “leaks” passed to newspapers overnight, the government may force cigarette manufacturers to sell their wares in plain packaging after yet another review, despite rejecting the policy earlier this year.
British Airways brings British etiquette to China – Mumbrella Asia
It’s a Good Policy to Have Social Media Rules in Writing – NYTimes.com – social media policies tame the wild world of digital.
Baidu Launched Brand Digital Equity List With Millward Brown — China Internet Watch
Social Proof: How and Why it is the most important factor in modern marketing — mobileYouth®
How Important is Measuring Social Media’s ROI? | L2’s The Daily
Wolff Olins Blog – Make enemies, not just friends – or stand for something
Swatting at a Swarm of Public Relations Spam – NYTimes.com – expect a detonation on media relations practices
Media
ISPs should block ‘pirate’ websites, says European Court of Justice – Advocate General Cruz Villalón hints at the future
WordPress Goes Legal: Sues Over Two Egregiously Bogus DMCA Notices That Were Designed To Censor | Techdirt – interesting as this could have implications for Hotfile / Time Warner
Online
Slide fodder: APAC internet penetration and social-media use – Campaign Asia
103 Compelling Social Media And Marketing Statistics For 2013 (and 2014) – Business 2 Community – slidefodder
World Wide Web founder predicts Chinese leaders will take down ‘Great Firewall’ on their own – The inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, predicts that Chinese leaders will eventually dismantle the ‘Great Firewall’ on their own because it’s inhibiting economic growth.
Retailing
Yahoo! Hong Kong Deals Most Popular Coupon site in Hong Kong, Groupon and Taobao Juhuasuan show strong growth – The coupon sector in Hong Kong has seen a healthy growth of 14.7% from 1.24 million unique visitors in April 2013 to 1.42 million unique visitors in September 2013.
Tackling the Potential Christmas Spending Slump
Botched RFID launch lost JC Penney a fortune | WSJ
Xiaomi sold 150,000 handsets in 10 mins on Weixin
Security
Ministers will order ISPs to block terrorist and extremist websites | The Guardian – Great Britannic Firewall
Safeplug delivers Tor-in-a-box for anonymous web surfing | SiliconANGLE – interesting accessible Tor, will this get around the Firefox vulnerabilities that government agencies have used to crack Tor?
Unnamed US officials speculate on Snowden’s ‘doomsday cache’ – feels a bit like spin, we’ll never know though
Singapore
Remote gambling in Singapore facing heavy restrictions – Online and other remote betting activities within Singapore will be illegal, subject to “specific exemptions”, under plans to be drawn up by the Government in the country.
Software
A Beautiful Mystery – IDEO’s Spark app
Early History of HTML – 1990 to 1992
Microsoft admits it has ‘too many operating systems’ – Likely will merge Windows RT and Windows Phone
PARC and SAP Co-innovation: Adding Graph Analytics to SAP HANA | PARC blog
How Ford is building an app program by developers, for developers (video) | VentureBeat – how long before we have Stuxnet for cars used to target people who may own a Ford like say some of the Mexican cartels?
Technology
Why Intel wants to be everyone’s chip maker – interesting analysis
China’s Fathers Say Driving Children Is Their Most Important Job as a Parent – WSJ
Intel Chairman Andy Bryant Says Chipmaker Had Seemed to Lose its Way – AllThingsD
Will mining the big data translate into less sales?
Telecoms
Is Smart Wi-Fi Router the Next Big Thing in China? | Technode
Web of no web
Seattle Diner Booting Customers For Wearing Google Glass – Forbes
There will be almost 200 million mobile augmented reality users by 2018 – putting pressure on battery technology currently solves by external battery packs and in-car charging
Wireless
Samsung’s marketing splurge doesn’t always bring bang-for-buck | Reuters
Samsung’s massive ad spend | Open (minds, finds, conversations)… – compensating for maturity in smartphone design and differentiation
270 million Android users in China
Deconstructing the narrative of American Exceptionalism in Mobile Technology
Samsung’s curved Galaxy Round smartphone fails to sell – Firm can’t raise a glass, no one is buying a Round