Happy & more news

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 FilesharingPDF 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

Latest global comparison of household Internet speeds | Trends in the Living NetworksTrends in the Living Networks

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

China launches antitrust probe into Qualcomm | Telecom Asia