6 minutes estimated reading time
B52 upgrades
B52 receives first tech upgrade since 1961: Now with color screens and wireless networking – this is a credit to the engineers that designed and manufactured to the B52. The longevity there was something dieselpunkish about mixed analogue and digital controls that appeals to me though. The B52 was originally designed as a nuclear bomber, but has only been used in action with conventional weapons. The B52 served in Vietnam, the first Gulf War, Afghanistan and Iraq. The B52 may serve for close on to a century in the US Air Force
Business
Dutch Lady reaches out to employees to push its brand | Marketing Interactive – interesting smart FMCG strategy
BAD CLOUD | Will McInnes – am sure we can all relate to Will’s experience
Real Estate Tycoon Sees Titanic Moment for China’s Housing Market – China Real Time Report – WSJ – he made these comments in what he believed was a Chatham House style setting
China
Guangdong to loosen hukou household registration system for millions of migrants | South China Morning Post – presumably to help stem some of the migration of factories inland. Good to see these people getting some government respect though (paywall)
China clamps down on US consulting groups | FT – as the likes of McKinsey maybe passing on commercial secrets to the US government
Chinese brands in world of their own | South China Morning Post – amazing to see the rise of Tencent
Consumer behaviour
BlueFocus: China is changing not slowing | Marketing Interactive – investing in big data, mobile, video makes sense. I thought e-commerce was an interesting area to choose, especially given China’s unique landscape
Jet setting as a Brand in China | L2 ThinkTank – interesting consumption pattern
Carnival’s CEO Explains the Cruise Industry’s Biggest Problem | BusinessWeek – interesting consumer perception conundrum
Design
Electro-Optic Camera: The first DSLR – really interesting history
Japan
If you encounter a natural disaster in Japan, you can connect to wifi using SSID “00000JAPAN” – way ahead of emergency planning elsewhere
No Time to Text? Say It With Stickers – NYTimes.com – LINE doing well in LatAm and Asia
Korea
Kakao And Daum To Merge, Creating One Of South Korea’s Largest Internet Companies | TechCrunch – this is a really big deal in South Korea. Daum is big in areas such as mobile search and social networks, KakaoTalk has gained ubiquity amongst Korean phone users and made a profitable business from games and stickers. I wonder what Tencent’s share will be in the combined company?
Kakao-Daum – The Next Big Thing From Korea? BeTech – some of the best analysis I have seen about the Daum Kakao merger
Legal
China to clean up instant messaging services – Chinadaily.com.cn – rumour spreading and fraud
Honda’s Super Cub now protected under 3D trademark registration | AkihabaraNews – allows trademarks of iconic shapes
Luxury
Comptoir des Cotonniers’ 20-Second Shopping | L2ThinkTank – really nice pop-up execution
Media
Influicity Launches YouTube Influencer Marketplace – the phrase influencer marketplace made me feel uneasy
Watchmen writer Alan Moore unveils comic book app and open-source toolkit Electricomics – really interesting media experiment by Alan Moore
Omnicom Strikes $230 Million Two-Year Mobile Deal With Twitter | Ad Age – this is all about access to information
It’s alive! What NPR learned from turning its @nprnews account from a bot to a human | Nieman Journalism Lab – interesting experiment in bot versus human curation on a Twitter feed
U.K. police try (and fail) to shut down largest torrent search engine on the Web | VentureBeat – interesting editorial by VentureBeat, I would have expected this more from the likes of Cory Doctorow or Laurence Lessig than a business publication
Online
Comcast promised poor Americans cheap internet, but most of them didn’t get it | Quartz – the money quote for me “The Internet today is like electricity. If you don’t have it, you’re screwed.”
Digital Intelligence :: Marriott offers loyalty points for social shares – loyalty points for advocacy
Retailing
Amazon Deserves All of Its Bad PR | Valleywag – any article that starts with the Lovecraftian sobriquet ‘ the Cthulhu of retail’ has to be read
JD.com Has been Added onto WeChat as the Shopping Channel | Technode – Tencent is the largest shareholder of JD so this makes sense. Mirrors what Alibaba did with Weibo
Tokyo Girls Collection in Fukushima’ brings big smiles to battered Tohoku | Asahi Shimbun – an interesting move given the mix of real-world event and m-commerce that TGC is. Nice to see that they will have made money and done good
Security
Everything Is Broken — The Message — Medium – interesting essay on computer security
Australian Apple iDevices hijacked, held to ransom | The Age – using passwords from recent data breaches. Interesting Australian focus
Schneier on Security: TrueCrypt WTF – fascinating commentary discussion on TrueCrypt
U.S. Companies Hacked by Chinese Didn’t Tell Investors – Bloomberg – which is pretty shocking. They would have at least been at a disadvantage trading with Chinese state-owned companies and the disclosures may have impacted goodwill as partners would be concerned about what information was disclosed. I would have thought all of this would have been meaningful to the share price?
Software
Playing the sales game: Do game releases actually increase console sales? | ExtremeTech – working with small data sets but interesting
Jolla’s Small-Scale Approach to Tackling Android | CCInsight – interesting analysis of Jolla. Will Sailfish really be able to go up against Cyanogen etc?
Technology
The History of the Modern Graphics Processor – TechSpot – interesting story, particularly how cyclical the market was
Microsoft’s golden era in China coming to an end | WantChinaTimes – Microsoft will not only lose government purchase orders, but will also lose the central enterprise purchases and OEM market–the three major revenue sources for Microsoft in China – according to a Chinese newspaper, if true then this clobbers Microsoft in China
Web of no web
Watch Skype translate a video conversation in real time | Quartz – you know that time when you first saw the internet and it was a thing of wonder, rather than where you go to work? That’s how I felt when I saw this, mixed up with feeling dirty realising that Skype is actually Microsoft
Can the Nervous System Be Hacked? – NYTimes.com – Johnny Mnemonic anyone?
Wireless
New video shows you everything cool about the LG G3 in only 2 minutes – they had me at lasers
Am I Crazy For Wanting A 4-Inch iPhone 6? | BusinessInsider – good points in terms of usability. It does beg the question do consumers actually want a phone anymore? I suspect some of them do, but handset manufacturers tend to disagree if one where to believe the big screen trend