UC Web + other news

4 minutes estimated reading time

UC Web

Alibaba buys up UC Web in ‘biggest merger in the history of China’s Internet’ | VentureBeat – or really expensive deal to get on the chrome. UC Web made a web browser that was popular in China and South East Asia. UC Web has created a joint venture with Alibaba that will help with Alibaba’s international expansion

Beauty

How red lipstick helped win an election | CNBC – interesting involvement of oligarchs in Korean politics

Consumer behaviour

Seven Digital Deadly Sins – really nice build by The Guardian; some nice consumer insights

Meet the Chinese Parents Who Go On Dates for Their Kids | VICE United Kingdom – interesting insight into Chinese marriage culture

Ethics

Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People – really nasty shit

Finance

Safaricom’s M-Pesa Turns Kenya Into a Mobile Payment Paradise – Businessweek – interesting article on how the service works from the perspective a of a neophyte

Ideas

Rage Against the Machine: The Rise of Anti-Politics Across Europe | The New Republic – the headline explains things better than most articles that I have seen

Japan

43.3% of Japanese use LINE Professionally, 29.6% use Facebook | PixelBits – interesting stats from Mona Nomura

Legal

Google may soon let you know when it’s required to hide something from you | VentureBeat – this could be interesting as knowledge of the void could be more damaging than the content

Media

The Works Recruitment – How recruiters use LinkedIn – no real surprises but handy primer

RIAA tax filing reveals a record industry that’s less interested in paying for piracy lawsuits | VentureBeat – music industry preparing for new reality

The truth about Paddy Power’s stunt in the Amazon rainforest | Paddy Power Blog – cutting things uncomfortably close

Nike And Amazon Explore And Experience Big On Small Screen NKE AMZN – Investors.com – Larry Weber on social. Very much on the ongoing activity rather than campaign school of thought

Online

百度保障 – Baidu launches verified programme on it’s knowledge search / Q&A product

Introducing Secret Dens — Secret Den — Medium – this sounds like an internal comms person’s worst nightmare

Sogou Launched Wechat Search — China Internet Watch – this is big, adds a little bit of a window into the black hole of OTT messaging platforms

No Logging Into Flickr Via Facebook After June 30 | AllFacebook – smart move by Yahoo!

Retailing

Amazon expands middleman role in latest online payments push | Reuters – Amazon already does payments, for instance KickStarter projects. This is about recurring payments

Security

Privacy As A Competitive Vector | AVC – Fred Wilson on the market for privacy. The difference that I don’t think Wilson addresses is the demand for privacy and the price people put on it. I think that there is a market, but the business model is critical as I don’t think consumers put a high price on privacy yet

Life sentences for serious cyberattacks are proposed in Queen’s speech | theguardian.com – call me cynical, but is this is much about ringfencing GCHQ’s domestic activities or the UK governments lack of digital savvy? Park your data and services outside the UK, move R&D or quality assurance for digital services outside the UK

Software

A tiny technical change in iOS 8 could stop marketers spying on you – Quartz – does this you also can’t a lock out devices to a wi-fi network based on MAC address as well as password?

Technology

Sony tops game console sales for 1st time in 8 years- Nikkei Asian Review – Nintendo slide 31 per cent in Japan!

A fast look at Swift, Apple’s new programming language | Ars Technica – interesting overview of Swift

Sharp reveals concept products for new business plan | Asahi Shimbun – some of this stuff sounds really cool. Also good to see that they are innovating out of trouble rather than letting loose a bunch of management consultants

Web of no web

Japanese carrier Docomo wants to move your phone’s SIM card into a wearable | Engadget – this is really interesting. More related content here

Google Now Has The Perfect Feature For Sleepy Commuters And Late Night Party Animals – smart use of contextual location based data

Wireless

ZTE to cut smartphone models by half | SCMP – cut half of its smartphone models available in the domestic market this year, while expecting total shipments in the world’s biggest smartphone market to remain stable, a company official said yesterday (paywall) – potentially smart move to reduce number of SKUs