SEO marketer crime + more

3 minutes estimated reading time

SEO Marketer Sentenced to More than Three Years in Federal Prison for Extorting Money from a Local Merger and Acquisitions Firm | Department of Justice – just wow. Who would have thought that an SEO Marketer would be sent down for a crime that sounds more like a mafiosi. You’ll never look at an SEO marketer in the same way again

The Many Ways Of WeChat: How Messaging Is Eating The World | TechCrunch – quite a nice primer on WeChat.

Microsoft’s Cortana Gets Baked Into Cyanogen’s Forked Version Of Android | TechCrunch – this should give Google cause for concern

SMARTPHONES: Hungry Huawei Eyes US Smartphone Market – Huawei’s move into the US smartphone market looks like a logical and necessary step to consolidating its place as a top global brand, but will require years of major investment to succeed.

Why the 2012 non-Retina MacBook Pro still sells – Marco.org – The better question isn’t why anyone still buys the 101, but why the rest of the MacBook lineup is still less compelling for the 101’s buyers after almost four years, and whether Apple will sell and support the 101 for long enough for newer MacBook models to become compelling, economical replacements

Circus Ponies – great Alphabet Inc parody by defunct Mac developer

Sennheiser’s 3D audio will finally make VR complete – Engadget – the problem is about getting to a standard, immersive sound options have been around for a while

Nextbit’s cloud-savvy smartphone ships on February 16th – Engadget – interesting cloud based focus, reminds me of the Danger Sidekick in that respect

Yahoo prepping to lay off 10% or more of workforce – Business Insider – you can’t cut yourself to growth

WeChat Unveils New Calling Feature to Start 2016 – Thatsmags.com – To cap off the holiday season and ring-ring-ring in the New Year, WeChat has released a new calling feature that allows users to call mobile and landline phones around the world.

I, Cringely 2016 Prediction #1 – Beginning of the end for engineering workstations – I, Cringely – Centrix model for graphical computing. It depends on network latency, resiliency and redundancy. So it may not work in many markets

Casio’s First Android Wear Watch Will Be Ruggedized And Have Up To A Month Of Battery Life & Razer Nabu Watch – Digital Watch with Smart Functions – closer to the minimum spec I would look at, if they nail 200 metres water resistance, a large G-Shock style form factor and a compelling use case I would re-examine my smart watch usage

NSA hacked two key encryption chips | TechEye – bad news for the likes of Gemalto

The Huawei Mate 8 Review – Anandtech – incremental rather than revolutionary changes, interesting how Qualcomm takes a pasting in the article comments

Qualcomm Pushes Snapdragon Chip Beyond Phones | WSJ – maturation of smartphone market forces expansion (paywall)

Daring Fireball: Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro S | DaringFireball – move to Windows rather than Android – Surface competitor. This probably says a lot about Android on the desktop

Brian Eno Tells The Origin Story For Ambient Music » Synthtopia – Eno on the origins of ambient

IMF Chief Economist’s 2016 Warning: Watch Out for China and Emerging-Market Volatility | WSJ – add to this interest rate rises in the developed world and you have a toxic mix of circumstances

richard sapper (1932-2015) DesignBoom – Richard Sapper was the designer behind Lenovo and before that IBM. The ThinkPad was influenced by bento boxes. You had the butterfly keyboard of the ThinkPad 701 and titanium chassis before the famous PowerBook