Nokia 8110 & other things

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Nokia 8110

A cheap facsimile of the classic Nokia 8110 managed to upstage the launch of of a range of premium Android phones at MWC.  Nostalgia is powerful, but I don’t think what’s going on here. I could see the Nokia 8110 as a weekend phone allowing consumers to wind down at the weekend and go cold turkey on the app economy.

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I think that the Nokia 8110 shows that the model of a single form factor based on common reference designs is broken. Apple managed to elevate the build quality of all smartphones as contract manufacturers moved towards an armada of CNC machines and advanced manufacturing. But in the process, the common designs, common components and new baseline in product integrity has homogenised and commoditised Android handsets to such a decree that only scale and advertising budgets are differentiators. More related content here.

Hong Kong cinematic sound tracks

Amazing selection of music from the sound tracks of classic kung fu movies over at Shaolin Chamber 36.

Roni Size

Roni Size talks about the music that influenced him. There is a lot of old school breaks that would be familiar to the breakdancing scene in his list of influential works. He also talks about the seminal film Wild Style and its influential soundtrack.

Frank Herbert

Frank Herbert talks about creating the science fiction epic Dune. Dune is an amazing piece of work and hearing Herbert talk about the origins of Dune makes that work even more impressive if that was possible.

Xinyuan Wang

digitalethnography | Field Note Painting Booklet – done by Xinyuan Wang, a UCL social anthroplogist in a lower tier Chinese city. Ms Wang wrote a really good monograph on social media in industrial China. She captures a moment in time that is invaluable for marketers looking at China and trying to understand the mobile environment.