Why 2.7 million Americans still get Netflix DVD service in the mail – CNN – Netflix also has plenty of DVD customers in urban areas who prefer the service for its convenience and selection of movies, spokeswoman Annie Jung says. “People assume that our customers must either be super seniors or folks that live in the boonies with no internet access,” she says. “Actually, our biggest hot spots are the coasts, like the Bay Area and New York.” – Netflix DVD service in the US covers the long tail like arthouse cinema and cult classics that the streaming service doesn’t address. They are two differentiated offerings rather than substitutes now. It is interesting that Blu-Ray hasn’t displace Netflix DVD service. More on Netflix here.
Audi’s New Electric Car Factory Goes Green | Wired – Electric vehicles consume more energy than gasoline-powered rides during manufacturing and manufacture is 70% of a gasoline powered car’s carbon footprint. Something to think about when you drive a Tesla rather than a classic vintage Land Rover or diesel Mercedes
Luxury Daily | Jean-Paul Gaultier is the latest brand to collaborate on streetwear – with Supreme. I think the outsider reputation of JPG fits streetwear really well, in its heyday it really got culture (paywall)
How Rolex Is Revamping Its Digital Channels: 3 Marketing Innovations Not To Miss | Luxury Society – interesting how they are melding brand purpose and product messages
How US went from telecoms leader to 5G also-ran without challenger to China’s Huawei | South China Morning Post – Interesting how Qualcomm is implicitly being blamed in this op-ed. There is no consideration of the implosion of new telcos following the dot.com bust for instance which took out fixed line equipment etc – Verizon and Sprint chose the CDMA mobile standard, developed by US firm Qualcomm, which operated on different frequencies than GSM, adopted by Europe. After the initial boom in the mobile industry following deregulation, the US telecommunications industry began to decline from 2001
The Quietus | News | RBMA And Red Bull Radio To Shut Down – “Red Bull will be moving away from a strongly centralized approach, will gradually phase out the existing structure and will implement a new setup which empowers existing Red Bull country teams and utilizes local expertise. Red Bull will continue to explore new ways to support promising and cutting-edge artists wherever they may be.” – major move
New Huawei phone has a 5x optical zoom, thanks to a periscope lens | Ars Technica – reminds me a lot of Konica Minolta’s pocket digital cameras (the first standalone digital camera that I owned), everything old is new again
Irish government concludes there is no viable plan B | total telecom – “We still don’t have universal 4G coverage so it’s a bit of a pipe dream to suggest we are going to have universal 5G coverage to deliver the national broadband plan,” the country’s communications minister, Richard Bruton, said. – To be fair, London doesn’t have universal mobile coverage, let alone 4G coverage.
Google’s work in China benefiting China’s military: U.S. general | Reuters – “The work that Google is doing in China is indirectly benefiting the Chinese military,” Marine General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. “We watch with great concern when industry partners work in China knowing that there is that indirect benefit,” he said. “Frankly, ‘indirect’ may be not a full characterization of the way it really is, it is more of a direct benefit to the Chinese military.”
Increasing The Effectiveness of PR Agency Partnerships in China | Holmes Report – Insight from R3’s China PR Scope Report reveals that though PR agencies are highly regarded in content (23.7%) and media management (17.8%), they are not particularly strong in KOL and celebrity engagement (3.9% and 1.3%) – if I were an international agency I’d be really concerned about this. It shows a failure to adapt that is probably more spectacular than in the west
U.K. Pub Chain Bans Mobile Phone Use in Bid to Encourage Talking – Bloomberg – our pubs are for social conversation person to person – actually no they’re for drinking
BrandZ says Huawei is strongest Chinese brand outside China, but why? | Marketing | Campaign Asia – despite lots of documented geopolitical issues, the year was still very good for Huawei in terms of branding, driven by focus on 5G and R&D leading to chip-level AI capabilities, foldable phones and other innovations, said Doreen Wang, global head of BrandZ at Kantar. – for an index that’s looking at marketing and advertising being converted to brand equity this isn’t good news
KFC Bought a Time Slot on Ultra Music Festival’s Main Stage | Music News | Consequence of Sound – you can see how this would all happen in a William Gibson book plot about the bankruptcy of culture in the near future. A client hungry of innovation and a desire to resonate with millennials and gen-Z. A jaded creative director who liked DeadMau5 and the agency’s news sponsorship and cultural partnerships team. I’m just surprised that there wasn’t a SnapChat tie in somewhere
Facebook’s most shared story of 2019 is a 119-word local crime brief from Central Texas. | Slate – interesting insight into how Facebook’s algorithms drove this
What Finally Killed AirPower | iFixit – Apple boxed themselves into an electromagnetic corner. What they wanted to do was physically possible—and they surely had it working in the lab—but they couldn’t consistently meet the rigorous transmission requirements that are designed to keep us safe from our gadgets.
Report: Huawei Riddled With ‘Long Term Security Risks’ – ExtremeTech – In short, Huawei isn’t trying to riddle its software or hardware with secret back doors, but it’s also really, really bad at security. That’s not a conclusion that’s hard to fathom, particularly given how many companies have been hit by security breaches or had their own poor practices exposed – Huawei aren’t Machiavellian, they’re just incompetent and unwilling or unable to fulfil their infosec commitments?
T-Mobile Introduces Private Phone Booths for Making Calls, Surfing the Web, Taking Selfies | Frequent Business Traveler – so in the same business as WeWork then
The Apple Card is great (playing devil’s advocate) | Boarding Area – the money quote in this article ‘Here’s the part where I pretend to love the card and argue why it really is cool and revolutionary.’
Chupa Chups logo, designed by Salvador Dali | Logo Design Love – Salvador Dali designed the logo, just wow
Appl Still Hasn’t Fixd Its MacBook Kyboad Problm | WSJ – this is quite shocking (paywall)