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Things that caught my eye this week - Ged Carroll

Things that caught my eye this week

2 minutes estimated reading time

Indonesia is a fascinating place in and of itself and comes up with all kinds of cultural nuggets. The latest one that I came across was the Vespa Extreme moped sub-culture. Vespa scooters are plentiful in Indonesia, as is the desire to invent. Car tuning culture is big amongst the middle class. But for those who need something more affordable Vespa Extreme builds are a site to behold. The South China Morning Post put together this great documentary film on the Vespa Extreme culture and its riders.

Like car culture there are meet-ups, cruises and even festivals organised.

Vespa Extreme Culture.

About half of the mobile game developers on iOS are based in China, the country’s universities turn out more programmers each year than anywhere else (including India). Yet China has still lagged behind other countries games in terms of incorporating technology and art. That’s where Black Myth: Wukong is supposed to come in. Sun Wukong is one of the names of the Monkey King in the Chinese literary classic Journey To The West. This has been a staple of Chinese animation and film for years.

Black Myth: Wukong

Could it be popular in China? It’s hard to tell from this pre-Alpha release footage. The biggest issues are likely to come from Chinese regulators. But hopefully the game won’t have to undergo the lengthy rewrites and changes foreign games have to do to comply. Instead the Chinese developers should be able to bake compliance in from the start. However, its China; so nothing is guaranteed.

German software giant SAP created a Tinder-like internal matching app to connect isolated employees for virtual lunches during remote work – its an interesting approach to things I guess. Home working lacks serendipity of working in an office. There is no water cooler moments. Social interactions are limited and Zoom analogues (Microsoft Teams, GoTo Meeting etc) burden the user with a heavy cognitive load. I just hope that this is opt-in at SAP, rather than ‘enforced’ or ‘serious fun’.

The Ikea Taiwan Facebook page faithfully created looks from their catalogue on Animal Crossing, much to the delight of their Taiwanese and Hong Kong based followers. The original post is here.

Ikea Taiwan Animal Crossing
The original Facebook post
Ikea Taiwan Animal Crossing
Front cover with Animal Crossing characters, but on Ikea furniture
Ikea Taiwan Animal Crossing
Side-by-side comparison between the original catalogue and a recreation using sets dressed in Animal Crossing
Ikea Taiwan Animal Crossing
Another example, all prices are in Taiwan dollars rather than Animal Crossing belles

More Ikea related content here.

Spotify is already encouraging media planners to start thinking about audio adverts for their client Christmas campaigns. More here; Spotify’s Christmas in Summer: Hear the Cheer