Ged Carroll

Search results for: “pink tax”

  • Supply chain technology + more news

    Will supply chain technology facilitate problematic global supply chain management?

    Investors Are Piling Into Supply-Chain Technology – WSJ – Newly minted unicorns, or companies that exceed $1 billion valuations, in the logistics sector in 2021 include e-commerce fulfillment specialist ShipBob Inc., digital warehouse and distribution provider Stord Inc. and Flock Freight, a platform that matches shipper loads to trucks and is backed by a venture arm of Japan-based conglomerate SoftBank Group Corp. Backers including big investment funds are pumping money into logistics technology at a rapid pace, driving up valuations for digital-focused ventures across freight, delivery and warehousing. The influx of cash is giving startups in a once-overlooked sector expanded access to capital to build out their businesses, particularly for the top companies that have already developed their core products, according to venture-capital executives who focus on logistics and supply chains. Supply-chain technology startups raised $24.3 billion in venture funding in the first three quarters of 2021, 58% more than the full-year total for 2020, according to analytics firm PitchBook Data Inc. Besides venture-capital firms, backers included global investment managers like Tiger Global Management LLC and Coatue Management LLC and the venture arms of large corporations such as shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S and Koch Industries Inc. And then you have Venture capitalists chase industrial tech start-ups as supply shocks widen | CNBC  – this reminds me of the B2B dot com frenzy around companies like GoIndustry, i2 Technologies and JDA Software / Blue Yonder.

    Supply chain technology underpins supply chain management (SCM). SCM as a term sprang out of management consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton in 1982. But the originals of supply chain technology go back much further. Railway companies were experimenting with barcode type readers with British Rail having a system that read the codes on trains passing at 100mph error free. This system was eventually shut down when British Rail was privatised. In the US they were using KarTrak in the late 1960s, but that was later abandoned. The codes were incorporated into the computer software used to schedule freight rail transport. Shipping containers sprung out of work done for the US military and were proved successful in Korea. The standards for the ‘intermodal’ container where hammered out from 1968 through 1972 covering everything from the containers themselves to safe handling. So you had a standard box and a method of tracking it, which is at the core of supply chain technology.

    Containers did a number of things:

    • It helped prevent ‘shrinkage’. Seiko no longer had to worry about shrinkage due to dockers kicking in the corner of a crate to steal a watch or ten and sell them down the pub.
    • It encouraged automation of docks and handling, reducing the amount of unskilled labour required
    • Simplified freight forwarding and handling through standardisation
    • Facilitated easier global supply chains. Goodyear would know how many tractor tyres it could fit in a 40 foot trailer and ship from Singapore. The ports of Singapore and Hong Kong managed to parlay their use of logistics management software to move containers faster, which proved to be a competitive advantage for a number of years, even after Hong Kong deindustrialised with the mainland opening up

    Once logistics management was in place, attention could be turned to sourcing, procurement and the integration of enterprise resource planning to provide an end-to-end picture through supply chain technology. The Japanese developed a lot of management practices designed to master supply chain management and these practices drove a wider demand for supply chain technology.

    Packet network infrastructure provided a way to connect systems from channel partners, intermediaries and third party suppliers with a company through a standard interface for supply chain technology to work. What is called EDI or electronic data interchange. The rise of the web made it even easier which is why you had a plethora of supply chain technology companies to simplified the process of EDI. They democratised supply chain technology.

    It also allowed retailers like Tesco to use supply chain technology to become vertically integrated from upstream suppliers and downstream customers.

    China

    Ex-President of China Merchants Bank Investigated for Suspected Corruption | Caixin Global – China Merchants Bank is huge. Londoners might be familiar with the brand from the extensive advertising CMB have done aimed at Chinese tourists every summer since the Olympics. Scandals are also changing marketing: Why Are Athletes Becoming Luxury Brands’ Ambassadors of Choice in China? – problem is due to show business stars reputation from being effeminate looking men to corruption, tax evasion and sex abuse scandals like their business titan peers

    互联网与中国后现代性呓语 

    Divergent views on China’s investment landscape | Financial Times – JPMorgan last month called China’s internet sector, once an engine of growth, “uninvestable”. Many big investors have headed for the exits. This week we revealed that Weijian Shan, the chair of PAG, a $50bn fund and one of Asia’s biggest investors, has diversified away from China.

    Consumer behaviour

    UK consumer confidence plunges to near-record low | Financial Times 

    Culture

    Terence Donovan captures the hedonism of Birmingham’s ’90s… – The Face 

    Design

    Google Tests Hidden Interfaces Which Remain Invisible Unless They’re Used / Digital Information World 

    Ethics

    The age taboo in workplaces means we miss out on talent | Financial Times – Research by two Harvard psychologists, Tessa Charlesworth and Mahzarin Banaji, suggests that negative stereotypes of ageing are actually more persistent than those about race and gender. Drawing on data from more than 4mn tests of conscious and unconscious bias, they have found that attitudes to sexual orientation, race and skin tone have improved during the past decade, compared to stubborn biases about age and disability, and increasing negativity about people who are overweight. Charlesworth and Banaji predict that anti-gay bias could reach “neutrality” in 20 years’ time, but that on current trends it will take 150 years for the same to happen to ageism. The raw reality is that older workers tend to be more expensive than younger ones, and are more vulnerable to cuts to middle management. But it may be a false economy to lower initial salary costs by hiring the young, if familiarity with procedures and teamwork are lost

    FMCG

    Investigating the Pink Tax: Evidence Against a Systematic Price Premium for Women in CPG by Sarah Moshary, Anna Tuchman, Natasha Bhatia :: SSRN – We find that women’s products are more expensive in some categories (e.g., deodorant) but less expensive in others (e.g., razors). Further, in an apples-to-apples comparison of women’s and men’s products with similar ingredients, the women’s variant is less expensive in three out of five categories. Our results call into question the need for and efficacy of recently proposed and enacted legislation mandating price parity across gendered products. – so there is actually a ‘blue tax’ rather than a pink tax

    Hong Kong

    The Black Box: My Experience in Hong Kong’s Prisons During the Pandemic Lockdown 

    Some Hong Kong women would rather die alone than date Hong Kong men — Quartz 

    Ideas

    On Collaboration — Tom Darlington

    British Historian Antony Beevor: “Putin Wants to Be Feared – Like Stalin and Hitler” – DER SPIEGEL – the liberal West is now facing a decline, and even possibly a collapse, in confidence in parliamentary democracy. The heroic resistance of Ukraine is perhaps the only hope that we will recognize in time the dangers of the general slide towards authoritarianism in an increasingly Manichaean world – that is to say, a new dualism of two power blocs confronting each other: one with a free and liberal stance, and one without.

    The cognitive dissonance of corporate life | Financial Times – employers’ efforts to drag people back into the office by offering them “perks” from free snacks to company swag. One particularly eager (and rich) organisation offered workers who were willing to trek back in the chance to win a Tesla. But Spiers, like me, isn’t biting. “I’ve come to think of these corporate toys and rewards as the work equivalent of the cheap prizes you win at a carnival after emptying your wallet to play the games,” she writes. “The difference is that the point of the carnival is to have fun and the prizes are incidental. In the workplace, this is just a laughably terrible trade-off. Who wants to give up the two hours a day they gain by not commuting for a free coffee mug? – interesting challenge that probably only a recession will right

    Digitally-Native Jobs, Self-Employment, and the Antiwork Movement 

    Indonesia

    Indonesia’s new law removes redtapes for foreign investors | DigiTimes – With abundant natural resources and young labor, Indonesia attracts – and needs – more foreign investment. The three largest foreign investors in Indonesia are Singapore, China (including Hong Kong), and Japan. Data provided by Indonesia’s Ministry of Investment (BKPM) showed that in the first three quarters of 2021, Singapore accounted for 32% of the total foreign investment, Hong Kong 13.8%, China 10%, and Japan 7.7%. – its also a great option for the move away from Chinese manufacturing

    Innovation

    Bosch snaps up Fraunhofer MEMS microspeaker spinout – eeNews Europe 

    Korea

    Young Rich Koreans Are Worth on Average W6.6 Billion – The Chosun Ilbo (English Edition)

    Luxury

    Kering: China’s lockdown takes much of the blame for Gucci’s crimped sales | Financial Times – I’d be more worried by how dependent they are on Chinese mainland sales

    Crypto crackdown stifles China’s ability to offshore cash | Financial Times – With the government applying more scrutiny to digital asset transactions, one of the oldest and most conventional methods to bypass capital controls is gaining popularity: the luxury collectible trade. While it’s difficult to bring suitcases filled with cash through customs, a Tang dynasty-era vase or a couple of Patek Philippe watches can easily pass as personal belongings. Rich buyers can purchase them in China and resell outside the country. Indeed, demand for designer time pieces is taking off, high-end watch sellers in China told the FT. One wealthy Chinese heir also told the FT about another existing loophole, in which Chinese developers building condo projects in Thailand or Malaysia market them at home, and accept renminbi. Once properties are purchased, they can be sold locally into currencies that can be more easily exchanged into dollars – this probably explains why auction houses Sotheby’s and Phillips have expanded their Hong Kong operations

    Media

    Netflix is not a tech company — Benedict Evans – back in 1992, just as the ‘Internet’ was starting to sound interesting, a company in the UK used technology to disrupt television. 

    Rupert Murdoch’s Sky realised that you could buy football rights for far more than anyone had ever thought of paying before, and you could make your money back by selling the games on subscription instead of pay-per-view or advertising, and you would be able to deliver that subscription using encrypted satellite channels. This was a big deal, both for Sky and for the UK Premiership league, and it was the beginning of something much bigger. 

    Sky used technology as a crowbar to build a new TV business. Everything about how it executed that technology had to be good, and by and large it was. The box was good, the UI was good, the truck-rolls were good, and the customer service and experience were good. Unlike American cable subscribers, Sky subscribers in the UK are generally pretty happy with the tech. The tech has to be good – but, it’s still all about the TV. If Sky had been showing reruns of MASH and I Love Lucy no-one would have signed up. Sky used tech as a crowbar, and the crowbar had to be good, but it’s actually a TV company. 

    I look at Netflix in very much the same way today. Netflix realised that you could spend far more money on far more hours of scripted drama than anyone had ever spent before, and you could (hopefully) make your money back by selling it on subscription directly to consumers instead of going through aggregators, using a new technology, broadband internet, that both gave you that access and made it possible for people to browse that vast selection of shows – and this: Ads are coming to Netflix: What do top media buyers and analysts think? – It’s plausible that Netflix will play a key role in driving the roll out of hybrid AVOD/SVOD around the world. Today, such models are mostly found in the U.S. and in Asia, but should Netflix add this on a global basis, it could be the next big thing. It’d force others to move beyond pure paid-for streaming models. I’ve long argued that it is unsustainable to expect customers to buy more than five SVOD services — so hybrid models are part of the solution as it eases the pressure on consumer wallets. 

    Ad agencies have persistently asked Netflix over the last few years to start running ads on the service. But they’ve been firmly against this until now. However, as Netflix management said on the investor call, what has changed is that this is a proven model that works: Hulu, HBO Max and Disney+ are doing it, so of course

    Online

    Go beyond the search box: Introducing multisearch – this Google redesign reminds me of much of the experience in search pioneered by you.com. Google needs to reinvent its search offering, early adopters are finding it much less useful then previously – Google search engine is not up to the mark, irrelevant ads and spam disappoint users. Here’s all you need to know / Digital Information World 

    Security

    France says Russian mercenaries staged ‘French atrocity’ in Mali | Mali | The Guardian 

    Singapore

    Singaporeans must benefit’: expats fleeing Hong Kong meet rising resentment | Financial Times – Chia is not alone in holding anti-expat beliefs. Over the past decade, perceptions that international employers have discriminated against locals have placed increasing pressure on the government to clamp down on immigration. While some anger has been directed towards manual labourers from elsewhere in Asia, Singaporeans are also frustrated by the significant proportion of westerners that make up the city’s elite workforce. After the recession triggered by the coronavirus pandemic refocused attention on employment and inequality in Singapore, the discontent has intensified. Experts warned that an influx of white-collar staff from Hong Kong risked deepening tensions, complicating Singapore’s bid to attract foreign money and talent. – Singapore’s answer to populism?

    Telecoms

    EETimes – CAN FD: Anything But Automotive Only – controller area networking. Uses connectors including RS232

    The military race for low Earth orbit satellites – and why China is behind | South China Morning Post – LEO satellite broadband projects going on in addition to Elon Musk’s StarLink – In Europe, Germany-based Airbus Defence and Space has teamed up with satellite internet firm OneWeb to provide services to the military. Canadian firm Telesat, partly funded by Ottawa, is eyeing the US Defence Department as a customer for its global LEO internet service, which is expected to start in 2024. Amazon’s Kuiper project also has been approved to launch 3,236 satellites but has been tight-lipped on its plans in the defence market. In China, LEO satellite internet is a fledgling industry working to connect remote parts of China and countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative. GalaxySpace, a private start-up in a field of state-owned giants, launched China’s first LEO broadband constellation comprising six satellites in March. But state media reports have described them as commercial and made no reference to military services. Separate state-owned enterprises also launched test satellites for the Hongyun and Hongyan LEO broadband projects in 2018 but little has been said publicly about them since. Another state-owned company, China Satellite Network Group, aims to create a Chinese version of Starlink but was only formed last year

    Web of no web

    LVMH’s Arnault is wary of the metaverse “bubble”. Should luxury be? | Vogue Business 

  • Mental health data hack + more

    Hackers hijack and publish mental health data of hundreds of people – a scandal caused by the extortion of a group of hackers to a private company that provides mental health services as a psychotherapy center for the Finnish public health system. Finland claims to be at the forefront of digitisation and data security. The criminals managed to access the mental health data of thousands of customers of the Vastaamo after detecting vulnerabilities in their system.How can Vastaamo be sure that mental health data won’t be leaked or sold on in the future. Hackers have already targeted women who shop for plus size clothing with weight loss scams. Now imagine the ‘opportunities’ for bot based counselling, black mail or fake medications that mental health patients offer. Hackers would enrich this data and sell it on again and gain over time allowing for relentless targeting and retargeting of vulnerable people with mental health issues. Given the increase in mental health issues among adults, this would present hackers with a total lifetime revenue stream.

    Smart Solution: Laser Indicators to Make Backing Trucks Up to Loading Docks Easier – wonderfully clever piece of design

    Mark Ritson: Fred Perry must do more than stop selling the Proud Boys shirts – Indeed, if you really want to make something hot among any group, the use of faux-exclusivity or – even better – a genuine attempt to exclude people from the product typically sends them rabid with desire. De-list a salad cream and once-uninterested consumers start bulk-buying it. Make your clothing in sizes that won’t fit older blokes and they will queue up around the block to squeeze their big units into it. Shutting down sales of black and yellow Fred Perry shirts in America will have zero impact on the proportion of them being worn by the Proud Boys. It will most likely exacerbate the situation. Those who already own a shirt will treasure and wear it with even greater pride. And the rest of the membership will resort to the grey and black markets to ensure that they too look like all their fascist mates. – advertising is the way forward, though I would be doing a photo shoot with leather subculture members

    The 1.4bn-people question – Apparatchiks and academics alike struggle to take China’s pulse | China | The Economist – For decades the party had scorned opinion polls as bourgeois and unnecessary—it embodied the will of the Chinese people, so why ask them what they thought? But it has become more open to pulse-taking since Mr Yang’s ordeal, which was described in an article by Tang Wenfang of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, published in 2018. Mr Yang says the party is “more paranoid” about public opinion than its democratic peers because it lacks elections or a free press for feedback – this also explains why IPSOS MORI type research is very hard to do in China

    China’s digital signage market to reach CAGR of 18.5% 2020-2024 – (paywall)

    Activists Turn Facial Recognition Tools Against the Police – The New York Times – “I am involved with developing facial recognition to in fact use on Portland police officers, since they are not identifying themselves to the public,” Mr. Howell said. Over the summer, with the city seized by demonstrations against police violence, leaders of the department had told uniformed officers that they could tape over their name. Mr. Howell wanted to know: Would his use of facial recognition technology become illegal? Portland’s mayor, Ted Wheeler, told Mr. Howell that his project was “a little creepy,” but a lawyer for the city clarified that the bills would not apply to individuals. – I can see an increased pressure for legislation making videoing and photographing law enforcement a crime

    ‘Small-budget fallacy’ hurts marketing effectiveness | WARC – Marketers, similarly, erroneously presume that newer digital tactics represent the best approach for brands on a limited budget – a perspective countered by analysis of thousands of case studies from WARC. “Channels like content marketing, social media, influencer marketing, or online display are among the media more likely to create an effectiveness disadvantage,” Hurman said. “And some of those more traditional channels – like TV, PR, events or [direct mail] – are the ones creating an effectiveness advantage.” – Probably one of the most effective articles that marketers could read right now. I don’t disagree that influencers can be effective, but there seems to be a dataless cargo cult built up around it over the past few years.

    Mark Sedwill: Dominic Cummings undermined the government | News | The Times – He also conceded that Britain had at times been “naïve” in dealing with threats from Russia and China. “I think when we’ve allowed the rhetoric to suggest that countries with very different political systems, essentially authoritarian political systems, are edging towards our values and viewing the world, then we’ve probably been mistaken and have overstated the natural alignment.” – the tone towards China in political elites throughout the world is going a lot colder

    Donald Trump paid nearly $200,000 in taxes to China, report claims | The Guardian – paid more tax in China than in the US. I am surprised that more hasn’t been made of this

    Chinese tech firms eye Singapore base amid US-China tensions, coronavirus border closures | South China Morning Post – Bytedance and in particular TikTok data safety issue moves from US and Europe to Singapore

    Nearly half of internet users in Philippines pirate content | Data | Campaign Asia – I wouldn’t be surprised if that number was that far off in the UK given the amount of pirated content on YouTube etc

    If Crisis or War Comes – The Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency – great advice in general here (PDF)

    Daring Fireball: The iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro – interesting thoughts on the iPhone 12s. What Gruber doesn’t touch on is the radio improvements, particularly in 4G. I suspect that smartphones are on a 4 – 5 year replacement cycle for many people

    Justice Dept. files long-awaited antitrust suit against Google | Ars Technica – why so rushed? There aren’t votes in this prosecution and going off without the required level of preparation against a well-resourced defence is very risky

    #DanceAwesome Hashtag Videos on TikTok – Samsung has low consideration amongst the young, they used the existing Samsung partnership with K-Pop girl group BlackPink (18.9 million fans on TikTok). A new track Dance Awesome was created with an accompanying dance. Black Pink give it some energy and the dance instructions got 2m views on YouTube. It felt authentic. It resonated with TikTok users. The campaign generated 5m user videos and over 20 billion views, though I would like to see how it affects longer term consideration levels. 

    Open backdoors into apps and adversaries will use them too | Financial Times  – it is interesting how long this has been discussed without significant action taking place. Japan underwent a sales boycott by China of rare earth metals ten years ago and this is still only at the discussion stages in the west

    Conoco/Concho: surfing the wave | Financial Times – interesting consolidation in shale oil businesses. I found CK Hutchison selling out at this time interesting: Cenovus snares Li Ka-shing’s Husky Energy in $7.8bn deal | Financial Times

    Toshiba launches global Quantum Key Distribution QKD business with UK factory – Toshiba estimates the QKD market to grow to approximately $20bn by 2035 and the company aims to take 25 percent of the market (approximately $3bn) in 2030. TDSL has been awarded the contract from the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) in Japan to deploy and manage the QKD systems that will be installed at multiple locations on their network. Toshiba plans to deliver the system in the fourth quarter of FY2020 and the deployment will start to roll out from April 2021. Outside of Japan, Toshiba Europe worked with BT on the UK’s first industrial deployment of a quantum-secure network, while in the US, Toshiba has participated in the recent QKD demonstration by Verizon Communications with Quantum Xchange. – Fascinating, it means that banks and governments can have secure communications, but consumers can’t, at least until we have several qubits of quantum computing power in a desktop computer and PGP-type situation gain.

    Ericsson and China Telecom achieve 5G Standalone data call – Ericsson Spectrum Sharing is a new way of rolling out 5G that uses existing hardware, spectrum and sites, while enabling increases in mid/high band coverage. It enables 4G, 5G NSA NR and 5G Standalone to be deployed simultaneously across FDD spectrum without the need for dedicated 5G spectrum. With Ericsson Spectrum Sharing, 5G radio resources are shared on a 1 millisecond basis, maximizing spectral efficiency. Most 5G networks have so far been deployed in Non-Standalone (NSA) mode where the underlying 4G network layer supported the necessary signaling. SA removes this 4G dependency. – Great, but Sweden’s ban on ZTE and Huawei in their network is likely to kill off Ericsson’s potential business with China Telecom – Sweden bans Huawei, ZTE from upcoming 5G networks | Reuters 

    First room-temperature superconductor demonstrated | Smart 2.0 – I am skeptical. I wouldn’t have shared it at all but for the fact that the article is from from part of the EE Times group

    Apple Launches ‘Apple Music TV,’ a 24-Hour Music Video Livestream – Variety – MTV left the door open for this, surprised that it hasn’t been done before

    Taiwan’s top 100 brands: Line, Taiwan Mobile, Rakuten among biggest gainers | Campaign Asia – Among the worst declines this year, Japanese electronics brand Sharp and China-based smartphone maker Xiaomi. Sharp’s decline mirrors the waning power of Japan’s legacy brands that we have seen in several other markets this year. – To be fair Sharp’s star has been falling for a long time, which is why Hon Hai Electronics could purchase them. Even Sony is inconsistent across product categories. Toshiba and Hitachi are no longer really consumer names

    String of Firms That Imploded Have Something in Common: Ernst & Young Audited Them – WSJ – is Ernst & Young damaged in the same way that Arthur Anderson was after the Enron scandal or will they survive? It is easy to forget now, but even if Arthur Anderson has escaped the Enron scandal, there was also the WorldCom scandal to pull them down. This is why E&Y feels rather like deja vu

    The flipside of China’s central bank digital currency | ASPI – DC/EP intersects with China’s ambitions to shape global technological and financial standards, for example, through the promotion of RMB internationalisation and fintech standards-setting along sites of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In the long term, therefore, a successful DC/EP could greatly expand the party-state’s ability to monitor and shape economic behaviour well beyond the borders of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Another great paper by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. – I suspect that is the fear of most consumers with a government backed digital currency. I can also understand the concern regarding a digital reserve currency. It is also similar to what can be had with a lot of credit card payment system records

  • Bruno Kahl + more news

    Bruno Kahl

    German Intelligence Chief Bruno Kahl Interview – SPIEGEL ONLINE – really interesting interview with Bruno Kahl. Mr Kahl is a career civil servant rather than a spook who became management. The insights that Bruno Kahl shares are very interesting:

    • America First didn’t affect intelligence sharing
    • Daesh has fallen into a franchise model
    • Turkey’s aborted military coup was over the concern of being purged, which happened anyway
    • Russia is less of a threat than IS

    More related content here.

    Business

    IBM, Remote-Work Pioneer, is Calling Thousands Of Employees Back To the Office | Slashdot – damning indictment of teleworking and the power of technology

    As Uber Woos More Drivers, Taxis Hit Back – NYTimes.com – when will Uber’s cheap capital and toxic culture run out of road and become this decade’s pets.com

    Consumer behaviour

    Escape to another world | 1843 – changing gender roles, changing expectations of what they can achieve and escapism

    China has overtaken Japan in South Koreans’ worst countries list, new survey claims | South China Morning Post – big longer term issue for the Chinese, probably bigger than they realise at the moment

    Alienation 101 | 1843 – Chinese student experience in the US

    Generation X More Addicted to Social Media Than Millennials, Report Finds – NYTimes.com – fire the millennials in your social team

    Are Teenagers Replacing Drugs With Smartphones? – NYTimes.com – drugs replaced by digital alternatives?

    Gadgets

    SoftBank Drops $100 Million Investment in iPhone Rival – WSJ – stops investment in Andy Rubin’s next thing (paywall)

    Apple announces a new, cheaper iPad in hopes of stopping sales slump – ExtremeTech – interesting that they are prepared to make a thicker product

    Handsets at MWC: Same But Different | EE Times – from the perspective of electronics engineers

    Innovation

    The economic rationale for public R&I funding and its impact – Research policy and organisation – EU Bookshop – good reading material showing the importance of government R&D spurring private enterprise innovation

    Legal

    Apple invents a Unique Air-Tight Protective Case for Future iPhones with a Smart Communications Component – Why does the notification have to be digital (thinking Sony’s Sport Walkman and Discman designs were secure closure was self evident)

    Lawyers and Academics Warn UK Against Criminalizing File-Sharers | Torrent Freak – interesting work by media lobbyists, it will go south when it starts catching casual middle class criminals

    South Korea Finds Qualcomm Prevented Samsung From Selling Its Exynos Processors – Slashdot – smoking gun…

    A Small Table Maker Takes On Alibaba’s Flood of Fakes – NYTimes.com – Alibaba’s PR pain

    Luxury

    De Grisogono Offers You a ‘Botler’ | New York Times – interesting Facebook Messenger usage

    What’s Gucci? | The Outline – stunned by this social strategy and not in a good way

    Nike Sees Online Search Spike from China’s Consumer Rights Day | The Daily | L2 – oh Consumer Rights day – that festival of bashing the west….

    Hong Kong jewellers poised for joy as Chinese big spenders return | South China Morning Post – I guess its also about creating portable wealth as capital restrictions continue and change

    Media

    What Marketers Should Expect from Search in the Future – Think with Google  – reading this makes me think that Jeff Weiner’s direction at Yahoo! Search was right; just the way to achieve it should have relied more on machine learning

    Why advertisers are pulling spend from YouTube – Business Insider – interesting mix of motivations

    Facebook Goes Full “Black Mirror”: How Facebook Is Making Membership a Prerequisite to Everyday… – In some ways this is worse than Microsoft Passport; that the IT industry and privacy wonks fought off in the early noughties

    Aral Balkan — We didn’t lose control – it was stolen – interesting framing of the modern day online media industry

    Online

    Here Is a Tweet Venture Capitalist Benedict Evans Just Deleted [Updated] | Gizmodo – EPIC

    Security

    QR code scams rise in China, putting e-payment security in spotlight | South China Morning Post– interesting attack vector

    Eeben Barlow’s Military and Security Blog: OVERCOMING THE CRISIS IN COMMAND – interesting essay on how the analogue between business management and military command is causing problems in the military

    Technology

    Beijing public bathrooms equipped with face scanners in a bid to save toilet paper-Sino-US – there is something wrong about the economics of this, unless the average Chinese person is the pink panther of toilet paper?

    Demis Hassabis plays to DeepMind’s strengths by using artificial intelligence for social impact – interesting read. One pout stood out though wasn’t Google X and Google Research supposed to be the kind of medium / long term research DeepMind claims to be. Secondly, there is no ‘general purpose’ AI in DeepMind’s current vision or structure

    Telecoms

    Mobile data became China Mobile’s biggest revenue driver in 2016 | total telecom – margins on data razor thin by comparison though, WeChat turning China Mobile into a dumb pipe

  • That was 2005

    January 2005

    Bez won Celebrity Big Brother, ten years after the peak of the Happy Mondays. London creative team Lee and Dan made an Al Qeada inspired calling card for Volkswagen that managed to leak out on to the web. Analysts at Credit Suisse First Boston won the monthly award for stating the bleeding obvious. We did a bit of homegrown analysis with the help of information from Popbitch to work out just how much News International made from the Prince Harry Nazi pictures. We also found that the Watchman character that the rc personality most resembled was The Comedian, more details on testing your Watchman Personality Inventory here.

    February 2005

    Words of the month were Mum Truck and KAGOY (kids get older, younger). Hunter S Thompson killed himself and half the media world pretended that they were avid readers of his work. The books of the month were Michael Collins by Tim Pat Coogan and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe (another pioneer of the gonzo school of journalism). The US Army released details around its successful word-of-mouth marketing campaign to attract recruits. America’s Army a realistic 3D game garnered interest in soldiering as a career and was far more fruitful than their television advertising campaigns. Bob Cringely highlighted how 25 billion USD needed to be invested by VC funds in the next 18 months or else they would lose their management fees. This of course wouldn’t have anything to do with the bubbling up of Web 2.0 would it? Carly Fiorina was finally ousted from H-P much to the relief of its employees. Sci-Fi London hosted a fantastic all-nighter of Shaw Brothers classics including Super Infra Man and Monkey Goes West.

    March 2005

    renaissance chambara turned 1 years-old. Forrester mapped out trends in consumer electronics for 2005. March’s word was Search Arbitrage. Seymour Hersh highlighted the Pentagon’s plans for axis-of-evil club member Iran. Hersh’s pioneering journalistic approach contrasted with general media malaise. The Sony PSP picked up a lot of interest on the web with some hailing it as the new iPod, I don’t think so…. And most importantly the rc towers local pub got recognised as Pub of the Year by the Evening Standard.

    April 2005

    PR gossip blog Spin Bunny was shut down for the first time as an unnamed PR agency called in the lawyers. Red Bull’s Art of Can exhibition brought a bit of culture to the Truman brewery. Word of the month is Kronenbourg. H-P manages to launch survey results that make them look foolish. There was less content overall as we were burning the midnight candle at work.

    May 2005

    Flying Records, one of the UK’s foremost dance record shops finally closed its shutters after ten years at the forefront of the scene, however its spirit lives on as Andrew Baker now champions new tracks online working for distributor Goya Music. Palm launched the LifeDrive and it didn’t look that impressive compared to an iPod, retail therapy was thus avoided. Michelle Delio was found to have made up some of her stories that she contributed to Wired News. The word of the month was Sachet Marketing.

    June 2005

    Country Music Television appoints a vice president of Dukes of Hazzard in a brilliantly executed PR campaign to promotes its re-runs of the original series. Omega releases its Planet Ocean watch – the watch that the Seamaster should be. WTF Apple goes Intel! Web 2.0 starts looking bubblicious. It was a few months since the Miami Winter Music festival and the Ibiza season was just starting to kick-off so a bumper month was had in the vinyl stakes. Michael Jackson is found not guilty, but the court of public opinion isn’t so sure. The word of the month is Mommy Consultant, Burson-Marsteller’s phrase e-fluential missed out because it was too close to effluent and we wouldn’t want you to be under the opinion that we thought all bloggers were full of sh!t now would we?

    July 2005

    Cracks start to show in the eBay edifice. Fatigue for consumerism starts to set in. Coke rolls out their Love poster campaign, arguably the best piece of creative this year. The ongoing rising price of oil gives Hubbert’s Peak a mainstream audience as consumers wake up to the fact that oil isn’t going to get any cheaper or more plentiful. The New York Times celebrated the tenth birthday of e-commerce.

    August 2005

    Wired issues its ten-year netrospective ‘celebrating’ the original of the bubble with the Netscape IPO. Citizen journalism sees its first cynical cash in with the launch of Scoopt, a picture agency for the general public and their camera phone. Paparazzi sleep easy though. Music industry bodies blame everybody but themselves for the continued under-performance of their industry. Bob Cringely launches his NerdTV series of interviews and Stussy’s 25th (XXV) anniversary collection is full swing. Towards the end of the month I managed to survive Silicon Valley. In Utah, the heavy mob is used to deal with kids listening to repetitive beats in an incident rather like the infamous police raid in Nelson near Blackburn back in the day. I am sure American’s everywhere feel safer already. The harvest of quality dance music on an acid house tip.

    September 2005

    Chigger is the word. Nick Love’s film The Business reminds us why the 1980s were so good and so crap at the same time. Palm previews a Windows device, Dell stumbles and I try hard not to snigger, its especially hard when some bright spark calls Dell’s answer to the iPod Shuffle the Dell Ditty and styles it like a Ronson lighter. Apple launches the iPod Nano and gadgeteers recoil in horror from the Motorola ROKR. Nestle re-releases the Texan bar. Geek-in-chief at Sun Microsystems, Jonathan Schwartz, appeals to the troops to stop leaking confidential news via their blogs; via a blog!

    October 2005

    Designers Burro shut up shop, while Criminal opens a Covent Garden boutique and Matmos see sense and re-release the Telstar lamp. Disgraced analyst Harry Blodgett starts his own blog. Super Southerner is the phrase of the moment. Spin Bunny gets shut down for the second time, this time it looks like its permanent as the entire site is removed from Typepad, speculation is that a South Bank based agency was responsible for letting loose the dogs of law. The tune of the moment is Tiger Stripes – Spirited Away. In a pre-Halloween push Burger King’s clumsy viral marketing efforts get unmasked by Slate.

    November 2005

    Lynx launches a bespoke perfume in conjunction with Oki-Ni, research shows that music downloads have plateaued proving the proving the point that you can only buy so much crap. Talking of crap, Hypercolour looks like it may be making a come back. AOL makes its first interesting move in years by taking TV to the web and my even have a good business model. The word is Shorty (at least according to DJ Tim Westwood).

    December 2005

    Christmas comes in with a whimper and Sony messes up a street marketing campaign for the PSP. rc floats the concept of a media bond and futures market to capitalise on the digitisation of content, the long tail and too much sloshing around waiting to be invested. Bootlegs mixes of Aretha Franklin and Pink Floyd move the feet so that the mind will follow. The word of the month is Uncanny Valley. Designers Terratag have some awesome gear in their latest fashion collection. Amazon take a Hermann Goring approach to email marketing in the final run-up to Christmas. A brief trip to Ireland left me with a number of contradictory observations about the state of the Celtic Tiger.

    Image courtesy of Sanrio. More related content here.

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