Ged Carroll

Category: ireland | 愛爾蘭| 아일랜드 | アイルランド

Céad míle fáilte – welcome to the Ireland category of this blog. This is where I share anything that relates to the Republic of Ireland, business issues relating to Ireland, the Irish people, or Irish culture.

Given that I am Irish, a number of these posts are more personal in nature and based on observation when taking time out to see the family. If I am honest about it, there is less of these posts than there should be. Life gets in the way and I don’t get to the home country as much as I would like.

Often posts that appear in this category will appear in other categories as well. So if Aer Lingus launched a new advert that I thought was particularly notable that might appear in branding as well as Ireland. It is a small market of seven million or so and doesn’t have that many distinct brands.

Or if there was a new white paper from UCD (University College Dublin), that might appear in ideas and Ireland. If there is Irish related subjects that you think would fit with this blog, feel free to let me know by leaving a comment in the ‘Get in touch’ section of this blog here.

  • Taobao models + more news

    Taobao models

    Modelling for Taobao, what a way to make a living｜WantChinaTimes.com – Taobao models face a number of challenges in their working lives. Their work is unstable by nature. More surprising, was poor social opinion of Taobao models in China. All of which add up to personally challenging roles for the young women who are Taobao models. It all sounds very hard for people who are essentially 21st century catalogue models

    Business

    Chinese corporate debt in charts | Quartz

    China

    David Cameron comes under fire in China – FT.com – The Cameron administration should acknowledge that the UK is not a big power in the eyes of the Chinese. It is just an old European country apt for travel and study – ouch got to love the Global Times

    Consumer behaviour

    The west is losing faith in it’s future | FT.com

    Digital Trends: UK consumers chose specialist social networks – Media Week<

    Information Geographies – really great slideware resource

    Economics

    Energy costs dragging Europe down

    U.S. Renters Face Growing Affordability Problems — MacArthur Foundation

    How to bet against the bitcoin megabubble (Stephen Gandel/Fortune) – yes, but it’s an expensive trade.

    By George, Britain’s Austerity Experiment Didn’t Work! : The New Yorker

    Standard Chartered warns 2014 is ‘make-or-break’ for China – a lot rides on economic reform

    Britain’s Autumn Statement: The butterfly effect? | The Economist – UK looks to screw over Chinese and other property investors

    Finance

    Bitcoin isn’t banned in China, only legally defined. – interesting posting on Bitcoin in China. I can’t see this status quo lasting as the Chinese government likes to use monetary controls

    How to

    How To Display Real-Time Like Counts For Your Facebook Page On An Ipad – Locations such as retail outlets that want to display real-time like totals can use Fliike from French startup Smiirl if they opt for a stand-alone counter device, or LikeScreen from Pretty.

    Ideas

    Toys and Games: Trends, Developments and Prospects Global Briefing – Euromonitor International

    Knight Lab’s Joe Germuska: “We have to find room for the big experimental ideas” | IJNet – interesting experiments going from publishing to search and visualisation

    Ireland

    Are we getting back to work? | The Irish Times – Sat, Dec 07, 2013 – the brain drain is likely to cripple future economic growth

    Japan

    Kawaii Culture: Don’t Underestimate the Power of Cuteness – Euromonitor International – soft power in progress

    Twitter’s Dorsey Vies With SoftBank’s Son for Japan Shops: Tech – Bloomberg – my money is on SoftBank unless Square gets a heavy hitting JV partner in Japan

    Korea

    EU takes hard stance on Samsung

    Luxury

    Moët & Chandon appoints Fan Bing Bing as its brand ambassador | Marketing Interactive – interesting that a wine brand needs a muse, but what a muse ;-)

    America’s 20 per cent who are affluent

    Samsonite sets its sights on acquisitions in China – FT.com – interesting mid-market rather than luxury play (paywall)

    Media

    Yahoo! Very dependent on Microsoft search revenue

    Dutch Digital Market Overview October 2013 – comScore, Inc – There are 13.3million Dutch internet users & 11.5million online video viewers. What are they doing online?

    Facebook social share declines

    Language Data Reveals Twitter’s Global Reach | MIT Technology Review

    Academia.edu slammed with takedown notices from journal publisher Elsevier

    Inside Story Of Yahoo Acquisition Ptch – Business Insider – not terribly surprising, interesting that it wasn’t an acquhire

    Jessica Lessin talks about paywalls, The Information and the virtues of knowing who your audience is – professionals will pay for useful content (i.e. media as a work tool), which increases competition on analyst firms

    The Meaning of China’s Crackdown on the Foreign Press : The New Yorker – it’s about internal image and the failure of soft power to deliver results

    Retailing

    Alibaba invests in logistics know-how

    Security

    Someone’s Been Siphoning Data Through a Huge Security Hole in the Internet | Threat Level | Wired.com

    Software

    Netflix open sources its data traffic cop, Suro (Derrick Harris/Gigaom) – Netflix is open sourcing a tool called Suro that the company uses to direct data from its source to its destination in real time.

    Enormous world exploration sim ‘No Man’s Sky’ announced from ‘Joe Danger’ creator Hello Games | The Verge – the procedural generation aspect of the game is interesting

    Wireless

    Chinese smartphone firms fear ‘patent troll’ litigation｜WantChinaTimes.com – insiders worry that in the wake of the acquisition, Nokia may cash in on its patent assets in an even more radical manner, alleging that the company may become a “patent troll” by recklessly suing mobile-phone firms worldwide, in a bid to maximize its royalty income

    3G mobile phone licence controversy looms for Hong Kong regulators | South China Morning Post – China Mobile, the world’s biggest telecoms operator with 750 million subscribers, is the only party interested in obtaining a new 3G licence in Hong Kong.The big four Hong Kong 3G mobile operators – HKT (PCCW), SmarTone, CSL (One2free) and 3 Hong Kong (Hutchison Telecom) – I was advised against China Mobile when getting my phone because it’s network was supposed to be poor, so not surprised it wants another licence (paywall)

  • Irish cookery teacher + more

    Irish cookery teacher

    Irish cookery teacher terrified into handing over website name to Lady Gaga | Irish Business | IrishCentral – the smart thing would have come to an agreement with the Irish cookery teacher and agree to licence the name to her for cookery blogging purposes only. Instead they’ve risked a social media shit-storm for a box-ticking exercise. In this day and age, that’s an act of gross negligence and incompetence by whoever signed off on this and I feel for the Irish cooker teacher involved. More Irish related content here.

    Consumer behaviour

    Under the Influence: Consumer Trust In Advertising

    The Demographics of “Cell-Mostly” Internet Users

    Economics

    The typical American family makes less than it did in 1989 – This isn’t a lost decade for economic gains for Americans. It is a lost generation.

    Lexington: The American Dream, RIP? | The Economist  – the cyberpunk novels like Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy were right

    The Decline of Great Industrial Cities – Euromonitor International – interesting data, will this be mirrored by suburbanisation in China and other emerging markets?

    How to

    (mt) Media Temple » WordPress Performance: From A to Z

    Infinite scroll: its impact on SEO and how to fix it | Econsultancy

    Ideas

    The Feynman Lectures on Physics Website – great reading material

    Innovation

    Integration of graphene photodetector into computer chip could revolutionize telecommunications | Science Recorder

    Audi’s Diesel V10 SUV Supercar Somehow Gets 30 MPG | Wired.com – its like the car of my childhood dreams has been built by Audi

    Media

    Netlabels : Free Music : Free Audio : Download & Streaming : Internet Archive – surprisingly good electronica in amongst this lot

    How Google could fix the press release | Econsultancy

    Online

    Quitting Facebook: What’s Behind The New Trend To Leave Social Networks? Eurasia Review – Reasons for quitting Facebook were mainly privacy concerns (48.3 percent), followed by a general dissatisfaction with Facebook (13.5 percent), negative aspects of online friends (12.6 percent), and the feeling of getting addicted to Facebook (6.0 percent; other/unspecific, 19.6 percent).

    Retailing

    Supermarkets in Africa: The grocers’ great trek | The Economist – partly because South Africa is turning into a basket case, and partly because of commodity market driven growth in other African countries

    Mobile Statistics – Study debunks commonly held beliefs about showrooming – Internet Retailer

    Security

    Schneier on Security: Surreptitiously Tampering with Computer Chips – that’s Intel’s business screwed in China

    Software

    Offline reading with the NewsBlur iOS app – NewsBlur – great performance tweaks

    Yahoo hires Google’s Technical Lead for Android’s Open Source Project — Tech News and Analysis – the hire will bring outsized kudos to Yahoo! engineering teams as much as anything else

    Bump Mobile Contact Sharing App Acquired By Google, Will Stay Alive For Now | TechCrunch – interesting move, kill a competitor to NFC?

    Google and Samsung soar into list of top 10 Linux contributors | Ars Technica – Microsoft and Yahoo! seem to have dropped right off

    Jolla’s Sailfish OS gains Android compatibility, making it an easier sell for manufacturers — Tech News and Analysis – expect homebrew ports as well

    Telecoms

    Nokia’s Last Great Deal: Zero to $7.2 Billion – WSJ.com – interesting article on the next chapter for Nokia as an infrastructure business

    Web of no web

    Google Glass Not Expected To Reach Europe For Years – voice recognition a barrier to rapid expansion

    Wireless

    BBC News – Mobile phone emergency alert system to be tested in UK – interesting implicit message of we know who and where you are

    China Mobile Marketing & Mobile User Insights — China Internet Watch

    Apple Clearly Doesn’t Care At All About Winning Smartphone Market Share – Business Insider

  • Hilton Worldwide + more

    Hilton Worldwide

    Hilton Worldwide Files for an IPO – Euromonitor International – interesting analysis of their business. Hilton Worldwide can trace its history back to a Texas hotelier in the early 20th century. It expanded to New York in 1943. Hilton Worldwide was one of the first users of computing with its centralised hotel booking system. It also pioneered the airport hotel with the first Hilton Worldwide airport property at San Francisco airport. Hilton Worldwide is being taken public by private equity company Blackstone.

    Consumer behaviour

    Selling to China’s digital divas: Microsoft – Campaign Asia – 18-34 year old women in China own on average just under 5 digital devices, the most popular being a smartphone

    Edelman Trust Barometer – The Emerging Markets Supplement – I’ll dig into this and there maybe a post with more detail here later

    DailyTech – Generation Y Wants iPhones/Tablets, Not Cars – imagine American Graffiti without the drive-in or the cars, but with iPads and iPhones

    Design

    Thuraya SatSleeve | Thuraya – reminded me of the OmniSky wireless sleds that used to clip on the back of Palm devices

    Gadgets

    Alcatel’s Crazy Idea: A Remote for the Smartphone – I don’t think that these are so crazy at all, having context dependent peripherals

    How to

    Matt Cutts Answers Whether Or Not Nofollow Links Can Hurt Your Site – nofollow links don’t hurt your search ranking

    Ideas

    Mutual Mobile | trend report on automotive – (PDF)

    Ireland

    TDs and Senators get reality check on mortgage arrears – The Irish Times – not really that surprising

    Luxury

    2013 White Paper on Travellers – The Rise of Social Travel | Group M & CIC Data – on Chinese travellers

    Media

    Sina Made Enterprise Weibo Verification Available for Singapore Companies — China Internet Watch

    When aggregators attack: Techmeme’s headline-rewriting is just part of a larger shift — paidContent

    Riptide: what really happened in the news business – great paper on the collision of digital technology with journalism and news gathering since 1980 (PDF)

    Online

    Twitter makes IPO plans official: files confidential S-1, but expected value is about $14B — Tech News and Analysis – that this is a confidential filing means the company’s annual revenue is less than $1 billion. Usually when companies announce plans to go public, they have to file an S-1, the securities filing that companies use to provide details about their planned initial public offerings. Under the JOBS act of 2012, however, companies with less than $1 billion in revenue can file confidentially.

    @ twitter: We’ve confidentially submitted … – why use a press release when this will do

    LinkedIn CEO: We’re aiming for 3B profiles and a map of the world’s economy | VentureBeat – reminds me of doing Yahoo! knowledge search press briefings with Jeff Weiner; similarly grand vision

    Retailing

    Chaos Reborn: Kowloon Walled City Rebuilt as Arcade | WebUrbanist – this is so cool

    Security

    NSA Spies on International Bank Transactions – SPIEGEL ONLINE – not terribly surprised

    VPNs caught in Cameron’s porn filter – O2 network lists privacy service as adult content | TechEye

    Google security exec: ‘Passwords are dead’ | Security & Privacy – CNET News – 2-part verification etc

    Software

    Cloud Phones Threaten iPhone Android – Business Insider – standard app versus web argument. The question is whether it will open up the market to a multiplicity of smartphone OS’ or just a few winners

    Wintel destined to eventually fail, says Acer founder – many downstream players moving to Google eco-system… For an ecosystem to have a chance of growing and staying strong, it must have leadership adopting strategies that allow all partners to earn profits. – Surprised Stan Shih was that blunt about their relationship with Microsoft

    Wireless

    Microsoft Nokia merger: Android Lumia had been built | BGR – of course they would, you have development teams doing all kinds of things like this, but it doesn’t mean that Nokia was ready to capitalise on it

    CannyVision – The most forward-thinking Apple yet – interesting speculative analysis

    How significant is Apple’s deal with Docomo? 66% of ex-Docomo users left to buy an iPhone – The Next Web – potentially cut churn by 66%?

    China approves new iPhone for all its networks – Rethink Wireless – an engineering feat certainly and potentially better for roaming, but don’t hold your breath for a China Mobile deal. China Mobile has more to gain by holding out for longer

    Xiaomi Turns Profit on Sales of IPhone-Beating Handset – Bloomberg – bad news for Nokia and Samsung

  • One time pad + more news

    One time pad technique

    In surveillance era, clever trick enhances secrecy of iPhone text messages | Ars Technica – kind of like the one time pad technique, but created on the fly. The one time pad (OTP) is an encryption technique that cannot be cracked, but requires the use of a single-use pre-shared key that is no smaller than the message being sent. In this technique, a plaintext is paired with a random secret key (also called a one time pad).

    Culture

    Richard Goodall Gallery Contemporary Art – prints by Central Station Manchester

    Ireland

    10 things a cyclist notices about rural Ireland – The Irish Times – interesting comments on changing society

    Luxury

    Not to be Overlooked – Japanese Outbound Tourists to Europe – Analyst Insight from Euromonitor International

    Media

    Yahoo to close its blogging service, | Marketing-Interactive.com– an interesting move, I will talk about this in more depth

    BuzzFeed has a Medium problem | PandoDaily – media models challenged

    What’s Bad About TV? Just Ask Apple. | Light Reading

    Retailing

    Facebook Pulls Physical Gifts From Gifting Program: Guess Why

    The Kids Aren’t All Right, and Neither Is Abercrombie & Fitch – Businessweek – part-time jobs aren’t what they used to be

    Security

    Feds Back Away From Forced Decryption … For Now | Threat Level | Wired.com – courts are not buying into the government’s theory that encryption is evidence of criminal behavior – more security related content can be found here.

    Of Course Teens Think About Privacy, They Have Parents – The Atlantic

    Software

    G2 Crowd – interesting aggregated opinions

    Steve Ballmer and the Art of Managing a Monopoly : The New Yorker

    In historic vote, New Zealand bans software patents | Ars Technica – interesting how this will fit in with the Trans Pacific Partnership

    Android’s Hugo Barra Departs Google for China’s Xiaomi – AllThingsD

    Why Google brought its app store to Iran, and what it could mean for Syria – the Obama administration has followed a pattern of gradually relaxing export restrictions worldwide

    Communities Dominate Brands: Ballmer Aftermath Part 1 – Future of Microsoft, especially in mobile

    Ballmer Departure From Microsoft Was More Sudden Than Portrayed – Kara Swisher – News – AllThingsD

    Technology

    Chip daddy: Moore’s Law is about to be repealed, but don’t blame physics • The Register

    Wireless

    3UK scraps roaming charges – only four years after abolishing it. It was called 3 Like Home rather than Feel Like Home but the principle was the same

    Samsung Announces colorful Galaxy Tab 3 built for kids — GigaOM – I really like the design off this, looks road warrior proof

  • Jamie Hewlett + more news

    Jamie Hewlett

    Jamie Hewlett was not someone that I would have associated with luxury menswear brand Dunhill. Dunhill have been creating interesting content for a number of years, that used to be accessed through an iPad application and their own site. This interview with Jamie Hewlett is brilliant. Hewlett’s talent as a comic creator developed early with him working in the studios of Bob Godfrey. Godfrey is famous to UK TV watchers for the cartoon series Rhubarb & Custard. After college Jamie Hewlett was recruited for Deadline magazine, which is where his iconic Tank Girl creation was formed and his relationship with Damon Albarn of Gorillaz.

    Jamie Hewlett submarined during the 1990s when the underground became mainstream drawing Get The Freebies. Eventually Jamie Hewlett teamed up with Albarn to provide the visual look of The Gorillaz.