Performance per watt
Is Moore’s Law Less Important to the Tech Industry? – NYTimes.com – the problem is that it’s hard to focus on performance per watt and define the difference. Software has as big an issue on performance per watt Way before this, the speed bumps were having less and less impact, partly due to poorly written software, you actually saw the lengthening of the product upgrade cycle on PCs years ago when people wouldn’t upgrade from XP and internet-enabled machines where perfectly adequate even when they were six years old (paywall)
Business
The US’s western states are guzzling water so fast they don’t realize they’re running out | Quartz – Bectel et al would probably be a great stock buy around about now
China Manufacturing Gauge Rises to 18-Month High on Stimulus – Bloomberg – interesting since this data is focused on private sector SMEs, rather than SOEs (state-owned enterprises) that have benefited from government stimulus
China Voice: More Internet companies should go abroad – Xinhua – these firms face limited (but growing) regulatory barriers in their overseas expansion while foreign firms effectively blocked from the Chinese Internet, especially as it becomes clear that some really are viewed as national champions. I wonder if results outside China will be harmonised as well?
Consumer behaviour
Apple’s iPad Problem | Slate – and those that do have a third device don’t need to replace it that often, especially since the iPad seems robust and perfectly adequate doing what it does, so the replacement cycles will be slower
What Type of Sharer Are You? Improve Your Social Media With Our Quiz – the study is link bait but they do have some good links to interesting academic research
Design
Yves Béhar sells his design agency to Chinese PR firm BlueFocus | VentureBeat – BlueFocus is looking more and more like the kind of fully rounded business Martin Sorrell should be worried about
Daring Fireball: More Amazing Xiaomi/Apple Design Coincidences – John Gruber’s Jobs-esque dis ‘Xiaomi copies with some degree of taste; Samsung has no taste‘.
Indonesia
Indonesia 101 | PixelBits – great rundown on Indonesia from a start-up perspective
Legal
China regulator determines Qualcomm has monopoly: state-run newspaper | Reuters – from Bill Bishop’s Sinocism newsletter – how do Qualcomm’s planned China royalty rates compare with those it charges in Japan and Korea? And is the possible fine assessed against China revenue or global revenue? I have heard it might be the latter, which could be significantly larger than what shareholders expect
Qualcomm delivers blowout Q3, but cuts outlook over China woes | ZDNet – The Chinese government regulatory issues were well known if not well understood, however it was interesting that some Chinese clients feel that they don’t need to pay Qualcomm….
How the Hammer Falls as China Nails Corruption – Caixin – interesting that the investigating body site is seen as a source and the audience goes there directly disintermediating news outlets
Marketing
Facebook Downplays Billion-Dollar App Ad Business | Re/code – the number of apps on there is quite scary
Waggener Edstrom launches WE Infinity analytics platform | PR Week – how does this match against Vocus etc – more related content here
WhatsApp, The Anti-Marketing Growth Phenomenon – GrowthHackers – its more like the product being the marketing rather than ‘anti-marketing’ per se
Online
Google has run away with the web search market and almost no one is chasing | Quartz – not terribly surprising, search is hard and it is difficult to move a customer away unless you have something radically better
Chinese Social Media Shrinks by 7% During Internet Crackdown – China Digital Times (CDT) – As Chinese authorities stage a crackdown on “rumor mongering” — the number of people visiting social websites dropped by 20.4 million, or 7.4 percent, to 257 million. How much of these were real accounts and how much were bots?
Retailing
Top Retail Websites’ Load Times Still Slowing | Marketing Charts – this beggars belief
BBC News – Five ways Aldi cracked the supermarket business – some of these things like store layout and bursts of unusual items are similar to Morrisons and Kwik Save
Security
Monetising user information without the privacy outrage – canvas fingerprinting
Forensic scientist identifies suspicious ‘back doors’ running on every iOS device | ZDNet – you can probably bet that this is also true in other devices
Technology
U.K. Cabinet Office Adopts ODF as Exclusive Standard for Sharable Documents – ConsortiumInfo.org – Microsoft would have been pissed a few years ago, now with the new management in place, who knows
Web of no web
Razer Integrates WeChat into its Nabu Wearable, Says Should Hit U.S. for Under $100 | Re/code – really like the messenger link and cross platform nature, now if they could make it more reliable than Nike’s Fuelband (on my second one in four months)
