Ged Carroll

Category: culture | 文明 | 미디어와 예술 | 人文

Culture was the central point of my reason to start this blog. I thought that there was so much to explore in Asian culture to try and understand the future.

Initially my interest was focused very much on Japan and Hong Kong. It’s ironic that before the Japanese government’s ‘Cool Japan’ initiative there was much more content out there about what was happening in Japan. Great and really missed publications like the Japan Trends blog and Ping magazine.

Hong Kong’s film industry had past its peak in the mid 1990s, but was still doing interesting stuff and the city was a great place to synthesise both eastern and western ideas to make them its own. Hong Kong because its so densely populated has served as a laboratory of sorts for the mobile industry.

Way before there was Uber Eats or Food Panda, Hong Kongers would send their order over WhatsApp before going over to pay for and pick up their food. Even my local McDonalds used to have a WhatsApp number that they gave out to regular customers. All of this worked because Hong Kong was a higher trust society than the UK or China. In many respects in terms of trust, its more like Japan.

Korea quickly became a country of interest as I caught the ‘Korean wave’ or hallyu on its way up. I also have discussed Chinese culture and how it has synthesised other cultures.

More recently, aspect of Chinese culture that I have covered has taken a darker turn due to a number of factors.

  • Harlem Shake + more news

    Harlem Shake

    Baauer’s ‘Harlem Shake’ Hits No. 1 With Unlicensed Samples – NYTimes.com – just like the early 1990s again. It reminds me of all the tracks who used vocals from the Accapellas Anonymous series of records on DJ Essentials Inc. Some of the Harlem Shake samples are from Philadelphyinz – T&A Breaks 3: Moombahton Loops & Samples – which in turn sampled at least five other tracks including one by Pitbull. Harlem Shake also sampled Plastic Little’s miller time

    Consumer behaviour

    Your Neighborhood Is Why You’re Fat – urban planning and health. Summary – suburbs and kitchen sink estates without mass transit system links and cycle-friendly roads are bad for you

    Why Koreans Love Tumblr, And Other Social Network Surprises – not so much why but interesting insights none-the-less

    FMCG

    Pepsi Unveiling New Bottle Design – first tune-up since 1997

    Nando’s nation: the chicken that conquered Britain – Telegraph – interesting article on the phenomena of fast casual eating

    Yum Brands Rebounds From Chicken Scare in China – Bloomberg

    How to

    Looking for a Google Alerts Alternative? Try This

    Innovation

    Recharging Japan’s Dominance in Lithium-ion Batteries – PARC blog

    China Is Engineering Genius Babies | VICE United Kingdom – not exactly but interesting take on how China is putting effort into biotechnology

    The 500MW molten salt nuclear reactor: Safe, half the price of light water, and shipped to order | ExtremeTech

    Luxury

    Lane Crawford employs 3D scanning for spring/summer campaign – Campaign Asia

    Media

    Ireland’s newspapers suffer hard times – FT.com

    What If The Google Reader Readers Just Don’t Come Back? | TechCrunch

    Third of digital ads ‘may never be seen’ (Infographic) – Digital Intelligence

    Apple is finally making money on content

    Social media, a blank canvas for your brand | IAB UK

    This Is the Scariest Statistic About the Newspaper Business Today – Derek Thompson – The Atlantic – in 2012, newspapers lost $16 in print ads for every $1 earned in digital ads. And it’s getting worse, according to a new report by Pew. In 2011, the ratio was just 10-to-1

    February 2013 Facebook Report: Electronics Industry | Social Media Statistics & Metrics | Socialbakers

    If Superheroes Were Sponsored By Famous Brands – brilliant. Branding could be a way for the comic book industry to survive the disruption of digitisation

    Did eBay Just Prove That Paid Search Ads Don’t Work? – Harvard Business Review but only if you an have incredibly strong organic search programme going on. What people failed to take away from this is the rather unique nature of eBay’s business. Don’t give up on spending for SEM just yet. Few organisations can boast of having a site with as strong an organic search marketing as eBay.

    Online

    Another Reason Google Reader Died: Increased Concern About Privacy and Compliance – Liz Gannes – News – AllThingsD – boils down to mainstream vs. niche

    Social | Facebook Events Join the Contextual-Computing Party – location data used well

    The man behind Flickr on making the service ‘awesome again’ | The Verge – making the site more responsive would be a good start

    Digg Blog, We’re Building A Reader – Digg going after the Google Reader community

    How Many People Really Use Sina Weibo – WSJ

    The Bing operating system: Microsoft bets on deep search integration to beat Google | The Verge – leveraging desktop presence

    Official Google Blog: A second spring of cleaning – highest profile casualty is Google Reader

    Google Illiterate | MetaFilter – pissed off Google Reader users

    LinkedIn to Buy Pulse Newsreader for More Than $50M – AllThingsD – interesting acquisition

    Retailing

    The week in charts – Economist – interesting data points on Alibaba

    Amazon Optimus Prime – AllThingsD – impressive growth in Amazon Prime, the Kindle Fire looks like the 21st century of the Argos catalogue

    China’s e-tail revolution | McKinsey & Company

    Software

    China Mobile: Let the Market Decide How to Charge Tencent for WeChat

    Why I’m Switching (Back) to Firefox – campaul [dot] net – I never switched away

    Insight: On Facebook, app makers face a treacherous path | Reuters

    Smartest of the Ambient Apps at SXSW 2013 | SiliconANGLE

    Technology

    Apple’s Data Centers Now Running on 100% Renewable Energy, Corporate Facilities at 75% – Mac Rumors

    Web of no web

    Google Glass is Provoking a Backlash Because it’s Rude to Wear a Computer over Your Eye | MIT Technology Review

    Wireless

    NYT: Apple allegedly squeezing EU operators on iPhone contracts, regulators looking into it | The Verge

    Android Owners Aren’t Real Smartphone Owners – Business Insider

    BlackBerry World catalog now boasts 100,000 BlackBerry 10 apps; 30,000 added in last 7 weeks – The Next Web

  • Donald Byrd + more news

    Donald Byrd

    Renowned artist Donald Byrd died the other week and Blue Note paid tribute to him by posting his concert from the 1973 Montreux Jazz Festival on SoundCloud and allowed fans to listen to it for free. I love the accompanying notes that label president Don Was wrote for the release. Listen here.

    byrd, donald- places and spaces
    My favourite Donald Byrd album – Spaces And Places

    Donald Byrd was known as one of the rare bebop jazz musicians who successfully explored funk and soul while remaining a jazz artist. As a bandleader, he had an influence on the early career of Herbie Hancock. More culture related content here.

    Business

    BBC News – North Sea oil investment at 30-year high, industry says

    Consumer behaviour

    40% of consumers are unaware that Google Adwords are adverts | Econsultancy

    Mobile Society Research Institute Home ≫ Mobile Phone use by children and its effect on children 2012

    Press Release – 2012 Digital Lifestyle Study | J.D. Power

    Why Consumers May Be On Crash Course – consumers are clipping coupons at a rate not seen since before the 2007 recession.

    How to

    From Harlem Shake to Tutorials: How Socialbakers uses YouTube | Social Media Statistics & Metrics – Socialbakers

    3 Paths Toward A More Creative Life | Co.Design

    Interflora SEO Penalty Analysis 2013 – Martin MacDonald

    Innovation

    Yoshida in NY: Sony snaps out of NIH syndrome – the interesting aspect of this is that games developers really didn’t like massively parallel systems for programming, the challenge will be how to be innovative when trying to be partner-centric

    Luxury

    Marketing, DKNY’s “theft” caught on Facebook | Market-interactive.com

    Media

    Nikki Usher: The IHT wasn’t just a brand or a history — it was an alternate editorial lens » Nieman Journalism Lab – interesting retrospective of the International Herald Tribune

    Transport for London unveils Penguin series to mark 150th anniversary – Brand Republic News – a really nice idea, particularly when one thinks about the synergy in London of reading a book on the commute

    2013 Digital Future in Focus Series – comScore, Inc – they also have a series of webinars to present the data as well

    Startup LocalResponse Targets Twitter Conversations With Display Ads – Ad Age Mobile

    Moscow’s speed cameras ‘knackered’ by MYSTERY malware • The Register – you couldn’t make this up…

    New Anti-Piracy System to Hit U.S. Internet Users on Monday

    Martin Sorrell on What’s Next – Harvard Business Review

    Mindshare – The Global Media Network – Vine, Video Sharing by Twitter

    Online

    Facebook’s new search struggles with the real world | The Verge

    Software

    Digital Media Strategies: Dennis Publishing and New Scientist on evolving consumer publishing | TheMediaBriefing – interesting how Dennis was moving away from InDesign

    Samsung finally folding Bada OS into Tizen | The Verge – interesting move given that Tizen is a more fully-featured operating system and Bada was aimed at more downmarket phones

    Mozilla previews Firefox OS with four phone makers and 18 operators onboard – Computerworld – looks like taking a second run at WebOS type eco-system a la Palm

    Framebase • The best programmers are the quickest to Google

    NPR News Apps | How to build a news app that never goes down and costs you practically nothing

    Technology

    Apple Is Solving Supply-Demand Problem, Selling More iMacs – AllThingsD

    Why don’t MacBooks come with cellular networking? – Marco.org

    Wireless

    Bits v. Bytes: Follow the money | asymco

    SK Telecom denies 4G ‘curse’ – probably explains why all the major Korean carriers got fined for over subsidising handsets…

    France Telecom CEO Stephane Richard Talks Apple, Regulators – AllThingsD – interesting carrier takes on Nokia and Blackberry

    Samsung’s Heft in Android Worries Google – WSJ.com – market power could go away from Google to Samsung

    Samsung’s Ill-Conceived Apple VoiceOver Suit Stayed in Germany – AllThingsD – the ramifications for Samsung’s reputation are interesting

    Apple, Samsung patent hearing ‘unprecedented’ in Australia – consolidated charges, the thing that surprises me is why they are fighting so hard over a small market like Australia?

  • Siberian meteor burst + more

    Siberian meteor burst

    I know that there have been 500 people with minor injuries, but  the Siberian meteor burst felt like I was living in a Jerry Bruckheimer film. The best observation I saw about it was in Vice magazine’s email newsletter which asked why so many drivers in Russia had managed to film the asteroid rather than keeping both hands on the wheel? The reason for the multiple recordings of the Siberian meteor burst is driver cams used to help with car accident disputes. The Siberian meteor burst brought back memories of the Tunguska event in 1908 which levelled large swathes of Siberian forest.

    Business

    “Physically Together”: Here’s the Internal YHOO No-Work-From-Home Memo | AllThingsD – I could see a post coming on from Becky McMichael about the benefits of remote working and flexible hours etc etc

    PrivCo | LIVINGSOCIAL $110M Debt Infusion From Existing Investors With Oppressive Terms – I wonder what implications this will have for GroupOn

    Consumer behaviour

    HBO: The Weight of the Nation interesting site on obesity in the US

    Culture

    So there has been extensive character redesigns and different actors will be voicing some of the main protagonists, but I am super-excited that Production I.G are returning with another installment in the Ghost In the Shell series of anime. Arise looks amazing judging by the trailer footage now available on YouTube. More Japan related content can be found here.