Ged Carroll

Category: ideas | 想法 | 생각 | 考える

Ideas were at the at the heart of why I started this blog. One of the first posts that I wrote there being a sweet spot in the complexity of products based on the ideas of Dan Greer. I wrote about the first online election fought by Howard Dean, which now looks like a precursor to the Obama and Trump presidential bids.

I articulated a belief I still have in the benefits of USB thumb drives as the Thumb Drive Gospel. The odd rant about IT, a reflection on the power of loose social networks, thoughts on internet freedom – an idea that that I have come back to touch on numerous times over the years as the online environment has changed.

Many of the ideas that I discussed came from books like Kim and Mauborgne’s Blue Ocean Strategy.

I was able to provide an insider perspective on Brad Garlinghouse’s infamous Peanut Butter-gate debacle. It says a lot about the lack of leadership that Garlinghouse didn’t get fired for what was a power play. Garlinghouse has gone on to become CEO of Ripple.

I built on initial thoughts by Stephen Davies on the intersection between online and public relations with a particular focus on definition to try and come up with unifying ideas.

Or why thought leadership is a less useful idea than demonstrating authority of a particular subject.

I touched on various retailing ideas including the massive expansion in private label products with grades of ‘premiumness’.

I’ve also spent a good deal of time thinking about the role of technology to separate us from the hoi polloi. But this was about active choice rather than an algorithmic filter bubble.

 

  • Carbon nanotubes & other news

    Carbon nanotubes

    IBM betting carbon nanotubes can restore Moore’s Law by 2020 | ExtremeTech – interesting, IBM research has been at the leading edge of a lot of semiconductor manufacturing techniques including:

    • Copper interconnects
    • RISC architecture design
    • Multi-core design
    • Strained silicon substrates

    Carbon nanotubes may join particularly as there is so much speculation about the state and future of IBM’s chip business as management moves towards a software and services based future. Is IBM preparing to sell the chip manufacturing business to the highest bidder?

    Business

    Amazon China chief replaced with another expat | WantChinaTimes – the back story is that Amazon has about 2 per cent of the e-commerce market in China

    Design

    Waterproof CD player with vocal removal function | AkihabaraNews – interesting thinking about context. Japan is still a big physical media market (they still have Tower Records) and people love to sing in the shower

    Economics

    HK’s retail sales fell in May | RTHK – its all about valuable gifts: watches, bags etc dropping by 25%

    Ideas

    The Future of the Workforce May Be Part-Time, Says Google CEO Larry Page | Re/code – utopian spin on zero-hour contracts?

    Korea

    S Korea to break away from Windows by 2020 | WantChinaTimes – interesting move: Windows 8 partly to blame, I suspect also the security decisions made around Active X made Koreans think twice before attaching themselves to Microsoft

    Online

    An Online Shift in China Muffles an Open Forum – NYTimes.com – “This is a new phase for social media in China,” said Hu Yong, a journalism professor at Peking University. “It is the decline of the first large-scale forum for information in China and the rise of something more narrowly focused.” – the authors have positioned this as a Chinese -specific move yet it is mirrored in the west with the rise of Whatsapp, Telegram and other OTT messenger services

    Google bans porn from its ad network | CNBC – Google obviously doesn’t need the revenue, which bodes well for ongoing quarterly number going forwards

    UK’s Porn Filter Triggers Widespread Internet Censorship | TorrentFreak – The results of ORG’s new tool show that what started as a “porn filter” has turned into something much bigger. Under the guise of “protecting the children” tens of thousands of sites are now caught up in overbroad filters, which is a worrying development to say the least – interesting that some are blocking the Open Rights Group and open source software sites

    Thanks To “Right To Be Forgotten,” Google Now Censors The Press In The EU | Marketingland – once you take the 1st amendment driven angst viewpoint out of this, its a great summary of things by Danny Sullivan

    Tencent Opening Up API for Wechat Login — China Internet Watch – expect WeChat’s app constellation to mushroom outside the Tencent family. More on WeChat here.

    Security

    3 Real Security Risks Threatening Your Smart TV Entertainment | Make Use Of – make mine a dumb TV

    Technology

    CHART OF THE DAY: Apple Is Invading The Enterprise – Business Insider – there is also a credibility issue, go to a developer conference and there is a sea of silver lids, this will knock on into the enterprise

    Telecoms

    I, Cringely The Secret of Google X – I, Cringely – I think untethered balloons aren’t a smart move either

  • Happiness blanket & other news

    Happiness blanket

    British Airways Happiness Blanket Changes Colors To Reflect Your Mood | PSFK – the happiness blanket is a nice bit of technology meets art, less sure how it works from a research point of view as being a valid output. The measurement is actually done using sensors in a headband. The blanket provides a visual cue though fibre optic fibres woven into the front of the blanket. The happiness blanket is a great cyberpunk maguffin.

    Economics

    Startup Incubator Economics, Revisited | Excapite – are incubators part of the problem or the solution

    As China’s wages increase, so does its rich-poor gap, says study | Shanghaist – interesting challenge, explains crack down on corruption etc

    Ethics

    Data Science: What the Facebook Controversy is Really About | The Atlantic – the last Facebook emotional research link that I am going to post

    Ideas

    The Military Is About to Get New Spy Glasses – Defense One – closer to what the vision of Google Glass et al should be

    A Breakthrough in the Checkered History Of Brain Hacking – Defense One – probably a little longer for the Johnny Mnemonic-style brain implants

    Luxury

    Why Chinese luxury consumption continues to surge | Marketing Interactive – driven by e-commerce

    Marketing

    Cannes 2014: PR’s Battle For Marketing Relevance | Holmes Report – interesting debate

    The changing face of Facebook | iCrossing – handy infographic on Facebook

    5 tips for B2B social media marketing | Marketing Interactive – nice piece for agencies

    Online

    Google Discontinues Q&A Services | Google System – no Yahoo! Answers competitors

    Alibaba boss Jack Ma says he has never used Taobao or Alipay, and doesn’t plan to | Quartz – did Jack Ma use TaoBao or not?

    Facebook Still Dominates Teens’ Social Usage | Forrester Blogs – Facebook is still important for teens with 28% saying that they use it all the time

    “Buy Now” Buttons Start Appearing in Tweets. Is Twitter Shopping Here? | Re/code – Twitter follows where Weibo led

    Google shuts down Orkut | Marketing Interactive – not terribly surprising. Though with all eyes on Brazil with the World Cup and Brazil having been Orkut’s lead market there is a certain amount of irony in the timing

    Tencent’s SY Lau : Mobile First | Holmes Report – interesting interview with Tencent executive SY Lau on WeChat

    Technology

    24 million Internet-connected TV Sets Sold in China in 2013: iResearch Report – but nothing about how they are used

    Web of no web

    Smart Picture Technologies Turns Your Smartphone’s Camera into a Measuring Tape | TechnoBob – really nice idea

    Multi-touch Haptic Display Vibrates Desired Points on Screen | Nikkei TechOn – this is exciting stuff, will change interface design

  • Emotion research paper by Facebook

    Over the weekend if you went on to quality (not Buzzfeed) news sites you would have probably seen something about a scientific paper that was published by researchers in the pay of Facebook on how emotion spreads through social networks.

    Emotion research explainer

    There was a lot of copy written already about the experiment, so I recommend that you read The Atlantic‘s piece on it instead. There has been a lot written about whether it is moral, legal or ethical. As far as it being legal, Facebook’s highly paid legal counsel could provide a better steer on it than I could; and I suspect they would tell you it was completely legal.

    As for the morals and ethics of it, I rather think that those are a mute point. Consumers emotion states have been tweaked for decades, the question of morality sailed with the rise of the mass market consumer product.
    Guilty Viewing Pleasures: They Live
    Whilst public relations as it is practiced now is more of a mechanistic craft; its father Edward Bernays viewed propaganda as a ‘modern instrument’ driven by scientific thinking including understanding of audience psychology to move people.

    Advertisers utilised motivational research from the early 20th century on to create cognitive dissonance  with a consumer and then provide the product as a solution. The Atlantic carried an article on the psychology of advertising back in 1904. You are a better Mum if you wash your kids clothes with Persil, Cadbury’s Dairy Milk will put a smile on your face. All of which mine directly into consumer’s emotion, spreading dissatisfaction.

    Political pollsters use voter psychographic profiling to induce a constituency result. We already live in the world of a malleable proletariat envisioned by by George Orwell in his novel 1984.

    The people who are outraged by this need to get over it, log-in to Facebook less and realise that they are already sheep with a gallery of multinational shepherds herding them through their consumer lifecycle. What you can do is become more informed and read your environment in a more critical way. More related content here.

    More information

    Everything We Know About Facebook’s Secret Mood Manipulation Experiment | The Atlantic
    Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks by Adam D. I. Kramera, Jamie E. Guillory and Jeffrey T. Hancock
    The Oxford Handbook of Propaganda Studies (Oxford Handbooks) the Auerbach and Castronovo edited anthology gives you pretty much everything you need to know from Bernays onwards about psychology and audience manipulation
    The Psychology of Advertising by Walter D Scott | The Atlantic (1904) – no that’s not a typo
    Frontline: The Persuaders | PBS
    Advertising’s Fifteen Basic Appeals | Jib Fowles

  • Google IO: who is Google trying to disrupt?

    Google IO this week played out like a science fair trying to be an Apple keynote. It was interesting for me to watch to try and discern how this will affect commercial rivals.
    Made it to Google I/O "extended". Now what do those guys in Mtn View have to share? #google

    Google IO and Java

    The most obvious casualty of Google IO announcements is not Apple or Microsoft but the Java language that Android’s application language is very similar to. Java was touted in the mid-1990s as a write-once, run-anywhere development language and pops up in surprising places. A variant of Java ran most of the pre-iOS smartphone games. It provided a development environment for early web applications including those used in the enterprise. Java had developed a strong footprint in consumer electronics that Android is now looking to usurp. Oracle had worked hard to support Java for embedded devices ever since it released the first Java development kit for OSX a couple of years ago.

    Microsoft

    Microsoft has already failed in mobile devices, having spent billions of dollars to maintain a toe hold – this situation may change over time, but for now Microsoft isn’t a relevant player in mobile devices. So Microsoft would be more threatened by the Google IO announcement of integration of its internet services into Android, than by Android itself. Gmail has become a development platform in its own right and Google is providing enterprise users with unlimited storage for $10 a month. Microsoft’s web services business has been growing rapidly to challenge the current market leader Amazon. Every part of that business from Azure cloud computing to hosted Exchange server functions are threatened by Google’s recent announcements.

    Gaming

    Google’s announcement of a smart TV come games console would threaten neither Microsoft nor Sony will be particularly worried by Google’s plans for an Android-powered games console, at least for now. It is interesting that Google thinks there still a market for games console casual gaming rather than just for the zealots. This could be a winner if Nintendo became a developer and abandoned the Wii U – similarly to SEGA’s retreat from the games console market after the Dreamcast console.

    Amazon

    The expansion of Android and related web services puts Amazon squarely in the frame as a competitor – however this is not a pushover for Google. Amazon has a strong position in digital goods and is the number one player in web services. In addition, Amazon (unlike Google) isn’t restricted in China, which will be one of the main makers of, and main markets for the products that Google is looking to put Android inside. Amazon has crashed and burned as a traditional e-tailer in China with just over 2% market share; web services and digital content could give the company a second wind. Outside China, Amazon already has the payment details of more high-spending consumers than Google, which gives Amazon the edge in the living room.

    Wearables

    Whilst Google probably hasn’t set out to ‘kill’ players in the wearables sector, wearable hardware companies are likely to face rapid commoditisation as Android makes it easier to design wearable hardware. This hollowing out of the market will be similar to what happened to handsets before Samsung managed to prevail through the scale of its resources. The challenge will be if they can differentiate on superior industrial design and maintain a premium price, or move into providing web services that support compatible devices –  a direction where Nike seems to be moving with its Nike+ Fuel Lab.

    The closer integration of Samsung and Google’s development efforts was probably the most interesting movement at Google I/O. Google’s divide-and-conquer strategy works when you have a number of evenly competitive players, but Samsung rapidly built scale and used its vertical integration to its advantage driving Motorola and HTC to the edge. Sony consolidated its hold on Sony Ericsson and LG have been grimly hanging on against its rival chaebol. Samsung tried to expand control of its eco-system with new applications, services and two new OS over the years – Bada and Tizen. Samsung partnership announcements including the integration of KNOX, represented a degree of detente between Samsung and Google – at least for the moment. This alliance puts other Android handset manufacturers like LG, Sony and HTC at a further disadvantage. It is less clear what this will mean for those developers who Samsung has persuaded to support their Tizen platform. Will that work have been wasted?

    The integration of KNOX will also affect the core enterprise business of BlackBerry, providing yet another reason for not purchasing BlackBerry devices or server software.

    Consumer electronics

    The further expansion into the home is Google trying to hammer the nails into the cross that consumer electronics companies like Sony, Sharp, JVC and Panasonic are already attached to. However, Google would need to build rapport with Chinese companies like TCL; yet companies TCL is less likely to want to get on the Google train for a few reasons:

    • China is one of the largest markets for home consumer electronics, yet Google can’t play
    • Many of these companies are vertically integrated and already have lower-tier handset manufacturer within the group who aren’t getting much love from Google already and some of these manufacturers are already playing with other Android-based distributions. They may even create forks from the open source distribution that is the basis of Google’s Android
    • A tighter relationship with a content provider will be more important than tying into Google – particularly as Google services face an increasing crackdown in China
    • A tight relationship with a payment provider will be more important than tying to Google – Tencent or Alibaba

    Google needs to find a way to address these issues, or partner with another player like Tencent which would take a lot of corporate manoeuvring; any partner maybe careful (if not leery) after they can see how Google’s relationship with Apple went south. Google may not be the barbarian Microsoft of the 1990s, but the organisation is now so big and complex that it could easily crush a partner thoughtlessly. That’s the last of my take from Google IO. More related content here.

    More information

    It’s A Java Embedded World | Dr Dobb’s – I guess I am showing my age, but if feels strange that it isn’t Dr Dobb’s Journal or DDJ anymore
    China Top B2C Websites Market Share in Q1 2014 | China Internet Watch
    Android TV hands-on: Google makes a new play for the living room | The Verge
    Google announces Drive for Work with unlimited storage at $10 a month | The Verge
    Google Opens Gmail, Making It More of a Platform for Developers | WSJ
    Google previews Android apps running on Chromebooks | TNW
    Razer’s making a gaming ‘micro-console’ with Android TV, available this fall | Engadget
    Google Introduces Android TV, Its New Platform For Smart TV Apps And Navigation | TechCrunch
    Google Unveils Ambitious Android Expansion at Conference | New York Times
    Nike+ Developer Portal

  • Umeng & other things this week

    Umeng

    Umeng have put together a great presentation on consumer behaviour and mobile in China’s tier 3 cities. Most of what you read focuses on tier one and tier two cities in China. Umeng provides insight into large yet untapped markets just below the biggest most-developed cities in China. The tier three cities that Umeng covers are the cities were China does much of its manufacturing now as places like Shenzhen and Shanghai have become too expensive

    Fukushima Happy

    This beautifully shot version of Pharrell Williams Happy done by the people of Fukushima prefecture showing everyday Japanese life and shot by Fuji TV.

    I particularly like the lucho libre masks and the winking Shibu shot. There is also a great outtakes / making of video

    Red Fuse x Colgate-Palmolive Myanmar

    Red Fuse Hong Kong’s work with Colgate-Palmolive in Myanmar to educate children about oral health (and sell more toothpaste) was a Cannes Lion winner and an inspired way of rethinking how packaging was used. The mobile toll-free number was particularly interesting given how nascent mobile phone usage is in Myanmar. There isn’t much of an online component as internet penetration is low and concentrated in richer urban areas of the country.


    Richard Feynman – The Character of Physical Law – 5 –

    The Distinction of Past and Future lecturing at Cornell University. Feynman was a great physicist but he was greater at making physics accessible to a wider range of people through his lectures and writing. Take a lunch time to enjoy this video

    Guardians of the Galaxy

    Yet another new trailer for the Guardians of The Galaxy, we get to see Rocket‘s character slightly more developed in this version and he seems brilliant in a Spaghetti Western anti-hero kind of way, if Eli Wallach (God rest his soul) had been a wise-cracking raccoon bandit.