Ged Carroll

Category: online | 線上 | 온라인으로 | オンライン

The online field has been one of the mainstays since I started writing online in 2003. My act of writing online was partly to understand online as a medium.

Online has changed in nature. It was first a destination and plane of travel. Early netizens saw it as virgin frontier territory, rather like the early American pioneers viewed the open vistas of the western United States. Or later travellers moving west into the newly developing cities and towns from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

America might now be fenced in and the land claimed, but there was a new boundless electronic frontier out there. As the frontier grew more people dialled up to log into it. Then there was the metaphor of web surfing. Surfing the internet as a phrase was popularised by computer programmer Mark McCahill. He saw it as a clear analogue to ‘channel surfing’ changing from station to station on a television set because nothing grabs your attention.

Web surfing tapped into the line of travel and 1990s cool. Surfing like all extreme sport at the time was cool. And the internet grabbed your attention.

Broadband access, wi-fi and mobile data changed the nature of things. It altered what was consumed and where it was consumed. The sitting room TV was connected to the internet to receive content from download and streaming services. Online radio, podcasts and playlists supplanted the transistor radio in the kitchen.

Multi-screening became a thing, tweeting along real time opinions to reality TV and live current affairs programmes. Online became a wrapper that at its worst envelopes us in a media miasma of shrill voices, vacuous content and disinformation.

  • Disaster at BBC + more

    A recipe for disaster at the BBC | Broadstuff – really good guide for people outside the UK on what is happening to the public service broadcaster. From beloved Aunty Beeb to disaster at the BBC

    Nokia back in mobile phone business | TotalTelecom – interesting move via HMD. It will be interesting to see how much brand equity is left in Nokia mobile devices. It will be interesting to see how HMD will do things differently from Microsoft/Nokia. More writing on Nokia here.

    This nifty device translates foreign languages in real-time | TheNextWeb – I would have to try it, I don’t believe it from what I’ve seen so far from the likes of Nuance and Google.

    Kevin Smith Is Making an Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai TV Show – I so hope that this is true. I loved the kooky original film version. It had big vision, 80s fashion, but not a big budget to match – which was a big part of its charm

    Why Snapchat Doesn’t Care About India — The Information – build for the markets were the advertising revenue and mobile structure make it worthwhile. Countries with low ARPU may not enrich the companies. They won’t attract much ad revenue and may even require specialist apps to take account of low bandwidth or local servers to comply with national data laws.

    North Korea’s new ad men try out pitches to new consumer class | Reuters – This uniquely North Korean style of advertising may have developed out of trade fairs, Abrahamian said.

    As the “donju” have earned money in the unofficial economy, the flaunting of wealth has become more commonplace, especially in Pyongyang where those with access to political capital are often the wealthiest traders.

    The advertisements seem acceptable inside shops, but not outdoors, Abrahamian said. During North Korea’s recent Workers’ Party congress, ads could be seen in several Pyongyang shops. – this sounds like the door-to-door salesman that was popular in the UK when housewife was a more common occupation.

  • On Writing

    This post was prompted by reading A Time To Write by Wadds, open it in a new tab on your browser and give it a read.
    Cover on my old book
    Given Wadds’ post I thought I would reflect briefly on my own process.

    Why I write?

    Wadds describes his writing as a kind of mindfulness.  For me writing serves a number of purposes:

    • It cements things in my memory, a bit like revision at school
    • It helps me work out ideas and my stance on them
    • Its a good platform for experiments. I started off my blogging to work out how it could help clients that I couldn’t get media coverage for. This was back before social media was a thing. At the moment I am using this blog  as part of an experiment on LinkedIn Pulse as a source of traffic. More on that when I have a decent set of data
    • Occasionally decent conversations spark of these posts, some of my good friends are online
    • There is a more talented fighter than I, also called Ged Carroll. I like to have a clear differentiator from him
    • My blog is also a marketing calling card, I have got jobs from it over the years.

    Wadds talks about why people don’t write, he describes it as effort and bravery. I suspect its a bit more complex. Yes life does get in the way for many people, but many of my friends have their own creative outlets: painting, photography, the art of social conversation, mastering video games to name but three.  For me writing extends out of curiosity, it is a natural progression – otherwise ideas would vanish into the ether.

    In terms of bravery, Wadds talks about the willingness to share private or personal subjects. I generally don’t, the reason is quite simple. Growing up in an Irish household, my time was predominantly spent in the UK during The Troubles, I grew up with the idea of the pervasive, invasive surveillance state. I grew up with a personal perception of what could be called ‘operational security’ (Op-Sec). The future has finally caught up.

    Workflow

    You can break my workflow down into four sections:

    • Ideation.  Ideas broadly come from reading something or the world around me. If it is something on the world around me, I will make some bullets in the notes application of my iPhone.  If it is a talk I will have likely recorded it using Olympus’ free dictation app for the iPhone. If it is from reading a book, I am likely to put post-it notes on the relevant pages with some notes and then flick back through this as I write a post. I have aversion to writing on the books themselves. I have found that I don’t get much out of reading on a Kindle, so only use that for leisure reading now. If  I am inspired by something I have seen, there will be a picture on Flickr, which also serves as the image hosting platform for this blog. I have about 46 GB of images in my Flickr account – it would take a major tectonic event to persuade me to move to another platform like 500px. I have a Twitter account with a set of lists that provide inspiration and use Newsblur as an RSS reader as well. Newsblur is invaluable. I am currently trying Breaking News, an app recommended by Richard Edelman and occasionally dip into Apple’s own News app. When I have online content that has spurred a writing idea I will notate it in my bookmark service pinboard.in
    • Writing. My writing method varies based on two criteria; the regularity of the post and the length of the post. If you’ve read my blog for a length of time you will see that there are repeating themes. Every two days is a collection of interesting links from around the web. These posts are based on content that I bookmark. There is a post on Friday for interesting creative or useful things, again this pretty much writes itself based on my bookmarks as I ingest the web. At the moment I am publishing slides of data that I have collected on a monthly basis, I usually write a bit of analysis on the some of the data that I have surfaced. This just flows out easily. For short irregular posts they are often a stream of consciousness with minimal editing directly into WordPress. Longer posts are often mind-mapped onto engineering squared paper and then written into Hemingway
    • Editing. Unlike Wadds, I don’t have an editor. I use Hemingway app as a machine-based editor. My fact-checking happens before words are committed to the posts in my reading around
    • Syndication. I syndicate my content using plumbing that I have put int place using IFTTT and WordPress’ own JetPack plug-in. When I syndicate to Medium and LinkedIn this is done manually.

    Wadds’ talks about mindfulness in writing. I don’t necessarily think that its the same for me.  That feeling of being in the zone is something I get more from DJ’ing ironically, or focusing on a mundane task. Writing is more about making fleeting ideas permanent. It is also written with at least half an eye on my work.

    More information
    Olympus Dictation app
    Flickr
    Newsblur
    Twitter lists
    pinboard.in
    Breaking News app
    IFTTT
    JetPack
    Medium

  • Monster internet surveillance + more

    Britain to pay billions for monster internet surveillance network | DuncanCampbell.org – lets park the moral dilemma this represents for a moment, would other countries come to the UK for expertise in terms of how to implement this locally? What countries would they be? What would the optics be on it? Who are the contractors that are likely to benefit from this work in the UK? More on security related issues here.

    I think it will be pretty hard to make lemonade out of these lemons. The business opportunity probably won’t scale to get a ‘space race’ type benefit, the likely client countries may pose problems in terms of optics. After Snowden, you can count out the EU territories. An obvious contractor to benefit would likely be Huawei (mix of telecoms and enterprise tech, fast growing player in enterprise storage) – who wouldn’t need British expertise to sell this monster internet surveillance solution abroad

    Let’s Talk About Amazon Reviews: How We Spot the Fakes | The Wirecutter – Although many reviews on Amazon are legitimate, more and more sketchy companies are turning to compensated Amazon reviews to inflate star ratings and to drum up purchases

    jenny odell • living a designed life – interesting essay on the rendered spaces used by developers in their sales pitches

    Samsung 837 – JWT Intelligence – really interesting retail space

    Italian Crime Series Gomorrah Kills Pornhub Traffic – Pornhub Insights – the power of mainstream media played out online, I am sure there would be a similar dip for something like Game of Thrones or the FA Cup Final in the US and UK respectively

    WPP Mobile New technology service from Maxus makes marketing as easy as Pie – gives WPP a bigger arbitrage opportunity but if you were a large client wouldn’t you be demanding similar implementation times?

    MSN Ceases Chinese Operations | ChnaTechNews – and that’s the last of the western portals when went there leaving the market

    CK Hutchison mulls legal challenge as EC thwarts its UK ambitions | TotalTele.com – not terribly surprising. UK Government’s big mistake was allowing BT to acquire a cellular operator again

    Misused English Words and Expressions in EU Publications – European Court of Auditors – Secretariat General Translation Directorate – fascinating document that explains why English speakers may feel exasperated at times with their EU counterparts

    Xiaomi faces existential crisis | Techinasia – if it loses the Chinese middle classes, it loses the opportunity to sell its eco-system of smart home products to them

  • Digitas teams with Facebook + more

    DigitasLBi Teams With Facebook To Launch Live-Streamed Morning Show 05/09/2016 – interesting agency as brand. I wonder if we’ll see ‘NBC teams with Facebook’ any time soon?

    Objective-See – handy ransomware blocker for OSX. The Mac has become a major target for hackers and crackers now.

    Japan moves to protect ‘copyrights’ of AI creations | Japan Times – prescient move by Japanese government – it is only a matter of time before other countries have to find ways of dealing with creator / owner issues (paywall)

    Amazon launching YouTube competitor Amazon Video Direct – Business Insider – threat to Facebook Video as well. Things are about to get interesting. It contrasts with Facebook’s move into original content with DigitasLBI

    (2) Tom Stocky – My team is responsible for Trending Topics, and I… – found no evidence that contractors had affected conservative content. It’s probably true, but that won’t stop the doubt seeded in the minds of conservative supporters

    Ten Years — The Year of the Looking Glass — Medium – Reflections on working over the past ten years at Facebook

    Free Microsoft Windows 10 upgrade campaign hasn’t been blowout success – Business Insider – it depends how you consider success

    The Vintage Watch Boom | Intelligence | BoF – part of this is also down to Swiss watch makers treating the industry like fast fashion rather than heirloom designs

    WeChat Campaign Spotlight: Montblanc Gives Chinese Fans a Digital History Lesson | Jing Daily – smaller more discrete items like pens and wallets still do well in gift giving – more on luxury related items here.

    Huawei V8 leaked also gets a dual camera design – Gizchina.com – Honor device looks like it would cannibalise sales

    Why the Home Wars Aren’t the Phone Wars — The Information – not a zero sum game (paywall)

    JD.com sees 47% rise in Q1 revenue | Shanghai Daily – I wonder how much is due to WeChat integration?

  • Google design

    Google design has had a transformative effect on the world. It reminds me of Dieter Rams on the concept of design had said something to the effect of good design being invisible – once you see the product you couldn’t imagine things exist any other way.

    That’s a really good description of the web with Google design. In the markets where it operates (with the exceptions of Czech Republic, South Korea, Japan and Russia) it’s a monopoly. Different regulatory authorities are investigating them for leveraging their monopoly into market domination in other categories.
    urban dictionary on Google SERP
    With SERP (Search Engine Results Page) like this one above, I am not surprised that antitrust authorities are gaining an upper hand. This Urban Dictionary integration seems to cross the boundary from being useful to feature bundling. It deprives Urban Dictionary of an opportunity to put ad inventory in front of its audience. Urban Dictionary makes it’s money from retargeted banner ads and its own customisable merchandise. You can get any phrase in Urban Dictionary with its definition on a coffee mug, coaster set or tote bag.
    urban dictionary SERP
    It would be interesting to see if Google got into some sort of content agreement with Urban Dictionary. However I suspect that they have just gone ahead and done this? More about Google here.