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.

  • 100 spies + more things

    100 spies will monitor all SMS and email that goes in and out of Norway | Nettavisen – original in Norwegian. 100 spies sounds like a small amount of people, but they are likely to supported by likes of machine learning technology to filter down the data further. It will be interested to see how these 100 spies will cope with increasing levels of encryption on messaging platforms and more. More content similar to this explanation of Norway’s 100 spies here.

    Smart Speaker Market Takes Off in Holiday Quarter | Consumer Intelligence Research Partners – interesting that you’re starting to see multi-speaker households (1/3rd of US households who own a smart speaker device own more than one). I am still leery of them. (PDF)

    Chinese Rap Queen Vava Fronts New Alexander Wang Campaign – China’s best female rapper. Most of her tracks sound like Korean R&B influenced pop music. Her ‘My New Swag’ takes things in a different direction and is her best track to date

    Loop – Launching 2019 – is it just me or is recycling a trojan horse to try and break Amazon’s rampage into FMCG?

    A Trip Behind The Spectacle At Davos | Palladium Magazine – If I could ask Schwab a single question, it would be this: if you knew in 1971 that the WEF would eventually be occupied by hordes of low-rent blockchain grifters, would you just fold up the whole thing? The blockchain community, though it contains a few interesting projects, is dominated by obvious scams, and so received an appropriate amount of contempt from traditional finance at Davos, whose scams are much more subtle and institutionalized.

    Bits: The Week in Tech: Bracing for the Year of the Pig in China | NYTimes.com – In a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the billionaire investor George Soros labeled President Xi the world’s “most dangerous opponent of open societies,” warning of the “mortal danger” in China’s use of artificial intelligence to repress its people. (Paywall)

    $50 for a Rimowa Look-a-Like: Innovation or Infringement? | BoF – interesting that the Made In China aspect of luxury brand products is now being used against them by Chinese companies. Also increasing pride in Made In China

    Operating system loyalty hits all time high | Consumer Intelligence Research Partners – mobile OS seems to be cemented into solid markets now(PDF)

    How Sneaker Bots Ruined Buying Shoes | Complex – this feels like peak streetwear

    People. Places. Things. — Your community in your pocket. – I first heard about this and thought about he locative art in William Gibson’s later books. Then I looked at the site and was reminded of the overload of ads in Altered Carbon but with less art and aplomb. This looks hellish, I am sure the concept, if not the start-up, will be very successful eventually

    Hulu announces a new ad unit that appears when you pause | TechCrunch – playing an ad just as you decide to got to the bathroom, answer the door for the pizza delivery guy or go and make a cup of tea – I do wonder about the efficiency and effectiveness of this ad unit. Is a view still a view if it plays whilst you walk away from it?

    WSJ: Apple Should Make The Chinese Version of iPhone – probably makes sense if it were an international device. I know that there is already a grey market for people interested in the dual SIM iPhone, the problem is verifying that the device isn’t shanzhai

    Champion athletic wear is getting its inevitable nostalgic streetwear moment | Quartz – Quartz is a bit behind on this and may just be marking the peak of the Champion wave rather than the start of it

    Worldwide threat assessment of the US intelligence community by Daniel R Coates, director of national intelligence – interesting reading, particularly when you notice the cognitive dissonance between US foreign policy and this clear eyed assessment. Secondly the section on China is really good (PDF)

    What marketing trends will shape China in 2019? | The Drum – interesting how programmatic shops think that 5G will instantly boost their businesses. I am not convinced

    Ultraviolet Shuts Down: Cloud Locker Closes This Summer – Variety – which is a good example why cloud services and media aren’t a great idea

    `The Internet Is The Great Equalizer’ – Bloomberg – 20 years later we now know that it isn’t

    Engage With Apple to Engage With Patients | Forrester Research – probably an overly optimistic piece by Forrester but interesting reading

    Alibaba Group Announces December Quarter 2018 Results | Business Wire – slowing growth overall, but fast growth in cloud services and a more bearish view Deep Throat: Alibaba Q3 Earnings Call

    Everything you need to know about Apple’s Q2 19 results | Computerworld – “We’ve said several times that the upgrades for the quarter were less than we anticipated due to the reasons we mentioned. Where it goes in the future, I don’t know. I’m convinced making a great product that’s high quality is best for the consumer.”

    WSJ City | Apple bug enables eavesdropping on FaceTime users – surprised that this didn’t come out in testing

    My Aramco Childhood | Slate – great tale of a third culture kid

    Zendesk Alternative – enterprise software company Zendesk punked competitor SEO tactics by forming an inhouse band. Brilliant idea

    Nike Replaces Under Armour as MLB’s Uniform Provider | HYPEBEAST – Starting in 2020, Nike will be the official uniform provider for the MLB, NBA and NFL. Total lock out in competition with adidas, Reebok and Under Armour

    We analyzed 16,625 papers to figure out where AI is headed next – MIT Technology Review – deep learning seems to have hit a peak

  • To kill the truth by Sam Bourne

    To kill the truth is very much a book of our time. It explores the power of historical records, the alt-right and technology. The plot opens with a very current battle between ‘woke’ academia meets the polo-shirted, tiki torch-bearing far right. A former academic has gone to court in order to dispute our understanding of the slave trade and create a revisionist history.

    Historical records and accounts were picked apart to cast sufficient doubt on them. By using this legal standard record-by-record the mass of evidence is ignored. The truth becomes lies, rather like social political discussions over Brexit and Trump’s election.

    Untitled

    Then key establishments of historical record start to burn down around the world. Online repositories from websites to Google are brought to their knees by hackers. Into this mess steps a smart wonkish protagonist Maggie Costello. Maggie is tired of the political machine and gets pulled back in. Soon she suffers from online identity theft.

    Taking one side Costello’s gender for a moment. Costello feels familiar. This is partly because she is so similar to Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon and Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan. Smart bookish heros who could see what the establishment couldn’t.

    The second parallel to Clancy’s work is that characters are secondary to the big ideas and technical wonders. And here lies the book’s achilles heel. Costello has obviously beeen developed as a smart vulnerable ‘woke’ hero. But she feels like a cardboard cut-out rather than a believable character. The androgynous nom-de-plume Sam Bourne hides the identity of Guardian journalist Jonathan Freedland. His wonkish credentials created a great high concept, but he hasn’t managed to create a character that we can root for.

    Enjoy the exploration of big contemporary issues, just keep our expectations low on the character development.

  • 3 year phone contracts + more things

    Paying for Keeps | CC Insight – 3-year phone contracts will suppress smartphone market even further, that includes 5G handsets (the why 5G in a handset is a whole other question). 3-year phone contracts will also likely encourage SIM only shopping. More wireless related content here.

    MOFT – World’s First Invisible Laptop Stand – of course early laptops had more opportunity to do ergonomic design which isn’t available when you fallow Apple’s ‘size zero’ design ethos. My first laptop an Apple PowerBook 165 had small rotatable legs. I am surprised that class action suits aren’t a thing due to RSI and carpal tunnel syndrome on modern laptops. The ergonomic information required to make the case for MOFT has been available for decades

    Uncover Harassers – rage as a plug-in. Surprised that there isn’t a UK version for gammons and remoaners respectively. Download this plug-in to optimise you’re being triggered. I get where they coming from but I can also see the downside of it as well

    The Facts About Facebook – WSJ – Zuckerberg’s op-ed falls flat with WSJ subscribers. A lot of people have written out how this back end binding of the services is as much about fending off coming regulation as anything else. Think Internet Explorer and Windows when Microsoft were taken to task. Read also Opinion | Mark Zuckerberg, Let Me Be Your Ghost Writer – The New York Times – funny but true, love the VCR analogy (paywall)

    I Bought a Fake Canada Goose Jacket on Amazon – The Atlantic – Amazon is full of fake stuff. There doesn’t seem to be a vendor quality control facility on Amazon Marketplace

    Global mobile ad spend set to tip TV in 2019 thanks to programmatic boom, and 5G boost – a 5G boost really?

    Huawei/Edelman Relationship Ends Before It Starts | Holmes Report – very interesting reading and the optics are pretty bad for Huawei.

    Xiaomi Mijia laser 4K projection TV goes on sale for 14999 Yuan ($2210) – Gizchina.com – who has clear space for a 100 inch screen to be thrown up on a wall?

    China has a special passport for its elites—like Huawei’s detained executive — Quartz – the smoking gun that connects Huawei to the government in the way that the company has always denied. I was really surprised that more hasn’t been made of this story. A P series or ‘Public Affairs’ passport is a non-diplomatic, but otherwise VIP passport for party officials and others who are very tightly involved with the Chinese government. It is the smoking gun that links Huawei and the Chinese government in a way that hasn’t been previously done and shreds a lot of Huawei’s counter arguments

    Tencent, NetEase Shut Out Again in New Batch of Games OK’d by China – Variety – “Given the current speed of new game approval, the backlog of games waiting for licensing, and the government’s stricter control over game content, we estimate it could take two to three years before the Chinese games industry stabilizes,”

    ‘They need the scale’: DTC brands like Peloton and Chewy are buying more TV ads | Digiday – because TV advertising still works

    WSJ City | Russia accuses Facebook Twitter of failing to comply with data laws – surprised more countries aren’t Balkanising personal data storage

  • DLD 2019 & things that made last week

    Scott Galloway presented at DLD 2019, Munich this week. DLD is a German version of Paddy Cosgrave’s Web Summit. You get attendance from the EU, the German government and German banking and industry as well as the tech sector. For those that don’t know him, Scott Galloway is a business professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business and the founder of L2 Inc. which was recently acquired by Gartner.

    funicular freak – amazing Tumblr account, words that I don’t often have in the same sentence any more

    7 of the Cutest (and Smartest) ‘Year of the Pig’ WeChat campaigns | Jing Daily  and here is how you can get it wrong. The flexibility of the WeChat platform for marketers is something that western social platforms can learn from. In terms of the content, Gucci consistently manages to come up with the right product designs and content for WeChat around lunar new year.

    Chloe managed to do a good job using celebrities in their campaign. It was interesting that they collaborated with an Indian artist Rithika Merchant, rather than a Chinese artist for the New Year designs.

    I had another late addition to my collection of the best Chinese New Year creative. Heineken did a Chinese New Year advert for the Singapore market. But its not on their social feeds so I can’t share it. I presume that the content must be a TV only campaign.

    Starbucks opens interactive coffee sanctuary in Bali as tribute to Indonesia’s Arabica coffee | The Drum 

  • Apple and Jaguar Land Rover in China

    Apple and Jaguar Land Rover blamed the Chinese economy for their recent financial results. The truth is probably more complex. What factors are affecting affecting Apple and Jaguar Land Rover that aren’t directly related to the Chinese economy?

    The reality is that Apple and Jaguar Land Rover are being buffeted by very different forces, some of which are their own making.

    Apple

    China is a unique mobile environment and in some ways it mirrors the hopes (and fears) for the internet in the late 1990s. Oracle and Sun Microsystems spent a lot of time during the dot com boom developing technologies that would allow applications to run on the web. Enterprise software sudden had a user experience that could be accessed via a web browser. Java allowed applications to be downloaded and run as needed. Netscape had a vision of the internet replicating the operating system as a layer that would run applications. Microsoft also realised this which was why they developed Internet Explorer, integrated it into Windows and killed off Netscape. The Judge Jackson trial happened and that was the start of the modern tech sector allowing Google and Apple to rise.

    Move forwards two decades and most computing is now done on mobile devices. In China, WeChat have managed to achieve what Netscape envisioned. Their app as a gateway to as many services as a consumer would need including a plethora of mini applications. It doesn’t suffer the problems that native web apps have had in terms of sluggish user experiences. In addition, WeChat has invested in a range of high-performing start-ups to built a keiretsu of businesses from cab services, e-commerce, property companies and even robotics. In the meanwhile Tencent who own WeChat have a range of consumer and business services as well.

    What this means for Apple is that many of its advantages in other markets are negated in China. The OS or even performance of a smartphone doesn’t matter that much, so long as it can run WeChat and a couple of other apps. The look and feel of the app is pretty much the same regardless of the phone OS. Continuity: where the iPhone and a Mac hand-off seamlessly to each other doesn’t matter that much if many consumers use their smartphone for all their personal computing needs.

    This has been the case for a few years now in China – but Apple haven’t found a way around it.

    As for phone industrial design – Apple lifted the game in manufacturing capability by introducing new machines and new ideas. To make the iPhone 5, Apple helped its suppliers buy thousands of CNC machines. This grew the manufacturers capability to supply and the amount of pre-owned machines that eventually came on the marketplace. It meant that other manufacturers have managed to make much better phone designs much faster.

    That meant Chinese consumers can buy phones that are indistinguishable from an iPhone if you ignore the logo and function the same because of China’s app eco-system. Again this has been the same for a few years and has accelerated due to the nature of the dominant smartphone form factor. The second iteration of the iPhone X form factor is what really changed things. The phones were different to what has come before, but they weren’t demonstrably better. They were also more expensive.

    In the mean time Huawei and others have continued to make progress, particularly in product design and camera technology – the two areas where Apple led year-on-year. Huawei devices can be expensive for what they are, but they gave domestic manufacturers ‘brand permission’ in the eyes of many Chinese consumers to be as good as the foreigners.

    This wasn’t helped by Samsung’s missteps in the Chinese market that started with the global recall of the Samsung Galaxy Note7 battery recall. Samsung hasn’t managed to make that gap back up and seems to make marketing missteps regularly such as its recent tie-in with the ‘fake’ Supreme brand holder China. If you’re a Chinese consumer the additional value or status that you used to see in foreign handset brands is now diminished. This seems to be a wider theme as domestic brands are also making similar gains in market share compared to foreign FMCG brands. Although there are also exceptions like baby formula.

    Domestic brands have done a good job marketing themselves. BBK in particular are very interesting. Whilst Huawei makes lots of noise and bluster at how big they are, BBK creeps up. It has a number of brands in China and abroad OnePlus, Oppo, Vivo and RealMe going after particular segments. The brands are focused but run separately like companies in their own right. Apple’s marketing riffs on its global marketing (though it did a great Chinese New Year themed ad last year). This reinforces the perceived common view that foreign businesses are full of hubris and don’t sufficiently localise for China. Apple’s recent pricing strategy in a market where this is so little to show in value provided looks like the epitome of hubris.

    180120 - China smartphone market

    Finally, there has been a massive amount of consolidation of brands in the China smartphone market over the past four years. That provides for scale in terms of logistics, supply chain, design, component sourcing and marketing.

    Jaguar Land Rover

    If we move to the automotive sector and look at Jaguar Land Rover – their problems in China look self inflicted. China’s car market has declined for the first time in 20 years. But it seems to have mostly affected brands like Hyundai rather than prestige brands like Mercedes Benz or BMW. The reasons why aren’t immediately apparent. Yes diesel cars are less popular, but BMW, Audi and Mercedes make diesel cars.

    Jaguar Land Rover aren’t the only foreign brand suffering: Toyota has had problems in China since the last round of strong anti-Japanese sentiment exploded in 2012.

    More information

    Why Does WeChat Block Competitors, While Facebook Doesn’t? | Walk The Chat

    Apple’s China Problem | Stratechery

    Samsung recalls Galaxy Note 7 worldwide due to exploding battery fears | The Verge

    Samsung angers hypebeasts by partnering with fake Supreme brand in China | The Verge

    Fake News: Samsung China’s Deal With Supreme “Knock-off” Spurs Drama | Jing Daily

    Chinese car sales fall for first time in more than 20 years | World news | The Guardian