Ged Carroll

Category: technology | 技術 | 기술 | テクノロジー

It’s hard to explain to someone who didn’t live through it how transformation technology has been. When I was a child a computer was something mysterious. My Dad has managed to work his way up from the shop floor of the shipyard where he worked and into the planning office.

One evening he broad home some computer paper. I was fascinated by the the way the paper hinged on perforations and had tear off side edges that allowed it to be pulled through the printer with plastic sprockets connecting through holes in the paper.

My Dad used to compile and print off work orders using an ICL mainframe computer that was timeshared by all the shipyards that were part of British Shipbuilders.

I used the paper for years for notes and my childhood drawings. It didn’t make me a computer whiz. I never had a computer when I was at school. My school didn’t have a computer lab. I got to use Windows machines a few times in a regional computer labs. I still use what I learned in Excel spreadsheets now.

My experience with computers started with work and eventually bought my own secondhand Mac. Cut and paste completely changed the way I wrote. I got to use internal email working for Corning and internet connectivity when I went to university. One of my friends had a CompuServe account and I was there when he first met his Mexican wife on an online chatroom, years before Tinder.

Leaving college I set up a Yahoo! email address. I only needed to check my email address once a week, which was fortunate as internet access was expensive. I used to go to Liverpool’s cyber cafe with a friend every Saturday and showed him how to use the internet. I would bring any messages that I needed to send pre-written on a floppy disk that also held my CV.

That is a world away from the technology we enjoy now, where we are enveloped by smartphones and constant connectivity. In some ways the rate of change feels as if it has slowed down compared to the last few decades.

  • 8K resolution & other things

    NHK unveils 8K tech | TelecomAsia – of course the challenge is having a TV big enough to make 8K worthwhile. 4K is the height of digital experience at the moment. If you go to watch a film in the West End on a digital projector, you will be watching 4K rather than 8K images. Secondly pixel density like 8K is only one aspect of image improvements. Others including high dynamic range images that are brighter and clearer. Finally the controversial double frame rate of 60 frames per second. This is supposed to provide smoother movement, but has proven to be a divisive experience with cinema audiences. Particularly when it was used on Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy. More related content here.

    China

    Foreign manufacturer exodus from China | Quartz – however a lot of business isn’t moving because of the depth of expertise and clusters of related businesses that they rely on. This has been a bit overwrought and there is also further inland opportunities

    Consumer behaviour

    Where’s Britain spending? Barclaycard – interesting Q4 data (PDF data)

    Culture

    An Everton Fan On Why Scousers Hate The National Team – Sabotage Times – the complexity of national identity played out on a small scale

    Finance

    Hong Kong’s unwanted HK$1,000 banknote is the money launderer’s medium of choice | SCMP – intersting that cash usage has increased by 6 per cent in real terms. Something to ponder on in the face of cryptocurrency and electronic payments

    FMCG

    Krispy Kreme ‘KKK Wednesdays’ Facebook ad – Business Insider – I can’t believe that they went there. You would be hard pressed to make this up.

    Ideas

    London is changing – interesting experiment by Central St Martins

    Japan

    Press Releases : DOCOMO and ZENRIN DataCom Develop New Indoor Navigation Technology | NTT DOCOMO – really interesting move on indoor where2.0 services between DOCOMO and ZENRIN DataCom. I know that a wide range of vendors from aerospace and defence giant EADS to Ruckus Wireless that have explored this area over the years

    Luxury

    Wine fortunes take off for labels featured on inflight menus | SCMP – inflight cuisine is a great marketing opportunity for wine brands

    Media

    YouTube makes a move against brand-sponsored videos | Digiday – this is huge for the likes of PR agencies and networks like Nuffnang

    Online

    spaceprob.es catalogs the active human-made machines that freckle our solar system and dot our galaxy – beautiful site

    Introducing TweetDeck Teams | Twitter Blogs – tries to win back users with Tweetdeck Teams against Hootsuite

    Apple – Press Info – Apple to Invest €1.7 Billion in New European Data Centres – data centre for Athenry, County Galway, hopefully the area will get a backbone upgrade to match

    Security

    Pages – Update on the SIM card encryption keys matter | Gemalto – Initial conclusions already indicate that Gemalto SIM products (as well as banking cards, passports and other products and platforms) are secure and the Company doesn’t expect to endure a significant financial prejudice – if the hack was that obvious surely it would have been picked up before now and of flagged? If the security services dd their job well there would be few fingerprints

    The Great SIM Heist: How Spies Stole the Keys to the Encryption Castle | The//Intercept – that completely screws Gemalto

    Software

    Avicii and Other DJs Produce Hits Using Pirated Software | Torrentfreak – interesting connection to Universal Music’s Per Sundin

    Web of no web

    Daring Fireball: Thinking About the Split in Apple Watch Sales by Model – basically the WSJ numbers are rubbish, especially with luxury consumption down in China

    Why the Internet of Things matters – and what it means for marketers everywhere | Percolate – (PDF)

  • Marketing singularities

    This post was prompted by a couple of conversations over the past few days that culminated in the idea of marketing singularities.

    Conversation number one

    A friend pointed out that they’ve got a new job, just received a document on what we’re doing from my global social agency ‘X’. What’s your opinion of them and where do you think client and agency responsibilities should lie? Question number two didn’t really get answered as ‘X’ is a social agency? was a much more interesting talking point. Would they be any good, when did they become a social agency? What just happened? The upshot of it is that social is a thing that everyone is now an expert in.

    surveillance sticker art

    Conversation number two

    I was in conversation with a potential technology vendor for a specific project and I outlined the point solution that I liked about their product, which was something that made them a particularly good fit for said project. They then explained to me why they were so much more than the point solution I required and were in fact a complete CRM-type solution.

    Other peers (let’s not call them competitors, as they have a slightly different world view and do slightly different things) have been acquired by CRM or software vendors. Those that were too big to buy have done deals to integrate their offering as a kind VAR-like partnership.

    Structure

    What these two conversations are indicative of are a pair of marketing singularities.

    Think of marketing as a broadly horizontal industry sector rather than the vertically integrated leviathans that are often brought to mind by the words Martin + Sorrell or the letters W, P +P respectively.

    I would consider the marketing groups to be more analogous to conglomerates than integrated marketing creatures. Competing clients and bespoke client needs create the need for different marketing brands and single purpose agencies but for many parts of the business they tend to operate independently from a day-to-day operation. Collaboration and genuinely integrated working are journeys to be yet taken rather than destinations that they will be soon arriving at.

    WPP are an interesting organisation in that as a conglomerate they have tried to build a vertical stack of agencies and technology vendors. They own a variety of technology companies particularly involved in the purchasing of online advertising (programmatic advertising or real-time bidding as it has been called in the past).

    There has been concerns amongst amongst the ad worlds largest clients that groups may use their privileged position as vendor and agency to play against their clients. Major brands seem to have developed a distrust of both agency trading desks and the lack of transparency into market data. Instead of giving agencies an unfair advantage and allowing them to play both sides of the trade, they are bring the trading desk in-house.

    So there is both client pressure and expertise factors that come into play which suggest the horizontal model is likely to be dominant for some time to come – now matter how many spreadsheets using a Monte Carlo method are developed by investment banks predicting a sure-fire success.

    However within this  horizontal model there some consolidation happening. On the one hand tools are rushing towards total customer information awareness. The key problem is one of structure, tools are used to selling into one kind of person (someone like me), not re-engineering a business from the ground up. Secondly relationships with agencies are not going to provide the kind of trust and access that would be required to fulfil the full potential of this vision.

    You could imagine the conversation in the board room

    Hi Mr CEO, Sterling Cooper Draper Price, the marketing agency the last CMO appointed want to re-engineer our business with their social software.

    Wait a minute Mr CTO, when did we have Sterling Cooper on board? What happened to McMann and Tate?

    They were fired two years ago by the last CMO, who left six months ago

    Our current CMO handed in her resignation yesterday, to start her own yoga retreat franchise. No doubt the new one will want their own agency…

    Ok, so a bit of poetic license is used in this thought experiment, but the point is suppliers like marketing agencies tend to be changed more frequently than the vendors of key business systems. Something has to change radically for this work.

    Whilst on the agency side of things everyone has tried to ‘own’ the social space as there is client fatigue over what that now means. And while social is now something everyone does at a marketing agency level, there are less individuals who are willing to admit that they have a specialism in it; as it seems to have about as much long term career growth in it as being a CB radio operator. More marketing related content here.

  • Gree + more news

    Gree

    Asiajin » Gree CEO Talks To National Paper Readers By A Full-Page Ad – interesting how social businesses had to respond to accusations of preying on consumers by ‘traditional’ business. Gree is a Japanese Internet media company with headquarters in Tokyo. The name was borrowed from the idea of six degrees of separation. It runs the GREE mobile focused social network, not to be mistaken for the products of Chinese domestic appliance maker GREE. Gree focuses on mobile gaming and the sale of virtual goods to games players.

    Consumer behaviour

    China Less and Less Enamored of Social Media, Study Finds – China Real Time Report – WSJ – “Social media has penetrated into the lives of Chinese people and they now realize they are spending too much time on it,” said Sophie Shen, who led the Kantar poll, in a statement. “At the same time, they are receiving more low-quality and duplicate content.”

    Economics

    Raise Taxes on Rich to Reward True Job Creators: Nick Hanauer – Businessweek – rich people don’t create jobs, customers do

    Finance

    Former Chairman of Anglo Irish Bank Arrested – NYTimes.com

    How to

    The Behavioural Economics Guide 2014 – (pdf) – this is an area of increasing interest in social policy, marketing and advertising circles. It promises the ability to better shape consumer behaviour, which is an attractive proposition to government and marketers. Especially when combined with pursuasive computing techniques in digital media.

    Guide to keeping your social media accounts secure – (PDF) keeping social media accounts secure is now a key issue for brand protection. Yet brands still treat their website much more safely than their social channels. Keeping social media accounts secure needs to be a higher priority.

    How to Find Websites and Domains owned by a Person?

    Ideas

    Jeff Mills: The Failings Of The Future | Hypnotik – interesting to read this, especially after reading William Gibson’s latest book The Peripheral. In the book, much of the story plays out after the Jackpot – a gradual long duration series of events that herald massive human population decline

    Innovation

    Hoping Google’s Lab Is a Rainmaker – NYTimes.com – interesting the impatience. However if you go back to Google’s red herring you can’t say that they weren’t warned. More innovation related content here.

    Swatch upcoming smartwatch won’t require charging — GigaOM – It seems to charge itself via movement. Does the Swatch smartwatch  use Seiko Kenetic style power? If so the smartphone device would represent spectacular innovation in low power computing. More related posts here.

    Japan

    Asiajin » Jerry Yang’s 1999 Order Thanked By Japanese Auction Dominator Yahuoku | Asiajin – interesting how Yahoo! engineered the product to meet Japanese characteristics back in 1999 by Jerry Yang. More on Yahoo! here.

    Luxury

    Nokia to sell luxury Vertu subsidiary

    INSEAD Knowledge: Chinese Vogue

    Luxury Goods Market Surges In China [Headlines] @PSFK

    Marketing

    ‘Mustang’ More Popular Than ‘Superman,’ ‘Batman’ According to Research by SplashData | Ford Media Centre – just bad PR and a piss poor use of search data by the Ford Media Centre. Its a desperate gasp at cultural relevance

    Media

    Universal Censors Megaupload Song, Gets Branded a “Rogue Label” | TorrentFreak – IF true, this is crazy as Universal is blowing a hole in its own head from a reputational point-of-view

    Patry’s How to Fix Copyright: deftly argued, incandescent book on the evidence-free state of copyright law – Boing Boing

    Groklaw – ITC Recommends Finland and Canada Help Barnes & Noble Get Evidence from Nokia and MOSAID ~pj

    Here’s What a Twitter Follower Costs | ClickZ

    Yahoo’s Alibaba Quandary – NYTimes.com

    Online

    Facebook’s Video Views Rising, But Mostly For Discovery | paidContent – does mobile mean less engagement with Facebook?

    SOPA: Chinese Internet Users See a Familiar Face | WebProNews

    Cameron etc shamed as social media-ignorant reactionaries | TechEye

    Social networking’s salad days are ending, Forrester says – CNET News

    People Now Watch Videos Nearly 30 Percent Longer On Tablets Than Desktops | TechCrunch

    Retailing

    Data: “Coupon” Most Engaging Keyword on Facebook for Cyber Monday / Black Friday Posts | Buddy Media – says a lot about the economy

    Security

    Three of Tech’s Top CEOs to Skip Obama Cybersecurity Summit – Bloomberg Business – snub due to Snowden revelations

    Spies are putting off writers | Channel EYE – more than 75 percent of respondents in countries classified as “free,” 84 percent in “partly free” countries, and 80 percent in countries that were “not free” said that they were “very” or “somewhat” worried about government surveillance in their countries

    2012: Siri Is a Stunner, Amazon Is Amazin’ and Security Gets Spendy – AllThingsD

    I, Cringely » Blog Archive » Cloudy judgement at BAE Systems

    Federal domain seizure raises new concerns over online censorship — Engadget – smacks of incompetence or government corruption to gain favour with the media industry

    Software

    We Need to Break the Mobile Duopoly. We Need a 3rd Mobile OS | Andreessen Horowitz – there are more than three, but there seems to be barriers to adoption

    Rumor: Skype Set To Launch A Social Network To Compete With Facebook | Social Networking Watch – this seems a bit pointless to me

    Beijing cracks down on Uber and its rival taxi-hailing apps | Quartz – interesting that Didi has been declared illegal

    WebOS Lives! (Update: And HP’s Still Making Tablets)

    Technology

    The Problem with Big Data | EE Times – nice analysis of big data. More technology related content here

    Chinese chip makers want in on bank card business | WantChinaTimes – threat for Infineon and Gemalto

    Tablets Attracting Repeat Buyers, Unemployed, Says Study – Forbes – if you have an Amazon Kindle Fire tablet you’re likely to be unemployed

    Roger McNamee’s 10 Hypotheses For Technology Investing – UPDATED EDITION

    You Think Your Credit Card Bills Are High? You Should See HP’s Debt – this is insane

    Asiajin » Cookpad’s Listing To Be Transfered To The First Section – interesting story about quality content

    The Windows 8 tablet train wreck | ExtremeTech

    Web of no web

    Why I’m not impressed with your smart device | VentureBeat – interesting take on CES

    Dimensions – Adventures in the Multiverse – interesting web of no web game that melds computer imagery with the real world for game play

    Wireless

    Liveblog: Xiaomi Explains Itself To Silicon Valley | TechCrunch – contextual aspects of the OS is really interesting

    Qualcomm Cuts Outlook, Warning Its Snapdragon 810 Dropped From a Flagship Device | Re/code – likely Samsung Galaxy S6

    Huawei Bets Americans Will Want Contract-Free Phones – WSJ – I guess they are struggling to get carrier deals, is the new burner phone a smartphone and is the FCC holding up approval on HiSilicon-powered smartphones?

    How AT&T fumbled $39 billion bid to acquire T-Mobile – The Washington Post – they were scared about losing jobs in a presidential election year. More wireless related stories here.

    How many iPhones are being discarded in the US? | asymco

  • Ogilvy social trends + other things

    Ogilvy social trends

    Marshall and James delivered their Ogilvy social trends presentation on a webinar. Included in the Ogilvy social trends presentation is

    • Disposable / transient content
    • Brand banter
    • Sub-dividing communities using greater ad targeting
    • Twitter zero as the organic reach on the platform plunges towards zero
    • Platforms battle for video dominance
    • Rise in privacy facilitating services
    • Digital and identity are blurring the lines between aspiration and self actualisation

    Here is this year’s Ogilvy social trends presentation:

    Vintage logo design

    Flickr user Eric Carl has put together an amazing album of vintage logo design from the 1970s and they are truly splendid in monochrome. They are like set of post modern mons – the iconic symbols that Japanese clans used to represent themselves. They also feel timeless rather than trend driven.

    Great to finally see something we’ve been working on for a good while break cover. I have been working on a global website redesign and digital strategy for the Family Brands unit at Unilever. This is their worldwide margarine (and related cooking ingredients including cream analogues) product portfolio of products. A second project that I have been involved in is a set of adverts that will be rolling out globally. This is debuting in Mexico. Unfortunately, I couldn’t enjoy it as the new, new thing beckons.