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.

  • Three and Superdrug + more

    Three and Superdrug launch new UK MVNO | total telecom – the MVNO deal with Three and Superdrug is a natural deal. Three and Superdrug are both owned by CK Hutchinson Holdings. The interesting bit is the cross business CRM where Three and Superdrug have got together to Superdrug drive loyalty card adoption. More retail related content here.

    THE LONG AND THE SHORT OF IT needs THE WRONG AND THE SHIT OF IT – BBH – interesting essay. The challenge is where do you get ‘crap’ campaign data from and how well will it be documented?

    Meet Kakao: How Korea’s Largest Mobile Giant Is Embracing Blockchain – CoinDesk – some smart critical thinking

    The Canard About Falling Incomes – WSJ – not an argument that I agree with, but Kessler argues that increasing digital features (like ABS on cars) compensate for the hollowing out of the middle classes (paywall)

    Tesla Model 3 Gets CR Recommendation After Braking Update – Consumer Reports – Teslas inspire a ‘true believer’ type following. I am leery of their ‘always in beta’ car software approach because its a car. So I am more concerned rather than delighted the that company managed to bring its braking distance closer to standard using an other-the-air software update

    Right Media, Creators of the First Ad Exchange | NYMag.com – the rise and fall of Right Media

    Chinese firms pile in to sponsor World Cup 2018 amid Fifa fallout-Sino-US – “Chinese companies get two things from sponsoring the World Cup. The first is access to western audiences that they will sooner or later be trying to win over, as their companies expand. The other is a cosmopolitan veneer to their brands, which they hope will resonate with their sizeable domestic markets.” – interesting that BBK’s youth brand Vivo rather than Huawei is the smartphone sponsor

    Grace Dent: ‘The processed food debate is MSG-sprinkled class war’ | Life and style | The Guardian – I would align it more with a Neo Victorian patrician attitude towards the working class

    Cross border insights finder – handy Facebook ad tool

    ‘I make £45k a month buying clothes for other people’ – The FT catches up with diagou 15 years after everyone else. China’s changes in luxury tax, increased travel of consumers, restrictions on capital flight, clampdown on corruption and e-tailing has had its toll on diagou

    Smart bulbs turn dumb: Lights out for Philips as Hue API goes dark • The Register – I get the benefits of technology but why does heating, lighting or other smart home controls have to be mediated through the cloud?

    Holiday Rentals, Homes, Experiences & Places – Airbnb – AirBnB launches stories which seems to be a continuation of its magazines

    What is a smartphone? | ASSA – really nice essay on smartphones and consumer behaviour

    Shenzhen’s tech innovation hothouse overheats – it’s been going on for the decade or so that I have travelled there. The unaffordability, maker spaces which are a real estate ruse to suck government grants and a grinding life pace. Financial services and design have already moved in. Your in less need of maker spaces when workshops can build working prototypes for you

  • WWDC 2018 outtakes

    Introduction to WWDC 2018

    This summary of the WWDC 2018 keynote has been re-organised to try and provide a bit more coherence as Apple took things in a slightly different order to try and create ‘surprise and delight‘.
    WWDC 2018 highlighted how cross-platform they’ve evolved Continuity and Siri to try and make them more useful (if, not smarter). All fo the changes outlined at WWDC 2018 represent a slow and steady progression to a more programmatic world.
    I’ve made some notes in green that are designed to flag points of interest to marketers and advertising folk. 

    App Store

    • 10 years old (and the app store search is still not where it should be)
    • World’s largest app marketplace
    • 500 million weekly visitors (might be due to moving away from iTunes for app updates)
    • $100,000,000 developer revenues to date

    Swift

    • 350,000 apps coded in it (no measure of the variable quality though)

    iOS 12

    • Focus on system optimisation
    • Faster app and function launches
    • They haven’t dropped any devices previously supported by iOS 11; a nod to longer device lives

    AR Kit – v 2

    • Adobe Creative Cloud support
    • USDZ format support throughout the system including News app
    • Multi-player AR experiences (demoed with Lego). Attribute digital assets to a physical object – interesting execution

    Measure – digital tape measure

    • Facilitated by MEMs, presumably the software technology comes out of AR work. Handy hack, I could have used this when I was eBaying stuff. I could see it being nice for things like home furnishings retailers and clothing e-commerce

    Photos

    Search suggestions – tries to predict what you want
    • Searches EXIF data for locations, events etc
    • For you function is a bit like Facebook memories
    • Photo sharing – recommended what to share and who to share them with. If its going to another iPhone user it prompts the recipient to share photos that they may have taken. Implications for social photo sharing apps
    • Full resolution over Messages

    Siri

    • Shortcuts to any app. It reminds me a little bit of Apple Script. Allows you to build multi-app behaviours – drag-and-drop
    • Suggestions based on app usage, calendar, locations
    • Possible implications for app usage – content opportunities to suggest ‘Shortcut workflows’ to build. Poses a bit of a thread for IFTTT’s smarthome ambitions
    Default iOS apps
    Stocks
    • Better charts
    • Native iPad and Mac version
    • Integration of Apple news in Stocks
    Voice Memos
    • iPad and Mac native version
    • iCloud support
    iBooks renamed to Apple Books
    • Redesigned
    Car Play
    • Supports third party navigation apps presumably to try and reduce iPhone to Android migration
    Efforts to limit mobile distraction
    • Do Not Disturb – improved view without notifications during bed time
    • Can be triggered from calendar or location (meetings, going to the cinema)
    Notifications – huge pain point addressed, particularly with people used to Android devices
    • Notifications ‘tuning’ – so that you can only see the notifications from apps you care about
    • Grouped notifications: app, topic and thread
    Screentime
    • Tracks device usage for the user
    Child app usage
    • Child locks on mobile device usage

    FaceTime

    • Group FaceTime supporting up to 32 participants. Shows the speaker by making their tile bigger. Challenges to Skype, WhatsApp
    • Integration into Messages, so you can go from group message to Group FaceTime

    watchOS 5

    • Walkie Talkie – push-to-talk app – watch-to-watch. Surely it would make sense on iOS and macOS as well?
    • Web content on watchOS via WebKit

    tvOS

    • AppleTV 4K to support Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision certified
    • AppleTV as cable set-top box for (Salt in Switzerland, Canal+ in France, Charter Spectrum). OTT on iPhone and iPad as well. If cable companies move to just being media content aggregators, how will this affect DOCSIS and FTTH roll out?
    • Zero-sign on for content when part of a cable TV offering
    • 3rd party remotes will work with AppleTV

    macOS – Mojave

    • Dark Mode – dark skin of OS. Nice level of integration and easier to work with during the evening, but not exactly ground-breaking
    • Desktop stacks – arrange by date, kind or tag
    • Contextual quick actions in Finder – can include Automator actions
    • Screen capture for video should make presentations a lot easier
    • Dev tools to make it easier to move iOS apps to the Mac framework – used this time on Apple default apps, Apple will roll out to developers in 2019
    • Beefing up security including app permissions to cover your mail database, camera and microphone use
    Safari
    • Shutting down tracking on likes, shares and comments. Strong focus on attacking ‘Fingerprinting’ – making it harder to track – Macs will be harder to distinguish from one and other (its also in iOS 12). Only providing basic web fonts as data, no data on legacy plug-ins and cutting back on app set-ups
    • Favicons in tabs (this annoyed the bejesus out of me, its a small thing but I am glad to see it)

    App Store

    • Revamped App store allows more content to market your app and improve usage / engagements. Opportunities for in-appstore content marketing (demo videos, ongoing articles with tips etc)
    • Ratings and review API (which will likely be a bit annoying). This will provide an incremental benefit for app marketers
    • Microsoft Office and BBEdit will be in the Mac app store – huge boost for the credibility of the Mac App Store
    Machine learning
    • CreateML – trying to make machine learning training easier for apps
    • CoreML 2 – Improved machine learning performance using batch predictions
    More related content here. More details for Apple developers here.

  • China’s post 00s generation + more

    5 Facts of Chinas Post 00s Generation Consumption Habits | Jing Daily – Chinas post 00s generation are more trusting of local brands. The increased confidence and Han nationalism looks down on ‘western worship’. Chinas post 00s generation poses a big challenge for foreign brands and agencies flogging influencer programmes

    Teens prefer YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram to Facebook, 2018 Pew survey finds. – not a real issue given Facebook owns Instagram

    The White House official Trump says doesn’t exist | South China Morning Post – China’s Ministry of State Security seems to have royally riled a senior Trump advisor when he worked as a journalist

    Chinese Æsop: – good reference of Chinese fables and myths

    SinoTech: Whiplash in U.S.-China Tech Trade Relations, with More Conflict on Horizon – Lawfare

    The Creepy Rise of Real Companies Spawning Fictional Design | WIRED

    Whether it’s Brexit or Bremain, the UK is in long-term economic decline | South China Morning Post – Either way, the outlook is grim. With or without Brexit, Britain is still an ailing industrial nation. So any short-term relief about Bremain must be blunted by the reality that Britain is stuck in the grip of longer-term economic decline. The shock Brexit vote two years ago simply accelerated the process. The jolt to confidence has ripped a big hole in investment and spending, and started unravelling many of the lifelines propping up the economy. Britain may never fully recover – Hong Kong op-ed on Brexit says a lot about how foreigners are viewing it

    China’s yuan gets support from Africa central banks to replace US dollar reserve — Quartz – given China’s acquisition of raw materials from Africa, Chinese government loans and large amount of Chinese goods imported having the yuan as a reserve currency makes sense

    Canceling Roseanne wasn’t the only possible decision, but it was the right one. | Slate – I was trying to articulate what has always been so tricky about the reboot, which was the utility of its immorality. Trump voters could watch Roseanne and feel seen, heard, and flattered. It allowed them to imagine themselves, like Roseanne Conner, as smart, tough, funny, and not racist.* And as false and mendacious as this fantasy is, it was, also, perhaps efficacious for our schisming America, a pressure release valve for Trump voters, while also being a relatively nontoxic way for progressives to observe said Trump voters. It was a way for us to see each other without actually having to speak, a way to exist in the same space without having to fight. – I was going to blog about Roseanne but this Slate op-ed nailed it

    Tech bubble is larger than in 2000, and the end is coming | CNBC – I’d argue that there has been diminishing innovation and longer term benefits in terms of returns

    Яндекс.Станция — мультимедиа-платформа с Алисой внутри – Yandex Station – an Amazon Echo / Alexa analogue for Russia only.

    China Flexes its Market Muscle by Demanding Samsung and SK Hynix cut Memory Chip Prices for Huawei & others or else – Patently Apple – Chinese PC makers have been struggling under component cost pressure as Samsung and SK control over 75 percent of global demand as of the first quarter of 2018. China says it wants to ensure “fair competition” in the market, so that no single supplier becomes too dominant and manipulates prices.

  • Malayan emergency + more things

    Psychological Warfare of the Malayan Emergency – interesting read; I wonder what C.C. Too would have made of the Leave and Remain campaigns? It is amazing how much of things in the UK goes back to Borneo and the Malayan emergency. The COIN strategies that were successful in the Malayan emergency were applied time and time again

    Reliance Jio has become the world leader in feature phones in just 10 months — Quartz – The strong growth in Jio, clubbed with the return of the Nokia brand, has helped the global feature phone market grow 38% year-on-year in January-March 2018, Counterpoint said. India contributed to nearly 43% of all feature phone sales during the first three months of 2018.

    Highlights from CCS Insight’s Predictions – Manufacturers’ vision for smart TVs fails. Despite their efforts to introduce apps and smart features, makers of smart TVs have failed to convince customers, who still use them as “dumb” screens. They buy TVs mainly based on design and picture quality, viewing the smartness only as a by-product. – More consumer behaviour related content here.

    The Bill Gates Line – Stratechery by Ben Thompson – interesting essay on the nature of monopoly power, platforms and aggregators

    Microsoft and Publicis unveil Marcel, an AI-based productivity platform for the ad giant | TechCrunch – interesting narrow expert apps rather than a general intelligence

    Qualcomm launches Snapdragon 710 platform in mobile AI, neural networking push | ZDNet – further enhancing neural networks on smartphones

    New Sony CEO to Detail Shift Away From Gadgets in Mid-Term Plan – Bloomberg – huge implication for innovation though

    US-China tech wars threaten global sector disruption | FT – strikes at the heart of China’s ambitions and is likely to curb revenues as well as disrupt supply chains at foreign multinationals, many of which see the country as a key market. But it is also prompting a rethink at the corporate level in China, with tech companies looking to develop their own chips (pay wall)

    Is Douyin the Right Social Video Platform for Luxury Brands? | Jing Daily – Douyin insider Fabian Bern shared that 85 percent of the app’s users are under 24 years old, over 70 percent are female, and the majority are from upper class families living in first tier cities

    Social credit system must bankrupt discredited people: former official – Global Times – China’s social credit system had blocked more than 11.14 million flights and 4.25 million high-speed train trips by the end of April.

    An improved social credit system was needed so that “discredited people become bankrupt,” Hou Yunchun, former deputy director of the development research center of the State Council

    Opinion | What the Microsoft Antitrust Case Taught Us – The New York Times – interesting how what would have isolated sporadic criticism of the big four internet giants Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google is now morphing into criticism and calls for remedy on a regular basis. Behavioural change from a marketing perspective is usually driven by reach and repetition. It feels like the ground is being prepared for legislation or a court challenge a few years from now

    A look back: The Bloomberg Keyboard | Bloomberg Professional Services – really interesting evolution of design

    The surprising return of the repo man – The Washington Post – “So much of America is just a heartbeat away from a repossession — even good people, decent people who aren’t deadbeats,” said Patrick Altes, a veteran agent in Daytona Beach, Fla. “It seems like a different environment than it’s ever been.”

    How Judea Pearl Became One of AI’s Sharpest Critics – The Atlantic – Three decades ago, a prime challenge in artificial-intelligence research was to program machines to associate a potential cause to a set of observable conditions. Pearl figured out how to do that using a scheme called Bayesian networks. Bayesian networks made it practical for machines to say that, given a patient who returned from Africa with a fever and body aches, the most likely explanation was malaria. In 2011 Pearl won the Turing Award, computer science’s highest honor, in large part for this work.

    But as Pearl sees it, the field of AI got mired in probabilistic associations. These days, headlines tout the latest breakthroughs in machine learning and neural networks. We read about computers that can master ancient games and drive cars. Pearl is underwhelmed. As he sees it, the state of the art in artificial intelligence today is merely a souped-up version of what machines could already do a generation ago: find hidden regularities in a large set of data. “All the impressive achievements of deep learning amount to just curve fitting,” he said recently.

  • Applied Materials + more news

    Applied Materials Sags on Weaker Revenue Outlook – Barron’s – looks promising overall for the semiconductor market. Applied Materials saw over 25% in machinery sales for making microchips and displays, indicating overall buoyant demand across consumer electronics manufacturers. Much of this is driven by memory chips that go into a wide range of products, from smartphones to cars. The main item of concern that I saw in Applied Materials sales was the high proportion of sales to Chinese manufacturers. This was in sharp contrast to a drop of supplies to Taiwan factories. As supply chains decouple from China, this reliance will be a real issue. Applied Materials also have to worry about having their devices torn down and reverse engineered by Chinese government sponsored efforts to become self sufficient.

    WSJ City – China secures access to 70% of world’s lithium supplies – Chile is the low carbon equivalent of Saudi Arabia. The rosy numbers are based on: current consumption rates that are low (electric cars are still a novelty) and doesn’t pair it with their position on rare metals – China also dominates super capacitor technology. Time for hydrogen powered cars

    Why are the biggest global PR agencies stuck? Does it matter? – SixtySecondView – good, if snarky read. Expect something on this from me soon. Currently have my head in creating an Excel document full of research

    ‘Menopausal’ UK economy risks once-in-a-century slump, warns deputy chief at Bank of England  – I thought the analogy accurate if not insensitive. There is little chance of economic growth bearing fruit

    This Is How a Newspaper Dies – POLITICO Magazine – In 1976, long before the internet arrived, Los Angeles Times media reporter David Shaw wrote in a lengthy Page One report about the newspaper’s worsening vital signs. “Are you now holding an endangered species in your hands?” he wrote. – I’d alluded to this here.

    Exclusive: NSA encryption plan for ‘internet of things’ rejected by international body – WikiTribune – understandable given the NSA’s history of weak encryption. What’s also interesting the low level of trust amongst allied countries