Ged Carroll

Blog

  • Internet of hacking

    IoT should be considered the Internet of Hacking (IoH).

    Mirai – is a bot network that is powered by a range of devices including infected home routers and remote camera systems. It took over these systems by using their default passwords. The network of compromised machines is then targeted to overload a target network or service. Last week the Dyn DNS service was targeted which restricted access to lots of other services for users on the east coast of the US.

    DNS is like a telephone directory of internet destinations, if no one knows where to go it becomes a lot harder to get in touch.

    DDoSing

    Mirai didn’t spring miraculously out of thin air. It finds its history in passionate gamers who used distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks to slow down or even kick opponents off online gaming platforms. Eventually the gaming companies got hip to it and went after the cheaters, not to be outdone the cheaters went after the gaming companies.

    Taking a service offline using DDoS became a source of extortion against online banking and e-commerce services. Attacks can be used as a form of ‘digital hit’ to take out opponents or critics like online security commentator Brian Krebs.

    Computing

    Moore’s Law meant that computing power has become so small and plentiful that it is surprising what we often have in the palms of our hands. The first Cisco router was built on the circuit board of a Sun Microsystems workstation. Home routers now are basically small computers running Linux. A CCTV camera box or a DVR are both basic PCs complete with hard drives.

    Back in 2007, BlackBerry co-founder Mike Lazaridis described the iPhone as

    “They’ve put a Mac in this thing…”

    The implication being that the power of a sophisticated PC was essentially in the palm of one’s hand. The downside of this is that your thermostat is dependent on a good broadband connection and Google based cloud services and your television can get malware in a similar manner to your PC.

    Security

    For a range of Chinese products that have been acknowledged as part of the botnet; the manufacturer acknowledged that they were secured with a default admin password. They fixed the problem in a later version of the firmware on the device. Resetting the default password is now part of the original device set-up the first time you use it.

    The current best advice for internet of things security is protecting the network with a firewall at the edge. The reality is that most home networks have a firewall on the connected PCs if you were lucky. The average consumer doesn’t have a dedicated security appliance on the edge of the home network.

    Modern enterprises no longer rely on only security at the edge, they have a ‘depth in defence’ approach that takes a layered approach to security.

    That would be a range of technology including:

    • At least one firewall at the edge
    • Intrusion detection software as part of a network management suite
    • A firewall on each device
    • Profile based permissions across the system (if you work in HR, you have access to the HR systems, but not customer records
    • Decoy honey post systems
    • All file systems encrypted by default so if data is stolen it still can’t be read

    Processes:

    • Updating software as soon as it becomes available
    • Hard passwords
    • Two-factor authentication

    Depth in defence is complex in nature, which makes it hard to pull off for the average family. IoT products are usually made to a price point. These are products as appliances, so it is hard for manufacturers to have a security eco-system. The likelihood of anti-virus and firewall software for light bulbs or thermostats is probably small to non-existent.

    The Shenzhen eco-system

    Shenzhen, just across the border from Hong Kong has been the centre of assembly for consumer electronics over the past 20 years. Although this is changing, for instance Apple devices are now assembled across China. Shenzhen has expanded into design, development and engineering. A key part of this process has been a unique open source development process. Specifications and designs are shared informally under legally ambiguous conditions – this shares development costs across manufacturers and allows for iterative improvements. This doesn’t seem to improve product security, quite the opposite, hence the internet of hacking. 

    There is a thriving maker community that allows for blurring between hobbyists and engineers. A hobbyists passion can quickly become a prototype and then into production . Shenzhen manufacturers can go to market so fast that they harvest ideas from Kickstarter and can have them in market before the idea has been funded on the crowdsourcing platform.

    All of these factors would seem to favour the ability to get good security technologies engineered directly into the products by sharing the load.

    China

    The European Union were reported to be looking at regulating security into the IoT eco-system, to try and prevent the internet of hacking, but in the past regulation hasn’t improved the security of related products such as DSL routers. Regulation is only likely to be effective if it is driven out of China. China does have a strong incentive to do this. But it is unlikely to do anything to help prevent the internet of hacking.

    The government has a strong design to increase the value of Chinese manufacturing beyond low value assembly and have local products seen as being high quality. President Xi has expressed frustration that the way Chinese manufacturing appears to be sophisticated, yet cannot make a good ballpoint pen.

    Insecurity in IoT products is rather like that pain point of poor quality pens. It is a win-win for both customers, the Chinese manufacturing sector and by extension the Party. More security related content can be found here.

    More Information

    WSJ City – Massive Internet Attack Stemmed From Game Tactics
    Your brilliant Kickstarter idea could be on sale in China before you’ve even finished funding it | Quartz
    Asus lawsuit puts entire industry on notice over shoddy router security | Ars Technica
    Europe to Push New Security Rules Amid IoT Mess — Krebs on Security
    Why can’t China make a good ballpoint pen? | Marketplace.org

  • Toothbrush test + more news

    Toothbrush test

    Google Canceled the Launch of a Robotic Arm After it Failed the ‘Toothbrush Test’ – Bloomberg – executives at Google parent Alphabet Inc. nixed the plan because it failed Chief Executive Officer Larry Page’s “toothbrush test,” a requirement that the company only ship products used daily by billions of people, according to people familiar with the situation. – Surely this would nix Google‘s enterprise products as well? The toothbrush test poses a serious problem to Alphabet. The business can no longer go after most business opportunities, due to the tyranny of large numbers involved in their earnings. Secondly, they may not get lucky twice, the only benefit of the toothbrush test is preventing the kind of problem that Yahoo! had with the Broadcast.com acquisition. The toothbrush test sounds like an innovation killer

    Consumer behaviour

    More millennials switch off social media | FT – qualitative rather than quantitative data

    Economics

    Pound sterling could be worth less than a dollar within three years, investor Jim Rogers warns | The Independent – You’ve got a lot of debt, you’ve got a serious balance of trade problem which shows no signs of being corrected. I don’t see anything to make sterling go up – not terribly surprising conclusion. The only alternative would be massive cuts outside the South East including rural subsidies and infrastructure spending. The state pension would likely have to be means tested and cut. It would also make sense to up taxation on capital gains and death duty

    Marketing

    One on One – Edelman – Six of the top 10 PR firms did not grow or went backwards in 2015. This should be PR’s time, given the complexity of the environment (nationalism, populism, fear of pace of innovation) and the explosion of media options… I contended that the management of PR agencies has not sufficiently recognized the opportunity on the marketing side of the business. The emphasis on continued increase in profit margins has pushed our sector toward public affairs, crisis management and corporate reputation… – in addition PR is letting its top talent walk out the door, pay is below par for other disciplines and needs to get general managers that won’t have a rotating door on the new types of talent that they want to get in

    Media

    The Man Who Stood Up To Facebook : All Tech Considered : NPR – which all goes back to where Facebook deviated from the web 2.0 credo and used it to its own advantage – for instance hollowing out Yahoo!’s user base

    Tag Heuer’s adventure seeking leads to a Red Bull TV sponsorship | Luxury Daily – interesting wrinkle on brand content where other brands come in and sponsor the brand content

    Some Thoughts on Reuters, NY Times, and Yahoo – Lawfare  – Benjamin Wittes flags that much of the Yahoo story is unclear, including legal arguments and the objective of the search, and further reporting from Motherboard and the Intercept

    Online

    Analysis: Trump ‘rigged’ vote claim may leave lasting damage | AP News – I don’t think that you can pin this solely on Trump when you have thinkers like marketing professor Philip Kotler has written a book on how the current framework is broken to ‘repair’ US democracy.

    The Latest Celebrity Diet? Cyberbullying – The New York Times – which is going to legitimise the tactics in the minds of many people out there as ‘normal behaviour’

    Bronte Capital: Measuring how bad Twitter is – needs to fire two thirds of its staff

    Security

    What Surveillance Will Look Like in the Future – The Atlantic – of course this depends on not having Note 7-esque battery problems

    Europe to Push New Security Rules Amid IoT Mess — Krebs on Security – it is the right thing to do, but will be hard to police and won’t stop shoddy security on products coming out of the Shenzhen, Dongguan, Goungzhou silicon triangle in the Pearl River delta

    Software

    The Telegraph overhauls mobile app to focus on speed – Digiday – interesting focus on immediacy, goes against the ‘abundance of bandwidth’ assumption many developers use

    WTF is a container? | TechCrunch – really nice primer

    Huawei has formed a strategic partnership to develop AI – Business Insider – but could you trust it? Interesting that this hasn’t caused upset in the US body politic

    Daring Fireball: Walt Mossberg: ‘Why Does Siri Seem So Dumb?’ – John Gruber’s take is really good. I won’t even get into the fact that Siri just doesn’t understand my BBC northern English accent and so I just don’t bother using it

    Baidu Launches A Medical Chatbot That Acts As A Physician’s Assistant | IPG Media Lab – interesting application, IBM Watson has aspired to go in this direction. Maximises the 8 minutes a patient has in a doctors surgery

    Web of no web

    Most Drivers Who Own Cars With Built-in GPS Systems Use Phones For Directions – Mostly Out of Frustration – explains why TomTom and Garmin are still going

    Building a Smart Home With Apple’s HomeKit | Wirecutter – shows how immature the smart house still is. That is if you’re not concerned about your IoS (internet of shit) devices being compromised and turned into a bot net for hire

    Wireless

    Verizon just raised a big warning flag for Yahoo – The Washington Post – hacks had a material effect on the business

    The exploding Note 7 is no surprise – leaked Samsung doc highlights toxic internal culture • The Register – the Note 7 seems to have shone a light on the Samsung business

    iPhone 7 vs Leica M9-P: A Side-by-Side Photo Comparison | PetaPixel – to me these show the limits of the smartphone rather than how great it is

  • Brexit segmentation

    Inspiration for brexit segmentation

    This chain of thought on Brexit segmentation got fired up when my Facebook filled up with calls to petition British Airways to stop the distribution of the Daily Mail, mainly because of headlines like:
    mail headline
    So can a brexit segmentation be used as part of a marketing strategy? There are at least 16 million consumers that would broadly fit within the brexiter segment. When one looks at the demographic split of leave versus remain voters you start to see clear segmentation ideal for marketing opportunity.

    You already have brands doing this in the U.S. for instance standing up for LGBT rights. Unilever’s Ben & Jerry’s have come out in support of Black Lives Matter.

    Now lets look at research done into the demographics of the voters.

    Much has been made of the splits in UK society:

    Young people who voted tended toward Remain; the older you were the more likely you would be a Brexiter

    (73%) of 18 to 24 year-olds voted to remain…

    A majority of those aged over 45 voted to leave, rising to 60% of those aged 65 or over

    Working class areas outside London and other major cities voted to leave

    The AB social group (broadly speaking, professionals and managers) were the only social group among whom a majority voted to remain (57%). C1s divided fairly evenly; nearly two thirds of C2DEs (64%) voted to leave the EU

    Labour claimed that a majority of Labour supporters who voted voted remain

    Nearly two thirds of Labour and SNP voters (63% and 64%), seven in ten Liberal Democrats and three quarters of Greens, voted to remain

    The correlation between class and voting broke down in Scotland and Northern Ireland were working class areas outside major cities narrowly voted to stay.

    Some of it was certainly a protest vote, large swathes of the country feel that they have been ignored by a professional city-orientated political class. As the Political Economy Research Centre reflected:

    The geography of leave voters reflected the economic crisis of the 1970s, not the 2010s.

    Concerns about financial future and family’s well being were stressors rather than root causes. Research attributed it to more deep seated attitudes that shaped world view.

    Work by the London School of Economics showed that when  attitudes were mapped against income level; working class status wasn’t as much a deciding factor as pollsters would have had one believe, instead it seemed to correlate close to personality traits.

    Closedness and openess

    Back in the 1950s American academics sought to answer the question of how Hitler and Mussolini  could have become so popular in what were initially democratic societies? What they and subsequent research found was that a certain amount of  a given population tend to have more of a closedness (or authoritarian dynamic) in their world view.

    This can be amplified through:

    • Culture
    • Fear
    • Change
    • Economic insecurity

    They look for strong leaders and simple answers. Nostalgia and the past is reassuring. They are less interested in ‘sensation seeking’ and want to fit in.

    Liberal values tended to be more orientated towards aspects of openness that embrace newness, sensations, innovation and change.

    The Google Trends spike

    Much was made of a post-election Google Trends spike on searches such as ‘What is Brexit?’ as a demonstration of a key democracy failing. According to political scientists voters having an understanding of what they are voting for is key in a democracy. If it were true it would cast a shadow on the likelihood of the underlying electorate traits being useful for segmentation. The Google Trends story wasn’t necessarily correct; (but it was great fodder for the news cycle)

    • Google Trends is about the rate of change in searches, so it might be moved dramatically by a relatively small amount of searches
    • Having been working on using Google Trends, we’ve found that there are inconsistencies in data in terms of timing and peaks depending on which IP address it is drawn from and what is the exact mix of terms compared.
    • There is nothing but a hypothesis to associate the peak with people who were eligible to vote.

    National versus international businesses

    There are a number of British brands on the high street that are geographically focused for whom taking a resolute Brexit stamp would not cause brand harm or investor protest. Examples of this would be Tesco – who have pared back their international footprint and are likely to continue to do so, Wetherspoons, Poundstretcher and payday loans brands like Wonga.com.

    For more internationally orientated publicly listed companies, the UK becomes less attractive. Senior government thought leaders such as conservative MP John Redwood have made it clear ‘interference’ including voicing concerns about the Brexit process would be unwelcome.

    …companies who did not stay silent on the country’s EU membership would pay a “very dear economic and financial price”.

    Chief executives who decide to take a corporate position on the issue could lose their jobs while those campaigning against membership would ensure there were financial consequences…

    As the UK becomes a more isolated economy  two steps behind its European peers there could be a temptation to spin off their UK business. This could happen in two ways.

    Selling on local gem brands

    Selling on local gem brands (brands with only significant sales in the local country). Examples could be brands like:

    • Ambrosia
    • Hovis
    • Cabrini sportswear
    • K cider
    • Barclays
    • Wonga.com
    • Royal London

    Disposal of UK assets

    Alternatively disposing of UK subsidiaries would make sense as Brexit represents a permanent reduction reduction in profit margins. For someone like McDonald’s Restaurants, that would likely mean pressing ahead with an ‘all-franchise’ model in a similar approach to what it has taken recently in China.

    In order to sell they are likely to require some sort of assets rather than just a sales agreement with the parent company. If they have become only a UK sales organisation, then the viability of this approach depends on the supply chain. One way of adding value into the supply chain would be for these businesses to open up a direct sales channel.

    Companies like Unilever already look at how they can integrate into supermarkets supply chain, with ‘buy it now’ buttons on their own site that take you to their online retail partners. They could also open up a direct e-commerce channel; given the Marmitegate debacle with Tesco; expect examination of alternative business models like America’s Dollar Shave Club and Amazon’s Dash.

    Modern international brands are already used to marketing towards the ‘open consumer’ who was likely to vote remain. Products that feel up to date, innovative and socially responsible.  A classic example would be Dove, Innocent smoothies, AirBnB or the average family car. Using a brexit segmentation would feel uncomfortable or just wrong for these brands.

    Marketing to the pro leave part of Brexit segmentation

    A local business for local people with brands that appeal to leave voter demographics could be more explicit in courting leave voter’s spend utilising a geographic and demographic aspects to Brexit segmentation.

    Tapping into the ‘authoritarian outlook’ would mean tapping into nostalgia; throw-back branding and possibly rolling back political correctness in the name of common sense.

    An extreme outcome could be Robertsons bringing back their original Golly character; though thankfully I suspect that would be step too far – even in post-Brexit Britain.

    Rejection of expert is partly down to wanting a reduction in complexity. This has huge implications for a wide range of products, particularly in the financial services sector or mobile tariffs.

    Choice is the enemy, a simple product, down-to-earth, unambiguous in its claims. Mobile tariffs without bolt-on features, complex phone upgrade cycles or value-added services. In the case of pensions and insurance, with the assurance that they could help ward off a sinister future full of negative change rather than rich rewards. Perceived good value wouldn’t do any harm either.

    In terms of how the product or service fits into the Brexiter’s life it is less about being part of a creative expression of individuality. Instead it is more about the ‘grey man’; blending in. Blending in is a threat coping mechanism, a form of risk reduction (think Dilbert cartoons). It shouldn’t mistaken for being more community-spirited, instead the community is of mutual convenience – a shoal of people.  A consequence of this is that persona creation becomes harder or derivative, the stellar insight from the planner loses its gloss. Agency creatives are likely to struggle with consumer empathy beyond utility.

    From the advertisers perspective appealing to leave brexit segmentation means blunt simplicity rather than clever creative. Audience reach is still important, but a higher frequency is likely required to achieve a comparable impact. This is to get over the Brexiter’s higher degree of inertia to marketing and making them feel that accepting the brand is part of conforming within society. It is part of the eco-system, traditional brands have an advantage due to their familiarity and heritage. Even if its a new brand it feels as if it has always been part of the consumers fabric.

    More information

    Ben & Jerry’s came out in support of Black Lives Matter. Naturally, some cops are freaking out | Fusion
    Business Leaders Speak Out Against North Carolina’s Transgender Law | Wall Street Journal
    These 70 Corporations Want to Block North Carolina’s Transgender Bathroom Law | CBN News (US news outlet for the evangelical christian audience)
    How the United Kingdom voted on Thursday… and why | Lord Ashcroft Polls
    How Demographics Decided Brexit | The Market Oracle
    How has Brexit changed the mindset of a nation? | Bucks New University Business School
    How do Britain’s ethnic minorities view the EU referendum? | Kings College London
    Making Sense of Brexit – the data you need to analyse | UK Data Service
    Who is voting to leave the EU and why? | openDemocracy UK
    Thoughts on the sociology of Brexit | Political Economy Research Centre
    The 2016 Referendum, Brexit and the Left Behind: An Aggregate-Level Analysis of the Result by Goodwin and Heath – PDF
    Businesses that speak out for Britain’s EU membership will be punished, vows John Redwood | The Telegraph
    UK voters don’t understand Brexit, Google searches suggest | Ars Technica UK
    Marmitegate is ‘just the tip of the iceberg’ as cheese, chocolate and wine all face ‘punishing tariffs’, Nick Clegg claims | The Telegraph
    It’s NOT the economy, stupid: Brexit as a story of personal values | British Politics and Policy blog | LSE
    Brexiters would rather trust the wisdom of ordinary people than the opinion of experts | Quartz
    The One Weird Trait That Predicts Whether You’re a Trump Supporter | Politico
    Brexit Voters: NOT the Left Behind | Fabian Society
    Authoritarianism and Political Behavior by Janowitz & Marvick | Public Opinion Quarterly (Summer 1953)
    Voters’ personality traits in presidential elections by Barbaranelli, Caprara, Vecchione and Fraley | Personality and Individual Differences 42 (2007) – PDF document
    Personality Traits, Partisan Attitudes, and Voting Behavior. Evidence from Germany by Schoen | Political Psychology (August 2007) – PDF document
    Grey Man Strategies 101: Peeling Away the Thin Veneer of Society | Imminent Threat Solutions
    How To: The Modern Grey Man Philosophy | Loaded Pocketz
    EU referendum results | The Electoral Commission

  • Leatherman + more news

    Leatherman

    Origin Of Leatherman: The Road From Start-Up To Mega-Brand – great interview with Tim Leatherman. The development of Leatherman cam out of an unmet need. But what was of particular interest was how Gerber Knives went from Leatherman supplier to competitor by looking at the Leatherman production orders. There’s a lesson from Leatherman for globalised brands using ODM firms in places like China.

    Business

    Samsung Targeted by U.S. Activist Elliott Urging Separation – Bloomberg – interesting move, launched just as the Lee family transitions a leadership handover. Basically, break things up, and allow American activist investors to tear your business to pieces. Part of wider trend where technology is now viewed as value rather than growth stocks

    Consumer behaviour

    Loving Our Phones May Come At A Physical Price | Buzzfeed – not terribly surprising when you think about it

    Economics

    Spotify is causing a major problem for economists – Business Insider – surely the same as services? – HSBC global economist James Pomeroy recently published a fascinating paper that looks at this question. “The rise of the digital natives” argues that the increase in digital services like Spotify — and Apple and Google and Facebook and Amazon and on and on — put downward pressure on prices and inflation.

    Finance

    WSJ City – Woodford: Investors Face Short-Termist Pressures – Neil Woodford’s criticisms remind me a lot of Will Hutton’s The State We’re In. The key difference is that Woodford seems a bit suspect (paywall)

    FMCG

    McDonald’s Celebrates 26th Birthday in China | Whats on Weibo – great WeChat and Weibo brand marketing case studies from What’s On Weibo. McDonald’s is very well known, but is surpassed in Chinese success by KFC.

    How to

    Foundations of Data Science by Blum, Hopcroft & Kannan | Cornell University – (PDF)

    Use iMessage apps on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch – Apple Support – not the most intuitive process, quite easy to miss the whole app store process

    Ideas

    Nabeel Hyatt on Silicon Valley innovation vs invention – Business Insider – and herein lies why China and other countries are able to dial-down silicon valley’s halo and make the bay area look more like Detroit-in-waiting

    Photos: How Tools Start a Revolution | Learning By Shipping – iPhone (or any other smartphone) is not the bokeh you were looking for

    Media

    Shazam’s CEO Talks 1 Billion App Downloads And The Future Of The Brand | Forbes – a billion downloads to get to profitability…

    Verizon reportedly wants $1 billion discount on Yahoo | VentureBeat – expect more things to come out before this fight ends. It was inevitable that Verizon would revisit the value as this would affect many younger tech savvy Yahoo! customers

    Bloomberg Announces New Multiplatform Brand for Tech News | Adweek – interesting that much faster page load times is pulled out as a key differentiator

    Yahoo! rebrands its main app as Yahoo Newsroom, lets you post your own news links | TechCrunch – a mix of Metro style tiles and Apples News app, I don’t think that this will be a success as there are similar services with longer traction. The ironic thing is that these are newsreaders are still using RSS on the back end. The window dressing has changed, but the importance of RSS / Atom hasn’t

    Viceland UK scores zero ratings on some nights after Sky TV launch | The Guardian – I’d seen these numbers the previous week, but its not a good narrative for Vice. I suspect the problem is being on Sky given the propensity for cord cutting

    Online

    Introducing Marketplace: Buy and Sell with Your Local Community | Facebook Newsroom – second (or third) time lucky?

    Retailing

    Amazon bans incentivized reviews tied to free or discounted products | TechCrunch – this is going to have an impact on influencer relations by PR agencies

    Security

    Yahoo Disputes Report on E-Mail Scanning for U.S. Government – Bloomberg – ‘non-denial’ denial

    Yahoo Slams Email Surveillance Story: Experts Demand Details | Threatpost – would you believe Yahoo!’s denials? But how could they adequately disprove it now, the FBI and NSA won’t help them

    The Hacking of Yahoo – Schneier on Security – “state-sponsored actor” is often code for “please don’t blame us for our shoddy security because it was a really sophisticated attacker and we can’t be expected to defend ourselves against that.” – this might be Marissa Mayer‘s leadership legacy at Yahoo!

    Delete Your Yahoo Account | The Intercept – Yahoo program seems “in some ways more problematic and broader” than previously revealed NSA bulk surveillance programs like PRISM or Upstream collection efforts. “It’s hard to think of an interpretation” of the Reuters report, he explained, “that doesn’t mean Yahoo isn’t being asked to scan all domestic communications without a warrant” or probable cause. – It probably won’t impact Yahoo!’s core active audience of techno-neophytes, but it does nuke any fantasy Verizon had of growing the user base

    Exclusive: Yahoo secretly scanned customer emails for U.S. intelligence – sources | Reuters – expect more dirty laundry to drop

    Software

    WeChat’s world | The Economist – a boisterous four-year-old living in Shanghai, is what marketing people call a digital native. Over a year ago, she started communicating with her parents using WeChat, a Chinese mobile-messaging service. She is too young to carry around a mobile phone. Instead she uses a Mon Mon, an internet-connected device that links through the cloud to the WeChat app – its a WeChat world, the other technology companies are just copying their innovation

    Behind The Crash Of 3D Robotics, North America’s Most Promising Drone Company – it’s just going to be inherently much more difficult for a Silicon Valley-based, software-focused company to compete against vertically integrated powerhouse manufacturing company in China

    Apple Said to Plan Improved Cloud Services by Unifying Teams – Bloomberg – I wonder what the implications could be for product leaks? Or are services an area of less concern?

    Microsoft’s bot platform is more popular than Facebook’s among developers | VentureBeat – interesting, though this might change with Facebook for Work

    Technology

    Encouraged by Apple, Sharp invests in OLED production equipment | Electronics EETimes – also managed to get some interesting tech that improves VR experience

    Sharp’s IGZO Display Makes Dots Invisible for VR | Nikkei TechOn – and Apple is looking to dial up production of OLEDs by buying from Sharp….

    Wireless

    Google’s 24/7 live support for the Pixel phones comes complete with screen sharing | Android Police – interesting step up in customer services, presumably what was required to get them into Verizon

    Source: Huawei passed on chance to produce Pixel phones, US division badly struggling | Android Police – big issues across handset business in US, interesting that they cleaned out the Honor marketing team despite them being the best performers. This is likely to create motivation issues moving forwards

  • Danger Hiptop

    Thinking about the Danger HIptop

    When I was reflecting on the Danger Hiptop I was reminded of an article which talked about the collective memory of London’s financial district being about eight years or so. Financiers with beautifully crafted models in Excel would be doomed to make the same mistake as their predecessors.

    Marketers make the same mistakes, not being able to draw on the lines of universal human behaviour when it meets technology. Today’s obsession with the ‘dark social’ of OTT messaging platforms is very reminiscent of the culture that grew up around the Danger Hiptop. The  Hiptop drove a use of instant messaging platforms (Yahoo!, Aol and MSN) in a similar way to today’s use of Kik, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp by young people.

    Heritage

    Danger was started back in 1999, by veterans from Apple, Philips and WebTV.

    Back then mobile data was very primitive, email was slow and the only people I knew who used mobile data on a regular basis were press photographers, sending images back from early digital SLRs using a laptop connected up to their phone. At this time it was still sometimes easier to bike images over. 3G wireless was on the horizon, but there wasn’t a clear use case.

    Apple was not the force it is now, but recovering from a near death experience. The iMac, blue and white G3 tower units and ‘Wall Street’ laptops reignited belief in core customers. Mac OSX Server 1.0 was released in March that year and pointed to the potential that future Macs would have.

    WebTV at the time was a company that felt like it was at the apex of things. Before the internet took off, companies like Oracle and BT had tried providing interactive TV services including CD ROM type experiences and e-commerce in a walled garden environment. This was based on having a thin client connected to a TV as monitor. WebTV took that idea and built upon the internet of the mid-1990s. It wasn’t appreciated how commoditised the PC market would become over time. They were acquired by Microsoft in 1997,  later that year they would also buy Hotmail.

    At the time, Philips was a force to be reckoned with in consumer electronics and product design. The company had a diverse portfolio of products and a reputation for unrewarded innovation including the compact cassette, interactive CD media and audio compact discs. Philips was the company that the Japanese wanted to beat and Samsung still made third-rate televisions.

    Some of them were veterans of a failed start-up called General Magic that had spun out of Apple. A technology super-team of engineers and developers came up with a wireless communicator device that failed in the market place.  It’s name became a byword for a failed start-up years later.  Talent was no predictor of success. General Magic was the silicon valley equivalent of Manchester United getting relegated and going bankrupt in a single season. So it is understandable that they may have been leery of making yet another wireless device.

    The device

    The Danger Hiptop was unapologetically a data first device. It was a thick device with a sliding screen which revealed a full keyboard and four-way directional button to move the cursor. On later devices this became a trackball. The screen was a then giant 240 x 160 pixels in size. It became available in colour during the device’s second iteration, later devices had a screen that was 854 pixels wide.

    I was large enough provide a half decent browsing experience, read and write messages and email. It was held in landscape arrangement and the chunky frame worked well in a two handed hold not that different from a games console controller, with thumb based typing which worked better than the BlackBerry keyboard for me.  Early devices allowed you to move around the screen with four-way rocker switch. Later devices had a trackball. This keyboard rather than touchscreen orientation made sense for two reasons:

    • Touchscreen were much less responsive than they are now
    • It enabled quick fire communication in comparison to today’s virtual smartphone keyboard

    Once the device went colour it also started to have LEDs that lit up for ringing and notifications, providing the kind of visual cues enjoyed by Palm and BlackBerry owners.

    The Hiptop had a small (even by Symbian standards) amount of apps, but these were held in an app store. At the time, Symbian had signed apps as a precaution against malware, but you would usually download the apps from the maker’s website or the likes of download.com or TUCOWS and then side load on to the device from a Mac or PC.

    The Hiptop didn’t need the mediation of a computer, in this respect it mirrored the smartphones of today.

    Product life

    When Danger was launched in 2002, carriers had much more sway over consumers. The user experience of devices was largely governed by carriers who usually made a mess of it. They decided what the default applications on a device and even the colour scheme of the default appearance theme.

    The slow rise of the Danger Hiptop to popularity was because it had a limited amount of channels per market. In the UK it was only available via T-Mobile (now EE).

    In the US, the Hiptop became a cult item primarily because IM had grown in the US in a similar way to SMS usage in Europe.

    Many carriers viewed Hiptop as a competitor to BlackBerry and refused to carry it in case it would cannibalise sales.

    Danger was acquired in 2008 and that is pretty much when the death of the Hiptop set in as Microsoft acquired the team to build something different. An incident with the Danger data centres losing consumers data and taking two months to restore full service from a month-old back-up didn’t help things. It was a forewarning of how dependent on cloud services that users would become.

    Danger held much user data and functionality in the cloud, at the time it made sense as it kept the hardware cheaper. Danger devices came with a maximum of 2GB internal memory.

    Even if Microsoft hadn’t acquired Danger, the Danger would have been challenged by the rise of both Android and iOS. Social platforms like Facebook would have offered both an opportunity and a challenge to existing messenger relationships. Finally the commoditisation of hardware would have made it harder for the Hiptop to differentiate on value for its millennial target market. More gadget related posts here.