Ged Carroll

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  • Ghostly sounds + more things

    Ghostly sounds

    All the ghostly sounds that are lost when you compress to mp3 – this has been quite well publicised but there is something about it that sends shivers down my spine each time I listen to the ghostly sounds.

    Culture

    Benjamin Von Wong’s superhero series of pictures are amazing

    TJ Fuller’s animated GIFs of psychedelic animals are tremendous

    Gadget

    The Apple Watch Is Time, Saved | TechCrunch – watch as context dependent screen for iPhone

    Apple Watch vs. Samsung Smartwatch: No new Gear announcement at MWC | BGR – a lot of supposition here but it was interesting that Samsung kept all the limelight for the Galaxy S6 models

    Innovation

    BBC News – Technology helps visually impaired navigate the Tube – interesting where 2.0 project on the London Underground

    Japan

    A History Of Gundam, The Anime That Defined The Giant Robot Revolution – as if this needs any explanation. More Japan related content here.

    Marketing

    Wednesday. Hump Day. Peak of the week. – hump day promotion great way to bury the competition by O2

    StateOfPR – Research report – the key take out in the stateofpr research report for me was the stagnation in budgets, however this maybe due to the CIPR membership skewed towards NFP and public sector

    Media

    David Shing’s vision of a world united by tech: Media360Summit – Campaign Asia – the sixth biggest contributor to stress is media overload

    Online

    Adult content policy on Blogger – Blogger Help – Google looks to clean up Blogger which has become a bit of a spam nest. More related content here.

    Retailing

    Why has ASOS removed its guest checkout option? | Econsultancy – they must have data to back this up surely? Or they don’t value drive by custom? More related content here.

    Security

    When Strong Encryption Isn’t Enough to Protect Our Privacy | Alternet  – much of this is because the information about the communication is useful in itself. It provides the typography of networks, the nature of the communication. Frequency of communications indicates the relative strength of communication. Strong encryption is like an envelope, but the stamp, the address, the colour of the envelope, the way the address is written, the franking over the stamp and the return address all provide useful information. 

    Edward Snowden Citizenfour: The former contractor sparked a movement that’s winning the surveillance argument. | Slate – interesting analysis of the dynamics of the US privacy movement. Thi is going to have legs. The only thing that surprises me however, is that other people are surprised. It is a natural extension of the ECHELON network of the late 1990s.

  • Apple Spring Forward event

    Apple Spring Forward event

    I started this post a few hours after watching Tim Cook and company launch a number of product revisions  under the title of Apple Spring Forward. The most anticipated of which was the Apple Watch. I was in full Post Traumatic Apple Event Disorder mode. I have collated some of my thoughts about the event below and tried to order them into some sort of cogent narrative.
    Apple TV connections

    AppleTV

    The reduction of cost in Apple TV hardware at the Apple Spring Forward event was an interesting move. Apple has decided to go for market share rather than margin with the device and the incumbent HBO Now service might be just the catalyst to drive adoption. That Apple is leading with a HBO streaming service tends to imply that Apple has likely given up on trying to build its own ‘cable channel over IP’ offering. It does raise another interesting question about how other studios will want to handle their content in iTunes or via a an app similar to BBC iPlayer. Apple is passing on to consumers the cost benefits of using the older silicon design that powers the Apple TV. It also means that the Apple TV is the least powerful computer in Apple’s product range – including phones and tablets. The AppleTV is an egalitarian device rather a luxury brand product and a vote against widespread 4K adoption; unless the price discount is making room for a premium 4K capable device at a later date?

    Social Enterprise

    Apple’s moves at becoming a ‘social enterprise’ were interesting. For an organisation so polished at presenting itself to the outside world, the ResearchKit announcement and the case study with Christy Turlington felt awkward.  ResearchKit was delivered in a flat manner and didn’t explain how the product fitted in with Apple’s position on user privacy. Turlington’s appearance was like a particularly sycophantic Charlie Rose interview. There was a lot to talk about without having to ‘over-reach’ for celebrity endorsement.

    Apple needs to work harder picking the spokespeople to burnish its reputation, the nature of the projects and the deliver to be less cringeworthy. The very nature of the product and design story means that Apple already has a certain amount of implicit moral imperative and the company should be more in-tune with that.


    Apple Watch app
    Apple Watch

    I am deeply conflicted by a lot of the discussions around the Apple Watch, for a number reasons:

    I haven’t used an Apple Watch, but watching others use it in the demos made me think that it is fiddly and dare-I-say-it: hard to use. It could be un-Apple in nature

    Scott Galloway points to the Apple Watch and describes Apple as having transitioned to a luxury brand. The Edition watch maybe a luxury product, but not all of the Apple product range are luxurious – the AppleTV at a new price point of $69 implies ubiquity. This maybe a specific choice to get scale for the media content that other luxury Apple devices need to function. Just in the same way that quality newspapers couldn’t survive solely on sales to luxury consumers. What does this mean for those Apple customers who use the the devices as professional or creative tools?

    Much of the debate revolves around what luxury consumers want by people who can’t afford to buy the Edition version of the watch. Do the kind of luxury shoppers who wouldn’t care about a $13,000+ watch have a smartphone, or a smart person to organise their lives? An astute reader of Popbitch will soon realise that the celebrity accessory to have is a personal assistant, not a bejeweled Vertu. Secondly, not being available is a luxury as privacy and time are the preserve of the reach in an always-on world

    Many of the more positive predictions depend on the Chinese luxury market. The luxury market is changing in China. Luxury goods are used as tools in China; if you look successful, you are more likely to be successful in a culture that relies on high-touch personal relationships to facilitate business. However, consumers are becoming more sophisticated and moving away from at least some of the gaudier products. The Middle East may be a more opportune market for Apple.

    A second use case in the Chinese luxury market is that of a compact storage of value for capital flight or making a payment. The culture of payments for favours is being clamped down on my the Xi administration which has been made visible by a 20%+ drop in luxury watch sales. I don’t know the way plutocrats would likely jump on the gold Apple Watch.

    ‘Apple Watch is just an iPhone remote control‘ Craig Johnson senior analyst at Piper Jaffray – heard on Bloomberg TV. ‘Luxury watches are a store of wealth, an Apple Watch isn’t‘. Which is probably true for many people on Wall Street, but may not true for the truly rich.

    Apple MacBook

    The MacBook carried the biggest dissonance for me and was arguably the biggest disappointment of the Apple Spring Forward event. For long time Apple customers, MacBook means entry level laptop. They used to come white polycarbonate shells that matched the iMac G4 and Apple eMac. Instead the MacBook seems to reflect status:

    • A price point above the MacBook Air, but less powerful and less adaptable
    • Good battery life, but underpowered for many tasks
    • Three finishes including a gold colour that screams status in the iPhone line
    • A single port which made many of geek friends freak out with anger. The morning after one of my friends posted on Facebook about the single port: I am still angry. I use a Retina MacBook Pro at work and suffer from a lack of ports for external drives (including an optical drive), Ethernet, a secondary display and a card reader for multimedia work. The MacBook has a single port which replaces the MagSafe with a USB connection. For business users or creatives the machine is gloriously impractical and destroys their investment in things like the Apple Cinema display. I currently an Apple TV and have tried to screen-cast over Wi-Fi to it for presentations, it doesn’t like video at all. When I travel I usually present, for business users who travel regularly like me the MacBook feels like a pig-in-a-poke. Is the MacBook then decided to be a luxury consumer device?

    The trackpad which is being rolled out across other Apple laptop models looked attractive to me. The next generation of keyboard seems to be less convincing. I suspect its attractiveness will be inversely proportional to your touch typing speed due to the lack of haptic feedback from shorter key travel.  Despite the price point difference, I suspect that the MacBook is actually designed to cannibalise some Apple iPad sales as an executive toy – I don’t know whether it will.

    That’s my take on the Apple Spring Forward event, but I would be interested on your take on it.

    More information

    Post Traumatic Apple Event Disorder
    On Smart Watches, I’ve Decided To Take The Plunge
    The Watch Post
    Size Zero Design | 厌食症设计
    Questions I Have About Apple’s Business | Apple 业务挑战
    CES Trends
    Waking from an Apple Watch hangover « Observatory
    New Apple Stuff and You | The Wirecutter

  • Robot nation in China factories +more

    China’s Factories Are Building a Robot Nation – Caixin – it is amazing how manual things like smartphone manufacture is. Apple moved production to China because pick and place ‘robotic’ automated machines had been used in phone manufacturer, but couldn’t handle the jewellery like manufacturing. Pick and place had been used in Japanese consumer electronics manufacturing since the early 1980s. We’ll see if the China robot nation works out in manufacturing. More related posts here

    Google and Apple may be forced to pay more tax in Russia | Gigaom – it makes sense

    Pablo by Buffer – Design engaging images for your social media posts in under 30 seconds

    Satya Nadella is cleaning up Microsoft’s ‘dirty little secret’ (MSFT) | Business Insider – the challenge is how do you give enough cloud away to encourage trial and adoption. It was easier with package software or OS where you just targeted C-suite and management consultants. I don’t think is necessarily that negative a story for Microsoft

    Vince Vaughn and Co-stars Pose for Idiotic Stock Photos You Can Have for Free | Adweek – genius collaboration with iStockPhotos

    Fund that hasn’t picked a stock in 80 years beats 98pc of peers | SCMP – Voya Corporate Leaders Trust Fund

    What Is the Future of Chinese Trade? | Yale Global – interesting analysis of the Chinese economy

    Brands must target digital strategies to local culture in Japan | Luxury Daily – great insights from L2

    China manufacturing shrinks again in Feb. | WantChinaTimes – partly down to the timing of spring festival

    Chinese shoppers are angry that their luxury Japanese toilet lids are made in China | Quartz – which says a lot about ‘brand China’ for its own consumers

    AirCloset is a subscription fashion box startup with a twist | Techinasia – interesting wear-and-return model

    Panasonic Developing ‘VR Goggles’ – Nikkei Technology Online – interesting that they can be worn as glasses implying a major reduction in weight in comparison to competitors

  • Age of Ultron + more things

    Age of Ultron

    The latest trailer for Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron looks like a CGI feast for the retinas. Age of Ultron is part of the Marvel arc planned out for the next few years. The main protagonist Ultron was originally created by Tony Stark and then went ‘Skynet’ which is where the Age of Ultron picks up the story. More on the Marvel universe here.

    Cerrone

    Amazing documentary by Pitchfork on French musician and producer Cerrone. Cerrone pioneered electronic disco, influencing electro, Italo-disco and house music. The Cerrone ‘sound’ first came together in his track Love in C Minor. Supernature saw him replace orchestra elements with electronic sounds and the rest as they say is history. Cerrone went on to sell charting disco records, film sound tracks and live shows. His records have been highly sampled in hip hop culture. You can find more culture related stuff here.

    Range Rover Evoque

    I am not particularly impressed by the Range Rover Evoque convertible but I did like this trip through the central London section of Crossrail. It has got a James Bond movie feel to the video, which is fitting given the tie in that the brand has had with the Bond franchise films featuring Daniel Craig.

    Valuation: four lessons to take away

    Aswath Damodaran, “Valuation: Four Lessons to Take Away” – on company valuations is a fascinating talk to have on in the background while you work away. 

    Learning how to learn

    A great presentation that I wish I had seen at college on the skill of learning. I had to learn a lot of these lessons by trying and working out what seemed to work for me. 

    The idea of going back and forwards in modes is very interesting in order to help learning. The neural scaffold needs to be built over time. 

  • MWC 2015 from the Sidelines: Day One

    In covering MWC 2015 yesterday I talked about the pre-event Sunday consumer product launches. These launches continued into Monday with Microsoft revealing more about Windows 10 alongside some mid-range smartphones. Sony’s press event was notable for both its style and content. Sony took a lower key approach to the show than in previous years. It hinted in interviews that this was part of a wider strategy by the company to shift Sony’s launch calendar, from being around the latest processor updates, to leading with consumer experience improvements.
    mwc day 1
    Looking at the online conversation around MWC on Monday, it unsurprisingly dominated by consumer devices. In particular hardware specifications of the devices, which shows just how much of a mountain Sony will have to climb in trying to change the event narrative away from device ‘speeds and feeds’.

    Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote at the event looked to downplay the role of internet.org rolling web access out in the developing world. In the reality his keynote was on the fault line of a chasm between telecoms providers and internet (or ‘over-the-top web’ to use Deutsche Telekom’s parlance) companies such as Google and Facebook.

    Messaging stripping away traffic from SMS, Project Loon and Internet.org have all been factors of concern. Google’s announcement that it planned to become a wireless carrier through a global set of MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) agreements hasn’t helped either. César Alierto, chief executive officer of Telefonica talked of moving the debate from net neutrality to a wider digital neutrality in order to create a level playing field for both carriers and internet companies.

    This divide between carriers and internet companies has been characterised by Bloomberg as part of a larger US/European digital divide, with large US companies having a greater market capital that they can use to buy up European rivals and push through developments in the face of carrier resistance.

    Another gap between the US and Europe was the continued importance of digital privacy at the show. Silent Circle rolled out a more polished version of the GeeksPhone-based Blackphone and a tablet companion. Finnish security company F-Secure promoted its Freedome VPN as a way of dealing with PRISM-style internet data collection.  Finnish mobile operating system company Jolla announced SailfishSecure in association with SSH Communications Security.

    Digital privacy wasn’t only a business opportunity for gadget makers, but also of concern to telco CEOs, who where concerned that a lack of consumer confidence in privacy would adversely affect business. Vodafone, Telenor, Deutsche Telekom and Telefonica all called for policy makers to provide stronger safeguards for citizens data privacy and digital security. This wasn’t solely altruistic as carriers saw a potential role to play in helping consumers securely manage their digital identity. How realistic that might be after the Gemalto data breach remains to be seen.

    Finally, the news that caused most confusion in Racepoint’s European HQ was that Ford showcase prototype MoDe electric bikes at their MWC press conference – I know we don’t get it either.

    More information
    Rory Cellan-Jones interviews Sony on whether it should walk away from mobile (BBC)
    Why Sony didn’t announce the Xperia Z4 smartphone at MWC | The Inquirer
    MWC 2015: Google Announces Wireless Carrier Plans By Becoming A ‘Mobile Virtual Network Operator’ | TechTimes
    Telcos Demand ‘Digital Neutrality’ | EETimes
    Zuckerberg in Barcelona highlights widening US-Europe gap | Bloomberg
    Security and Microsoft take center stage as Mobile World Congress 2015 opens | CNet
    Telco CEOs see urgent need for privacy, data security | TotalTelecom
    Mikko Hypponen To Talk Privacy At The Mobile World Congress | F-secure
    Ford unveils ‘MoDe’ electric bike prototypes at MWC 2015 | CNet