Ged Carroll

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  • The futility of QRcodes on tube

    Traveling on the London Underground ‘tube’ recently I have noticed that more and more adverts have a QRcode. But the trips also highlighted the futility of using a QRcode, particularly on many of the deep lines.

    I am not too sure if tube QRcode is a recent phenomena or that I have been paying more attention as a number of the projects that I’ve been recently looking at are about the ‘web of no web‘: the interface between the web and the real world. I am a big fan of progressive approaches to marketing, however, the more I thought about the phenomena, the greater the waste of time that it seemed to be:

    • Londoners often joke about the tube being like cattle trucks; in reality European Union regulations wouldn’t allow livestock to travel on a train with the conditions of the tube on a hot summers day. A combination of overcrowding together with the lack of air conditioning  means that some of the lines can be as hot as a walk in the desert. The over-crowding also means that would be hard to take a picture of a QR code. So whilst the advert may have a large reach, the realistic reach of the QR code call to action is a lot smaller
    • So you happen to be lucky in terms of where the crush places you and try to snap the QR code with your phone. You probably won’t be successful, tube lines aren’t known for the smooth ride of say the Paris Métro, so you will be trying to hold your camera still whilst the train carriage rocks and sways in front of your smartphone. Your phone won’t be able to focus and take a clear image of the QR code. That’s one of the reason’s why there isn’t a tube advert shown here to illustrate this post, despite at least three attempts over the past week to snap a picture of an appropriate advert
    • Unlike other mass transit systems in the likes of Singapore and Hong Kong, huge high-traffic sections of the lines are underground or in such a deep cutting that they are inaccessible to mobile phone networks so QR code won’t take the audience through to an appropriate web page, but instead prompt a ‘network unavailable’ message

    The futility of QRcodes on the tube shows that the media buyers, marketers and or designers don’t pay much attention to the context of their advertisement art work, which could artificially skew campaign objectives and measurement adversely. In order to combat ‘the futility’, we need to go beyond TGI data and media packs. We can start this process by keeping our eyes open to the world around us.

  • Funds of funds + more news

    Funds of Funds

    Funds of Funds May Actually Increase Risk, Study Finds – NYTimes.com – this feels counter-intuitive at first, until you realise that funds of funds are a synthetic financial instrument from the prospective of the end investor. Synthetic financial instruments led to problems like the 2008 financial crisis and the Savings and Loans crisis of the 1990s. The reason for the problem of funds of funds for the end investor is that there lots of known unknowns under the hood. It is conceivable that several funds make a similar wrong headed bet and get stung by it. Without directing the funds, how do you maintain continued diversity of investment and strategies to ensure the bet hedging. Lastly funds are less liquid assets in the grand scheme of things with limitations on when and how much you can withdraw. I wonder if a similar study has been done around thematic ETFs as well?

    Beauty

    At Makeup Alley, Advice From Online Peers – NYTimes.com – how user reviews are demolishing beauty treatment company claims and promoting other products that previously didn’t claim benefits

    Economics

    Wealthy Investors Grow Pessimistic About Economy – WSJ – US economy, due to government debt and economic growth

    Japan records surprise trade surplus – FT.com – rescheduling manufacturing work around power fluctuations

    Ethics

    danah boyd | apophenia » “Real Names” Policies Are an Abuse of Power

    A Billion Dollars Isn’t Cool. You Know What’s Cool? Basic Human Decency | TechCrunch – social norming around the social web

    Ideas

    Could Quantum Computing Kill Copyright? | TorrentFreak

    Korea

    Five Lessons From Samsung’s Second Quarter Results – WSJ – interesting that Samsung is husbanding its cash by reducing shareholder returns

    Luxury

    Second-Tier Spotlight: “Rich Second Generation” Fueling Ningbo Luxury Market « Jing Daily : The Business of Luxury and Culture in China – interesting divergence in consumer preferences

    Media

    To Spread Your Brand On Facebook, Don’t Target Your Fans–Target Their Friends | Fast Company – propagation planning

    More British papers dragged into hacking row ‹ Japan Today – not surprising, the practice may have started at the News of The World but could have been taken around the papers as journalists and editors move on to new roles

    Murdoch Selects Advisers Carefully – WSJ.com – it makes sense he needs a ‘clean’ team that can stay together through this

    Online

    danah boyd | apophenia » Designing for Social Norms (or How Not to Create Angry Mobs)

    With the Bing Search Engine, Microsoft Plays the Underdog – NYTimes.com – I am not seeing a cohesive vision to change search from Microsoft; this looks like the ‘we are innovative’ foot-stamping PR wrapped in a storytelling methodology that comes out of Microsoft corporate PR. I think that the social search stuff at Google and Facebook is of more interest. Bing needs to come out of the box with something 10 times better to get people to move in significant numbers. Qi Lu didn’t manage it at Yahoo!, what makes them think he can manage it at Microsoft?

    A Bomb in Oslo? What Google Lost by Ending Real-Time Search – The Atlantic – Google News just wasn’t as fast, it needs Realtime

    Official Google Blog: More wood behind fewer arrows – interesting change, more focus on fully formed products?

    Security

    Majority of South Koreans’ data exposed | FT.com – the interesting bit is the data wipe of PCs used in the attack to hide fingerprints

    Technology

    Data Centers Using Less Power Than Forecast, Report Says – NYTimes.com – green technology and virtualisation kicks in

    The Key Subtle Notes From Apple’s Earnings Call | TechCrunch – exclusives are doled out on the conference call without hype

    Wireless

    Apple Passes Nokia and Holds Off Samsung to Become World’s Top Smartphone Vendor [Updated] – Mac Rumors – Android is Toyota and Apple is Mercedes & Porsche

  • Facial recognition – ethics

    Former CEO Eric Schmidt made a big deal of facial recognition databases being the one technology that Google wouldn’t deploying as it is an ethical and privacy set too far. Face recognition is currently used in law enforcement situations from policing football matches to anti-terrorism detection and surveillance amongst crowds. Google does use a certain amount of face recognition technology in its Picasa photo-sharing application and has some patents on using facial recognition in a social network.

    Developments in face recognition technology are apparently taking place at a rapidly increasing pace according Schmidt, which means that even if Google doesn’t roll something out, others will, Facebook being the likely favourite.

    With geotagged images and video taken by smartphones, turning the world into a constantly surveiled system. There would be no privacy and few hiding places left. The idea of moving to a new town or city and reinventing yourself which young people do when they go to college or go and get their first job would fall at the first hurdle as your old life would be seamlessly sewn together to your new one online.

    The risk goes up considerably when you have battered spouses who have ran away or are looking escape a stalker.

    Google’s disinterest in face recognition could be seen as being more about dodging anti-trust regulations, particularly if this technology was merged with search. However once someone does it, Google will to be a reluctant but fast follower if it is to continue to compete in the online space, which probably explains why they bought PittPatt the other day and recently patented the use of facial recognition technology to pick famous people out of pictures (presumably to improve image search relevance). More related content can be found here.

    More information online

    One Counter To Schmidt’s Facial Recognition Claim | Stowe Boyd

    Google Acquires Facial Recognition Software Company PittPatt | Techcrunch

    Google warns against facial recognition database | The Telegraph

    Google Thinks Facial Recognition Is Very, Very Bad. Except Maybe For Famous People | Gizmodo

    Google debates face recognition technology | FT.com

  • Hackgate & UK audience

    Much has been made this week on the Murdoch’s appearing at a parliamentary inquiry into hackgate: a scandal involving phone hacking and other nefarious practices by the media in order to get stories. What is less getting less to no real discussion is what hackgate says about the UK audience. News International is a business, if the content didn’t sell, they wouldn’t create more of it.

    Content that would formerly only air in blackmail cases would appear on the Sunday breakfast table and consumers lapped up the lives of public figures. I am no fan of News Corporation’s media outlets but I feel very uncomfortable about the four-minute hate that is going on at the moment. Lots of people are enjoying the details about the how, but nobody seems to be asking about the why of the whole episode.

    Like the war on drugs, the problem isn’t only one of supply, but one of latent and actual demand that will be supplied one way or the other. Whilst there are middle-class people who believe that cocaine is an ideal final course at a dinner party you will have drug cartels. Whilst you have consumers who have a prurient interest in other people’s lives there will be publications that are willing to push the envelope in news-gathering.

    Why aren’t questions being asked about the thirst of UK consumers for the kind of stories that hackgate revealed. An examination of society as well as media ethics is called for.

    Why did it take the murder of a child (Milly Dowling) to suddenly make the media gathering behaviour move from naughty to wrong in the general public’s eyes? More media related commentary can be found here.

    More discussions of note about the case

    Monocolumn – High farce lets Murdoch off the hook [Monocle]

    RPT-COLUMN-It pays to be Murdoch. Just ask US gov’t: DCJohnston | Reuters

    Hunt asks regulators to reconsider News Corp/Sky deal – Media news – Media Week

    Murdoch Closing Tabloid Linked to British Hacking – NYTimes.com

    James Murdoch accused of lying

    UK deputy PM: Chance to clean up press-gov’t ties

  • Aspiration of flight

    Inter-city rail services increasingly define themselves in terms of comparison to airlines. Take for instance the Chinese attendants recruited for the countries new Beijing-Shanghai ‘bullet-train’ route. The 403 women inductees look like classic air stewardess material and have gone through a similar kind of polishing process. The Chinese describe these attendees as ‘high-speed sisters’ 高姐. Find out more at the Shanghaist

    In the UK, you don’t have to look far for the aspiration of flight, rows of seats where you are not facing people are called ‘airline-style seats’ on the online ticket booking service and First Great Western even have gone to the trouble of recreating the airline safety card attached to the seat and a little fold-down drinks table.

    Virgin Trains have provided an integrated points system with other aspects of their business including Virgin Travel and Virgin Atlantic – their airline. Thankfully the airline doesn’t have the kind of odours that its train toilets seem to have, even when spotless. 
    Aspirations of flight
    The problem is that the actual experience isn’t like an airline in most cases, its bumpy and lurches from side-to-side on older parts of the track. At least Virgin has its Pendolino trains that lean into a turn and smooth out the side to side movement. On occasion Virgin’s tilting trains can make the walk to the buffet car like a simulation of being under the influence. And the overall ambiance of trains in the UK, if it did meet the aspiration of flight standard is generally more Ryanair than Singapore Airlines. 

    Instead of aping airlines with an aspiration of flight, why not emphasis what the trains don’t have like laborious security checks and having to spend hours in the crap department store concessions that now pass for airside lounges in the UK? More related content can be found here.