Ged Carroll

Blog

  • Hold onto your old cell phone

    Hold on to your old cell phone for at least another six months. New Nokia phones should be due out in the next six months or so and they look half decent. Nokia software and build quality in an LG/Samsung style case has got to be a surefire winner. Read more at Gizmodo (mainly because they have lots of pretty pictures).

    Clamshell designs to replace old cell phone

    Nokia has doubled down since hitting turbulence in its plans for world wireless domination. Part of Nokia’s problems was attributed to the fact that it had no foldable in their old cell phone range currently on the market.

    To remedy the situation they have come up with three foldable handsets for poor, well-off and rich people. The stinking rich still have to put up with a Vertu ‘chocolate bar’ handset instead.

    Nokia Bluetooth keyboard

    They have also announced a Bluetooth keyboard that at first glance looks like a Think Outside design. More gadget related content here.

    Blogging and PR industry

    OK, I lied, my ex-colleague Stephen Waddington has written a down-to-earth paper on blogging and its implications for the PR industry. His advice on PRing to bloggers seems to be similar to trying to influence a Usenet group, is to do so CAREFULLY!

    Give the article a quick read, its worth it. The main thing they missed out is the use of employees or interest group members personal blogs to raise a search engine position. This has been used in recent Googlebombs attacking George Bush.

  • Sleeping problem

    Japan has a sleeping problem. On the face of it, you might think that the sleeping problem was that people were getting too much sleep. It is a high trust society, so you occasionally see drunks safely left alone where they are to sleep. A drunken salary man can rent a catacomb like sleeping capsule to crash out, if they can’t make it home. You see people sleeping on the commuter train in the morning.

    But that is only half the story of sleep in Japan. In a society famous for its neon cities, long office hours, high stress levels and horrendous commutes. Since the start of the economic miracle there were some who indulged in even more methamphetamine abuse than an Australian roadtrain driver. And some parents enroll offspring in cramming programmes for infant schoolchildren.

    You may expect insomnia to be a problem. You’d be right.

    Its also big business, Matsushita (the mega-corp behind Panasonic, Technics and JVC) will be launching later this year a ‘sleeping room package’ that consists of a plasma screen TV, a tricked-out bed and ambient sound recordings. This is expected to sell for about 20,000 GBP.

    In the UK we have an assortment of reality TV shows to send us to sleep. For more Japan related content click here.

  • Microsoft security spin

    I read a classic piece of spin in The Business, Microsoft races to stop bank account hackers by Tony Glover. Tony who has been shortlisted in a category for Business Journalist of the Year wrote “Technicians at the US software giant Microsoft are working flat out to prevent a new security threat that this week could give criminals access to computer systems used worldwide by banks and governments.”

    The general threat that Tony outlined called phishing has been covered for quite a while by national newspapers, something that wasn’t made clear in the article. In fact eBay, HBOS and Barclays customers have all been exposed to phishing attacks. The article was an excellent piece of PR work (my hat goes off to the members of the Microsoft press team) that failed to point out:

    – Phishing has been going on for quite a while now, though the vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Explorer is new. It is one of many security vulnerabilities in the product and phishing as a security risk is well understood

    – Microsoft was trying to plug yet another security gap in their software that facilitates phishing? . Despite repeated promises to get tough security, Microsoft have failed to do so

    – Using an alternative browser like Opera can help prevent the risk of phishing (though nothing in IT systems can be labeled foolproof)

    – It is yet another good argument against software bundling like Microsoft (and increasingly Apple) have been doing and is an excellent riposte to critics of the EU competition commissions case against Microsoft. Bundling of software restricts the ability of competition to spur innovation and improvements in both quality and service

    Free Internet calls move a step closer on page six goes on to talk breathlessly about a new feature in Microsoft Office that provides Internet calls. Its not that big a deal, I know of people who used Skype and before it Net2Phone and other over the net software phones. In fact Stephen Waddington, managing director of geeky PR firm Rainier was quoted in a newspaper case study talking about his firms uses of voice over the ‘net for international conference calls a few years ago.

    In addition, many instant messenger programmes such as Yahoo! Instant Messenger, AIM and iChat offer audio and video calls between users. Another fallacy in technology circles is the concept of ‘free’, you’d think that technology marketers would be mature enough to realise that nothing ever comes for free, even ‘free’ pirated MP3s or DiVX movie files via a P2P network is partly financed by banner advertisements, spyware and adware in the P2P software itself. Freeware is often produced for altruistic reasons, even if it is to build a community of users or make ones mark with an elegant solution to a problem. In the case of ‘free internet calls’ it will help increase sales of broadband connections, where calls leave the domain of a connection between IP addresses over PCs some sort of ‘interconnection charge’ will be due. Its not new, its history repeating.

  • Flying Records recommendations

    Over the past few weeks I have ignored shopping for new vinyl as I have managed my house move.I got a rare opportunity to go over to Flying Records in Soho and found a few great tracks across genres.  To correct the lack of music on this blog, I have a few Flying Records recommendations:

    – Chez Damier – Spiritual Warefare v.1 Trackmode competent well produced mellow house with mellow R&B lyrics, good but no cigar

    – Double U – Secret Love Sonar Kollectiv – great deep track with Moni Love type sassy New York vocal samples over a tribal beat that would have felt right at home in the Sound Factory

    – J Rocc / Steinski – Ain’t no thing / Say ho Stones Throw – not a new track but an excellent re-release. Cut-and-paste production pioneer Steinski complemented with old school block party lyrics. No Bentleys, no Lex coupés, no bling, just dope lyrics and amazing production. This is based on hip-hop made in Connecticut from 1979 to 1983. J Rocc and Steinski made their own cut-up montage. The whole project was produced by Stones Throw’s Peanut Butter Wolf.

    I slaved away in the listening booth so that you didn’t have to!

    2020 update: Flying Records like much of the well loved independent records shops in Soho no longer exists. Founder Charlie Chester was responsible for a good deal of London’s club life in the 1990s and was a key promoter of the British scene in Ibiza. By the time I shopped there as a regular, the internet had taken off, but the shop still had a great mix of vinyl and highly knowledgeable shop managers. Something that Amazon haven’t managed to synthesise yet. Dean Thatcher was also involved and the shop logo was used on a short lived sub label for Cooltempo then owned by Chrysalis. The sole release on the label was a remix of an Ian Dury & The Blockheads song. Thatcher & Chester formed the early progressive house record label Cowboy Records.

  • Dance Music Industry

     Many dance music labels have closed down, particularly those owned by the majors like Strictly Rhythm and Credence. Cream runs festivals and restaurants rather than clubs and looks to Latin America and Eastern Europe for growth, Home is looking to be let out as retail space and the giant screen on the side of the building sits there in darkness

    – Young people are listening to rock now, yes they are but they also have varied taste – which is why dance music festivals are doing well

    – People want live music, the amount of live music venues in the UK dropped way below what it should have done and it is good to see it come back

    – People want R&B, R&B has always been popular

    – The dance music scene has stagnated, much of it has and UK record labels have been guilty of churning out more rubbish than most. The mash-up is a classic sign of creative bankruptcy in the industry and Hoxton’s tastes do not play well thoughout the rest of the UK. I cannot remember the last record I bought from a UK label, I suspect it was probably this time last year. I have however, kept buying imported records from the US and Europe

    – US labels like Nervous, Guidance or even going back to Trax Records and DJ International, survived in a hostile home market by selling abroad, why can’t the UK labels

    -US labels on the west coast are surviving an onslaught on to their scene by police using draconian crack house laws to shut the parties down and send organisers to jail for ten years, they are still making good music and selling records worldwide successfully

    – Young people are drinking and not doing drugs: that’s why cocaine seizures are up, MDMA is plentiful and cheap

    There are labels that are thriving: Defected is licensing American content from the likes of Miguel Migs. While there is much of the input like Junior Jack that is not my cup of tea you have to hand it Simon Dunmore that he is managing to walk the line between quality and commercial success for his label

    AATW – all around the world. A label based in Blackburn, Lancs that realised what Pete Waterman discovered twenty years ago. You can run a record label on single sales. Like Pete Waterman the records are well produced tat that know their target market really well. They are down market and the listeners are disparaged as ‘Northern Pill Monkeys‘ by London based record executives, and their acts are criticised as ‘a plumber with a tired lap dancer’ but they are getting out there and buying the singles.

    I personally don’t believe that you have to provide customers with a ‘crap’ product, that a well crafted one will sell, but you have to know your marketplace. Many of the tastemakers within the industry have lost sight of that and need to move on.

    One person that seems to have it right (all be it on a small scale) is my friend Nick Lawrence’s label Altered Vibes that has gone from strength to strength by not compromising on quality and developing its artists. Something that is hard to do when the majors like EMI are dropping 30 per cent of their rostered artists in one fell swoop and putting less and less each year into development. More media industry related posts here.