Howard Stringer + more news

8 minutes estimated reading time

Howard Stringer

Sony confirms Kazuo Hirai as new President and CEO, replacing Howard Stringer — Engadget – this is huge, the pivot back from entertainment to engineering and technology is happening at Sony. Howard Stringer worked for three decades at CBS, which Sony bought during the go-go years of the 1980s. He started as junior on the Ed Sullivan show. Over the years Howard Stringer built his career as journalist, producer and executive. A subjourn at a media and telecoms funded start-up for two years saw Howard Stringer return to Sony. This pivot is important as it gives insight into Sony’s convergence strategy of the early noughties. The Sony share price fell 60 percent on the watch of Howard Stringer, part of this was due to force majeure of the great Tohoku earthquake. But it also didn’t help that Howard Stringer helped build up Samsung by providing a joint venture with Sony on its Bravia televisions

Consumer behaviour

Today’s Teens Better Behaved Than Their Parents – NYTimes.com – more socially conservative

Design

Boeing finds problem in tail section of 787 Dreamliners ‹ Japan Today – problem is with shims between the carbon fibre skin and supporting framework. Carbon fibre composite construction ins relatively new in the civil aircraft industry

Old friend, new face, at Cathay Pacific’s flagship lounge | CNNGo.com

Olympus OM-D E-M5 Camera Leaked Photos | Kineda – I love the way the design harks back to the classic Olympus OM film cameras

Dezeen » Blog Archive » K01 by Marc Newson for Pentax

Economics

Beijing tells airlines not to pay EU carbon tax | SCMP.com – expect the EU to come off the worst with this Mexican stand-off

China needs 200 years to achieve free market: economist|WantChinaTimes.com – what really constitutes a ‘truly free’ economy

Chinese data suffer New Year hangover – FT.com – according to PMI index domestic demand weak, export demand strong

Poverty trap for middle classes of Europe | Presseurop (English)

The End Of Cheap China, Part III. How YOU Must Prepare For It. : China Law Blog

Finance

Private Equity: Fact, Fiction and What Lies in Between – Knowledge@Wharton

Mortgage Tornado Warning, Unheeded – NYTimes.com – corruption and crime at the dark heart of the mortgage industry

MasterCard reveals roadmap for our electronic payment future: EMV in, magnetic strips out — Engadget

Hong Kong

Hong Kong residents oppose opening roads to mainlanders|Want China Times

Final curtains for cinema complex in Time Square | SCMP.com – one of my favourite haunts in Hong Kong (pay wall)

Apple Daily Hong Kong runs ad against mainland “locusts”: Shanghaiist

Hong Kong Finance Job Cuts Hit Samsung, Daiwa – WSJ

How to

LongReply to swissmiss – finding duplicate files

Ideas

Open the Future: The Future Isn’t What It Used to Be

Study shows climate sensitivity to CO2 less than extreme projections

Innovation

Toyota Engineer Speaks on Advantages, Disadvantages of SiC Power Devices — Tech-On!

Nokia reveals polarizing secrets of ClearBlack display — Engadget – would this work for televisions?

Sony Global – Technology – SoRPlas Environmental Technology – interesting recycled plastic technology from Sony

The Vintage Knob – Online vintage audio museum, forum and image bank – the superlative engineering involved in the products are amazing

DARPA summons researchers to reinvent computing | ExtremeTech

AMD’s CTO talks heterogeneous systems architecture

A CEO’s guide to innovation in China – McKinsey Quarterly – interesting breakdown of Chinese innovation

The death of CPU scaling: From one core to many — and why we’re still stuck | ExtremeTech – really interesting read on why computers don’t have the ‘wow’ factor that they did in the past

Wanted: 3-D IC standards within six months

Rebuilding America: Proposals emerge to fix ‘dysfunctional’ R&D tax credit

Japan

Panasonic, Fujitsu, Renesas eye chip merger ‹ Japan Today

Japan’s current account surplus smallest in 15 years ‹ Japan Today

Pachinko addiction a growing problem for Japanese women ‹ Japan Today

Toyota Lets You Become A Sportscar  – brings out the inner 5-year old

Trust in Japan – Sixty Second View – amazing destruction of trust

Made Better in Japan – WSJ.com – interesting how attention to detail is causing a surge in low end | high price Japanese products

The salaryman’s guide to Tokyo | The Guardian – made me laugh

Labor ministry releases definition of ‘power harassment’ ‹ Japan Today

Japan’s population to shrink two thirds by 2110 ‹ Japan Today

Korea

South Korea’s Pop Wave – Al Jazeera English – links to corruption and forced prostitution together with punishing schedules and unfair contracts blight reputation of K-pop

Samsung’s Marketing Chief Aims to Stir Passion for Korea’s Electronics – Ina Fried – Mobile – AllThingsD

Luxury

French luxury giant buys into mainland firm | SCMP.com – first investment like this from LVMH. Ochirly is a mid-priced brand aimed at trendy female office workers (pay wall)

Economic Slowdown May Fuel Maturation Of China’s Luxury Market « Jing Daily

Bloomberg launches twice-yearly luxury lifestyle mag | Press Gazette – surprised that Bloomberg and Reuters hadn’t done this previously. There has been a magazine called Square Mile aimed at the city of London which occupies a similar niche.

Marketing

40 years of Super Bowl Commercials. | adland.tv

Media

Used MP3 Music Files Legal To Sell Says Federal Judge

Themes from MIDEM – Mint Digital – interesting comments on Facebook

Three Lessons for Social TV – Amy Jo Martin – Harvard Business Review

News Corporation pushes tablet title: News from Warc.com – but is closing down the London based tablet experiment using entertainment and sports content from The Sun

Reuters: News Corp clean-up squad has 100 staff reviewing emails, expense claims and phone records | Press Gazette – a hint of the Spanish Inquisition about it

Why Some Book Buyers Are Increasingly Resistant To E-Readers | mocoNews

Shoe on the other foot: RIAA wants to scrap anti-piracy OPEN Act

Warner Music Group chairman loves Spotify, calls Google Music an “oxymoron” | VentureBeat

Online

Facebook says China still a major hurdle | Market-interactive.com – I am not certain that they would be able to beat domestic rivals

New Registrations For Sina Weibo Appear To Have Fallen Off A Cliff | DigiCha – real-world ID requirements affects Weibo

How OoVoo Became Teenagers’ Favorite Way To Video Chat – Forbes

Retailing

Facebook’s Payments Business Is Already 15% The Size Of PayPal — Sort Of – SplatF

Tesco market share drops below 30% | Irish Examiner

Amazon disappoints with dramatically lower profits for Q4 | VentureBeat

Security

Max Schrems: The Austrian Thorn In Facebook’s Side – Forbes

Students voice privacy concerns with Facebook | ZDNet

Black SMS Encrypts and Decrypts Your Text Messages – interesting application, wonder how robust the encryption actually is

Satellite phone encryption cracked – Telegraph

Where’s the Market for Online Privacy? – Forbes

A fashion revolution? | FT.com – transparent fashion business

Software

Apple Requires Retina Screenshots From iOS Devs – this is good as reduces platform fragmentation

An Ex-Zynga Engineer Is Ripping The Company Apart In Plain Sight – or why Zynga is crap to work for. Not particularly surprised by this

Google Instant, Disabled For Slow Computers

Windows Phone developer lead leaves for Amazon’s Kindle team | ZDNet

Chinese Learning App, Mandarin Madness Launches on iOS and Android | TechNode

Monocolumn – Presentations in PowerPoint – for and against [Monocle]

Technology

Samsung aims to sell 25 mil ‘smart TVs’ this year ‹ Japan Today

Apple trademark may hint at processing improvement for next-gen A6 processor

FOSS Patents: Apple removed products from German online store due to Motorola injunction based on FRAND patent – Motorola gets away with exploitation of FRAND patents, yet Samsung gets hauled in front of antitrust hearings?

Canalys: Smartphone shipments surpassed PC shipments in 2011

Ex-Apple engineer emits Zevo ZFS for Mac OS • The Register – good to see Sun’s ZFS getting new life. This will be important given the battering the cloud has taken

Sharp to cut LCD production in Osaka plant by half – Engadget

ITC judge throws out Barnes and Noble’s patent defense against Microsoft — Engadget

Japan’s DeNa moves into Chinese smartphone game market in deal with Baidu | VentureBeat

Telecoms

UK Report Blames The Internet For Terrorism, Says ISPs Should Take Down Content | Techdirt – Jesus wept

IPv6 upgrade to cost ISPs ‘hundreds of millions’ – Ixia

Apple forcing IT shops to “adapt or die”

Web of no web

Siri to get Chinese, Russian and Japanese Support Next Month | gizchina.com

Employers and Brands Use Gaming to Gauge Engagement – NYTimes.com

Wireless

Nokia on smartphone strategy: We don’t have a Plan B

Apple and Samsung will continue dominating smartphone industry

FOSS Patents: German appeals court upholds Galaxy Tab 10.1 injunction — but on different legal basis than Apple’s design right

EUROPA – Press Releases – Antitrust: Commission opens proceedings against Samsung

Feature Phones Now More Profitable Than Mid-tier Smartphones – Forbes

DOCOMO, LAWSON and Radishbo-ya Agree on Business and Capital Alliances | NTT DOCOMO – interesting move into retail services by NTT

DoCoMo demands Google’s help with signalling storm – Rethink Wireless

In Europe, Some Lovers of the BlackBerry Now Seek A New Flavor – NYTimes.com