Pearl river delta + more news

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Pearl river delta

China slowdown: feeling the pain in the Pearl River Delta | beyondbrics – it is really interesting that China’s slowdown isn’t only being felt in the traditional rust belt in the North East, but also in the Pearl river delta. Hong Kong sits at the end of the Pearl river delta as does Shenzhen. The Pearl river delta is about 7,500 square km. It goes from Guangzhou in the north to the Macau Special Administrative Region in the south. The Pearl river delta is a maze of streams and canals between small rice paddies that, because of the 12-month growing season, commonly support three rice crops annually. It is one of the most crowded areas of China, where modern industry and agriculture have been rapidly developed since the 1980s.

Business

August trend report examines emergence of Chinese brands on global stage | JWT Intelligence – westerners like China: people and heritage. However they are down on Chinese products and brands. If you did that poll at the end of the 19th century, the respondents would have said the same thing about Germany

China: mapping the territory – PMLiVE

Standard Chartered eyes joint deal after backing down in U.S.| Reuters

China

China disappointed with medals haul – FT.com – a sign of western imperalist hegemony trying to usurp China’s journey to the world ? The swift doping accusations against teenage gold medalist Ye Shiwen is fuel to this world view in China (paywall)

“China’s Afghan Game Plan” by Shlomo Ben-Ami | Project Syndicate – opportunity for natural resources including copper, oil and gas

Nobody special | SCMP.com – reality stars in China; great overview (pay wall)

Is China Giving Carte Blanche for Anti-Competitive Conduct by PRC Companies Doing Business Overseas? : China Law Update

Culture

Meet the Swedes Who Love Classic Cars and Elvis | VICE – great article on Sweden’s raggare sub-culture. Noticed this in Norway as well

How rave music conquered America | The Guardian – ironic given that rave came out of house music a small sub-culture from Chicago and one of the biggest players in the early rave seen was New York DJs Tommy Musto and Frankie Bones

Economics

Tricky customers – FT.comPier Luigi Sigismondi, Unilever’s chief supply chain officer. “While middle cases in the emerging world are aspiring to so-called western standards of living … western Europe is starting to see an economy that’s taking us to the developing market dynamics, which is quite concerning.”

Fund file: why China’s cash pile is not enough | beyondbrics

Immigration: Going the distance | The Economist

German Companies Disappoint with Quarterly Earnings Reports – SPIEGEL ONLINE – not terribly surprising given that so many of its trading partners are hurting

Finance

Visa branded ‘cynical’ as it bans rival cards from the Olympics | Mail Online

Switzerland: Julius Bär To Buy Merrill Lynch’s International Arm Eurasia Review

FMCG

Cruelty free policies ditched | SCMP.com – compliance with local regulations are undermining the previous gains my the animal welfare lobby (paywall)

How to maximise reach in Hong Kong’s fragmented digital market: P&G study – Campaign Asia-Pacific

McDonald’s Is Going For American Fast Food’s Last Unconquered Frontier

Germany

Germany Reopens Facebook Privacy Inquiry – NYTimes.com

How to

Multilingual professional lorem ipsum generator for typographers – includes kanji and Chinese characters

Ideas

A Bookfuturist Manifesto – Tim Carmody – The Atlantic

Innovation

Mazda cars losing weight? Try 220 pounds. – CSMonitor.com – interesting times for new materials

Ireland

Ireland’s prosecution of Anglo-Irish CEO Sean FitzPatrick sets example for US – The Boston Globe

Japan

Sharp Corp running out of options ‹ Japan Today – it is the harbinger of things to come with the formerly mighty Japanese consumer electronics brands? I hope not, but suspect it is likely to be the case

Decline of entrepreneurship blamed for Japan woes

Luxury

Altagamma – interesting luxury industry study done in June 2012

China’s Young Rich: Not Top Students – WSJ

What’s up with those Qataris? | Material World – investing in luxury brands

What NASA has to do with New York Fashion Week | Material World – inspiration

Marketing

Don’t Ignore Boomers – The Most Valuable Generation | Nielsen Wire – because they have the assets

Media

Monocolumn – Olympic ticket guilt [Monocle] – or how the Olympics screwed over London

BBC’s Mark Thompson moves to New York Times. Crikey – Telegraph Blogs – the most interesting thing for me about this is what it says about the changing media landscape.

Generation Y Leads in Book Buying, Says Industry’s Most Comprehensive Report – PRNewswire

The Dandy faces possible closure after 75-years – I guess for crudely drawn artwork like Desperate Dan digital doesn’t matter so much

Interview: How China’s giant Tencent makes users pay — paidContent

Are China and Hong Kong TV Shows Stealing Their Ideas From the U.S.? – China Real Time Report – WSJ – when is an idea original though, particularly in TV or film?

MPAA / RIAA Want U.S. to Help Quash The Pirate Bay | TorrentFreak

Washington Post’s TruthTeller project hopes to birth real-time fact-checking | Poynter.

New Era for Video-on-Demand Websites in China : China Law Update – interesting moves to mature the media sector

Twitter and the law: 10 legal risks in tweeting from or to the UK

News Corp writes $2.8 billion off its publishing activities — paidContent

The Media Business: NBC’s Olympic Coverage Shows Audience Expectations Aren’t in Its Cross Media Strategy – as a corporate entity don’t be a dick

Facebook advertisers are told vet user comments | The Wall Blog – Australia first, but I could see it rolling out internationally as best practice

San Francisco sports website Bleacher Report sells for reported $175 million – SiliconValley.com – interesting comparison to rivals.com

MPAA leak: O’Dwyer, TVShack.net case “isn’t about Internet freedom.” | Ars Technica

How Cosmo Conquered the World – NYTimes.com – interesting that the print version is such a status symbol

Online

Matt Cutts: Google Updates Will Be Jarring For A While | WebProNews

Facebook, Cringely, and the devolution of the web ~ I, Cringely – keep an eye on what Bob does

Retailing

Here’s The Real Reason Groupon’s Stock Just Crashed – Business Insider

All night book store in Hong Kong | SCMP.com – makes me realise how much I miss the former Borders branch on Oxford Street (paywall)

Lane Crawford breaks out | Material World

Caltech STUDY: What you see is what you buy | EyeQuant Blog – how a simple design trick affects consumer choices

Behavioral Differences Between Men and Women Influence Shopping | Practical eCommerce

Security

Bath Salts in the Wound | VICE – shocking portrayal of synthetic drug abuse in working-class American communities

The iPhone Has Passed a Key Security Threshold – Technology Review

Stratfor emails reveal secret, widespread TrapWire surveillance system — RT

Black Hat hacker lays waste to Android and Meego using NFC exploits | ExtremeTech – I guess NFC payments may not be a great idea

Attack against Microsoft scheme puts hundreds of crypto apps at risk | Ars Technica

Mac malware spies on infected users through video and audio capture | Naked Security

Software

Mobile app startups are failing like it’s 1999 | @andrewchen

The ‘experts’ who never see BBM will never understand RIM • The Register – interesting contrarian take on RIM by Andrew Orlowski. Much of it is correct, I think that the issue however is one of investor, banker and carrier confidence. I hope Orlowski is right

Nokia to Sell App Unit Amid Increasing Microsoft Reliance – Businessweek

Microsoft’s Massive Metro Mistake | PCMag.com – interesting analysis

Technology

VCs’ Strange, Instinctual Need to Replace Founders – Harvard Business Review

Infosys Sued For Visa Fraud: Another Big Blow to Outsourcing Market | ServicesANGLE – the thin end of the wedge, I suspect that the reality of outsourcing means that visa fraud is a challenge rather like traffic violations are to a courier company

Why Apple Won’t Sue Microsoft Over Surface

How Big Data Became So Big – NYTimes.com

Smelling blood, IBM may aim to buy RIM’s enterprise services unit | VentureBeat

comScore TabLens: Today’s US Tablet Owner Revealed

A belt and suspenders for your cloud storage ~ I, Cringely

Ericsson buys parallel processing firm – Rethink Wireless

Apple and Microsoft to team up for Kodak’s patents? | Politics and Law – CNET News

Telecoms

Huawei: The company that spooked the world | The Economist

Big Fat Pipes: Google’s Underappreciated Tech Edge – Atlantic

Hong Kong’s Hutchison says profit drops 78% – RTÉ News

Web of no web

CSR Debuts First SiRFstarV™ Chip Optimised for Mobile Devices – Selected by LG Electronics for New Flagship Smartphone  – GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and Compass system capabilities

Wireless

Samsung’s Wang was up 22 hours a day, had no time to copy Apple • The Register – is it just me or has Samsung’s lawyers just made Samsung management sound hateful for making a young mother only get two hours sleep a night?

Communities Dominate Brands: Smartphone Market Shares Q2 Full Numbers – Samsung and Android solidifying their leads

Apple scores courtroom wins in Motorola FRAND case | CNET News

Vodafone and O2 face UK regulatory hurdles – Rethink Wireless

Motorola to Cut 20% of Work Force, Part of Sweeping Change – NYTimes.com

Q2 2012 U.S. smartphone market share: Apple dominates, Samsung trails

Korea gets world’s first VoLTE services – Rethink Wireless – finally voice on 4G services rather than working across 3G for voice

iPhone Caused “Crisis of Design” at Samsung (Memo) – AllThingsD

Saving Private Research in Motion, RIM, Blackberry | Monday Note – no obvious path back

Here’s why tablets (yes, tablets!) will replace the smartphone | GigaOM

3.5 Inches by Dustin Curtis

Among Mobile Phone Users, Hispanics, Asians are Most-Likely Smartphone Owners in the U.S. | Nielsen Wire

Generation App: 62% of Mobile Users 25-34 own Smartphones | Nielsen Wire

EE Times Confidential | Multi-screen wars: MediaTek/Mstar vs. Qualcomm, Marvell, Nvidia – going head to head for the converged entertainment space

Apple Claims Google Warned Samsung Against Copying iPhone, iPad – AllThingsD

Communities Dominate Brands: Apple iPhone Q2 Sales fall to 26M, market share falls to 16%, but this is normal sales pattern

RIM No Longer Dominates BYOD Trend, Apple Makes Serious Gains | SiliconANGLE

Apple’s Reality-Check Quarter In Charts – SplatF