Dominic Mohan
Dominic Mohan severs staff ties with Rupert Murdoch | guardian.co.uk – it’s weird I forever think of Dominic Mohan and the the Bizarre column. The Bizarre show business column gave Dominic Mohan is public profile in the UK. Dominic Mohan had moved to The Sun from the News of The World. When Dominic Mohan eventually became editor, he was responsible for publishing The Sun on Sunday – the spiritual successor to The News of The World sans phone tapping. Rumours are that Dominic Mohan is interested in eventually becoming a PR man. Dominic Mohan has a sister who is also a journalist.
China
Etymology – of Chinese characters
Consumer behaviour
Social Media and Consumer Empowerment Study | Social Media Today
Culture
Looking for Jack | The Sun |Clubz – oh the irony! The Sun which in the space of a few weeks went from doing a reader offer on smiley t-shirts to demonising the music, jumps on the house bandwagon again 25 years later
Economics
UK sees signs of recovery, but who has been left behind? | The Observer
China’s Demographic Dividend Could End By 2015 | The Diplomat
China Manufacturing Weakens Further in July as Slowdown Deepens – Bloomberg
Whitehall says EU status quo suits Britain | City A.M. – but would that be enough in a referendum?
Finance
Hedge funds to negotiate hard with the Co-op | City A.M. – ‘The bank this month launched a review to uncover when and how the capital hole built up‘ – I wonder what will come out of this?
FMCG
Civil War in Men’s Shaving – Analyst Insight from Euromonitor International
Fast food shocker: Taco bell dropping kids meals, toys | News – Home – Taco Bell says kids meals only account for half of 1% of its overall sales
How to
Recipicheck – Prevent emails being sent to unintended recipients. – interesting, they could have played embarrassment as a bigger card
How to Import Web Data into Google Docs with ImportHTML
Ideas
How technology has stopped evolution and is destroying the world | Guardian – it reads a bit like the unibomber manifesto
Anne-Marie Slaughter: ‘I think we need a men’s movement’ | guardian.co.uk – read the comments
Indonesia
Indonesia social media profile | Social@Ogilvy
Innovation
Metamaterial Invisibility – Business Insider
Big Law Firms in Trouble: When the Money Dries Up | New Republic – globalisation and software shake up law practices
Luxury
China should probe foreign luxury carmakers over prices: Xinhua | Reuters
Marketing
Uberflip | Behind the scenes of content marketing – (reg wall) free e-book
The Power of Context and the Future of Real-time Marketing | VML – it makes sense
Download: Whitepaper ‘Avoiding the Pharma Digital Trap’
Media
Porn sites get more internet traffic in UK than social networks or shopping | The Guardian
Penguin’s Book Country plans store where self-published authors can sell their ebooks — paidContent – interesting approach by Penguin who seem to have learned from the mistakes that record companies made.
Two Ad Giants Chasing Google in Merger Deal – NYTimes.com – While advertising agencies often work hand in hand with Google, Facebook and Twitter, those same companies can also work directly with companies like General Motors and Coca-Cola, including sharing data – add additional value or be canned (pay wall)
Worldwide gaming audience figures – Digital Intelligence
Reach of sports sites across Europe: Top 18 countries – Digital Intelligence
The ‘Australia tax’ is real, geo-blocking to stop | ZDNet
Google’s Gmail ‘Promotions’ Tab: Why It Won’t Hurt E-mail Marketing | TIME.com
Newspapers: A decent proposal | The Economist – interesting comparison with the US market, however the UK doesn’t have the same infrastructure of important regional papers that the US does
BBC News – ‘Lads’ mags’ set cover-up deadline by Co-operative
China has had enough of singing competitions thank you very much: Shanghaiist
New research on measuring Social Media ROI – Smart Insights Digital Marketing Advice
Chinese films gain box office edge with reality-based films｜WantChinaTimes.com – domestic film producers have managed to attract wider audiences, especially people in their 20s and 30s, by relaying stories that resonate with the daily lives of ordinary people.
Forget second-screen apps. Today, the TV is the second screen — Tech News and Analysis
‘Turbo’ and ‘R.I.P.D.’ Open to Disappointing Results – NYTimes.com – quality, budgets seem to be an issue. I can recommend Pacific Rim and the Lone Ranger however
Video Advertising Benchmarks | Innovid– The Entertainment vertical generated the greatest amount of user activity (5.5 percent) and time earned (35.73 seconds), while the CPG Food & Beverages vertical saw the greatest completion rate (77 percent) and average percentage of Ads Viewed (84.3 percent) – (reg wall to get the report) (PDF)
James Murdoch is not afraid to get things wrong – Fortune Tech – never underestimate the customer’s satisfaction with the status quo
A British Porn Ban Is on the Way – Alexander Abad-Santos – The Atlantic Wire – going for female voter gold, but likely to affect UK image abroad and business investment. What is really interesting is the timing to distract from Tempora / PRISM blanket suveillance scandal
Insights from Opera Mediaworks | The State of Mobile Advertising Q2 – 2013
The Value of Google Result Positioning | Search Engine Journal – zero sum game
Online
The Social TV Ecosystem In One Chart – Business Insider
comScore Releases the “2013 Southeast Asia Digital Future in Focus” Report – comScore, Inc
The Future Of Facebook Is, Without A Doubt, Asia – and the ARPU number will be a fraction of the current value
Study: Global comparisons of news consumption and shifting channels | Trends in the Living Networks
Why Opt-In Porn Is a Terrible Idea – Businessweek – this isn’t good for Digital Britain
Quality
What would best [insert name here] do? – Brand Republic News – Westwood wants us all to stop to think about our culture, about “the pursuit of our perfection”. According to her, we all have an inner “best self” – and this, not authority figures or celebrities, or conforming to the norm, should be the one to guide us
Retailing
The 6 Types of Digital Consumers and Their Paths to Purchase | Compete Pulse
Tesco boss says cheap food era is over | The Observer
Security
Texas students hijack superyacht with GPS-spoofing luggage • The Register
Edward Snowden’s not the story. The fate of the internet is | Technology | The Observer – “If businesses or governments think they might be spied on,” Neelie Kroes said, “they will have less reason to trust the cloud, and it will be cloud providers who ultimately miss out. Why would you pay someone else to hold your commercial or other secrets, if you suspect or know they are being shared against your wishes? Front or back door – it doesn’t matter – any smart person doesn’t want the information shared at all. Customers will act rationally and providers will miss out on a great opportunity.”
Spy agencies reportedly have a long-standing ban on Lenovo PCs due to back-door vulnerabilities – The Next Web – the interesting thing is that most laptop components come from someone else rather than the name on the outside of the machine
Scientist banned from revealing codes used to start luxury cars | guardian.co.uk – the real question is what other dirty little secrets Volkswagen Group has gotten hidden in their technology?
Online porn block: Legit sites to suffer from David Cameron’s ignorance- The Inquirer
Government Access to Information Survey : Cloud Security Alliance – not sure that the design is that robust, but the results won’t make US technology providers happy
Anonymous unmasked | The Irish Times – Sat, Jul 20, 2013
Software
WeChat took Facebook’s mantle in China and now it’s going global – The Next Web
Nokia blames Microsoft for poor Windows Phone app selection- The Inquirer
Microsoft and Steve Ballmer have a major shareholder problem – Quartz – I suspect that things will be like the Berlin Wall. Things will look solid with the current management team in charge until it crumbles. Shareholders should be thankful that neither the Yahoo! or Nokia deals went anywhere as this would have made things much worse for Microsoft’s financials
Chinese iTunes Accounts Compromised to Boost App Rankings – or diminish confidence in Apple eco-system?
Evernote Wants to Become the Nike for Your Brain: 10 Questions With CEO Phil Libin | Wired Business | Wired.com – I am not an Evernote user but this is an interesting interview
Alibaba Offers Smart TV Operating System to Lure More Users – Bloomberg – interesting mix in business advertising / commerce in smart TV
The Rise Of Social Gaming Doesn’t Mean Gamers Are Becoming More Social | WebProNews – gamers prefer single player games. Probably says something about the satisfaction that gaming gives (individual achievement?)
Technology
Ballmer admits Microsoft built too many Surface RTs, disappointed with Windows sales | The Verge
Intel Tips Custom 14nm Server Chips | EE Times – customisation is interesting, wonder what that will mean in terms of support by Linux distributions and Windows for that matter?
Touch: Where Microsoft Went Wrong | TechCrunch – I don’t want to say I told you so, but I did…
The irrelevance of Microsoft — Benedict Evans – IBM’s mainframes have been irrelevant (Benedict Evans choice of words rather than mine) for a long time but have hung around. Microsoft will do the same
Telecoms
Finland Writes History With Crowdsourced Copyright Law | TorrentFreak – Hollywood is going to hate this. Expect Finland to roll out data havens
Web of no web
Google Glass is the next Segway says venture capitalist | T3 – not terribly surprised
Don Norman on Wearable Devices | MIT Technology Review
Wireless
OTT Messaging blossoms but SMS still growing and delivering the big revenues – “During 2012 and 2013 we have seen many reports that operators are losing $20bn – $30bn in SMS revenue to OTT messaging apps,” said Karl Whitfield, a Director at Portio Research. “We see reports that OTT traffic will be double that of SMS by the end of 2013. This is wrong on both counts. It may be true that SMS revenues are levelling off and that OTT is on the rise, but SMS is still generating revenues of $15.3m per hour, 24/7, that’s a massive $133.8bn in 2013. Worldwide SMS revenue has gone up year on year since the early 1990s and will continue to be above 2010 levels until 2017. SMS was levelling off before OTT apps came along, and now MNOs are gaining revenue from increased data usage instead.
Communities Dominate Brands: Nokia Q2 Analysis – This is Textbook Comprehensively Failed Strategy in Numbers – ignore Tomi’s narrative just go and look at the numbers at the bottom of the post
Insight: How Samsung is beating Apple in China | Reuters – you can make up your own mind on the conclusion but it’s a really nice overview of the divergence in MO between Apple and Samsung
Yes, Samsung is acutely aware that we’ve reached “peak trophy smartphone” – Quartz – hollowing out of the business a la the PC market
Apple’s Secret Weapon: the IPhone 4 – WSJ.com – Many customers buy iPhone 5s for gifts, he added, but usually buy the iPhone 4 or 4S for personal use
How Apple’s profits stack up against Google and Microsoft | The Verge
China Has 261M Active Smartphones And Tablets, 65% On Android
Mobile Users from Three and Four Tier Cities in China — China Internet Watch
What to expect from Apple’s Q3 results | FT Tech blog – share price movement isn’t reflecting the company news (paywall)