Dominic Mohan + more news

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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

Survey Finds Higher Unemployment in China, Wide Wealth Gap and High Inequality – China Real Time Report – WSJ

UK sees signs of recovery, but who has been left behind? | The Observer

Ignore the hype: Britain’s ‘recovery’ is a fantasy that hides our weakness | Will Hutton in The Observer

China’s Demographic Dividend Could End By 2015 | The Diplomat

China Manufacturing Weakens Further in July as Slowdown Deepens – Bloomberg

A Third of China’s Potential Car Buyers Reside in Just Eighteen Cities – Analyst Insight from Euromonitor International

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

7nm, 5nm, 3nm: The new materials and transistors that will take us to the limits of Moore’s law | ExtremeTech

Wearable computers might use a new paper-thin interactive “e-skin,” the first made of plastic — Tech News and Analysis

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.comWhile 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 | InnovidThe 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 Technever 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 NewsWestwood 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

Deloitte Survey: Gearing up for Back-to-School, Shoppers More Upbeat but Still Sticking to The Basics

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 | T3not 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.comMany 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)

iPhone activations on Verizon grew 41 percent year over year, and analysts seemingly didn’t notice | TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog