3 minutes estimated reading time
Bakrie Group and Path
Indonesia’s Bakrie Group leads Path’s $25 million Series C round – Indonesia is the world’s largest muslim country. It is also the country where BlackBerry was popular. If you’re not Indonesian, the Bakrie Group won’t sound that familiar. The Bakrie Group is a conglomerate, it has interests across various industries including mining, oil and gas, property development, infrastructure, plantations, media and telecommunications. The Bakrie Group is one of the largest firms in Indonesia, with 10 subsidiary companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange.
Consumer behaviour
The Top 10 Global Consumer Trends for 2014 – trends include an overwhelming desire globally to indulge in luxury goods, download more apps and document experiences visually through social media
I Bought an E-Cigar and My World Has Changed | Motherboard – probably the biggest story out of CES is the rise of e-cigarettes and other nicotine vaporisers
Economics
Forget the Unemployment Rate—People Still Don’t Have Jobs – Businessweek – people know that there is long term unemployment despite the numbers
Ethics
The corruption of Britain: UK’s key institutions infiltrated by criminals – Home News – UK – The Independent – why the UK could learn from Hong Kong and the ICAC
FMCG
L’Oreal pulls Garnier brand out of Chinese market｜WantChinaTimes.com – this is about the price point at which Garnier products came in at, which exposed them to domestic brand competition
Hong Kong
Hong Kong triads supply meth ingredients to Mexican drug cartels | South China Morning Post – a modern day version of the British opium trade run by the Hongs like Jardine Mathieson but in reverse
How to
Search Animated GIFs on the Web – Giphy
Innovation
Designing the Next Wave of Computer Chips – NYTimes.com – interesting move, particularly when one thinks about FPGAs, ASICs or even MEM devices
Hardware Commoditization revivisted – if you want a good enough design. However you can get out of this if your hardware design is sufficiently good
Online
Ad ‘Experiments’ Come To Delicious As It Updates Social Bookmarking API With Authentication, Rate Limits | TechCrunch – delicious now ranks at around the 1,000 mark on Alexa and is declining. It is most popular in India and most likely to be used in school. Not too sure how attractive that is going to be to advertisers?
Retailing
Amazon preparing to battle it out with Korean e-commerce sites in 2014 – Korea won’t be the pushover of a market Amazon probably thinks, for every example of success in Asia (Amazon Japan) there are car crashes (Amazon China) where they have had their butt kicked by T-Mall / TaoBao
Software
everpix/Everpix-Intelligence · GitHub – interesting raw data on a web service
US Air Force turns up dubious Autonomy accounting in reseller contracts probe • The Register – interesting how will this affect Mike Lynch et al?
Technology
I, Cringely Final 2014 prediction: the end of the PC as we knew it – I, Cringely
Web of no web
Don’t fear the Internet of things | Jack Shafer – I think that the author is a bit optimistic, when one looks at the way cars surviel their drivers (not only if you have an insurance company-fitted black box) or milling machines that won’t allow you to move them around a workshop or factory, the internet of things is changing the very fabric of ownership and not for the better, let alone the privacy implications. Society needs to adjust or legislate to deal with these step changes and it hasn’t happened yet
Wireless
Xiaomi offers refund for fans unhappy with latest model｜WantChinaTimes.com – show the danger of spokespeople over promising