Month: November 2015

Microsoft Surface Pro 4 vs. Apple iPad Pro buyer’s guide – Business Insider – or why the whole tablet versus laptop debate is a bit moot

British Draft Law Threatens Data Encryption and Privacy | Grey Coder – no real surprise at the level of stupidity involved in this bill

Xiaomi launches new phone to counter Huawei challenge – FT.com – Huawei’s smartphone sales have grown more than 80 per cent year-on-year in China, while by some measures Xiaomi has seen year-on-year declines, according to Canalys. IDC, on the other hand, reported that Xiaomi had year-on-year Chinese smartphone sales growth of 11 per cent in the three months to September. (paywall)

Forget Wi-Fi: You may soon access the internet via ordinary light bulbs – Light-speed internet may be upon us. A technology called “Li-Fi” uses light waves from ordinary LED light bulbs to deliver internet connectivity that that is cheaper, more secure and 100 times faster

Japanese adult site will donate to AIDS charity—if you can resist looking at their breasts – interesting the way they developed this site

Amazon Pulls Subway Ads for ‘Man in the High Castle’ Amid Backlash to Nazi Insignia | NBC New York – how on earth did this get approved

These companies are betting on hard-to-reach fossil fuels, and it could cost them billions – given the industry is cyclical this could actually look smarter than the headline indicates

Samurai, spy, commando: who were the real ninja? Aeon Magazine – they had me at the title

Operator 24 Seven’s National Roaming Solution Aims to Tackle Network Not-Spots – domestic roaming

Future Visions – really smart project from Microsoft

We chew over CCS Insight’s look into the fu-ture-ture-ture-ture • The Register – idea of QNX being owned by automakers is interesting

Domino’s Offers One-button Pizza Ordering: Cheesy Button | Technabob – it was only a matter of time

With TV Viewing Changing, Networks Take Longer to Drop Shows – The New York Times – “It’s going to take a little longer to evaluate the metrics,” he said. “The overnights are just not the complete picture anymore, and every viewer counts.” (paywall)

Rich Countries Don’t Want Coal – Slate – which leaves coal open as a possible replacement chemical feedstock precursor as oil declines?

The euro crisis was not a government-debt crisis – Economist – (paywall)

Audi content engine – Audi self driving car – thanks to Azeem

Tencent to fully open WeChat Payment for overseas transactions: Shanghais – Chinese Internet giant Tencent has just announced that it will completely open the mobile payment service offered on its social messaging app WeChat to overseas transactions, making it much easier

The Last Days Of Marissa Mayer? – Forbes – Yahoo!’s core business with 4 billion USD in revenue is worth less than nothing

Sky Q for Gen – CCS Insight – interesting lack of focus on streaming media with a lot of local storage

SFX Entertainment Nearing Bankruptcy – Magnetic Magazine – interesting times that could bring a hammer blow to EDM

Paris Terrorists Used Double ROT-13 Encryption – Bruce Schneier – no cryptography used at all

Activist investor Starboard asks Yahoo to sell core business instead of Alibaba stake because of concerns over large shareholder tax bill (Wall Street Journal) – which makes sense if you’ve read Bob Cringely’s analysis on Yahoo!

Soma Group Video Calls Launched | Soma Blog – threat to Skype

Blackberry taking ‘balanced’ approach to encryption, lawful intercept – Fedscoop – so basically don’t use Blackberry

A Chinese billionaire bought a $170 million painting with an American Express to get the points – Quartz – the best ad for Amex ever

brandchannel: Is VICELAND the Disneyfication of VICE or the VICE-ification of Disney? – and from a marketers perspective that’s a bad thing because?

Official Google Blog: Introducing the new Google+ – whilst it is likely to look interesting, we’ll see if consumer interest gets on board. In terms of position it reminds me a lot of Douban – the Chinese social network that revolves around passion points: books, music, art, photography etc.

The Dawn of Commercial Digital Recording by Thomas Pine – ARSC Journal – (PDF) fascinating reading

Things that made my day this week. I have been quiet on here as El Capitan has a real problem with memory leakage with regards to mail.app, this necessitated a complete rebuild of the computer (which didn’t solve anything) and an eventual pruning of the library. This is a real software quality problem for Apple.

Piers Sanderson, who I first met a few years ago has put out a new film called the Art of The DJ which uses the story of Steve Lawler to tell the wider story of the rise of the superstar DJ. When I met Piers he was struggling to get sponsorship to pay for the licensing rights to the music in his acid house film High on Hope. This time around, he has Lawler’s record label backing him and the documentary has been realised as a paid for stream through Lawler’s Facebook page. If you want to watch it it costs 3.50GBP.

Taco Bell managed to make a brand event out of their rescue of the original Taco Bell store, which is being moved to Taco Bell headquarters for posterity. More from the old school web cam footage here.

Jakob was just your average IP infringing online oversharer until the Business Software Alliance (basically Microsoft) legaled him in his native Czech Republic. He was offered a deal to appear in an anti-piracy film and had to gain 200,000 viewers. It looked like a win for the software owners, in reality Jakob has become a figure that netizens seem to have rallied around if you look at the comments on his video.

I read Liar’s Poker in college and enjoyed his book the big short that is ostensively about investors who realised first that the mortgage market was unsustainable, but acted as a insiders guide to mortgage cons in a similar way to his insiders view of derivatives in Liars Poker over 25 years earlier. Hollywood is hoping to cash in on Lewis’ book in the same way that it did with Money Ball and the trailer looks awesome (thanks for the heads up James).

Things that have made my day this week.

A special mention would go to the National Lottery whose website this evening showed how not to cater for peak demand as I explained to my Dad what 503 and 404  error codes were over the phone when he couldn’t purchase his Euromillions ticket for at least and hour. I hope his number doesn’t come in this time, otherwise he will be insufferable. Having worked on National Lottery online projects before and known how brutal they can be on testing for Facebook apps this downtime was especially surprising.

Y&R Philippines’ ‘Water Lamp’ for North Face Wins Tinta Awards | Marketing Innovation – basic electro-chemistry meant that chemically treated paper and water created enough electricity to power an LED light for 12 hours.

Liquid Stop Sign: Emergency Laser Projection on Sheet of Water | Web Urbanist – has a real ‘Blade Runner’ feel to it

To give you an idea of the clout that Alibaba and their Single’s Day sale has in China on November 11 each year – you only have to look at the TV spectacular that Jack Ma and company put on featuring the likes of Daniel Craig and Kevin Spacey in his President Frank Underwood character

Porta Estel·lar or Stargate for those of you who don’t speak Catalan is an amazing immersive art installation built inside the chassis

Cross-Device Tracking Creates New Privacy Concerns, FTC Says | Advertising Age – “They do this under the veil of anonymous identifiers and hashed P.I.I. [personally-identifiable information], but these identifiers are still persistent and can provide a strong link to the same individual online and offline,” Ms. Ramirez said, in language that challenges the typical rhetoric from companies that track consumers.”Not only can these profiles be used to draw sensitive inferences about consumers, there is also a risk of unexpected and unwelcome use of data generated from cross-device tracking” (paywall)

Five myths about the Chinese economy | McKinsey & Company – China has been faking it. it’s economy lacks the capacity to innovate, environmental degradation is at a point of no return, unproductive investment & rising debt fuels its rapid growth and its stability is threatened by polarising inequity – nice piece by McKinsey that points the counterarguments to these oft-quoted ideas