Month: August 2016

  • Travel hacks & inspiration

    Some travel hacks: Mytaxi – works for European cities, similar to Hailo or Uber 3 Feel Like Home – not having to worry about roaming charges in a number of countries. There are a couple of things to be aware of: If you have a tethered broadband component to your phone tariff it won’t be…

  • Press – Silicon Valley + more

    Press – Silicon Valley – Nieman Reports – interesting, smart read. I thought that coverage in the press  – Silicon Valley has been sycophantic for decades. There were some noticeable exceptions like InfoWorld’s Notes from the Field in the early 1990s. More on Silicon Valley here. This Is How The Majority Of The World Will Get…

  • SGI acquired & more news

    SGI acquired Hewlett Packard Enterprise acquires SGI for $275 million | VentureBeat – death of a legend. SGI stands for Silicon Graphics International. SGI workstations and servers were legendary. The dinosaurs in Jurassic Park were rendered on SGI hardware. Much of the early web was run off SGI servers and SGI were involved in early efforts…

  • US technology companies in China

    Uber has been cited as an example of how US technology companies can’t succeed in China, but the wrong lessons are being learned. Let’s look at a couple of examples. Facebook Facebook is viewed as having ‘failed’ in China. There are two parts to this. First of all lets talk about Facebook’s business model, simply put…

  • Facebook marketer tools +

    Facebook marketer tools – Digital media has been historically very focused on performance marketing tools. The new generation of Facebook marketer tools are an attempt to shake things up from a brand marketing perspective. A lot of inspirational work coming out of Brazil (non-olympic related).  Don’t think of it as hyper-targeted advertising, think of it…

  • The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu

    The Three Body Problem like all the best science fiction is multi-layered. It has a complex story which gradually weaves together a large set of characters across time as the story is told in a non-linear manner. It is also multi-layered in terms of genres: It is a space opera as rich as Asimov’s Foundation…

  • Frankfurt + more things

    I spent a good bit of time in Frankfurt this week, working with one of our clients on demystifying analytics and trying to put in frameworks out which they could get actionable insights. Being in Frankfurt was more exciting than the previous sentence makes it sound and great to meet people in person that I…

  • Alan Kay on AI + more

    Alan Kay Computing pioneer Alan Kay on AI, Apple and future – FactorDaily – interesting take on current approaches to AI by computer pioneer Alan Kay. I first came across Alan Kay in Bob Cringely’s book Accidental Empires. The fact that you can read this page in a browser window is partly down to Alan Kay.…

  • The QRcode post

    A few years ago, I was involved in a project that used a QRcode across OOH (out of home) activity for a retail launch. We had it on advertising hoardings and on the back of public transport.  QRcode scanners varied in performance. In addition you had to think about: Contrast – did the code stand…