Month: March 2017

  • Pam Edstrom

    PR Week and The Holmes Report carried an obituary for Pam Edstrom who passed away last night. I worked at her agency for a few years and came across her a few times. Pam had an intensity and an energy to her. She was also a true believer; you could break her open like a…

  • Bruno Kahl + more news

    Bruno Kahl German Intelligence Chief Bruno Kahl Interview – SPIEGEL ONLINE – really interesting interview with Bruno Kahl. Mr Kahl is a career civil servant rather than a spook who became management. The insights that Bruno Kahl shares are very interesting: More related content here. Business IBM, Remote-Work Pioneer, is Calling Thousands Of Employees Back…

  • Jump Around – 25 years later

    It’s hard to believe that the House of Pain’s Jump Around turned 25 last week. The iconic intro from ‘Harlem Shuffle’ used to be a call to the dance floor when I used to play it on Wednesday night sets at a late closing wine bar in the North West of England. The video fired…

  • PopSlate failure

    PopSlate I’ve go in involved in a few crowdfunded products and some of them have worked out but the majority haven’t. The latest example was the high profile e-ink phone cover PopSlate. PopSlate got over $1 million dollars of funding and was widely covered by the media. “popSLATE 2 is E-Ink for your iPhone done…

  • Asian Godfathers by Joe Studwell

    I’d read Joe Studwell’s How Asia Works over lunar new year so Asian Godfathers was an obvious follow-on. Studwell dealt directly with the reasons for East Asia’s economic growth and Southeast Asia’s failing to follow them. Studwell attached this same subject through through a different lens. Studwell looks at it through the lens of the business community in…

  • Toshiba chip sale + more news

    Exclusive: Japan to vet bidders in Toshiba chip sale for national security risks – sources | Reuters – I could understand that Japan probably doesn’t want China dicking them around on the Toshiba chip sale. China would happy interfere with the Toshiba chip sale, because of the pathological hatred Chinese authoritarian nationalism holds for Japan. Also…

  • The mobile industry and it’s progress

    Just over 11 years ago I watched a talk on the mobile industry by Charles Dunstone of Carphone Warehouse at the LSE. I came across the post by accident the other evening and wondered how well Dunstone’s view held up over the past decade or so. On VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol)… I think that…

  • Dmoz + more news

    Dmoz RIP Dmoz: The Open Directory Project is closing | SearchEngineLand – the demise of Dmoz is probably only of interest to old school web users who had used search directories before search engines became more effective and SEO people. Directories and their taxonomies were the search engines of yore. Back when I worked at…

  • The World as Design: Writings of Design by Otl Aicher

    The World as Design author Aicher was a German designer. He is most famous of his graphic design and typography. His most famous font is Rotis  His impact was far wider. Aicher was a co-founder of the short-lived Ulm School of Design. Over its 15 years it developed a legacy that continues to echo through…