Pipes + more news

Pipes

Pipes – Yahoo! Pipes analogue, lets just hope that they haven’t captured the ‘flakey’ experience. I often remember hearing Yahoo! Pipes being compared to owning a British sports car. Instead I would prefer that Pipes provide the Mazda MX5 (Miata) experience where you get the experience but none of the broken ass crap of owning an MGB

Business

Is 2017 the beginning of the end for the app economy? TheNextWeb – not exactly the beginning of the end. More like a new normal – one thing that’s missing is the importance of building inside existing app eco-systems such as WeChat, Facebook Messenger etc. Whilst WeChat have made headway with mini-apps it will be interesting to see if Facebook can duplicate their success.

Korea

Why young South Koreans are turning away from religion | Arts & Culture | Al Jazeera – a certain amount of this turning away is geography. Korea had a mix of buddhism and Shamanism historically. Buddhist monasteries and temples were often in the mountains close to nature. Shamanism depended on closeness with nature – so again being out in the middle of nowhere. You throw in the move to cities, the break down of familial connections through distance and time poverty. More on Korean related topics here.

Luxury

Luxury Brands Leave Youku in Favor of China’s Younger Video Platforms | L2

Marketing

Ambition: Exploring the digital marketing revolution – interview with Philip Kotler

Ambition: Mastering mobile internet strategy in China by Winston Ma – nice white paper that looks at cinema’s role in reaching customers as part of an omnichannel approach

Media

Why the Chinese Will Pay for Content That Americans Won’t – Bloomberg – De Dao and other paid media. Part of the reason is that the quality of much free media is lacklustre due to pleasing the state ranking above delighting the audience.

Security

Russian Hackers Are Using Google’s Own Infrastructure to Hack Gmail Users | Motherboard

Does Slack allow your boss to spy on you? — Quartz – yes, but only with output rather than outcome-focused measures on productivity. It will reinforce the practices of poor managers rather than help make good managers

Web of no web

Russian internet giant Yandex shows off its self-driving car | Engadget

The Surprising Repercussions of Making AI Assistants Sound Human | WIRED – interesting nuances of voice interface design