Why Google Translate fails
The Shallowness of Google Translate – The Atlantic – Google Translate really weak on language that uses metaphors or symbolic elements in their discussion. So examples that I am familiar with Google Translate failing on include both Cantonese and Mandarin. It’s Mandarin is slightly better, likely due to a wider body of material to work from.
Beauty
Kiehl’s sends its moisturizer for men to space – POPSOP – it hits all the touch points for luxury: limited, heritage (space race), desirable and captures the imagination
Business
Apple plans to reduce net cash balance to “approximately zero” FT – I personally think that this is a bad idea (paywall)
Consumer behaviour
Are you addicted to your smartphone? You may need professional help | SCMP – it is interesting that ‘internet addiction’ isn’t diagnosed as say obsessive compulsive behaviour or sociopathy but its own unique disorder. The likes of TV soap operas or music offered similar escapes – the amount I spent on vinyl was definitely the wrong side of sanity (paywall)
‘Social discovery’ is not about making friends. It’s about sex, narcissism, & gossip | VentureBeat – interesting if slightly depressing interview with the people at Tagged
Edelman Study: ‘Selfie-Style’ Entertainment On the Rise – In2 – interesting that selfie is now used as a descriptor for instant self gratification
Design
A synth has been designed to get kids into making electronic music | hhhhappy – want
BIC – Universal Typeface Experiment – I really like this idea by BIC, it could also build a very useful data set for technologists
Shanghai Street View: Branding The Zone | Young’s Chinese Business – interesting article on the Free Trade Zone (FTZ) in Shanghai
Economics
Mainlanders’ spending in Hong Kong doesn’t show up in our GDP – that’s statistical reality | South China Morning Post – which is crazy when one sees how much retail is done to cater to cross-border visitors
Ethics
Robert Peston’s speech warns of threat to journalism from native ads – full text | theguardian.com – usual chest thumping about PRs, interesting commentary on native advertising
Watchdog voices fears of privatisation risk to ethical standards – FT.com – Commissioners tended to assume that providers would conform to ethical standards so they were not explicitly incorporated into either the selection of providers or contracts. If monitoring occurred at all, it was focused on performance and financial measures rather than ethics, the committee said. (Paywall) – because that’s going to work well…
Ideas
Automating Influence: The Manipulation of Public Debate – Stratfor – nice digestible write-up (paywall)
Legal
Knowledge Hub | Review of PAA Forum in Beijing – federation of regulation in China was interesting, since Mr Xi’s moves more like bring order towards the centre
Luxury
Prada promotes its latest Candy fragrance with a comic book | Popsop – it reminds me a bit of Modesty Blaise in terms of the drawing style
Media
Adidas Launches World Cup Campaign with Google | Adweek – interesting move more because of the new Google ad formats
Xaxis rolls out a new, real-time global DMP | CampaignAsia – with real-time audience profiles, interesting to see my old client Crystal Semantics technology is now used by Xaxis
Online
In a Mobile-First World, Shorter Video Ads Drive Results | Facebook Business – Average watch time for both the 6-second and 30-second video ads was the same, but ad recall was significantly higher for the 6-second ads. The difference in ad recall underlines the importance of keeping video ads short and communicating key messages in the first few seconds. – And here is the flaw in the argument
Retailing
Alibaba’s 11 Main online mall bids to lure U.S. shoppers – SFGate – interesting that development is separate rather than utilising the TMall codebase
Technology
Safety in their hands | Federation Internationale de l’Automobile – biometric data from racing gloves
Netflix Closing Public API Later this Year | ProgrammableWeb – interesting that Netflix closed their public API as this would be handy for new start-ups making next generation consumer electronics product like Roku or Apple TV
Twitter’s new API lets developers sift through every tweet in history | TheNextWeb – potentially good news for social listening / analytics tools
My Thoughts On It » Is Paper From Facebook To Be Tossed? – interesting comScore data on Paper app
Daring Fireball: Only Apple – interesting article. I think that Apple’s decision to not try and build a curates egg helps, also iOS and OSX are being evolved rather than being completely shaken up at the moment. Lastly Apple has to worry about a smaller amount of variance in hardware than other software teams
Web of no web
BBC News – Tomorrow’s Cities – thought that this was interesting primer for smart cities, internet of things, programmable web, machine-to-machine
Nokia’s Here Buys Medio Systems To Push More Personalised Location Services | TechCrunch – interesting move putting lots of contextual pieces in place
Wireless
Goodbye, Pure: near-term, post-transition guidance for ex-Nokians regarding their branded future – Evleaks – interesting insights into rebranding a newly acquired company
Huawei, ZTE On Global Hiring Sprees | Young’s China Business – a symptom of the decline of Alcatel Lucent, Nokia and Ericsson’s business. Expect Cisco and HP to suffer too
Weibo Adds Gaming, Review and Payment Features to Mobile App Update | TechNode – starting to look more like the kind of eco-system Tencent has built around WeChat and QQ respectively. More related content here.