Category: business | 商業 | 상업 | ビジネス

My interest in business or commercial activity first started when a work friend of my Mum visited our family. She brought a book on commerce which is what business studies would have been called decades earlier. I read the book and that piqued my interest.

At the end of your third year in secondary school you are allowed to pick optional classes that you will take exams in. this is supposed to be something that you’re free to chose.

I was interested in business studies (partly because my friend Joe was doing it). But the school decided that they wanted me to do physics and chemistry instead and they did the same for my advanced level exams because I had done well in the normal level ones. School had a lot to answer for, but fortunately I managed to get back on track with college.

Eventually I finally managed to do pass a foundational course at night school whilst working in industry. I used that to then help me go and study for a degree in marketing.

I work in advertising now. And had previously worked in petrochemicals, plastics and optical fibre manfacture. All of which revolve around business. That’s why you find a business section here on my blog.

Business tends to cover a wide range of sectors that catch my eye over time. Business usually covers sectors that I don’t write about that much, but that have an outside impact on wider economics. So real estate would have been on my radar during the 2008 recession.

Fieldnotes & other things

Fieldnotes

Chad Dickerson’s Fieldnotes – Fieldnotes is an email newsletter from one of the key people during Yahoo!’s web 2.0 geek golden age and former CEO of Etsy. Chad Dickerson was in charge of Yahoo!’s Brickhouse incubator and the Yahoo! Developer Network. He then went to be the CTO of Etsy and was then promoted to CEO. Dickerson came from a background in technology for online media, having worked at CNN, Salon.com and InfoWorld before Yahoo!

Shipping time lapse

This is the second time lapse film I’ve seen done by an officer on a ship. I get it. No internet would give you a lot of time to put the film together. It opens up a world that I had only heard of from people older than me who had served on ships when westerners were sailors. I love the way clouds boil away, time lapse allow you to better see the liquid nature of clouds.

20 choice edits and reworks

Greg Wilson put together this mix of his favourite edits that had been done in 2017. Everyone of them are are an amazing track. Wilson was one of the original resident DJs at the Hacienda. He was the first UK DJ to be seen scratching on TV. He took a break from DJing and returned later to both DJing and production. Wilson is one of the pioneers in the nu disco movement.

LV Pass Apple Messenger icons

Louis Vuitton’s LV Pass app did some really nice integration with Apple’s Messenger stickers. It is based on Jeff Koons artworks and the iconic Louis Vuitton brand. More related content here.

Switch off for the holidays

Fair play to Nokia for running this campaign on their website over Christmas. They realise that consumers are over connected and need a screen break, so they have been encouraging consumers to switch off and connect in real life for the holidays.

January 12, 2018
GoPro quits drones & other news

GoPro quits drone business

GoPro quits the drone business – The Verge – because of the grip that DJI has on the drone market. GoPro had expanded into drones in the face of declining growth in the action camera market. You can start to see drone footage being cut into extreme sports videos providing a variation of views that weren’t possible previously.

Business

Pony Ma, the global strategist with deep pockets | FT – interesting profile of Pony Ma, CEO of Tencent

Consumer behaviour

Japanese convenience stores showing “hardening of society” with touch-screen age verification? – Japan is a high trust society lying would be a really big deal. More related content here.

Design

Tucker Sno-Cats Are the Latest Toys of the Superrich – Bloomberg – interesting design approach focusing on floating over the snow

TCCC Unity on the App Store – Coca-Cola did an iPhone app to explain the ethos behind its bespoke fonts (presumably beyond not having to pay licence fees and hubris)…

Media

Create & Share Your Own Marvel Comics | Coming Soon – Sign Up Now! – Horrible caveats to usage but could be interesting for notices around the office – memes etc

Click-to-WhatsApp messaging buttons are now rolling out in Facebook ads | TechCrunch – makes total sense in markets like Hong Kong where so much brand and business communications happens on WhatsApp

Technology

Imaginary Soundscape – Qosmo, inc. – machine learning guesstimated soundscapes

Wireless

AT&T Backs Off Deal to Sell Smartphones From China’s Huawei – WSJ – if true it represents a spectacular loss of face for Huawei. There would be likely internal repercussions in Shenzhen as it dents the company’s reputation as a brand on the rise, its aspiration to be seen as a globally recognised premium brand and the oft talked about objective of cracking the US handset market beyond burner phones

Web of no web

A Concise History of the Smartwatch – Bloomberg – quite a nice bit of analysis

Your Car May Soon Start Serving You Ads | Slashdot – it begs a question about the economics of car software

First Amazon Alexa-Enabled Digital Glasses to Debut at CES – Bloomberg – don’t sound particularly promising

January 9, 2018
Innovation stuckness + more 2018 trends
There are a number of people who have done great trends / predictions for 2018. I thought that I would focus on what I would like to see across three trends: innovation stuckness, lean web design, machine learning ethical considerations, buffer bloat and redefining what a technology start-up is.

Smartphones are stuck in a period of innovation stuckness. It is becoming increasingly difficult to justify upgrades to your handset. This has had knock-on effects to mobile networks. In markets where subsidised handsets are the norm like the UK we’re seeing that SIM-only contracts are becoming the norm.

Apple is trying to innovate its way out of this problem with its work on augmented reality interaction. Consumer media consumption will take a good while to catch up.

Smartphone cameras are as good as consumers need (at the moment). Displays are now good enough that improvements look indistinguishable. They are also large enough for you to watch Amazon Prime or Netflix during a commute. Mobile wallets are merely a back-up in case one leaves your wallet at home.

Whilst the app names have changed, much of the smartphone usage now is for the same things I used a Nokia or Palm smartphone ten years ago:
- Alarm clock
- Web surfing
- Entertainment
- Media playback
- Communications
I hope that we start to see smartphones going back to the future and looking at different form factors. My iPhone would be much more useful as a productive device if it was available in a similar form factor to the old Nokia communicator. Different form factors of devices for different users. Gamers would benefit from better controls a la the Nokia nGage.

Interfaces can make better use of haptic feedback, and be designed to take advantage of more hardware-optimised devices.

Innovation isn’t only the responsibility of app developers and phone makers. What about a modern 4G version of ‘Enhanced Full Rate’ on GSM (GSM-EFR) ‘hi-fi voice calls’. UK operator One2One launched GSM-EFR on 2G networks in the late 1990s as part of their Precept tariffs, but I haven’t seen any other carrier try to do a similar thing since. Why not? I suspect part of the problem is that ‘innovation’ in your average mobile network provider now is testing vendor products in a lab to ensure they work properly on their network.

The web has developed a digital equivalent of clogged arteries. Part of this is down to buffer bloat and a lack of lean web design approach. Unfortunately the mobile web has not brought a clean slate approach but hacked together adaptations. A bigger issue is the layers of advertising technology trackers, analytics and assorted chunks of Javascript. Ad tech hammers page load time and responsiveness.

We’ve seen Apple and Mozilla try to redesign their browser technology to slow down or stimmy ad technology. Consumers are adopting ad blockers to try and improve their own web experience.

There needs to be a collective reset button. I am not sure if we see a resurgence of the paid web or a kinder lighter footprint in advertising technology. Otherwise we have an unending conflict between the media industry and the rest of us.

The debate around machine learning in 2017 highlighted a Black Mirroresque dystopia awaiting us. The good news is that we tend to overestimate technology’s impact in the short term. In the long term the impact tends to meet our expectations all be in a more banal way.

Part of the current problem around machine learning is that Silicon Valley seems to only consider technology rather than the consequences of potential use cases. This needs to change, unfortunately the people in charge of technology companies are the least capable people to achieve it. We need a kinder more holistic roadmap. Legislation and regulation will be far too late to the party. We won’t be able to stop technological progress, but we can influence the way its used.

Lying in bed ill over the Christmas period, I read that crypto currency mining currently required as much energy as Bahrain. By the end of 2018, it will require as much energy as Italy. That is insane.

Apart from speculation and buying products on the dark web what is the killer app for crypto currencies? Why is worth the energy overhead? Steve Jobs focused on computing power per watt as part of his vision for laptops and moving the Mac range to Intel. Part of the move to the cloud was about making computing more efficient for businesses and providing computing power over the network for consumers on ‘low power’ mobile devices. Yet almost a decade and a half later, the hottest thing in technology is a grossly energy inefficient process.

We are starting to see regulators in Korea and China step in to regulate the market and energy supply to miners, but western economies need to look at this. And I haven’t even got on to the ICO (intial coin offering) as Ponzi scheme…

If you substitute the words ‘fax machine’ or ‘call centre’ for app would Uber, Deliveroo etc be considered as technology companies? I suspect that the answer is no. A company may use a lot of technology – it happens a lot these days. But that doesn’t make Capita, Mastercard or Goldman Sachs a technology company, lets apply a bit of critical thinking. I wouldn’t mind, but this same mistake was made in the late 1990s during the dot com boom.

Many companies including Enron were ‘repackaged’ by management, venture capitalists, investment banks and consultancies (cough, cough McKinsey) as asset-light technology driven businesses aka ‘an internet company’. It didn’t work out well last time. It won’t this time either.

More information
Enhanced full rate (GSM) – Wikipedia
Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index | Digiconomist
Setback for Uber as European court advised to treat it as transport firm | Reuters
Other trends reports
Fjord: 2018 Fjord Trends
iProspect: Future Focus 2018: The New Machine Rules
Isobar: Augmented Humanity: Isobar Trends Report 2018
J. Walter Thompson Innovation Group: The Future 100
Ogilvy & Mather: Key Digital Trends for 2018 – Whatley and Manson are doing webinar presentations this week if you want to catch them
Campaign Asia did a nice precise of them all
Past prediction stuff that I’ve done
2016: crystal ball gazing, how did I do? | renaissance chambara
2016: just where is it all going? | renaissance chambara
2015: crystal ball gazing, how did I do? | renaissance chambara
2015: just where is it all going? | renaissance chambara
2014: crystal ball gazing, how did I do? | renaissance chambara
2014: just where is it all going? | renaissance chambara
Crystal ball-gazing: 2013 how did I do? | renaissance chambara
2013: just where is it all going? | renaissance chambara
Crystal ball-gazing: 2012 how did I do? | renaissance chambara
2012: just where is digital going? | renaissance chambara
Things I’d like to see in 2012 | renaissance chambara
Crystal ball-gazing: 2011 how did I do?
2010: How did I do? | renaissance chambara
2010: just where is digital going? | renaissance chambara
Predictions for 2009 | renaissance chambara

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January 8, 2018
Darude & other things

Darude – Sandstorm

Vice are running a series on classic EDM (heart sinks) but the first is Darude – Sandstorm. Lets not even get into the music taxonomy Vice are using…

Darude – Sandstorm is interesting because the catchy hook is straight out of the Stock Aitken and Waterman playbook, complete with a key change. It sounds timeless, it could have been from any time from the early 1980s onwards – since it fits in with records like Rofo’s Theme. It is also surprisingly simple which is why it became endlessly memeable.

The back story of how Darude – Sandstorm took off is fascinating.

VR in jail

Re-entry into society is astonishingly difficult for criminals that have completed their prison sentence. Its not only that businesses are reluctant to employ convicted criminals, but that life has changed. Imagine going into jail before the internet and coming out today. You might know about the changes, but knowing isn’t the same as experiencing them.

Secondly, interacting outside is different to jail. You don’t have opportunities to prepare for the transition. And that’s where the Colorado correctional facilities use of VR comes in. Convicts can experience scenarios and learn from the experience.

Scott Galloway on 2017

Scott Galloway summing up 2017 at hyper speed.

[Bonus posting] Predictions for 2018 | The Daily | L2 – Scott Galloway and the team have some ballsy predictions

How Rega makes turntables

The team at The Vinyl Factory put together videos on how Rega make turntables…

How McIntosh Labs make amplifiers

How McIntosh Labs make amplifiers. McIntosh Labs have been producing amazing hi-fi for over seven decades, with a design language that hasn’t changed that much over the years. It is really impressive that McIntosh Labs have been competitors like Bob Carver come and go. It’s also impressive that McIntosh Labs still make their products in the US.

Have a great start to 2018.

January 5, 2018
Marzipan & other news

Marzipan

Daring Fireball: Marzipan – Gruber posits that Marzipan is a unified development environment that allows programmers to create apps optimised for iOS and macOS. Marzipan means that the only have to write the app only one time, rather than having to rewrite completely for each platform. It makes more sense than the original Guzman article on a future merging of iOS and macOS

Business

Behind the Fall and Rise of China’s Xiaomi | WIRED – interesting analysis of how Xiaomi made mixed retail / e-tail strategy and smart home products pull their business

Apple Took the Lion Share of Smartphone Industry Profits in Q3 2017 at Close to 60% – Patently Apple – there are many ways to cut this data. Apple is still doing well, Samsung has made big strides to get back into the game over the last year and the largest Chinese manufacturers are still living on thin margins of $15 per handset. Huawei’s numbers are likely to be mixed. The Honor handsets will have a much lower margins and so pull down Huawei’s aggregate value.

Consumer behaviour

The politics of social status: economic and cultural roots of the populist right – Gidron – 2017 – The British Journal of Sociology – Wiley Online Library – the answers may lie on the ‘supply side’ of political competition, where recent movements in party platforms have made the populist right more attractive to many voters. A convergence over the past three decades in the economic platforms of the centre-left and centre-right toward the right have reduced the appeal of the centre-left to the working class. In this context, many voters now complain that no one speaks for them. At the same time, parties on the populist right have moved their economic platforms to the left, making them more plausible providers of jobs and social protection. Moreover, in order to mount distinctive appeals at a time when the differences between parties on economic issues has narrowed, many parties have put more emphasis on identity or values issues, which often draw middle-class voters to the left but working-class voters to the right

Finance

China puts US$15,000 annual personal cap on overseas bank card withdrawals | South China Morning Post – further clamping down on capital flight, overseas property investment etc

China moves to impose order on mobile payments boom | FT – $76/day usage limit is going to kill their usage abroad since they have mostly penetrated duty free and high-end department stores (paywall)

Marketing

The Jeanius Style of Steve Jobs – Levi Strauss – wait a minute; Levi’s used to give billionaire Steve Jobs free jeans? Why?

Daring Fireball: Italian Company Calls Itself ‘Steve Jobs’ – expect overpriced mock turtlenecks in any colour you want so long as it’s black

Legal

Trump Says U.S. Post Office Should Charge Amazon `Much More’ | Ad Age – actually a fair point, the problem is that Amazon has got too large and too powerful (paywall)

China takes popular news app Toutiao offline for 24 hours over pornographic content | South China Morning Post – it was only a matter of when this would happen

The Most Expensive Mile of Subway Track on Earth – The New York Times – public officials have stood by as a small group of politically connected labor unions, construction companies and consulting firms have amassed large profits. – When does pork barrel politics start to look like organised crime?

Huawei executive detained on suspicion of taking bribes | HKEJ Insights – it is worthwhile bearing in mind that Huawei is a big ass company, so the odds of at least some employees being bent is a sure thing, just on the scale of numbers. It isn’t necessarily proof that the company is rotten. Huawei has its cultural foibles but corruption isn’t necessarily one of them

Security

Tencent denies storing WeChat records after Chinese billionaire reportedly questions monitoring | South China Morning Post – how does it comply with Chinese law for monitoring etc? Interesting privacy now a minor issue at least in China. I had heard of people moving to Ding as they didn’t trust WeChat

China’s Huawei flags slower smartphone and overall revenue growth | Reuters – I thought that 5G infrastructure and continued enterprise sales would kick in for Huawei, they are still desperately trying to increase their slim margins on smartphone sales

The strange story of “Extended Random” – A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering – you can deploy a cryptographic backdoor, but it’s awfully hard to control where it will end up

Technology

Researchers Made Google’s Image Recognition AI Mistake a Rifle For a Helicopter | WIRED – interesting implications for black SEO

January 3, 2018