Cleantech
Insight: How cleantech tarnished Kleiner and VC star John Doerr | Reuters – when thinking about cleantech it is worth remembering that Doerr also made crazy bets on Netscape. It may have been the wrong thing to do from a finance point-of-view but the direction was right. Robert X. Cringely described technology as being like surfing, hitting and riding a wave at the right time and knowing when to get off. Doerr wasn’t the only person to hit the wave to early. Vinod Khosla also bet big too early on cleantech with his firm Khosla Ventures. Beside Cleantech, Doerr and Khosla also had a common path. Khosla was a Kleiner Perkins alum. Both had being part of the founding team at Silicon Valley royalty, Khosla at Sun Microsystems and Doerr at Intel. Cleantech has been of interest since the rise of environmental movement and hit different peaks during the OPEC oil crises. But its only with global warming that cleantech interest got serious
Consumer behaviour
The Future of Drugs | VICE – interesting essay on the consumer behaviour side of things
Culture
WeAreFSTVL’s stream on SoundCloud – keep an eye on this
Economics
Paul Krugman On Technology And Inequality – Business Insider – technology is likely to encourage inequality for decades
Hong Kong’s fading love affair with its property barons signals Beijing’s growing clout – Quartz – or maybe like most economies the mix needs to be tweaked
No longer factory of the world, China is now its banker – Quartz – interesting data about China doing outbound foreign direct investment
Chart Focus: How to compete in emerging markets – Chinese markets as urban clusters
Finance
Secrets and Lies of the Bailout | Rolling Stone – interesting colour on top of what people knew with regards the 2008 banking crisis
FMCG
Frosties sales decline because of advertising ban on television – Mirror Online – advertising works, opportunities for below-the-line marketing not being exploited by food companies?
Unilever’s Jon Goldstone: A great brand can’t stand for ‘cheap’ – Marketing news – Marketing magazine – interesting move away from data driven marketing
Innovation
The Amazings – interesting idea in terms of knowledge sharing
Accoustic Renaissance for Audio proposal – Mono could be enjoyed side-by-side with friends, whereas stereo is only for the ‘hot-spot’, hence highly personalized. Now multi-channel can again provide a much wider listening area, therefore it can again be enjoyed with friends or families – Negishi-san’s observation on the social aspects of listening are very interesting
Carbon Fiber: The Secret of the 2014 Corvette Stingray – interesting that the price point isn’t above the previous glass reinforced plastic (GRP) models
Koreans create magnetic transistor that could turn every CPU into an FPGA | ExtremeTech
Handheld See-Through-Wall Radar | The Firearm Blog – crazy sci-fi tech that’s real
Korean boffins crack art of bendy batteries • The Register
Japan
Survey of Japanese Young Adults Shows Preference for Twitter, Facebook
Luxury
KPMG – Global reach China Luxury – interesting and more nuanced take on the Chinese market for luxury goods
Media
Super League clubs on brink of financial abyss, says finance expert | The Guardian – I have a personal interest in not seeing top-flight rugby league go under, but if it did, I imagine that tyre-kicking bears would also look at other sports
MK – FACT Magazine – love the video interviews with MK
Obama: ‘One of the biggest factors is going to be how the media shapes debates’ | Poynter. – or how the changing structure of media industry will change debates
Lionel Barber’s email to FT staff outlining digital-first strategy | guardian.co.uk – feels very much like what the Telegraph went through ages ago
Antigua Government Set to Launch “Pirate” Website To Punish United States | TorrentFreak
New York Times to launch electronic corrections form | Journalism.co.uk – expect PRs to be all over this
Greg Sandoval quits CNET over CBS editorial interference | JIMROMENESKO.COM – CBS versus Dish Networks casualty
Online
Just Under Deadline, Google Responds to European Antitrust Concerns – AllThingsD
Ahead of Graph Search launch, Facebook removed the ability to opt out of search results – Quartz – you know that this is going to end badly for at least some people
Goodbye LinkedIn answers, hello more Group spam? | Econsultancy – disappointing for B2B marketers
Quality
CES: Worse Products Through Software – if you only read one article about CES read this
Retailing
Why online book discovery is broken (and how to fix it) — paidContent – I’d argue that it was similar with non-chart music purchases as well
Capgemini retail study commissioned by TJ Hughes (PDF) online going to be big apparently
Security
Errata Security: I conceal my identity the same way Aaron was indicted for – interesting how technological use clashes with the law
The Future of Crime | VICE – interesting thoughtful article by VICE that touches a lot of current hot technologies including 3D printing and in-car computing
Why We’re Raising the Signature Threshold for We the People | The White House – interesting given the timing with Aaron Swartz-related petition activity
Software
OmniGroup are going back to the Mac; after spending the past few years bringing their applications to the iPad. I particularly like OmniPlan as a piece of project management software. If there was one worthwhile thing that came out of MacWorld Expo this year, this was it
Microsoft’s Role a Sticking Point in Dell Buyout Talks – WSJ.com – has Microsoft learned from the Nokia deal, would it have been easier if Elop had taken Nokia private to do the Lumia changeover?
Nokia builds WP8 momentum, but will increase its costs – Rethink Wireless – careful calculus?
Nokia Sales Down 79% in China as Symbian Dies, Lumia Slow to Grow – which is a huge drop in the world’s biggest wireless market
Daring Fireball: The Trend Against Skeuomorphic Textures and Effects in User Interface Design – technology means that display limitations no longer need to be hidden by skeuomorphic design
Basecamp Personal Takes Project Management Out Of The Office, Ditches Subscriptions For A One-Time Fee | TechCrunch – much more accessible
Technology
Excess chip inventory set to hurt Q1 – signs of an electronics downturn
NTSB: “No Obvious Anomalies” in Dreamliner Backup Battery | Frequent Business Traveler – which screws the prevailing narrative being pushed that tried to taint the Japanese battery supplier
Robot Makers Spread Global Gospel of Automation – NYTimes.com – I guess we know what John Markoff’s next book maybe about. Interesting read through
Surface with Windows RT: The prettiest thing you’ll never want to touch again | Reuters – one of the most brutal reviews that I have read
UBS slashes its Microsoft Surface RT sales forecast by 50 percent- The Inquirer
Telecoms
TeliaSonera’s Uzbekistan scandal is a warning to telecom CEOs everywhere – Quartz – It has come out in the Nordics first, primarily because of the transparency there, but I wouldn’t be surprised it was endemic amongst the wireless groups in the EU and US
Chinese government reportedly in talks to lift 12-year ban on gaming consoles – The Next Web
Web of no web
Wireless
Why The WSJ Got The ‘iPhone Demand Is Crashing’ Story All Wrong – Forbes – the WSJ has been going for much more speculation journalism to compete on reporting with the likes of TechCrunch, I guess you could call it a blogification of the fourth estate
In Asia’s trend-setting cities, iPhone fatigue sets in | Reuters – interesting association with Hallyu. I pass an electronics store every morning and there is always a Girls Generation concert playing on the LG televisions. Is this the decline of American culture’s power?
HTC Mini announced as a remote for your smartphone (Cory Gunther/Android Community)
Samsung’s predicament – Chris Dixon – is the PC analogy the correct one?
Samsung seeks to block Apple appeal for sales ban – San Jose Mercury News