Category: gadget | 小工具 | 가제트 | ガジェット

What constitutes a gadget? The dictionary definition would be a small mechanical or electronic device or tool, especially an ingenious or novel one.

When I started writing this blog the gadget section focused on personal digital assistants such as the Palm PDA and Sony’s Clie devices. Or the Anoto digital pen that allowed you to record digitally what had been written on a specially marked out paper page, giving the best of both experiences.

Some of the ideas I shared weren’t so small like a Panasonic sleeping room for sleep starved, but well heeled Japanese.

When cutting edge technology failed me, I periodically went back to older technology such as the Nokia 8850 cellphone or my love of the Nokia E90 Communicator.

I also started looking back to discontinued products like the Sony Walkman WM-D6C Pro, one of the best cassette decks ever made of any size. I knew people who used it in their hi-fi systems as well as for portable audio.

Some of the technology that I looked at were products that marked a particular point in my life such as my college days with the Apple StyleWriter II. While my college peers were worried about getting on laser printers to submit assignments, I had a stack of cartridges cotton buds and isopropyl alcohol to deal with any non catastrophic printer issues and so could print during the evening in the comfort of my lodgings.

Alongside the demise in prominence of the gadget, there has been a rise in the trend of everyday carry or EDC.

Machines for emoting

Machines for emoting

Machines for emoting, is the problem of our internet in the palm of our hands? Over the past few years the sentiment towards the internet has changed dramatically.

Before the internet

Going back to the 1960s, my parents told me about the ‘No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs’ signs. These were found in many British towns at the same time that hippies were advocating peace and love. And when Enoch Powell made his rivers of blood speech; 70 percent of British people surveyed agreed with him.

Real world media and underground subcultures traded blows over racism at a slower pace. Though many of those blows were real.

Is it the internet?

This is no longer the information superhighway of Al Gore. The reasons for the changes aren’t obvious. One popular narrative is that algorithms are to blame. It is common to hear that narrative in news media.

But academic research suggests that it isn’t ‘radicalisation’ by algorithms isn’t true.

Is it the devices we use?

There were smartphones before the iPhone. They were made by numerous companies including Nokia, Palm, SonyEricsson, Panasonic and even Microsoft (who partnered with a number of manufacturers). In Japan, NTT DoCoMo put the ‘smart’ in the network through iMode rather than building a mini-PC in the phone itself.

Smartphones had initially started with business users and gradually broadened its base. Quite early on, phones focused on social functions, a classic example would be Danger’s Sidekick model which was designed for messaging. Nokia first popularised the app store and security signed apps that Apple and Google built upon.

The move to the ‘pictures under glass’ interface that we now know from Android and iPhone devices coincided with a surge on social.

Social media existed before 2010, but not as we now know it. Few of us had smartphones in 2009. Facebook’s active user base has grown sevenfold over the past 10 years, and there simply aren’t enough people for that to happen again. Instagram and WhatsApp were both launched about a decade ago, and swiftly absorbed into the mother of all social networks. As for Twitter, let me simply note that Donald Trump only started tweeting in earnest in 2011.
Tim Hartford in the FT

Did the pictures under glass metaphor and apps designed to utilise it make social too easy to share? It allows people to emote. From mild emotions usually expressed with emoticons or GIFs to visceral anger that seems to flood Twitter – there seems to be evidence of correlation if not causality. So how can design slow the hose pipe down to encourage more considered responses?

If that’s the case then user experience design has to play a part in resolving some of the worst issues online, given that people can’t seem to be able to respond appropriately by moderating their behaviour.

December 29, 2019
Open source 5G + more things

Pentagon wants open-source 5G plan in campaign against Huawei – ok in theory only. Open source 5G including OpenRAN doesn’t provide the flexibility in installation that vendor solutions do. More related content here.

It Seemed Like a Popular Chat App. It’s Secretly a Spy Tool. – The New York Times – Emirati’s do with Totok what the Chinese have been doing for years with WeChat TOMS/Skype etc. Totok is apparently popular in Qatar as it allows VoIP without a VPN – so expat workers use it to connect with their families at home.

Made in America – On US staffed hacking team in UAE. Interesting investigation by Reuters

The decade of the drop: why do we still stand in line? | How To Spend It – experience. It’s diametrically opposite to one stop shopping

Apple Captures 66% of the Smartphone Industry’s Profits in Q3 leaving all of their Competitors Combined in the Dust – Patently Apple – it is becoming a challenge for Chinese smartphone brands to increase their smartphone ASPs and margins due to a combination of longer consumer holding periods and Apple lowering pricing on some key SKUs, which has limited the headroom that Chinese vendors had used to increase their ASPs – in the long term Huawei having to be vertically integrated all the way up the stack could be to their benefit

Nike’s Jordan brand just had its first billion-dollar quarter — Quartz – interesting that it has taken over 30 years to get to a billion dollar quarter, yet Jordan is at least ten years past its cultural peak

In Focus: Pet Shop Boys 6th December 2019 | Listen on NTS – amazing delve into their career

Reality TV stars auditioned to ‘promote’ poison diet drink on Instagram – BBC News – Oh my gosh, this is as good as watching re-runs of Brass Eye

Pig Irons at the ‘Plex | Margins – essay on consulting firms well worth reading

Gildo Zegna: tailoring masculinity for changing tastes | Financial Times – luxury goods industry is feeling the heat of technological disruption, social upheaval and identity politics. Furthermore, within the high end fashion industry few items of clothing are facing more pressure from falling consumer demand than the one that made the Zegna family rich: the traditional men’s suit. “The big challenge we face is a rethinking of masculinity,” he says. – I think streetwear is interesting because of the reassurance it provides on masculinity. The basics of streetwear go back to the mid-century sports basics. The hooded top, jeans, t-shirts, plaid shirts, Letterman jacket, track jacket etc

Facebook awaits EU opinion in privacy case | Financial Times – interesting how wide the impact of this case could be in terms of things like credit card transaction data etc. (paywall)

Aito.ai – Introducing a new database category – the predictive database – hmmm

A Surveillance Net Blankets China’s Cities, Giving Police Vast Powers – The New York Times – Chinese authorities are knitting together old and state-of-the-art technologies — phone scanners, facial-recognition cameras, face and fingerprint databases and many others — into sweeping tools for authoritarian control, according to police and private databases examined by The New York Times. Once combined and fully operational, the tools can help police grab the identities of people as they walk down the street, find out who they are meeting with and identify who does and doesn’t belong to the Communist Party. The United States and other countries use some of the same techniques to track terrorists or drug lords. Chinese cities want to use them to track everybody.

Is LVMH’s Digital Transformation Working? | Luxury Society – “Over the last few years our market has become highly fragmented,” it added. “Customer journeys and purchasing habits have become more complex. Now, in addition to magazines and other traditional media, our customers – especially young people – use a range of digital options to stay informed, communicate with friends and shop. Brand awareness and customer engagement are built on these many different touchpoints.”

December 23, 2019
Snowden revelations + more things
Looking back at the Snowden revelations – A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering – The brilliant thing about the Snowden leaks was that he didn’t tell us much of anything. He showed us. Most of the revelations came in the form of a Powerpoint slide deck, the misery of which somehow made it all more real. And despite all the revelation fatigue, the things he showed us were remarkable – this is such a good read. I suspect that the level of surprise expressed is mostly a US thing. I was disappointed, but not shocked by it all. Back in the day the NSA used to publish one of the best guides to ‘hardening’ macOS – documents that they no longer seem to host online. The Snowden revelations were nothing new. I grew up in Europe when:
- GCHQ were tapping all of Ireland’s overseas telecoms and data traffic via the Capenhurst tower. Having lived in the neighbourhood of Capenhurst during the 1980s and 1990s, this was well known but only confirmed in the media in 1999
- The ECHELON network was hoovering up microwave, fax, satellite and telephone calls
After Duncan Campbell’s lifetime of work, the Snowden revelations are part of a decades long pattern of behaviour. Admittedly the US’ rivals will be up to the same things and worse.

Luxury watch maker Patek Philippe and Leagas Delaney launch new Generations campaign – Marketing Communication News – the most interesting aspect of this to me is the way its looking to address a younger audience. Secondly, if you look at the background with the plants and rain its moved the look and feel to more tropical than their previous campaigns that were northern European in feel. (It was actually shot in Italy). Because? My guess, China. Younger rich people due to second generation wealth. Two children reflecting the recent law changes around family size in the country

Is the era of the $100+ graphing calculator coming to an end? | The Hustle – don’t feel too sorry for Texas Instruments: over a 20-year period, TI set out to manufacture demand by making its calculators mandated classroom tools. The company established partnerships with big textbook companies that integrated TI-specific exercises (complete with screenshots of buttons) into classroom curricula. It sought approval for standardized test use from administrators like the College Board. And every time a competing tech innovation came along, it lobbied to maintain its perch atop the parabola. According to Open Secrets and ProPublica data, Texas Instruments paid lobbyists to hound the Department of Education every year from 2005 to 2009 — right around the time when mobile technology and apps were becoming more of a threat. The company campaigned against devices with touchscreens, internet connection, and QWERTY keyboards” – hate the game, not the player etc. etc.

Snap Detailed Facebook’s Aggressive Tactics in ‘Project Voldemort’ Dossier – WSJ – which is being used in an antitrust investigation. No real surprises for anyone who has followed Facebook over the years. This negates Facebook’s main defence of ‘if it wasn’t us, it would be China’

The Dark Side of Techno-Utopianism | The New Yorker – the sub heading ‘Big technological shifts have always empowered reformers. They have also empowered bigots, hucksters and propagandists

New York in 1984 was the time, and the place, dance music became a culture – Features – Mixmag – great write up, the only thing missing is a name check for the Latin Rascals, Cutting Records and the Freestyle scene

Jason Dill HYPEBEAST Magazine Interview | HYPEBEAST – great interview, partly due to the car crash of journalist interviewing technique

Parenting’s New Frontier: What Happens When Your 11-Year-Old Says No to a Smartphone? – Vogue – my son had decided three things about smartphones. 1. They’re infantilizing, a set of digital apron strings meant to attach you to your mother. (He was onto something there.) 2. They compromise a boy’s resourcefulness because kids come to rely on the GPS instead of learning Scout skills. 3. They make people trivial. This final observation bugs me the most, because he still expresses it whenever he sees me jabbing at my own device: “Texty texty! Emoji emoji!” And when I play my word games, he shouts, “GAMER!” That hurts. In short, my son says, he doesn’t want a phone because he wants to be free
September 26, 2019
I like: StarTech Thunderbolt 3 adapter

I like the StarTech Thunderbolt 3 adapter, or to give it its full name: StarTech.com TBT3TBTADAP Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter.

Like many people who have bought a new Apple laptop recently. The move to USB-C / Thunderbolt 3 has been extremely disruptive. I spent a fortune on new accessories. One thing I wasn’t prepared to do was throw away my Belkin hubs and Apple Cinema monitors. I tried Apple’s own Thunderbolt 2 – Thunderbolt 3 adapter; and it worked inconsistently. One day I would switch on my computer and the monitor or hub wouldn’t work. For apparent no reason, on a seemingly random basis.

StarTech are a Canadian company who have been involved in unsexy, but necessary parts of the technology and video industry. Their focus is purely on interconnectivity of different video display standards. Whilst they aren’t a well known brand like Logitech or Belkin, there are probably some of their products used by your office sys.admin. They used to make a well respected Thunderbolt 2 hub, that didn’t seem to ship to the UK. So in desperation I decided to give their adaptors a chance.

Let’s get the negative aspects about them out of the way first. They are bulky, with the electronics coming in a case about the size of a stack of playing cards, rather than a small pack of chewing gum like Apple’s own convertors. They’re in a shade of dark grey only a sys.admin could love.

But once you get over these cosmetic issues you get a product that just works. It is ironic that I had to go to a non-Apple supplier to get this most Apple of attributes. I can wholeheartedly recommend these convertors.

More on my trials and tribulations with USB-C / Thunderbolt 3 here.

September 24, 2019
By innovation only. Yet another iPhone launch
Apple’s September 10 event ‘By innovation only’ marked the autumn season of premium smartphone launches. It is also a bellwether of what we can expect from the technology sector.

Mark Twain’s ‘History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes’ fits especially well in the smartphone business. From a consumer perspective Apple’s 2019/20 iPhone range is basically the same phones but with more camera features. Other vendors are going to come out with handsets with more camera and 5G modems.

All of them are going to be trapped in the same pictures-under-glass metaphor. The smartphone industry as a whole (with the iPhone as bellwether) is trapped in its own version of groundhog day.

5G? Not so fast

Whilst 5G sounds good on new handsets, there’s five points to consider:
- Early generation handsets for a new wireless standards tend to have poor battery lives
- 5G phones are only as good as 5G networks
- There aren’t applications to make use of 5G networks
- A lot of mobile usage happens on home or other wi-fi networks. 5G is competing with your home broadband connection rather than your patchy cellular connection
- 5G isn’t really about smartphones
When you see all launches (like this picture from the Huawei Mate 30 launch); just remember the five points above and process the slick technology spin through this lens.

In Huawei’s case they’re basically launching very pretty €1,000+ 5G Mi-Fi hotspots with point-and-shoot camera functionality, since they’re an Android phone without access to Google services. The Porsche Design variants come out at closer to €2,500 – ideal for bored, but patriotic 土豪.

Price inelasticity

Apple’s iPhone X and XS models tested the the price elasticity of premium smartphones. The market spoke. This year’s prices have stayed the same rather than increasing. You could argue that the value proposition has increased through a year’s worth of bundled services. Of course, its only worth anything if you use the services.

Differentiation through services

Seven years ago I was sat in a hotel restaurant in Seoul and overheard Flipboard going through a pitch they wanted to deliver to Samsung. Samsung eventually tried out Flipboard and free content subscriptions to help sell the Galaxy S3.

Apple decided to build their own free subscription model based around streaming video. This is to:
- Differentiate its new devices from competitors
- Provide a recurring revenue stream from iPhone users with older devices
- Utilise the massive data centres that Apple has been building for the past decade
Built to last

The use of superior materials has resulted in iPhones lasting longer. Add this to pricing and for many people, their first iPhone is a pre-owned iPhone. They are handed down in families or to older relatives. This has built Apple a large user base. The big question is whether they can turn this footprint into services.

There is a tension between new phone sales in a saturated marketplace, versus a growing base of service users.

More information

Apple Live Event: Apple Cuts Prices for Sales, New Subscribers – Bloomberg

Apple Event: Upgrades, Upgrades, Upgrades – Tech.pinions

The iPhone and Apple’s Services Strategy – Stratechery by Ben Thompson

Apple is making its iPhones last longer. That’s a good thing | Macworld
September 20, 2019