Ged Carroll

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.

  • Facebook eroding & other news

    Facebook eroding

    The tweet about Facebook eroding is part of a greater issue of what Facebook is calling internally ‘context collapse‘. Facebook recognised the issue back in 2015. There are several likely reasons for Facebook eroding:

    • Negative network effects
    • Societal norming on social media content
    • Lack of trust in the facebook brand
    • People just don’t like Facebook as a platform that much

    Business

    After Anbang Takeover, China’s Deal Money, Already Ebbing, Could Slow Further – The New York Times

    Hello, mobile operators? This is your age of disruption calling | McKinsey & Company – lots of buzz words, diagnosis but not a glimpse of a way forward

    Edelman Revenue Up 2.1% In 2018 To $894m | Holmes Report – given that all the global PR groups have had exceptionally low growth or even declines

    How Douyin became China’s top short-video App in 500 days – WalktheChat

    Wireless

    Nokia on 5G at MWC, what struck me is the sales pitch was more like an enterprise software company like IBM or Oracle than a telecoms vendor. There is lots of tech in the networks but there isn’t a recognisable killer app. His warnings about 5G upgradeable products ring true though.

    Consumer behaviour

    Asian Boss do some really nice street interviews in different Asian cities and this one about Apple iPhones in Korea is particularly instructive. Samsung is seen as the default phone as they assemble phones (mostly for Asian markets) in Korea. Whereas in Europe all of the are made in China. When I lived in Hong Kong, both Samsung and LG emphasised that they made their phones in Korea with an implicit quality guarantee. 

    The iPhone seems to have won out on product design amongst younger people. but one shouldn’t ignore the desire to support the national brand. 

  • Operaatio Elop

    Nokia

    Operaatio Elop covers one of the most dramatic events in Finland since the Winter War. At the time of Nokia’s high point it accounted for over 25% of the Finnish economy. There has seldom been a fall so drastic as Nokia’s fall in the mobile phone market from leading player to disaster. With that fall came the humbling of an entire country.

    Given the scale of the fall and the size of Nokia as a brand around the world, I was surprised the the Operaatio Elop hadn’t been translated and published in different language editions. Instead it was up to numerous Finns to crowdsource a translation into English for free and provide it on an as is basis.

    Has Nokia’s fall had been so complete that it literally fell out of interest for non-Finns?

    What becomes apparent is that a story more nuanced than the press coverage would allow. Elop comes out of it a flawed tragic figure – a one-trick pony; rather than a skilful trojan horse.

    Nokia’s feature phone line up where surprisingly a hero of the piece contributing positively to the business for longer than I would have expected and slowing down the business collapse precipitated in the smartphone business.

    Nokia’s board of directors and former management come out of it much worse.

    Fatal flaws

    Nokia’s strengths had become its weakness.

    • Smartphone manufacturing processes weren’t ready for mass adoption
    • MeeGo had been unfairly assessed
    • It blew its marketing budget on a bet on the North American market, ignoring other countries
    • The marketing budget was spent too early and all at once. What resulted was an ineffective and inefficient marketing campaign. By my reckoning it was roughly $100 per phone sold during the launch of the Lumia range in the US
    • Poor quality Windows Phone software, small Windows Phone application ecosystem and cheap Android phones were key issues
    • Chip technology partner issues from its relationship with Qualcomm to Intel’s failure in 4G as it focused on WiMax rather than LTE

    The more pertinent question would be is there any circumstances where Nokia stood a chance of staying on top in the mobile phone marketplace? Operaatio Elop is a compelling but balanced read and I can’t recommend it highly enough. More book reviews here.

  • Twitter for Mac – some alternatives

    Twitter’s desktop client on the Mac has been pulled from the app store and won’t be supported any more. It is time to look for an alternative.  What you should choose depends on how you use Twitter, I’ve tried to outline what I consider are the best native Mac apps for Twitter.

    The alternative that I use is Night Owl (夜フクロウ or YoruFukurou)  which is a small lightweight client put together by a Japanese development team. I used it historically because it had a small footprint on my desktop which is handy when you a list running in the background. It allows you to use many of the same ‘short cut’ commands that used to be available when you could use Twitter via SMS – it helps in running a productive app now.  I have a breaking news list that I use, this is what it looks like.

    Night Owl

    You can download Night Owl from the Apple App Store or their website.

    Twitterific is probably the best maintained out of all the Twitter clients for the Mac, it looks similar to Night Owl and costs £7.99 on the app store.

    Echofon has a similar layout to Night Owl , but charges you £9.99 for the privilege. It has also hasn’t been updated as often as Night Owl.  Echofon comes in full price and light versions in the App store.

    If you are managing social media accounts then Tweetdeck is an obvious option. It’s multiple panels create a screen-wide dashboard so that you can handle mentions, direct messages and keep an eye on trending topics. It’s been last updated in 2015 and I’ve heard anecdotal evidence of it being buggy.

    An alternative to TweetDeck is Janetter Pro which provides a similar look and feel to TweetDeck but allows for further customisation including custom wallpapers (if you care about that kind of thing). It also supports multiple languages for the app interface including Japanese, Korean and simplified Chinese.  Janetter Pro was updated in May 2017, it costs £4.99, you can find out more on their website and in the app store. There is also a free version in the App Store. In my opinion Janetter Pro is an overlooked gem of a product if you want a comprehensive dashboard view. If I had to do Twitter community management, I’d invest in Janetter Pro.

    Tweetbot is the editors choice on the Apple App store and comes in at a premium price of £9.99, for this you get an interface that can flex between the Night Owl and Tweetdeck style interface design.

  • Traffic experiments + more things

    Fascinating Traffic Experiments by Publishers (by @baekdal) #analysis  – Presence is often a very big part of the effect that you can have, in that, if you can be present in people’s minds, you often experience a kind of spillover effect on your business as a whole. This is not just true for content, but also everything else … like advertising. We know that creating an ad campaign where you show up in front of people continually over time is far more effective than just having one good ad. – a great delve into online with these traffic experiments. The practice of digital advertising tries to move away from ‘traditional’ advertising thinking a la branded recall. But it ends up validating it. The comment particularly resonates the findings of people like Byron Sharp. More related posts here.

    Great video essay on the Yamaha DX-7 synthesiser. After you listen to the bits on percussion you’ll never listen to your iPhone ringtones in quite the same way again.

    Systems Confrontation and System Destruction Warfare: How the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Seeks to Wage Modern Warfare | RAND – interesting to read. The concept of system destruction warfare [体系破击战] is also a good analogy for the way Amazon in particular has acted the in the commercial sphere (PDF)

    Android Wear is getting killed, and it’s all Qualcomm’s fault | Ars Technica – this assumes that the problem with Android Wear is a supply side issue with silicon, it doesn’t ask if Qualcomm sees it as a demand side issue and has moved on?

    The Shift: His 2020 Campaign Message: The Robots Are Coming | NYTimes.com – interesting how the debate about automation has been internalised and weaponised by politicians (paywall)

    Useful video, well worth a watch about applying Bayes Theorem to everyday life

    Key takeouts:

    • Remember your priors – what do you know about the context in advance of making an assumption
    • Imagine that your hypothesis is wrong? Would the world look different? – it forces you to check your presumptive assumptions
    • Update incrementally – all yourself to gradually change your mind based on updated information (flexible stance rather than dogmatic belief, as body of proof builds over time)

  • Connie Chan + more things

    I love Connie Chan blog posts and presentations. In this talk she covers how Asian applications manage to squeeze so much more features into their apps than their western equivalent to provide a fuller eco-system of services that she terms super-apps.

    Connie Chan isn’t only smart, but manages to talk about Chinese eco-systems in a simple coherent way, which is an art in itself. More Connie Chan related content here.

    Interesting couple of articles on the user behaviour associated voice command enabled speakers – Alexa and Google Assistant have a problem: People aren’t sticking with voice apps they try – Recode and Alexa, We’re Still Trying to Figure Out What to Do With You – The New York Times – (paywall) – the low hardware price seems to be encouraging trial but that’s about it for now

    Nike footwear supplier Yue Yuen to make HK$6.7b from retail arm’s privatisation plan | SCMP – it makes sense given the rise of e-commerce in China

    The staggering scale of China’s Belt and Road initiative – Axios – scale of ambition is impressive but one also needs to think about maintenance. A lot of British laid railway and roads no longer exist due to a lack of maintenance after they left

    Why we post – Interesting UCL project

    For These Young Entrepreneurs, Silicon Valley Is, Like, Lame – WSJ  – for most of the 18 entrepreneurs and investors, and especially for those in their 20s and 30s, last week’s visit largely failed to impress. To many in the group, northern California’s low-rise buildings looked shabbier than the glitzy skyscrapers in Beijing and Shenzhen. They can’t believe Americans still use credit cards and cash while they use mobile payment for almost everything back home – not terribly surprised. Silicon Valley is no longer the place ‘where wizards stay up late’. Agencies work harder than their Bay Area tech clients and it is full of hubris

    The Fall of Travis Kalanick Was a Lot Weirder and Darker Than You Thought – Bloomberg – actually I am not that surprised

    Luxury is thriving in China again, thanks to millennials — Quartz – Chinese millennials start buying luxury younger, and they buy high-end products more frequently, the firm says. (It undoubtedly helps that they have more spending power than previous generations did at their age.) What they’re buying is also different. Bain surveyed about 500 Chinese millennials and found their interests leaned toward casual and street-inspired fashion – Supreme rather than Prada, put into context here

    Luxury Daily | Rimowa undergoes rebrand – on the cusp of their 120 years in the business, reminds me of all the metal stamped information on each case

    Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Using page speed in mobile search ranking – makes total sense

    Readiness for the future of production | AT Kearney for World Economic Forum – interesting assessement

    Global expectations for 2018 | Ipsos – what the world thinks will happen (PDF)

    The techlash against Amazon, Facebook and Google—and what they can do – A memo to big tech – reading Scott Galloway The Four at the moment, it seems to be the zeitgeist

    Snap confirms reports of up to 24 redundancies in a bid to ‘scale internally’ | The Drum – no, it doesn’t make any sense to me either

    RA: Moodymann: A Detroit enigma – via our Jed

    Huawei – Really Convincing Story, Not. | Radio Free Mobile  – this means that this feature (RCS – Rich Communication Services), like its AI assistant, AI chip and its now commoditised imaging offering will be unable to generate any differentiation for Huawei in its devices. This leaves it exactly the same boat as all of the other Android handset makers who differentiate purely on the basis of hardware

    APAC ads fail at integration, says Kantar Millward Brown study | Marketing Interactive