Ged Carroll

Category: ideas | 想法 | 생각 | 考える

Ideas were at the at the heart of why I started this blog. One of the first posts that I wrote there being a sweet spot in the complexity of products based on the ideas of Dan Greer. I wrote about the first online election fought by Howard Dean, which now looks like a precursor to the Obama and Trump presidential bids.

I articulated a belief I still have in the benefits of USB thumb drives as the Thumb Drive Gospel. The odd rant about IT, a reflection on the power of loose social networks, thoughts on internet freedom – an idea that that I have come back to touch on numerous times over the years as the online environment has changed.

Many of the ideas that I discussed came from books like Kim and Mauborgne’s Blue Ocean Strategy.

I was able to provide an insider perspective on Brad Garlinghouse’s infamous Peanut Butter-gate debacle. It says a lot about the lack of leadership that Garlinghouse didn’t get fired for what was a power play. Garlinghouse has gone on to become CEO of Ripple.

I built on initial thoughts by Stephen Davies on the intersection between online and public relations with a particular focus on definition to try and come up with unifying ideas.

Or why thought leadership is a less useful idea than demonstrating authority of a particular subject.

I touched on various retailing ideas including the massive expansion in private label products with grades of ‘premiumness’.

I’ve also spent a good deal of time thinking about the role of technology to separate us from the hoi polloi. But this was about active choice rather than an algorithmic filter bubble.

 

  • Fairphone 2 + more things

    Fairphone 2 – a pre-production review of the new modular smartphone – Computing – a review of a Project Aria-esque device. The Fairphone 2 is similar to Jolla, which also experimented with their ‘other half’ concept but no eco-system built up around it. It will be interesting to see if Fairphone 2 can be any more successful

    16 Deals Feeding Chip Biz’s Merger Fever | EE Times – the flurry of M&A activity is the product of Wall Street’s relentless pressure on chip companies to show revenue growth that cannot be achieved organically

    Online IT Project Management Software | LiquidPlanner – interesting project management software

    Will digital books ever replace print? – Craig Mod – Aeon – Digital books stagnate in closed, dull systems, while printed books are shareable, lovely and enduring. What comes next? – which is usually the kind of problem digital solves….

    No More Coffee Queues, Starbucks Mobile Order and Pay Comes to London | Lifehacker – I hope that it has less friction than Qkr

    Samsung refutes claims that its TVs are more energy-efficient in lab tests than real life | VentureBeat – it will be interesting to see how this plays out

    Have The World’s TV Makers Been ‘Doing a Volkswagen’? | Time – Samsung accused of cheating on energy consumption tests for TVs

    This Is Why Dunkin’ Donuts Is Closing 100 Stores | Time – aggressive market for breakfasts in the US

    IBM’s super fast, powerful and tiny carbon computer chips could soon be in all our devices | Quartz – if they don’t mess it up like Josephson Junction chips in the 1980s. More technology related posts here.

    Caffeinated Peanut Butter Is Here | Time – putting this on my wishlist from Santa Claus

    How Steve Jobs Fleeced Carly Fiorina — Backchannel — Medium – something that Steven Levy doesn’t not but in an added piece of irony of this is that Compaq had one of the first hard disk based MP3 players that no one remembers any more. It was a product licensed to Hango Electronics and sold as the Personal Jukebox

    Amazon to Ban Sale of Apple, Google Video-Streaming Devices – Bloomberg Business – so the back of your TV is going to be festooned with boondoggles and black hockey pucks as everyone decides to play nasty

    Synaptics Said to Shun $110-a-Share Bid From China Investor – Bloomberg Business – which would help China’s strategic position to be higher up the food chain on chip design

    Google, Microsoft Resolve Patent Fight Over Phones, Xbox – Bloomberg Business – war on trolls like Microsoft founder Paul Allen and his business Intellectual Ventures. Will Microsoft still be taxing Android phone makers though?

    iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus Preliminary Results | Anandtech – interesting how performance has been improved across the circuit board including memory access and processor performance

    Phil Knight sees the finish line as Nike’s leader | US Today – kind of a big deal in the sports industry

    Why have marketers stopped putting creativity first? | CampaignLive – I’d also add that performance marketing has created a culture of marketing being about Excel spreadsheets

    brandchannel: Reader’s Digest Owner Rebrands to Trusted Media Brands – it makes sense as Readers Digest is actually a stable of magazines

    Never not wrong: Saying Apple should ditch its chips | Macworld – but that doesn’t stop it from licencing more Qualcomm technology

  • Being Digital by Nicholas Negroponte

    Strictly speaking this is a bit different from when I have written about books. This is the second time that I read Being Digital, the first time was during my final year in college.
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    I was curious to know how the book would hold up in the space of 20 years since it was first published. In twenty years we’ve seen televisions shrink as we moved from cathode ray tubes to plasma and LCD displays. The cost of telephone calls has declined, cellphones are really no longer phones but a type of mobile computer that happens to do voice calls poorly. The dominant form of personal computing is Android rather than Windows. The internet has facilitated a raft of services that used to exist in the real world or didn’t exist previously.

    In the subsequent 20 years Negroponte has gone from being one of digital’s poster children with a column in Wired and his leading role at MIT Media Lab to a more obscure position in digital history. His biography over at MIT has him listed as sitting on the board of Motorola Inc.

    It is easy to dismiss his showmanship and bluster, but the Negroponte did work that foreshadowed in-car sat navigation devices, Google Street View and the modern stylus-less touch screen.

    The book first of all emphasises how far we have come when it talks about 9600 baud connections, I am writing this post sat on the end of an internet connection that provides 50mbps download and 10mbps upload – and that’s slow compared to the speeds that I enjoyed in Hong Kong. Negroponte envisioned that satellites would have a greater role in internet access than it seems to currently have, cellular networks seem to have brought that disruption instead.

    It has the tone of boundless optimism that seemed to exemplify technology writing in the mid-to-late 1990s but with not quite the messianic feel of peer George Gilder. Negroponte smartly hedges his bets for where the ‘rubber hits the road’ as society brings some odd effects in on technology usage.

    Online media

    Negroponte grasped the importance of digital and the internet as a medium for the provision of media content. That sounds like a no brainer but back in the day the record industry didn’t get it. In fact record industry went on to make blockbuster profits for another five years, N’Sync was the best selling artist of the year in 2000 with No Strings Attached selling 9.94 million copies. Over the next decade or so profits halved in the face of determined record label countermeasures including suing their customers.

    OTT and cord cutting

    Negroponte was dismissive of high definition video and television considering it wasteful of bandwidth. On this I get the sense that he is both right and wrong. We are surrounded by high definition screens (even 4K mobile screens – where their size doesn’t allow you to appreciate the full clarity of the image). But this doesn’t mean that our entertainment has to come in high definition, much YouTube isn’t watched on full screen for instance.

    Disruption of publishing

    Negroponte grasped that it would also shake up the book industry and Being Digital has been published in a number of e-book reader formats, but at the moment the experience of digital books leaves something to be desired compared to traditional books.

    Tablets

    Negroponte labours a surprising amount of copy on tablet devices. At the time that he published his book GO was in competition with Microsoft with pen computing devices and software, EO had launched their personal communicator – a phablet sized cellular network connected pen tablet and the first Apple Newton had launched in 1993. Negroponte goes on to insist that the finger is the best stylus. MIT Media Lab had done research on the stylus-less touch experience, but reading the article reminded me of the points Steve Jobs had made about touch on the original iPhone and iPad.  It is also mirrored in the Ron Arad concepts I mentioned in an earlier blog post.

    Agents

    Negroponte considered that we would be supported in our online lives with agents that would provide contextual content and do tasks, which is where Google Now, Siri and Cortana have tried to go. However his writing implies an agent that is less ‘visible’ and in the face of the user.

    Negroponte’s critique of virtual reality at the time provides good insight as to how much progress Oculus Rift and other similar products have made. He points out the technical and user experience challenges really well. If anyone is thinking about immersive experiences, it is well worth a read.

    Going back and reading the book provided me an opportunity reflect on where we have come to in the past twenty years and Negroponte’s instincts where mostly right.

    More information

    Nicholas Negroponte – biography | MIT Media Lab

  • Ron Arad’s tablet design concept for LG

    Ron Arad is more famous for his architecture and art than product design. I went along to see him speak at an event that is part of London Design Festival last week thanks to the China-Britain Cultural Exchange Association. Arad’s presentation felt largely unplanned as the curator of the talk asked him to jump around from project to project rather than a clear narrative being presented. Arad showed imagery or video that he then talked around.

    During the presentation he showed off the design concept that he did for LG that pre-dated the iPad. It sounded at the event like Ron Arad had started his thinking in 1997, but the sources I looked at online stated that this project was done in 2002 and the video copy I found on YouTube states that the copyright is 2003.


    The video is quite prescient in a number of ways

    • The device was primarily about content consumption and messaging
    • He nailed the in-home use case, with the exception of realising that the iPad may be a communal shared device rather than belonging to an individual
    • It has a flat design interface (though this might be a limitation of their ability to create it on video and a spin on the circular LG logo)
    • The soft keyboard on screen
    • There is no stylus
      There was auto-rotation of the screen
    • It has no user serviceable parts (this was at the time when cellphones and laptops came with detachable batteries)
    • Inductive charging with a table rather than the small pad used by the like of the Microsoft/Nokia Lumia devices
    • The way the controls where superimposed on footage of the user working with the device is reminiscent of the way TV and films are now treating parts of a plot that involves messaging

    There were a few things that it got wrong:

    • Arad clearly didn’t understand the significance of the iPod, so the device had an optical drive rather than side loaded video content
    • The device is really big, more like a laptop screen than a phablet, a la the iPad Mini or Galaxy Tab
    • The form factor was too thick, understandably so when they are trying to squeeze a battery and optical drive in the device, the thickness had a benefit in that the device was self-standing. Apple relied on covers and cases to provide the standing mechanism

    More gadget-related posts here.

    More information

    The Israeli designer who (almost) invented the iPad | Times of Israel
    The Simple Way “Sherlock” Solved Hollywood’s Problem With Text Messaging | Fast Company

  • Traackr – beyond the buzzword event

    Thanks to Delphine at Traackr UK for inviting me alone to their event last week. I started to make notes about what was being presented but in the end also started writing reactive notes as thoughts occurred to me.  Here they are below (with the spelling corrected).
    IMG_7976The event was given the theme of ‘beyond the buzzword’ which has multiple interpretations – Traackr looks at influencers more like a granular taxonomy than around keywords, but it also signifies a mainstreaming of ‘influencer marketing’.

    There was an explanation of why influencer marketing
          • Authoritative content
          • The ability to better scale high touch relationships, something that traditional public relations isn’t able to do. The mix of people in the room from marketing agencies and PR agencies gives an idea of how ‘blended’ the concept of influencer marketing is. PR agencies see it as an extension of PR, specialist agencies see it in a different light and mainstream marketing agencies see it as an extension of their content marketing divisions

    What became apparent to me during listening to the introduction and the presentations was that Traackr and the people on stage hadn’t met the same requirements I’d heard from clients with regards a business case for influencer marketing. Influencer marketing wasn’t quite taken as an article of faith, but considered to be a good thing. There was a focus on measurement benchmarking and a lack of concern over RoI or the lack of econometric data to back up the decision. The lack of econometric data to support PR is starting to become an issue and may affect where PR sits (at least in B2B environments at least for those companies with a strong marketing automation programme in place). IMG_7966
    There was some hints that influencer marketing was looked at in a similar to customer services, in particular the advocacy journey above reminded me of customer service models.

    Coca Cola

    Coca-Cola focus the majority of their influencer relations programmes on what Brian Solis calls the Magic middle, the point at between the head and the long tail in a ‘long tail distribution’, the man from Coca-Cola defined this as  ‘people who don’t have agents and strong bonds with followers’. They are likely to know the majority of their followers personally. They use interaction and prize give-aways as a way of encouraging brand advocacy and continued heavy consumption patterns. In a similar way to on pack tokens and giveaways would have done in pre-internet times.
    They also like to do activities that encourage co-creation and in-real-life (IRL) interaction was consider the acme of these campaign interactions. When asked about whether they use sponsored / affiliate marketing of magic middle influencers – Coca-Cola generally don’t touch them. They only pay for a-listers and this seems to be on a market-by-market basis.
    Interestingly, they use Traackr to consolidate programme data, keep things up to date, integrate with rest of the toolbox. I wonder what would be economics of this approach rather than using Salesforce’s tools to provide the customer records?
     The objectives for influencer marketing at Coca-Cola where around brand love, brand affinity and purchase intent – which makes sense given the dynamics of the mature market oligarchy that they operate in.

    De Grisogono

    De Grisogono is a Swiss-based jewellery brand that also make mens watches. They discussed their use of influencer marketing as part of a panel discussion. Historically luxury brands had been slow to react to social platforms due to their perception of exclusivity and what it meant to be exclusive. In many cases social was imposed by customers on the brands. De Grisogono sees social and influencer marketing as an extension of their IRL social events. Since they are a relatively new brand there was  also no heritage as baggage.
    There overall intent is to drive footfall into stores, however it was interesting that they don’t look at location-based services like Swarm/Foursquare and instead focus on content channels. They don’t need to look at customer segmentation, since their approach to pricing does that for them.
    They qualify influencers based on expertise and passion. Generally their jewellery influencers have 30-50,000 followers, mens watch influencers have less. This is in sharp contrast to fashion bloggers who may have millions of followers.
    When thinking about influencer relations they put a focus on how they design content and experiences. They also pay a lot of attention to provide clients and prospects at any IRL events that influencers attend with adequate privacy.
    The brand produces content that features influencer, to keep the production levels high. User generated content is not obvious for for a luxury brand (despite customers taking selfies) – De Grisogono take a more graduated control of visual content than other brands.
    In trying to define the ROI, De Grisogono said that they don’t measure it explicitly but have noticed a causality between influencer coverage  and a 300 percent increase in press coverage.

  • Total app time + more things

    Smartphone App Users Spend Half of Their Total App Time With Their Favorite One | Marketing Charts – which had big implications for the app economy. Total app time is an extreme example of the long tail

    EPIC – Decision by EU Legal Advisor Signals End of “Safe Harbor” – big affect on American marketing companies and requires cloud providers to have European data shards if they don’t already

    Bye Bye U-2: CIA Legend Allen Predicts End Of Manned Reconnaissance « Breaking Defense – inevitable. Not having to have the payload of a pilot, with supporting supporting safety and life support systems

    Corporate reputation cannot be managed, built or protected by PR people alone | Marketing Interactive – interesting article not so much because of its assertions about social media, but that it implies PR is becoming a philosophy, think ‘marketing orientated organisations’ versus ‘sales orientated organisations’ as marketers used to discuss them

    Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100 At A Cost Of $35M, Shutters Operations In 7 Countries | TechCrunch – I was surprised to see Taiwan and Thailand on these lists

    Luxury brands can be their own worst enemy | CNBC – devaluing and diluting their brand. More luxury related content here.

    Atlas by Quartz – a great resource to find research

    Goldman Sachs is using Snapchat stories to lure millennials into its workforce | BusinessInsider – interesting use of SnapChat for corporate marketing

    Lenovo appoints ex-McKinsey executive Gordon Orr to board as group diversifies from PCs to mobile and enterprise | South China Morning Post – Orr, who currently also serves as a non-executive director at Hong Kong-listed conglomerate Swire Pacific, retired from McKinsey last month. (Paywall)

    Urban Networks: Spreading the flow of goods, people and ideas – Glaeser, Ponzetto & Zau – interesting study on how architecture impacts use, adoption and effects of technology – puts a new take on smart cities (PDF)

    U.S. and China Seek Arms Deal for Cyberspace – The New York Times – this isn’t going to solve US problems around data breaches

    Alibaba Shares, Down 45% From Their Peak, Have Had A Wild First Year – TheStreet – whilst the Chinese economy is quieter, there is still a growth opportunity in disrupting bricks-and-mortar stores. Chinese department stores have suffered financially, its a train that isn’t likely to stop

    Legendary CPU architect Jim Keller leaves AMD – HEXUS.net – its amazing how AMD’s fortunes have changed since I worked on them nine years ago. At that time they were a worthy challenger in desktop and server market

    D-Link Private Code-Signing Keys Leaked | Threatpost – so potentially lots of compromised routers that can be built into a distributed bot net with the right skills….

    Facebook Now Lets Advertisers Pay Only For Fully Visible Ads | Fast Company – which will appeal a lot to big advertisers like Unilever

    Samsung’s S Health is now available for all Android smartphones | Android Central – interesting the way they have expanded it, originally this would have been a Samsung USPP, there must be a gain in having a wider data pool?

    Coca-Cola Sees No Sales Impact From Online Buzz; Says Digital Display As Effective As TV | CMO Strategy – Advertising Age – really interesting study on the effect of social. One problem is that of data quality

    Unilever Finds Social-Media Buzz Really Does Drive Sales | Advertising Age – interesting how social doesn’t help Coca-Cola but does help Unilever, context is much more nuanced

    EPA accuses Volkswagen, Audi of evading emission laws | USA Today – this is huge. The potential reputation damage to VW group brands is huge. It’s also an impressive hack

    Beijing goes up against Uber, Didi Kuaidi with its own car-hailing app | SCMP – I thought that Didi Kuaidi was the government’s champion but it isn’t apparently. A bit like ZTE is an outsider compared to Huawei. Is Didi Kuaidi’s expansion abroad through investing in Lyft a factor in this? (paywall)