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.
I was looking at old tech magazines online and came across the reader service card. It was a proverbial blast from the past. Occasionally I come across them, usually in my books where a card was used as an impromptu bookmark. In the same way that my Dad still uses old AOL discs as a coffee coaster on his work bench.
The principle behind the reader service card was really simple. Email and messaging was only used in academic circles or within a company, with no external connection. For external communications there were:
All of these cost money and took time. Back then your company might have had a strictly enforced telephone usage policy. So ticking a box for each advert that you’re interested in seems easy. An ad opting into the scheme would have text at the bottom would go something like ‘circle 93 on inquiry card.’ That explains why reader service cards were often nicknamed bingo cards.
The cards would be collated by the publisher who would send a list of addresses and relevant information to the advertiser. The advertiser would then send you a brochure and keep you on their mailing list.
My Dad had files full of product sheets from card requests and brochures that he would reference on a regular basis alongside parts catalogues. He knew them folders inside out.
This was the web, before the web. Hewlett Packard were moving to printing brochures on demand in the mid-1990s in parallel to them building out their first website pages with relevant product information.
Wired magazine had an interesting article on revisiting old technology magazines. The idea was that while in some ways technology has progressed. In other ways, good ideas got bypassed. There are a number of Good ideas that might have more currency now. There is a contrasting ahistoric technology view held by some Silicon Valley luminaries.
Bret Victor gave a presentation ‘from 1973’, showing the fallacy of the ahistoric technology viewpoint. These ideas will be of more relevance to the audience of programmers, but you can grasp the gist of what’s going on.
One of the reasons I stuck with the Mac platform was that small development houses and lone programmers built useful software based on similarly niche concepts.
Now these software applications, alongside web services that have been developed in a similar way, like Newsblur and Pinboard are a key part of my workflow.
McDonalds Japan have a reputation for doing localised products to appeal to Japanese consumers. The flavours and the marketing are grounded in Japanese culture. They have tapped a well loved manga Touch (published during the 1980s) for an advert to promote the 30th anniversary of the chicken Tatsuda burger.
The Oxford Union is trying to keep its programme of speakers going via online sessions. Including Hong Kong exiled dissident Nathan Law.
Oxford Union
Finally Asian Boss appealed to viewers for donations as they are struggling financially and are likely to shut down soon without money. This raises questions about the effectiveness of monetisation on YouTube, even with a lightweight structure media organisation like Asian Boss.
Should you wish to do so, you can donate directly to Asian Boss here.
The gray house phenomenon is a fascinating microcosm of urban development. Gray because its a specifically American phenomenon, rather than grey. But some of the aspects of it will be equally familiar to city dwellers elsewhere.
The act of painting a brick house is a quick fix by developers, rather like body filler on old car:
…it’s a cheap, easy way to refresh a brick facade. Many rowhouses in the city are a century old, or close to it, and “you probably don’t want to risk [damaging] hundred-year-old mortar by power-washing,” notes Kevin Wood, a realtor with Slate Properties. Left as is, old brick may appear dingy—especially if the house dates to the era when coal was burned in D.C.—or it will have gaps between courses where the mortar needs repointing, a painstaking repair job. New paint can hide a multitude of small flaws.
Grayed Expectations | Washington City Paper
This causes anxiety among people who want to preserve an areas character with soot stained natural brick finish.
Flip house gray
Grey was chosen because it was an inoffensive neutral colour that was designed to blend in. Think norm core for house exteriors. Neutral colours are recommended on websites that provide advice to people looking to refurbish and resell a house. But it has come to mark out a home that was painted to sell it, or as one article put it ‘flip house gray’. It stands out in neighbourhoods and provides a visual marker for gentrification. The gray house is either for sale, or a house were people have moved into a neighbourhood.
Clifford Stott did a call with the Hong Kong Democrat Party on the Hong Kong protests. His responses also cover issues around COVID-19 and how western nations handle crises. Stott believes that China will be a malign authoritarian influence beyond Hong Kong.
Probably one of the darkest aspects of the video is when Stott points out that he visited Hong Kong at the invitation of the Hong Kong Police and wouldn’t be able to go back due to the National Security Law. More security related content here.
Tory rebels seek to block trade deal with China over Uighurs | Financial Times – Boris Johnson faces a rebellion by about 30 Tory MPs on Tuesday who are seeking to block a potential post-Brexit trade deal with China over its human rights record. The amendment to the trade deal — promoting a UK trade policy that upholds human rights — is co-sponsored by one-time Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith and former minister Nusrat Ghani. It would stop ministers from cutting trade deals with countries found guilty of genocide by the High Court. It is backed by all the opposition parties as well as the Muslim Council of Britain and the Board of Deputies of British Jews
As Adobe Flash stops running, so do some railroads in China – Tuesday’s chaos arose after China Railway Shenyang failed to deactivate Flash in time, leading to a complete shutdown of its railroads in Dalian, Liaoning province. Staffers were reportedly unable to view train operation diagrams, formulate train sequencing schedules and arrange shunting plans.Authorities fixed the issue by installing a pirated version of Flash at 4:30 a.m. the following day.
CES 2021 – the Consumer Electronics Show usually sets the tone at the start of the year for consumer-oriented technology. It usually fills up Las Vegas’ hotels and conference facilities.
CES 2021 went online only. Like attending online conferencing the experience was lacking. Networking and informal conversations aren’t something that technology has managed to solve.
Consumer electronics manufacturers didn’t let the virtual nature of CES 2021 put them off though. LG and Samsung went gangbusters rolling out new products. One can understand their enthusiasm based on CTA research for US TV sales in 2020:
Televisions: Households channeled discretionary dollars into upgrading TVs in a record-setting year for shipments in 2020. CTA expects steady demand for displays in 2021 as TVs remain the centerpiece for entertainment in homes. Television shipments will drop 8% to 43 million units in 2021, the second-highest volume on record, while revenues will decline just 1% to $22 billion. Growth areas for TVs in 2021 include sets over 70-inches (3.3 million units, up 6%) and 8K Ultra High-Definition TVs (1.7 million units, up 300%).
U.S. Tech Industry Revenue to Jump 4.3% in 2021 After Record Year in 2020, Says CTA
According Parks Associates, smart TVs were the most popular devices for streaming content. This has been on the rise since 2018. This offers a business opportunity for TV manufacturers and also a potential point of differentiation.
Based on research by Park Associates
TV vendors were looking at differentiating their products from the increasing amount of competition.
Looking at the change in TV design; where there is less distinction from the display technology, cabinet or frame design, even OS (with Android) has become commoditised – new sources of differentiation become important.
LG has been soldiering on with with version 6 of webOS, originally derived from Palm’s attempt to meld HTML 5 web service based apps on top of Linux during the mid to late noughties. (It was also interesting that Samsung didn’t do a similar thing with their Tizen OS; which is derived work done by Intel and Nokia on Linux for mobile and consumer electronics applications.)
Google Duo tried to get a jump on Zoom by having support in smart TVs. TVs were found to be supporting multiple voice assistants which implies that there has been a stalemate amongst the major players. Whether or not that will result in voice service customer us promiscuity in the home is an interesting question.
On the hardware front, Japanese manufacturers Sony & Panasonic were promoting the use of onboard machine learning to optimise image processing in real time.
SWAS – screen with a subscription
LG expanded its support of content streaming services to include streaming games platforms. Looking at the Parks Associates data, one can understand why they think that the games console market is ripe for disruption.
Samsung looked to get into the digital art market, with subscription based imagery available on its Lifestyle TV line, which look like a picture frame when off. This is only three decades after Bill Gates Xanadu 2.0 home was filled with digital art. He patented the e-picture hanging in 2003.
Samsung has gone into coopetition with Peloton with new functionality within the Samsung Health function on its TVs. But also integrating with the fitness training service. The camera and machine learning provides guidance and advice on form for exercisers. This mirrors where Apple has gone with its fitness offerings that are included in the Apple One subscription.
Sony doubled down on its content business with the Bravia CORE streaming service for its top of the range TVs. A few things with this announcement:
CORE uses up to 118Mbits/sec for ‘IMAX enhanced’ content
It is initially only a 2-year project, which implies that it might be a reaction to COVID limited box office numbers rather than an ongoing Netflix killer
It is also interesting that Sony is still hamstrung by its different lines of business and hasn’t launched a streaming games service in its TVs for fear of cannibalising PlayStation sales.
Other revenue streams on screen
LG Shop Time 2.0 built on the Shop Time app launched late last year. ShopTime allows you to buy what you see on screen with 1-click in partnership with the Home Shopping Network. Korea has a large TV shopping culture, with mobile commerce and TV experience integration, so this move seems to be a logical progression.
Picture I took on a trip to Ulsan in 2012, TV home shopping integrated with mobile commerce by scanning QRcode to buy item currently being sold on the show.
However the launch of Shop Time 2.0 is a decade on from the pioneering work by Japanese media house Girlwalker; that mixed live and streamed entertainment with 1-click shopping. Their Tokyo Girls Collection and Shibuya Girls Collection events set the standard in this kind of retail experience.
Samsung TV Plus focused on new targeted advertising capabilities with its own DSP and DMP solution. Ad tracking provides a record of everything that you watch on TV for better ad targeting.
SWAS and the other revenue streams change the game for TV manufacturers at CES 2021. Previously, a TV was once in a decade purchase. Now manufacturers have the opportunity in the upfront purchase and in multiple recurring revenue streams. The increased amount of technology in the devices, implies an expectation of faster upgrade cycles. However device security and data privacy still don’t seem to be issues on the radar of TV manufacturers.
AIoT – artificial intelligence of things
In the same way that fuzzy logic made its way into consumer electronics from rice cookers and cameras to lifts, connected machine learning is now taking a similar path with variable results. Machine learning seemed to feature in CTA Innovation Award Honorees across categories at CES 2021.
The COVID-19 factor
CES 2021 itself went virtual because of the pandemic. And two trends became apparent. Machines replaced service staff with devices like an autonomous shopping trolley that would follow the consumer around a supermarket. The second was disinfection, with UV light used as a the go-to germ-killing technique. LG had a number of robots for aiding in hotel room service functions such as delivering items including food packages. There was also a bot for sterilising empty rooms with UV. Accessories company Targus won an award for its UV-C desktop disinfection lamp.
