Ged Carroll

Category: japan |日本 | 일본

Yōkoso – welcome to the Japan category of this blog. This blog was inspired by my love of Japanese culture and their consumer trends. I was introduced to chambara films thanks to being a fan of Sergio Leone’s dollars trilogy. A Fistful of Dollars was heavily influenced by Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo.

Getting to watch Akira and Ghost In The Shell for the first time were seminal moments in my life. I was fortunate to have lived in Liverpool when the 051 was an arthouse cinema and later on going to the BFI in London on a regular basis.

Today this is where I share anything that relates to Japan, business issues, the Japanese people or culture. Often posts that appear in this category will appear in other categories as well. So if Lawson launched a new brand collaboration with Nissan to sell a special edition Nissan Skyline GT-R. And that I thought was particularly interesting or noteworthy, that might appear in branding as well as Japan.

There is a lot of Japan-related content here. Japanese culture was one of odd the original inspirations for this blog hence my reference to chambara films in the blog name.

I don’t tend to comment on local politics because I don’t understand it that well, but I am interested when it intersects with business. An example of this would be legal issues affecting the media sector for instance.

If there are any Japanese related subjects that you think would fit with this blog, feel free to let me know by leaving a comment in the ‘Get in touch’ section of this blog here.

  • AI love advice + more things

    Japanese communications company to introduce AI love advice specialist | Rocket News 24 – we can all stand around an snigger about this. But it’s also really interesting. One of the ways that Yahoo! failed to innovate around search was a concept they called knowledge search. This was about opinions rather than facts: what’s the best place to get a cup of coffee in Greenwich? Yahoo! had envisioned it would be people powered.

    Eventually it would become Yahoo! Answers – which filled up with spam content. This was a fault of incentives and community management not principle as Quora proved. The more pertinent question would be: what would stop an AI love advice specialist?

    China’s Baidu Misses Expectations As Net Profit Crashes 18.9% | ChinaTechNews – Baidu is between a rock and a hard place. Yes it has a market protected from Google. But it is also shut out of the WeChat walled garden. Alibaba is where most purchases happen so Baidu isn’t that needed and they’re at the mercy of the Chinese government. Success has a price

    Spy Chief Complains That Edward Snowden Sped Up Spread of Encryption by 7 Years  – it came from the National Security Agency. “The projected growth maturation and installation of commercially available encryption — what they had forecasted for seven years ahead, three years ago, was accelerated to now, because of the revelation of the leaks.” More on privacy related posts here.

    Microsoft Flow is like IFTTT for connecting cloud services – Business Insider – back in the day this would have been called middleware. When I started off my agency career I happened to have telecoms clients. A lot of my colleagues had small software companies that provided software components for ‘n-tier’ systems. This allowed development of flexible and reusable apps. Logic and processing of data could be built into workflows.

  • WeChat payments + more things

    WeChat payments and wallet function brought to the international version of WeChat with its last version update, but I only noticed it this week. Does this mean that WeChat is now putting all the pieces in place before they get serious about an international market push? They are already trying to get foreign credit card merchants on board accepting WeChat payments to  provide extra convenience for Chinese consumers travelling abroad.
    WeChat wallet now for louwai
    TfL brought back its experiment for having people stand on both sides of the escalators. For those of us who live in London this is quite a change to our usual routine. We are used to standing on the right or moving along the escalator on the left. It caught me out the first time that I visited London.

    But TfL research found that you net out moving people more efficiently by encouraging everyone to stand. This allows a ‘denser’ escalator and better times clearing people off platforms.
    Stand on both sides - people living outside London won't realise what a paradigm shift this is
    A comparable shift would be say, New Yorkers suddenly becoming unfailingly polite and accommodating. I do quite like the ‘blue pill’ footprints that TfL use for signage on the escalators.

    Japanese producer TOYOMU reimagined Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo based on reviews and a list of the samples used. Japan hasn’t embraced streaming music unlike western lemmings music buyers. I think what he came up with is far better, see for yourself.

    Forthcoming Russian superhero film Guardians looks even more intense than the Night Watch and Day Watch films. Apparently the bear packs a chain cannon a la Jesse Venture in Predator.

    Luxxury releases Greg Wilson remixes of the their track on yellow vinyl, have a preview of it here. I am a huge fan of Luxxury and the lush nu-disco products that he manages to come up with.  More Luxxury sounds here.

  • IBM guilty + more news

    IBM guilty of age discrimination

    I, Cringely Is IBM guilty of age discrimination? – Part two – I, Cringely – this could get very interesting, IBM guilty in a court of law would pose a wide range of problems from a political and regulatory point-of-view. There will also be issues in terms of skillsets for looking after large legacy systems. More on IBM here.

    Consumer behaviour

    Has Desktop Internet Use Peaked? – WSJ – Data from the research company indicate overall time spent online in the U.S. from desktop devices—which include laptop computers—has fallen for the past four months, on a year-over-year basis. It dipped 9.3% in December 2015, 7.6% in January, 2% in February and 6% in March (paywall)

    Culture

    A Japanese guy remade The Life of Pablo without hearing it | Dazed – I think its better than the real thing

    Media

    Copyright fight club – POLITICO – Hollywood in one corner, internet companies in the other

    6 Reasons BuzzFeed’s Revenue Miss Is OMG! – BuzzFeed’s supposed to be the media company that holds the answer to the media business’s future in a post-banner world

    Online

    UC Davis pepper spray: PHOTOS – Business Insider – interesting case study of online PR clean-up that didn’t quite work out

    Rocket Internet Vows to Limit Losses After 2015 Cash Burn | BoF – just wow

    企鹅智酷 | Tencent Penguin Intelligence – great online research resource in Chinese

    The CIA Is Investing in Firms That Mine Your Tweets and Instagram Photos – (paywall)

    Security

    FBI hasn’t learned anything from unlocked San Bernardino iPhone, says report – CNET – quelle surprise, I can’t even believe that this is news

    Daring Fireball: Motherboard: How Canadian Police Intercept and Read Encrypted BlackBerry Messages – basically if you aren’t running your own Business Enterprise Server, your BlackBerry messages and email are up for grabs. If the police have the key you can bet other people can get their hands on it as well – a la the criminal record database access that is acquired by private investigators through nefarious means

    Web of no web

    Why New York Subway Lines Are Missing Countdown Clocks – The Atlantic – if you look at the lifespan of the equipment deployed, how would Intenet of Heavier Things last as long?

    The return of the QR code? | The Digerati – the QRcode never really went away, what is interesting is how Facebook has gone for something proprietary in its code design for Messenger

  • Facebook Live + more things

    Facebook live

    A Facebook live streaming service (a la U-Stream and YouTube) was newly launched this week. You can stream on your page or in-group. There is a map to discover streams going on in realtime. I already  found one seminar by Nu-Skin a multi-level marketer of wellness and beauty products in Hong Kong as an example of where Facebook Live was being used from a commercial perspective.

    The Stanton Warriors embraced the new Facebook live streaming service to promote further fan interaction whilst they were in the studio. It will be interesting to see the best and worst that brands do with this medium. From a piracy point-of-view I would imagine that it is likely to be used for streaming live sports coverage – expect the Premier League to be very unhappy.

    RUN and RUN

    Not exactly the same sound but J-Pop act lyrical school’s debut track RUN and RUN has a really clever smartphone optimised video with amazing breaks of the fourth wall.

    UPDATE: Our James pointed me in the direction of an even better link for the RUN and RUN video on Vimeo that I hope works here

    RUN and RUN / lyrical school 【MV for Smartphone】 from RUNandRUN_lyrisch on Vimeo.

    If you can’t see anything point your browser here.

    Godzilla

    Japan’s king of all monsters, Godzilla returns from chilling out on Monster Island for his 31st outing in the Japanese cinema. This new trailer is interesting as the visuals evoke Fukushima Daiichi  nuclear disaster and the Great Tohoku Earthquake of 2011. Check out the Cloverfield-esque shots in the 30 second trailer below. There is a longer trailer where Godzilla appears fully in shot leaving no mystery to how bad ass he is this time. This means that the film is likely to go beyond his usual mayhem and might touch on contemporary issues.

    Vintage CGI

    Last, but not least; a vintage show reel by 1980s CGI shop MAGI Synthavision in its full neon wireframe magnificence and southern country rock soundtrack. More similar visual stuff here.