The online field has been one of the mainstays since I started writing online in 2003. My act of writing online was partly to understand online as a medium.
Online has changed in nature. It was first a destination and plane of travel. Early netizens saw it as virgin frontier territory, rather like the early American pioneers viewed the open vistas of the western United States. Or later travellers moving west into the newly developing cities and towns from San Francisco to Los Angeles.
America might now be fenced in and the land claimed, but there was a new boundless electronic frontier out there. As the frontier grew more people dialled up to log into it. Then there was the metaphor of web surfing. Surfing the internet as a phrase was popularised by computer programmer Mark McCahill. He saw it as a clear analogue to ‘channel surfing’ changing from station to station on a television set because nothing grabs your attention.
Web surfing tapped into the line of travel and 1990s cool. Surfing like all extreme sport at the time was cool. And the internet grabbed your attention.
Broadband access, wi-fi and mobile data changed the nature of things. It altered what was consumed and where it was consumed. The sitting room TV was connected to the internet to receive content from download and streaming services. Online radio, podcasts and playlists supplanted the transistor radio in the kitchen.
Multi-screening became a thing, tweeting along real time opinions to reality TV and live current affairs programmes. Online became a wrapper that at its worst envelopes us in a media miasma of shrill voices, vacuous content and disinformation.
The key themes for me from the 2017 internet trends report were:
Continued slowing in internet growth showing that the previous years decline in growth wasn’t a one off. In the 2017 internet trends report we also saw a decline in smartphone growth as well
All of these trends don’t apply with India where the market is still growing for internet access and smartphone growth. In India the 2017 internet trends isn’t ‘2017’ but 2010
Lean forward media is beloved of internet entrepreneurs. Interactive gaming is becoming mainstream around the world, with 2.6 billion gamers in 2017 versus 100 million in 1995. Gaming revenue is estimated to be around $100 billion in 2016, and China is now the largest market for gaming.
In the US at least wearables are becoming mainstreamed. 25 percent of Americans owning one, up 12 percent from 2016. Back when I was in Hong Kong, Chinese manufacturers were cranking out low cost health monitors to monitor your exercise activity
The Reflex remixes Gil Scott Heron. Nicolas was one of the few remixers who can make a production that’s better than the original.
Ultraman theme tune
Scatman Ultraman – Ultraman is a famous suited super hero. It is part of the Japanese TV and movie ‘special filming or tokusatsu genre. It is the grandfather of the Mighty Morphing Power Rangers. One of Ultraman’s powers was the ability to grow really large, which spawned other giant hero or Kyodai Hero characters.
Pipes – Yahoo! Pipes analogue, lets just hope that they haven’t captured the ‘flakey’ experience. I often remember hearing Yahoo! Pipes being compared to owning a British sports car. Instead I would prefer that Pipes provide the Mazda MX5 (Miata) experience where you get the experience but none of the broken ass crap of owning an MGB
Business
Is 2017 the beginning of the end for the app economy? TheNextWeb – not exactly the beginning of the end. More like a new normal – one thing that’s missing is the importance of building inside existing app eco-systems such as WeChat, Facebook Messenger etc. Whilst WeChat have made headway with mini-apps it will be interesting to see if Facebook can duplicate their success.
Korea
Why young South Koreans are turning away from religion | Arts & Culture | Al Jazeera – a certain amount of this turning away is geography. Korea had a mix of buddhism and Shamanism historically. Buddhist monasteries and temples were often in the mountains close to nature. Shamanism depended on closeness with nature – so again being out in the middle of nowhere. You throw in the move to cities, the break down of familial connections through distance and time poverty. More on Korean related topics here.
Does Slack allow your boss to spy on you? — Quartz – yes, but only with output rather than outcome-focused measures on productivity. It will reinforce the practices of poor managers rather than help make good managers
Apple has finally found someone to support HomeKit • The Register – there have been smart home standards before HomeKit. I can also understand why there is a wider leeriness around Internet of Things due to the privacy implications, built in obsolescence and dependence on the cloud. But HomeKit does provide a more secure solution that seems to be less dependent on the cloud than Google and Amazon options out there. More related content here.
Magellan’s Hamish Douglass says Uber is a ‘Ponzi scheme’ | Sydney Morning Herald – I can see the point that Mr Douglass is making. More rose tinted observations might point to the similarity with Amazon; however even Amazon is relying on constant investment of profits from mature units in international and service expansion – Uber seems to be nowhere near breakeven
Chinese companies are working hard to overcome the copycat stigma | Quartz – actually this isn’t an overnight thing but has been going on for the best part of ten years. It is also worthwhile giving a shoutout to Naomi Wu who has been educating Chinese businesses on GPL licences and helping get compliance from companies in Shenzhen.
How He Used Facebook to Win | by Sue Halpern | The New York Review of Books – Facebook did turn out to be essential to Trump’s victory, but not in the way Grassegger, Krogerus, and Schwartz suggest. Though there is little doubt that Cambridge Analytica exploited members of the social network, Facebook’s real influence came from the campaign’s strategic and perfectly legal use of Facebook’s suite of marketing tools
Apple Begs Android Users to Switch to iPhone | Makeuseof – beg is the wrong word, but this looks like the start of an effort to promote platform switching which is another indicator of smartphone market maturity and saturation
Bring Home a Classic Synth with the DIY Fairlight CMI – using the iPad emulation app. Its amazing to think how much computing power difference between a Fairlight and the iPad. The original Fairlight used a pen-screen interface. Its technology limitations gave it a distinctive sound. It is one of the things that gave Trevor Horne productions such a big sound. It is in stark contrast to current hyper-compressed productions.
VPMZ MOLOT factory
Fascinating video from a Russian gun manufacturing line shot at at the VPMZ MOLOT factory. The foundry looks more spectacular than someone going full belt with Adobe After-Effects. The design that goes into the products to enable mass production is fascinating
Amazon
Scott Galloway on Amazon. While Galloway does hold Amazon stock, he is not backward about criticising the company. His video on how Amazon is dismantling retail, could equally apply to logistics firms like Fedex and cloud services and web hosting (notably Google Cloud). Scott has written about Amazon in more depth alongside a critique of Google, Facebook and Apple in his book The Four. More Amazon related content here.
Are Brand Blogs Worth the Effort? | The Daily | L2 – I am surprised at the findings on brand blogs especially in terms of best practices not being adhered to. Blogging is the platform which the marketing profession understands best, because it has been using it the longest, brand blogs are also one of the few platforms that the luxury brand can truly own. I think the research on brand blogs reflects that marketing functions aren’t learning organisation. More related content here.