Ged Carroll

Category: online | 線上 | 온라인으로 | オンライン

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.

  • ABZU & other things

    ABZU

    I like my computer entertainment trippy rather than action packed like this trailer for computer game ABZU

    Best battle of the bastards meme after the Game of Thrones episode caused an outburst of video creativity. Equating Jon Snow to Leeeeeeeroy Jenkins was genius. Whilst we talk about the fragmentary nature of online content, mainstream media is still providing the key cultural moments.

    Design

    The outlandish Rolls-Royce self-driving car of the future: Vision Next 100 | ExtremeTech – it has more of the design language of a Bristol than a Rolls Royce. Mercedes has an interesting take implying that UNHW individuals would still like the choice to drive rather than a self-driving car

    Amazing analysis of typography in Blade Runner. The level of detail is impressive. It also speaks volumes of the set designers and visualisers like Syd Mead

    FMCG

    Even the world’s biggest candy company doesn’t think you should be eating this much sugar | Quartz – there is another explanation to consider. Does having M&Ms in a McFlurry cheapen the brand or act as an economic substitute for a bag of M&Ms?

    Philadelphia Is the Nation’s First Major City to Pass a Soda Tax | Time – research on the effectiveness of this could be decisive in future legislation. It is interesting how it has also being rolled out in Mexico and discussed at a policy level across Europe

    Online

    Grandma with incredibly polite Google searches | BGR – it reminds me of my parents ‘Ask Google about…’

    US asks to join Irish data protection court case – Schrems argues that the use of these clauses does not change the fact that Facebook is still subject to the US mass surveillance program, and that the CJEU has already found them to be in conflict with EU law

    Software

    Samsung to Buy Joyent | WSJ – interesting move by Samsung. It makes sense for them to by as software and cloud has been a weaker capability than hardware design

    WeChat Moments – The Holy Grail of Social Media Marketing In China | Racepoint Global – my ex-B-M and Racepoint colleague James on WeChat

    Web of no web

    Biz Break: Apple Watch outlook may be dimming | SiliconBeat – the rationale is interesting and is category-wide rather than an Apple-specific platform. More on the Apple Watch here.

  • Rise of Facebook + more

    At Cannes, the Ad Industry Confronts the Rise of Facebook – The New York Times – takes some of the heat from Google as most hated media partner, but few have woken up to the existential threat that the rise of Facebook poses for the advertising industry and brand marketers.

    Amazon to Add Dozens of Brands to Dash Buttons, but Do Shoppers Want Them? – WSJ – the financial terms Amazon is getting from the FMCG companies for Dash buttons is insane. $15/ button plus 15% of sales… More on the Amazon Dash button here. It’s no wonder that the Amazon Dash button was launched on April’s Fools Day 2015 as a giant grift that they tried to play on FMCG marketers…

    A British tragedy in one act | HKEJ Insight – nice byline by Chris Patten aimed at an audience of Hong Kong readers. But one can’t also ignore the implicit racism in many of the British decisions – such as not giving the Hong Kong people British passports

    E-Mail from Bill – The New Yorker – fascinating artefact from 20 years ago, it reminds me of some Skype chats that I have with my friend Noel who lives in Hong Kong

    China says Brexit is a sign of a ‘losing mindset’ | Irish Times – “East Asia has witnessed decades of high-speed growth and prosperity. Europe stays where it was, becoming the world’s centre of museums and tourist destinations. Unfortunately, Europe is also close to the chaotic Middle East. Waves of refugees flood into Europe, coinciding with increasing terrorist attacks,” the editorial ran. Among Chinese citizens, the reaction has been largely one of bewilderment. The European Union is generally seen as something that countries strive to get into, rather than out of. “I thought Brexit was a joke, I never thought it could come true,” wrote one online commentator, Xiong, while Momo said: “I think more Chinese people were watching Brexit than actual British people voting.

  • Divorce talks + more

    Britain, EU at odds over timing of divorce talks – The Boston Globe – The markers of European decline are not hard to find. For the first time in modern history, Asia has more private wealth than Europe, the Boston Consulting Group said last year. And China will account for 70 percent of Asia’s growth between now and 2019, the group said. – It is of course more complex than ‘because China’. Rampant deindustrialisation, a loss of pride, crushing austerity. Intractable economic problems. A loss of identity and loss of empire. A collective hallucination all contributed to the non-binding vote that has resulted in divorce talks. Just wait until these divorce talks get on to fishery issues, free trade and state aid.

    How a Former Apple Designer is Updating Huawei’s Look — The Information – trying to crawl out of the commoditisation trap. More on Huawei here

    How ‘Deleted’ Yahoo Emails Led to a 20-Year Drug Trafficking Conviction | Motherboard – this has interesting privacy implications, i.e. you don’t have any with Yahoo! or probably most other email services

    Earned Brand 2016 – Edelman – interesting research into consumer brand relationships across a range of brand categories

    Chinese Company in Patent Dispute With Apple Barely Exists – WSJ

    Something doesn’t add up in Nikesh Arora’s sudden exit from SoftBank | Techinasia – it’s rather cast a shadow on Nikesh

    Universities and startup factories are fuelling a rise in UK startups like Magic Pony, the AI business Twitter bought for $150 million – While the Magic Pony exit is likely to be seen as a positive step for the UK AI scene, it does raise questions about whether the UK will ever be able to produce a really big AI company if Silicon Valley keeps preying on the country’s most promising startups. – This rather reminded me of the role that lower division clubs like Tranmere Rovers used to play for top sides. Feeding talent through and not profiting by the talent development themselves.

    Taking the headphone jack off phones is user-hostile and stupid | The Verge – you could argue the same about removing floppy disks on the original iMac, though I am inclined to agree with this

    BNNS – Apple Developer Documentation – Apple’s API that allows the GPU to run a simple neural network that helps the iPhone be smarter about preferences

    Jack Ma’s Counterfeit Comments Shed Light on Taobao’s ‘Legal’ Fakes | Jing Daily – Alibaba throws a grenade at the luxury industry

    Y Combinator’s Xerox Alto: restoring the legendary 1970s GUI computer – amazing when you think about how long ago it was and how little forward we have come from it by comparison in subsequent years

    RIMOWA – Electronic Tag – interesting, but looks like tech, for tech’s sake

    Social influencers now more popular for brand campaigns than traditional celebs | PR Week – so the survey data is self serving but it also might say something about client budgets

    Survival on the Wirral | Culture | The Independent – if you want to know why the poor are voted for Brexit, its because scenes like this haven’t changed

    Brexit and Trust – Edelman – this has been a long train running in the UK for decades not years, but otherwise an interesting read

    RA: Real estate, gentrification and nightlife in New York – pretty much the same story as London

  • Throwback gadget: SnapperMail

    Thinking about SnapperMail takes me back to end of 2001, I started to prepare for leaving my job at Edelman. This meant upgrading my home IT set up. I picked up an iBook. The iBook was Apple’s consumer-orientated laptop made from 1999 to 2006. Mine was a second generation ‘Snow’ laptop with a G3 processor, dual USB sockets and a combo drive which allowed me to watch DVDs and burn CDs.

    I used the move to go on the first version of OSX. The move also meant that I got a new email account, my default account to date. It had two key attributes:

    • No adverts, so it looked professional in comparison to having a Yahoo! or Hotmail email address and it wasn’t tied to an ISP.
    • IMAP support which allowed me to use my email account across different devices that syncs across the devices. POP3 downloads the  emails from the server to the device, so is ideal only for when you are accessing email from one machine

    My iBook was my only source of email access whilst I left Edelman, freelanced, and then eventually joined Pirate Communications. My first smartphone was a Nokia 6600, which I used alongside a Palm  PDA – l got this sometime around the end of 2003. The 6600 supported IMAP out of the gate, it was slow, but I was connected.

    The 6600 was eclipsed by Palm’s Treo devices which were a better device. I moved from the 6600 and a Palm Tungsten T3 combo to a Treo 600 smartphone in January 2005.

    The process wasn’t smooth. The Treo was sufficiently fragile that I got a translucent silicon jacket that worked surprisingly well with the keyboard and screen protector to look after the touchscreen. Software wise the Treo 600 was a step back from the Tungsten T3 PDA. The screen was smaller and the software felt sluggish in comparison. I had deliberately chosen the 600 over the 650 because I had previously worked agency side on the Palm account and been a long-suffering device owner so knew how crap they were at bug fixes on new devices. The media didn’t call the former Palm CEO ‘Mad’ Bill Maggs for no reason (just sayin’).
    snapperfish limited
    Unfortunately Palm had not been as progressive in comparison to Nokia with its default email client. The software didn’t support IMAP. Fortunately I used to follow Mitch Kapor’s blog and he had recommended SnapperMail: an app from a small New Zealand company SnapperFish.

    SnapperMail was a compact modern email client. It has a number of features that we would expect now:

    • It supported IMAP
    • It supported SSL client to mail box encryption*
    • it was really easy to use
    • You could work with attachments including zipped files**
    • There was no restriction on the file size of attachments, the only restriction was your email account rather than your email client

    This looks like the kind of technology you would have thought Palm should have done. At the this time Palm were competing against Microsoft Windows Mobile 2003, BlackBerry 6200 series, 7100 series and early 8700 series. Yet the default email client was back in the 1990s.

    *The full-fat application cost US$39.99

    **SnapperMail came bundled with HandZipper Lite which handled the compressed files and JPEGWatch Lite image viewer

    I used this alongside MetrO – a public transit directions app and QuickOffice Pro – to read Office documents as part of my modern smartphone experience. It wasn’t just me that loved SnapperMail, it was praised by Walt Mossberg back when he wrote at the Wall Street Journal.

    SnapperMail won two Palm Source (Palm’s software licence business) Powered Up awards in 2003. It was recognised as Best Productivity and Best of the Best Solution. More on Palm here. 

    More information
    SnapperMail Has Solid Software For Savvy Mobile E-Mail Users | WSJ
    QuickOffice
    MetrO – open source mass transit application
    PalmSource Welcomes Developers with Awards, New Tools; Announces New Licensees | PalmSource press room

  • Blockchain deals + other news

    The Dumb Money Is Chasing After Blockchain Deals | CB Insights – true enough. Warning incoming rant on blockchain. Blockchain has a relatively low transaction rate. Traceability is reliant on a reliable database rather than the decentralisation. You have better performing open source databases that aren’t dependent on the weakest link of the decentralised network. For really high translation rates you are better investing in an Oracle database and appropriate hardware support – either through a SaaS or in-house.

    Executive Shuffle at Cyanogen Amid Challenges – can Jolla step up or is it too on the ropes? Jolla has some interesting contracts with the likes of the Russian government for trusted mobile systems. Cyanogen sold purely on improvements in user experience, so Jolla’s security infrastructure has a clear benefit for enterprise users and carriers who don’t want a smartphone botnet.  Jolla also has a strong UX, it pioneered some tactile gestures and leveraged Nokia employees deep experience in mobile experience and understanding of consumer behaviour.  Jolla also has support on some Sony smartphones. The big issue would be the failure of Jolla to turn existing deals with handset manufactured into wide availability of consumer products. It hasn’t been alone in that respect. Both Cyanogen and Firefox OS had similar issues of distribution that would then aid adoption. More on Jolla here.

    Introducing 360 Photos on Facebook – every idea becomes new again. Back before the Internet there was QuickTime VR. This rolled on to the early net but the experiment was very patchy due  to the lack of bandwidth in comparison to today. Content and interaction wise there is clearly no difference from a the consumer experience between Facebook 360 and QuickTime VR. The question is how Facebook 360 goes forward, or if it just becomes a fad like QuickTime VR did before it?