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.

  • OLED + more news

    OLED

    Samsung Display to invest $3.6 billion in new OLED production line | Reuters – interesting that they are doing this after Sony abandoned OLED technology.

    Sony had an early lead in OLED display technology. Like many inventions OLED technology has a long history. The first practical OLED was created in the National Physical Laboratory at Teddington in the UK. Eastman Kodak built practical OLED devices in 1987. A team at Yamagata University in Japan achieved the commercialisation of OLED backlit displays and lighting with white OLED technology.

    Samsung’s display business came out of a partnership with NEC for mobile phone displays. Kodak had partnered with Sanyo. Pioneer, TDK and Sony got involved in production as well. The Sony XEL-1 in 2007 herald a range of future TVs that could be hung like a picture frame it was that thin. But Sony struggled with production and withdrew from OLED manufacturing. Meanwhile Samsung took over their joint venture with NEC.

    Business

    There is no internet bubble, and never was, according to this tech visionary | Quartz – semantics

    China’s Xiaomi to open shop in the US this year, but not for phones | The Verge – no phones due to likely intellectual property related issues for Xiaomi. However even with accessories there will probably patent disputes involving these as well

    Accel and DJI Will Introduce a Fund to Invest in the Drone Ecosystem | Re/code – interesting move positioning DJI at the head of a drone movement and at the centre of an ecosystem a la Android or GoPro. I met them a couple of years ago and they felt marginally more squared away than your typical Chinese start-up

    The Short Life and Speedy Death of Russia’s Silicon Valley | Foreign Policy – (paywall)

    Grindr Said to Explore Sale of Gay Men’s Dating App | Bloomberg Business – this could be an interesting social barometer if they manage to go public or what value they sell for, in comparison to the challenges AdultFriendFinder faced a number of years ago due to its niche product offerings

    Banjo Announces $100 Million in Additional Funding | Banjo – not too sure about the valuation, but it seems to think that social media war rooms and real time marketing will continue to be a thing

    Consumer behaviour

    Luke Johnson – Animal Spirits: Silicon Valley robber barons tuck into Mad Men’s lunch – on an emotional level it struck a chord, but then I am sure the luddites would have said similar things if they were part of the Islington chattering set

    Computers aren’t making us better workers like they used to | Quartz – I wonder if this is similar to effectiveness of online marketing, some of Nigel’s Scott’s analysis would tend to suggest yes

    Gadgets

    LG launches a ‘try before you buy’ program for the G4 | BGR – reflects confidence in the product

    US phablet market soars – Kantar Worldpanel – driven by iPhone 6 Plus

    Media

    Shazam’s struggle to become a profitable verb (Wired UK) – classic web-of-no-web model, it’s time maybe now as native apps struggle for attention, but I could see this tech eventually being in LINE or WeChat

    Apple pushing music labels to kill free Spotify streaming ahead of Beats relaunch | The Verge – do record labels really need to be pushed on this, when one thinks about how they have moved away from licensing content for magazine cover mount CDs, which seemed to peak in the late 1990s

    Online

    Twitter Confirms Google Firehose Deal To Target Logged Out Users | TechCrunch – also benefits Google in terms of search quality

    Google Shuts Down PageSpeed Service For Accelerating Websites | TechCrunch – interesting piece on PageSpeed, it is part of Google’s retreat including getting rid of 20% projects and making Adplanner less useful

    Retailing

    Amazon doubles free delivery minimum spend in UK – BBC News – you can see the strain delivery costs take on Amazon’s finances

    Competition becomes tougher in the Chinese slowdown economy – Kantar Worldpanel – international retailers taking a kicking from local retailers

    Security

    AP Exclusive: Chinese banks a haven for web counterfeits – not terribly surprising given that these are also China’s most widespread banks

    The World’s Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who is Going Broke – ProPublica – indicates the precarious nature or some of the most critical open source projects

    Russia and China Pledge Not to Hack Each Other – WSJ – the technology exchange is much more concerning given that the U.S. considers Russia the more dangerous cyber threat

    Keeping Your Car Safe From Electronic Thieves – NYTimes.com – fridge as a Faraday Cage

    Software

    Android Switchers Drive iOS Growth in Europe’s Big Five – Kantar Worldpanel – some interesting stats

    Deep Learning Machine Solves the Cocktail Party Problem | MIT Technology Review – does that mean in five years from now we won’t need stems for remixes?

    Technology

    Robot makers from China look to expand into global market｜WantChinaTimes.com – interesting clean room focus – semiconductors?

    A Chinese company is replacing 90 percent of its workers with robots | Fusion – robotic factory a la Fiat, for product assembly they aren’t likely to have fine enough movement, at the moment

    Why Eurogamer dropped review scores for games | SiliconAngle – implications for gaming PRs

    Telecoms

    Utility: Verizon To Exit Wireline Business Within 10 Years | DSLReports – which has to make one ask what is the long term value of wired/wireless or triple play models in Europe and APAC?

    Web of no web

    How A Computer Can Anticipate Users’ Needs (Without Driving Them Crazy) | Fast Company – interesting essay on the web-of-no-web and user intent

    Why Google Glass Broke – NYTimes.com – product not ready for prime time and team ripped apart by personal relationships. Ego drove out quality management. More on web-of-no-web related technologies here.

  • 48 hours with the Apple Watch

    My experiment with the Apple Watch is part of a larger project. I  decided to experiment with wearables a while ago. My first experiment was with the Casio G-Shock+ series of watches that takes the well-loved brand and drops some rudimentary notification function, BlueTooth LE capability and a companion iPhone app together as a workable but unambitious package.

    The Apple Watch is a different experience and has a different ethos to the Casio G-Shock+. The Apple Watch experience starts as soon as you receive the package.

    I was surprised to be presented the box by security in reception, mainly because it had roughly the same size and weight as a toner cartridge for the office colour photocopier / printer.
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    My immediate reaction was that Apple may have made the packaging look like this to mask the first drop of watches from over-ambitious eBay entrepreneurs in the postal service.
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    But it soon became apparent that Apple had built a packing equivalent of a Winnebago RV for the watch.
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    Inside a long heavy duty cardboard box is a giant whale of a coffin for the watch and space underneath for the charging cable and plug in charger. All of this seems at odds with Apple’s move over the years towards less wasteful, more environmentally friendly packaging.

    At the same time the experience didn’t feel special to me, just slightly perplexing, ok very perplexing. I have been involved in the launch of a new Huawei smartphone over the past few weeks and that packaging provided a more luxurious experience.

    An email arrives to my home account letting me know that I can set up a live video call with someone who will help me set up my watch. An alarm bell rings in the back of my head that makes me think that the product might not ‘just work’ which the a core tenet of the Apple experience.

    The watch itself has some nice industrial design touches.
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    The Apple Watch strap was easy even for a mechanical klutz like me to change, by pushing a button and sliding the strap in or out of a groove on the case.

    The case is nicely made (as something the price of a premium Casio or Hugo Boss watch should be). However as a bit of a watch head the case did not blow me away, if I didn’t know about it’s smarts it felt very much like a Fossil watch.

    Switching it on and pairing it with my iPhone was very easy, the problems began when the iPhone app schlepped across all my iPhone applications that had Apple Watch capability, without a thought for how often I use them. This means that the home screen is covered in an acne rash of default and third-party applications, 80 per cent of which I don’t regularly use.

    Whilst I am in awe of the the way the device hides the process of syncing with the iPhone I am less impressed by the slow speed of glance content loaded from the iPhone more slowly than it would be to just take the iPhone from my pocket and look.
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    When glances do appear, they appear in an amazingly high resolution.

    The killer app

    The haptic alerts were handy and Accuweather had made the best Watch app. WeChat shamed Twitter with its comparative usefulness. But ultimately I still don’t know a compelling reason to own an Apple Watch beyond trying to understand where it fits in a customer’s digital life.

    The Apple Watch is a two-handed device, for instance unlocking the Watch by typing in your PIN. Flashback to a childhood encounter with a friend’s Casio Databank flooded my memory whilst unlocking the watch.

    I found that I tended to use the crown when the watch wasn’t on my wrist, probably sounds a bit pointless.

    Like the Casio G-Shock+ before it, Apple hadn’t mastered prioritising alerts or putting intelligence behind them. I think that this a major issue, since app developers will try to go for maximum notification real estate as part of the ‘grab’ of the attention economy. I think that this is an Achilles Heel of wearables in general.

    Conclusions

    The Apple Watch didn’t encourage me to ‘play with it’ to find out its features, the way other Apple products from the original sit-up and beg Mac to the iPod and iPhone did. I can’t say that I have had any real enjoyment out of using one. So much so, that I was quite happy to leave it in its charger most of Sunday, whilst my iPhone is never an arms length away.

    Notifications are going to become very tiresome, very fast.

    It isn’t particularly friendly to use and at 48 hours in, I still haven’t really got to grips with the device.

    This feels like a first step in a long journey needed to fix the human smartwatch interface.

    The Apple Watch feels like a solution looking for a problem, just in the same way that the Mac only found its calling with Aldus desktop publishing software and an Adobe powered laser printer, so the Apple Watch is dependent on some clever app development in the future.

    I suspect the kind of programmable world that we would need for the device to thrive, for instance your iPhone seeing that you have enough time in your diary, ordering your morning coffee at Starbucks and then the Watch telling you to step in the cafe and pick it up just as you are about to walk past doesn’t exist yet.

    The experience did get me to marvel at the engineering that went into the device, but at the moment it feels that all that effort has been largely unrewarding in terms of customer experience. I still wear my collection of G-Shocks or fine Swiss watches on my right wrist. I don’t think that many watchmakers have much to worry about yet, except those targeting the mid-market of big brand, mediocre movements.

    More information

    On smart watches, I’ve decided to take the plunge
    On wearing a smartwatch
    On Wearables

  • Android device fragmentation + more

    Android Sales: Guess how many Android devices are available for sale | BGR – 18,000 different types of Android devices which is an insane amount of device fragmentation. Imagine the pain in Android device testing needed and that isn’t even getting into different app stores and non-Google Android devices –  a la Russia and China. More wireless related content here.

    Regarding Chrome’s Power Efficiency on OS X | The Verge – interesting how Google is falling into the same traps when coding across platforms that Microsoft did

    Why China’s economy is slowing and what it means for everything | Quartz – interesting bit of economic analysis via charts

    Fascinating chart in HBR (above) on the relative change in valuation of Brands… | Broadstuff – interesting data on the decline of brand value

    Hush Technology will block snoring but play your alarm with its smart earplugs | VentureBeat – interesting how noise cancelling technology has shrunk

    Moscase Is Like Batman’s Utility Belt For Your iPhone | TechCrunch – the modular nature of the back is quite interesting, I like the e-ink screen

    Daring Fireball: The Apple Watch Edition’s Upgrade Dilemma – it won’t be replacing my Swiss watch any time soon

    Nokia nears deal to buy Alcatel-Lucent mobile networks unit | Hong Kong Economic Journal Insight – two turkeys won’t make an eagle

    GSMA Intelligence – interesting diagram talking about latency and bandwidth requirements of different applications on mobile networks when you scroll down the page

    Activist Puts Pressure on Qualcomm – WSJ – inevitable when one looks at the increasing competition in the chip business for them and the move by major players (Apple, Samsung, Huawei)

    Samsung Galaxy S6 review: It’s what’s on the outside that counts | Ars Technica – this review is emblematic of the pedestal that Samsung has fallen off

    LINE CEO bets on selfies and macho stamps to expand overseas | Japan Times – really interesting insight into app localisation and branding

    Twitter Ends its Partnership with DataSift – Datasift Blog – ok this could be interesting

    These slides are all you need to make the case for an all-flash data center | SiliconANGLE – that responsive data has to change the economics of cloud as well and not in a good way

    Exclusive: Twitter A/B testing a Yahoo style directory for non-logged in users | SiliconANGLE – and Google seems to be supplementing search results with content from DMOZ about links

    If Nokia Map Unit Is for Sale, Microsoft, Apple and Yahoo All Might Want a Look | Re/code – it makes sense that Nokia would want to sell this separately from the phones, but who would it go to

  • Blade Runner & other things

    Watching Blade Runner after it had been re-released into the cinema. I have watched Blade Runner numerous times on TV, VHS, LaserDisc, DVD and Blu Ray but there is something magical about watching it on the big screen

    The cinema and Blu Ray versions of Blade Runner have a level of clarity and detail that is amazing. But watching on VHS had a softness that provided an artistic quality to the film. The lower resolution and noise felt more ‘cyber punk’.

    Hack-A-Day pointed me in the direction of this old industrial film about a Workington, Cumbria Bessemer steel plant that made railway tracks. At the time of filming the plant had been working for 102 years. More related content here.

    Google had an interesting interview with former BP chairman Lord John Browne on discrimination against gay people in their careers.

    I am a big fan of Miroslav Sasek’s work, from his This is… series of children’s travel books in the 1960s. My personal favourites are This is Hong Kong and This Is The Way To The Moon – which covered NASA’s Project Apollo space programme and Cape Canaveral. Art Republic have some amazing prints derived from his illustrations.

    Criteo has a really good presentation on m-commerce outside China

  • The Amazon Dash button post

    At the beginning of this month Amazon launched an addition to their Dash ordering hardware with the Amazon Dash button. There was a lot of incredulity amongst the media heightened by the unfortunate timing which overlapped with April’s Fool Day.

    Why the incredulity?

    I would break the cynicism down into two broad buckets:

    • The Amazon Dash button has a very singular usage / use case, narrower even the Yo! app which was a bit of a tech fad last year. Critics are at best uncertain that consumers would use them? I generally buy toilet rolls every 4-6 months, do I really need a button for that?
    • The Amazon Dash button implies that the hardware required is ridiculously cheap. How many boxes of washing powder, packets of Mac & Cheese or toilet rolls would be required for a button to break even?
    Business perspective

    Rather than ripping into this into too much depth I thought I would share Benedict Evans’ interesting hypothesis about the Amazon Dash button:

    Amazon is trying to eliminate both vendor and brand decisions, and turning itself into a utility company – get your house connected to power, water, gas and Amazon. And choosing which commodity product you need is just another piece of friction to be removed by Amazon’s kaizen

    There are some interesting directions that come out of this view point. Let’s break Benedict’s analysis down chunk-by-chunk:

    • Eliminating vendor decisions: there are two prongs to this. Firstly, it would reduce the basket size for supermarkets and also reduce impulse purchases. Let’s think about the Walmart ‘beer and diapers’ retail urban legend for a moment – if you weren’t shopping for the diapers, you aren’t likely to have picked up the beer next to it as you would have had no reason to go near those shelves. By implication it is also an attack on some of the categories carried in convenience stores. Given that the button is about ‘just-in-time’ shopping it implies that the users are not likely to have rooms in their lives for big box retailers or CostCo. The buttons are likely to aimed at urban dwellers rather than the suburbs were larger homes and larger vehicles to do the big box store shop are the norm – Sam’s Warehouse is safer than Walmart in this scenario
    • Eliminate brand decisions: since sales are diverted from supermarkets this also affects their private label sales, especially where they are acquired by accident as lookalikes stacked next to well-known brands. Challenger brands find that switching becomes much harder as they can’t intercept the customer at the point-of-intent through shopper marketing and the opportunity cost for the consumer gets raised due to the comparative nature of the friction in purchase.  It also begs a question about how much it affects the share price of WPP and other marketing combines who have spent big on shopper marketing acquisitions over the past few years. Do buttons offer a net gain or loss of value to them? I do know that the button puts Amazon in a much more powerful position versus vendors in terms of discount pricing to retailer and warehousing. The key to understand the power  that Amazon would bring is ‘choosing which commodity product you need…’. The very idea of a product being boiled down to a commodity buy would scare the living daylights of the average brand manager in an FMCG mega-corp
    • Turning itself into a utility: for Amazon this is about locking the consumer in via Prime to the consumer life. At the present time, logistics costs have been an increasing proportion of the cost of sales for Amazon, there must be a hope that the scale of grocery shopping will bring down the price of Prime and drive profits higher?

    There is no reason why the likes of Tesco, Ocado or Iceland couldn’t have done this. The wider Dash technology would make it easier for consumers to do grocery shopping and reduce the friction of online purchases. Instead they seem to have wanted to reduce cashier numbers inshore and focused on self-service tills. Time will tell if they made the right technological choice.

    What about the user?

    This is designed to make the consumers life easier and I can see how it makes purchase of otherwise annoying to shop for items frictionless, but it only works within reason. You can’t have a wall of buttons on the front door of your fridge freezer and just when do you press the button in the bathroom to order up more razor blades or toilet roll? What happens during the run up to Christmas when Amazon has had sub-optimal performance with regards deliveries on occasion? What is the buying frequency required to make the button habit forming, used without thinking about it, without consideration. When does the opportunity cost for the consumer tip in their favour regarding button usage?

    What I don’t have yet is a clear understanding on depth and breadth of the customer problem being solved by the Dash button.

    Product design

    The original Dash device was interesting because it represented a rejection of the broader theme of convergence where functionality is subsumed from dedicated hardware into a software layer running on a computer, via a web browser, tablet or smartphone. Instead Dash is a shopping appliance and wouldn’t look out of place in a cupboard full of Braun kit.

    The Dash button represents a further evolution of specialist hardware, a brand-specific, tactile hardware interface. It mirrors software like IFTTT’s ‘Do’ application, the Yo! messenger app and the Dimple smartphone button project.

    For non-food products like toilet rolls that come in a plastic bale that is quickly discarded, there may not be a barcode to scan in on your Dash device. Instead you would have to ask for a new pack of Charmin’ or more Mach3 razors. Processing each voice message is expensive, which makes the opportunity cost around creating dedicated buttons for certain classes of product much more attractive. Amazon first and foremost is a data-driven company, they will know which product categories that they want to have buttons for. However, what makes on an Excel spreadsheet doesn’t always make sense to the consumer…

    More information

    Amazon Dash button
    Benedict Evans newsletter edition 106
    Investing in smart logistics | Fidelity Worldwide Investments
    Amazon, in Threat to UPS, Tries Its Own Deliveries | WSJ (paywall)
    Supply Chain News: A 360-Degree View of E-Fulfillment Part 1 | Supply Chain Digest
    Amazon joins numerous startups in building delivery networks to disrupt Fedex and UPS. | DataFox
    The Amazon Dash post
    Dimple smartphone button project | Indiegogo
    SpinVox: the shocking allegations in full | The Kernel