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.

  • Shrook RSS reader

    How China’s internet regulations got me thinking about the Shrook RSS reader and service. I got unfettered internet access during a trip across the border from Shenzhen , China to Hong Kong. I briefly checked my Bloglines account and found that I had over 11,000 unread posts to catch up on.

    11029 unread items

    This got me thinking about a solution, so I will be trying out Shrook RSS reader and service to see if it provides an effective solution to my RSS addiction in China.

    Bloglines like Google Reader was blocked in China. I presume because these platforms would otherwise provide access to content that the Chinese government might to have censored.

    Shrook is a mix of application and cloud service with a freemium price plan offering always-on RSS goodness. Given my China-specific needs, it makes sense to go to smaller, niche services like Shrook. Shrook has a nice simple design to the RSS reader and is a native app for the Mac. It compares favourably to the way NetNewsWire was back in the day. The ability to sync online also allows RSS usage across different devices – so for instance home and work machines.

    UPDATE (September 19, 2020): Both Bloglines and the Shrook RSS sync service no longer exist. The last version of the Shrook RSS reader to work was published in 2016. The app has since been withdrawn from the Mac App Store. Bloglines closed down on October 1, 2010.

  • Google Music China

    I spent some time in Shenzhen and tried the Google Music China service. It was unlike anything else I have seen and was designed especially for consumers in mainland China.

    Google Music China

    Google Music China is impressive in terms of the size of its catalogue and ease-of-use. You have a mix of western artists and Chinese artists on the service. There didn’t seem to be a lot of censorship going on. You could download the full expletive riven Eminem experience. The music is downloaded into your computer as MP3 files and doesn’t have any DRM on it. I put it into my iTunes library. The service is powered by a Chinese partner for Google, which becomes apparent when you look at the URL on the page for an individual track.

    There didn’t seem to be a restriction on the amount of music that you could download. I got a mix of material from jazz to techno including a number of albums by The Jazz Messengers.

    Much of the music seems to have been licensed through the US right holders of the music; such as this Astralwerks license for a Fat Boy Slim track below.

    The service is free, in that I didn’t have to pay per track, or pay a subscription. Instead the music is ad funded with display ads as shown below.

    Google Music banner ad

    I do wonder what the click through rates are on the adverts that periodically get vended on the service?  More China-related content here.

  • Google Wave

    The office that I work in has been abuzz about Google Wave and Becky has been gently badgering me to air my thoughts on it. I have been reluctant to give a definitive judgement on it, as I believe that like Twitter; it’s true utility may not become apparent until there are a critical amount of users on it.

    It used to be that device manufacturers created a gizmo but the software on the device was the killer application (for instance the Apple II and VisiCalc, the Macintosh and Aldus PageMaker or the iPhone and 60,000+ applications), with the web the utility and the killer application is the network of people on there.

    Google Wave001

    Google Wave does herald some changes in the web which may require consumers to alter their behaviour.

    But we’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves, what is Google Wave anyway?

    Wave is a personal communications and collaboration tool. Say what? Google has looked trying to innovate by bringing together elements of different tools which are currently used by the members of the public to varying degrees: e-mail, instant messaging, wikis, and social networks.

    When you use it, the bits that are immediately obvious are the instant messaging platform and the ability to share video clips.  The interface isn’t as easy to use as other Google products like GMail so its questionable whether it will eventually find widespread consumer adoption in its present form. It is interesting in that it shows Google’s thinking about web communications.

    The biggest aspect from my perspective is the move from the real-time web to what I term the ‘thought-time web’. When you are typing via instant messenger you don’t display your message until you press return on a conversation. With Wave people can see your message as you type, if you’re like me you work out the structure of what you’re going to say in the dialogue box, editing as you go with cut and past. So having this transparency on your message creation may not be that good an idea.

    With Wave you would have to use another editing programme and cut-and-paste into the Wave dialogue box in order to get the same functionality in message writing. this means that they can jump in at any point in the conversation and it also means message trails will become less meaningful as you can’t see the order in which responses happen against each other in the same way as IM.

    A secondary aspect to this is what I think of as transient data. Think about it in terms of these two hypothetical scenarios:

    • A vulnerable 12-year old is taunted by members of her class who write in a message of hateful language about their weight or colour and then cut-and-paste homework-related dialogue in over the top and hit the return key. The abuse happens in real-time with no apparent evidence that the child can point to in order to get aid from parent or school
    • A consumer is looking for information about a camera, the customer services representative types in the specification of the model that the consumer wants at a too-good-to-be-true price and then cuts and pastes and presses return on a completely different, less favourable offer for the same price. The consumer doesn’t have a leg to stand on

    Contrast this with the current culture of email and Facebook where is there is an evidence or document trail that the victim can use for recourse. The social aspects of thought-time communications a la Google Wave haven’t been fully understood yet and society’s way of dealing with the challenges are likely to take years to iron out.

  • New approach to China + more

    New approach to China

    Official Google Blog: A new approach to China – According to Google, IP theft from Google and Gmail being hacked prompted a new approach to China. That’s very reasonable on the face of it, especially given that the IP theft also affected several other companies as well. However Google is uniquely placed to take a new approach to China because it has lots of rewards and few downsides. Such as the fact that Google is under pressure in the US and not doing terribly well in the Chinese market due to credible local competition. Or as another outlet put it Google: Revenues From China Are ‘Immaterial’ | paidContent

    Consumer behaviour

    A Few Good Kids? | Mother Jones – interesting how marketing data is being used. It seems that more work needs to be done on the creative and the approach

    If Your 9-Year-Old Doesn’t Have a Cell Phone, He’s Not Socializing Enough – Fast Company

    What Do Baby Boomers Want From Technology? – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com – some interesting progmatic attitudes to tech

    Media Cache – TV Still Has a Hold on Teenagers – NYTimes.com – Forrester survey of European teens. Conventional media still consumed

    Design

    Snow Peak Official Website – cool Japanese over-engineered camping stuff, love their Baja table out of solid aluminium and titanium cooking ware.

    Hacking with Style: TrueType VT220 Font – I remember this font from my time at Corning Optical Fibres using the plant DEC VAX which provided my first email account

    Economics

    Superfusion: How China and America Became One Economy. – By Daniel Gross and Win Rosenfeld – Slate Magazine

    Asia leading the way | Economist.com

    FT.com / World / Comment – Washington adapts to eastwards power shift

    FMCG

    Taste the Rainbow: Cigarette Makers’ Colorful Answer to FDA Packaging Regs | Advertising, Branding, and Marketing | Fast Company – tobacco companies use visual cues to make up for not being able to bill cigarettes as light, mild or low tar.

    How to

    Sleep success: How to make ZZZs = memory – life – 26 November 2009 – New Scientist

    Ideas

    Edge In Frankfurt: THE AGE OF THE INFORMAVORE by Frank Schirrmacher

    How reputation could save the Earth – opinion – 15 November 2009 – New Scientist – at first when I read this headline I thought someone in corporate communications had been going full belt at the magic mushrooms again. Instead the concept is a kind of green whuffie

    FT.com | Warfighting: The US Marine Corps on agility – interesting take on dealing with chaotic times

    Innovation

    Apple Patent Application Could Presage Thinner Devices – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com

    London

    FT.com | Olympics likely to harm UK tourism

    Luxury

    Cartier drops prices to woo young | The Japan Times Online – interesting move. I remember Armani doing a similar kind of thing with Armani Xchange in the early 1990s, it will be interesting to see the effect that it may have on the Cartier brand

    Media

    FT.com / Media – Disney boss tells Hollywood to rewrite script – internationalise content rather than assume a global media culture, develop online delivery platforms, cut costs, consolidate media franchises

    Online

    FT.com / China – Beijing tightens internet controls – “The internet is developing quickly, there are many loopholes in social management and maintaining social stability faces unprecedented new challenges,” said Meng Jianzhu, public security minister. “We must establish a comprehensive prevention and control social security system that covers the internet and the real world.”

    Retailing

    Retail outlook: Discounters best poised to thrive – USATODAY.com – US is seeing discounters thrive as well

    Security

    FT.com / UK – Watchdog probes sale of mobile phone records – take T-mobile’s licence away and shut them down

    Software

    Microsoft’s Future, Beyond Windows 7 and the PC – NYTimes.com – I can’t believe that the New York Times published this piece on Microsoft. Waggener Edstrom and Frank Shaw must have hit the roof when it came out. The mantra for Microsoft as a client is no surprises, I would be surprised if anyone walked willingly into this piece which eviscerates the corporate reputation

    Apocalypse Then: a two-part series on the lessons of Y2K. (1) – By Farhad Manjoo – Slate Magazine

    FT.com / Technology – Chinese court rules against Microsoft – infringed Zhongyi Electronics property rights.

    Technology

    The BBC is encrypting its HD signal by the back door | Technology | guardian.co.uk

    Cloud computing: Clash of the clouds | The Economist

    E.U. Takes More Time to Review Oracle-Sun Deal – DealBook Blog – NYTimes.com – I hope that Sun Microsystems finds a safe harbour at Oracle

    The Digital Economy Bill is legislatively flawed | Left Foot Forward – piece that I co-authored with my pod neighbour Nick

    Web of no web

    AR to Realize World of Science Fiction — Nikkei Electronics Asia — November 2009 – good overview of augmented reality

    Wireless

    Daring Fireball: Oh Joe You Didn’t – interesting take on is or isn’t Apple earning more money on handsets than Nokia story that been doing the rounds on Twitter over the weekend

  • Free – The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson

    Free owes a debt to work done by some of the early team at Wired magazine. Encyclopedia of the New Economy by John Browning and Spencer Reiss was originally published as a three-part work in Wired magazine back in 1998. Step forward a decade or so and current Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson has been explaining some of the key concepts for his readers. The Long Tail was his first effort at this missonary work and Free – The Future of a Radical Price is his latest effort.

    I may be the wrong person to review Free because I am not the target audience. Alongside  generation-Y, I am 0ne of those people who think that its perfectly natural to have a colossal photo album on steroids in flickr, a digital memory in delicious and the world’s largest library in Google all for free (or near as damn it).

    Try explaining these economic concepts to my Mum and Dad however and you will find this tougher going: Free is aimed at people like my parents and Rupert Murdoch who don’t quite get what is going on and how best to harness it. With this audience in mind Anderson takes us on a journey of Free which is part light magazine content a la Alan Whicker and part-intellectual a la Bamber Gascoigne.

    Some of the book gave me a deja vu from Anderson’s early work The Long Tail, in particular the example about the Anderson household’s preference for DIY stop-motion animation versions of Star Wars scenes on YouTube over George Lucas’ works on DVD, (I am with them on that one, the dialogue Lucas came up should put him on trial for crimes against cinema).

    Anderson spins a good yarn, but chances are that if you read this blog on a regular basis, Free is way below your ‘web-literacy’ age.