Security is protection from, or resilience against, potential harm (or other unwanted coercive change) caused by others, by restraining the freedom of others to act. Beneficiaries (technically referents) of security may be of persons and social groups, objects and institutions, ecosystems or any other entity or phenomenon vulnerable to unwanted change. Security mostly refers to protection from hostile forces, but it has a wide range of other senses: for example, as the absence of harm (e.g. freedom from want); as the presence of an essential good (e.g. food security); as resilience against potential damage or harm (e.g. secure foundations); as secrecy (e.g. a secure telephone line); as containment (e.g. a secure room or cell); and as a state of mind (e.g. emotional security).
Back when I started writing this blog, hacking was something that was done against ‘the man’, usually as a political statement. Now breaches are part of organised crime’s day to day operations. The Chinese government so thoroughly hacked Nortel that all its intellectual property was stolen along with commercial secrets like bids and client lists. The result was the firm went bankrupt. Russian ransomware shuts down hospitals across Ireland. North Korean government sanctioned hackers robbed 50 million dollars from the central bank of Bangladesh and laundered it in association with Chinese organised crime.
Now it has spilled into the real world with Chinese covert actions, Russian contractors in the developing world and hybrid warfare being waged across central Europe and the middle east.
Zynternet is a portmanteau made up of Zyn and internet. If you’re reading this internet is self-explanatory, the Zyn in question is tabacco-free Skoal bandit type nicotine pouches. Zyn comes in a tin and has various flavours.
According to journalist Max Read, the Zynternet is a kind of 90s to early 2000s sports obsessed ‘lad’ type culture; but in the 2020s. There are shades of ‘white van man’ in there as well.
a broad community of fratty, horndog, boorishly provocative 20- and sometimes (embarrassingly) 30-somethings–mostly but by no means entirely male–has emerged to form a newly prominent online subculture.
Despite Read’s definition defining it as a 20 to 30-something thing, the subculture seems to bleed into 40-something Dads and draws on creators like Barstool Sports. They’re less extreme than the Andrew Tate acolytes. They care more about sports and professional golf than they do about current affairs and politics. But they’ll be voting Republican. They like college sports, sports betting, light beers and Zyn nicotine pouches.
The culture has grown prominent on the laissez-faire Musk era Twitter.
Zynternet stretch
It would be very easy to point to the Zynternet audience and draw parallels to the ‘proles’ of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four. And then go down a dystopian k-hole.
I’ll leave the last words to David Ogilvy for those despairing about the Zynternet:
You aren’t advertising to a standing army; you are advertising to a moving parade. Three million consumers get married every year. The advertisement which sold a refrigerator to those who got married last year will probably be just as successful with those who’ll get married next year. An advertisement is just like a radar sweep, constantly hunting new prospects as they come into the market. Get a good radar and keep it sweeping.
David Ogilvy
TL;DR if you’re not reaching the zynternet, you’re probably not doing political marketing properly. More related content here.
Content or couture? Balenciaga’s 30-minute dress becomes the flashpoint of the season | Vogue Business – “It feels a little like a fast fashion iteration of haute couture,” says Victoria Moss, fashion director of The Standard, of the swirling mass of black nylon. “This feels at odds with what fashion at this level should be, which is exquisitely made pieces that somewhat justify their extreme pricing.” She adds that many invest in couture to have garments perfectly fitted to their bodies — and made to last for years.
“Is it beautiful? That’s debatable. Is it impressive? Not really. Is it brazen? Absolutely. Is it a meditation on the creative process? Maybe. Are we bored of these kinds of gimmicks at Balenciaga? Clearly not, as Demna’s work continues to be both a lightning rod and a conversation starter. “Call it ‘pret-a-polarize’,” says fashion journalist and ‘Newfash’ podcast host Mosha Lundström. “To my eye and understanding, I see this look as content rather than couture.”
Japan declares victory in effort to end government use of floppy disks | Reuters – yes stories like this are funny because ‘modern’ Japan with its flip phones, fax machines and floppy discs are an anachronism. But there’s a few other things to consider. There might be issues in terms of investment a la the NHS and critical systems that for whatever reason can’t be ported on to modern systems (like the problems had with security based on ActiveX).
Dumb systems also have security benefits, you can’t steal nearly as much data on even a compressed floppy disk as you can on a USB stick.
Interesting use cases for generative AI in China which sounds like a plot line from Ghost In The Shell.
Baidu – World No. 1? – Radio Free Mobile – is Baidu ERNIE really the number one generative AI service? It depends on if the numbers are true. 14 million developers, 950,000 models within the eco-system
China plays down importance of lithography tools in semiconductor challenges – Interesting report from Taiwan’s DigiTimes semiconductor trade magazine: China seems to be deliberately playing down the importance of lithography tools as it identifies the challenges for the development of its semiconductor industry in a recently published dossier.
The IT director is seeing a return to power and its thanks to the power of hackers and AI. The smartphone, the resurgence of Apple and SaaS saw IT decisions become more organic thanks to increased access to online services that provided better features than traditional enterprise software companies and the rise of knowledge working. IT teams found management of mobile devices onerous and faced hostile users.
Michiko Fukahori of the Japanese National Institute of Information and Communications Technology at ITU TSB – 8th Chief Technology Officers (CTO) Meeting
This meant that the IT director became less important in software marketing. A decade ago marketing had pivoted to a bottom up approach of ‘land and expand’. This drove the sales of Slack, Monday.com and MongoDB.
Two things impacted this bottom up approach to enterprise innovation:
Cybercrime: ransomware and supply chain attacks. Both are not new, ransomware can be traced back to 1989, with malware known as the AIDS trojan (this had much cultural resonance back then as a name). Supply chain attacks started happening in the 2010s with the Target data breach and by 2011, US politicians were considering it a security issue. Over COVID with the rise of remote working, the attacks increased. The risk put the IT director back in the firing line.
AI governance: generative AI systems learn from their training models and from user inputs, this led to a wide range of concerns from company intellectual property leaving via the AI system, or AI outputs based on intellectual property theft.
The most immediate impact of this is that the IT director is becoming a prized target on more technology marketers agendas again. This takes IT director focused marketing from back in the 1980s and the early 2000s with a top-down c-suite focus including the IT director. This implies that established brands like Microsoft and IBM will do better than buzzier startups. It also means I am less likely to see adverts for Monday.com in my YouTube feed over time.
This doesn’t mean that the IT director won’t be disrupted in other parts of his role as machine learning facilitates process automation in ways that are continuing to evolve.
Brands plan for a quiet Pride Month | News | Campaign Asia – The hesitation around Pride may also be related to executives’ increasing reluctance to speak out on social issues more broadly. Wolff pointed to Edelman’s Trust Barometer, which found that 87% of executives think taking a public stance on a social issue is riskier than staying silent. “Essentially, nine out of every 10 executives believe that the return on investment for their careers is not worth the support during this turbulent time,” said (Kate) Wolff. “This is clearly problematic for both the community and the progress we have made in recent years.”
Chinese Firms Are Investing Heavily in Whisky Market | Yicai Global – Although international liquor giants have developed the local whisky consumption market for many years, the market penetration rate of overseas spirits in China, including whisky, is only about 3 percent. This means domestic whisky producers will need to develop new consumption scenarios, Yang said. Whisky consumption in China centers mainly around nightclubs, gift-giving and tasting events held by affluent consumers, Yang noted, but in these scenarios, imported whisky brands with a long history tend to be more popularly accepted,, so it will be difficult for domestic rivals to compete. According to the latest report from alcohol market analysts IWSR, China’s whisky market was worth CNY5.5 billion (USD758 million) last year, having grown more than fourfold over the past 10 years. It is expected to reach CNY50 billion (USD6.9 billion) in the next five to 10 years.
Yoox Net-a-Porter exits China to focus on more profitable markets – Multi-brand luxury clothing sales platform Yoox Net-a-Porter is closing its China operations, this against a backdrop of other brands also pulling out of Chinese e-commerce including Marc Jacobs fragrances. The corporate line from Richemont was “in the context of a global Yoox Net-a-Porter plan aimed at focusing investments and resources on its core and more profitable geographies”.
Ignite the Scent: The Effectiveness of Implied Explosion in Perfume Ads | the Journal of Advertising Research – Scent is an important product attribute and an integral component of the consumption experience as consumers often want to perceive a product’s smell to make a well-informed purchase decision. It is difficult, however, to communicate the properties of a scent without the physical presence of odorants. Through five experiments conducted in a perfume-advertising context, our research shows that implied explosion, whether visually (e.g., a spritz blast) or semantically created, can increase perceived scent intensity, subsequently enhancing perceived scent persistence. It also found a positive effect of perceived scent persistence on purchase intention. In conclusion, the research suggests that implied explosion can be a powerful tool for advertisers to enhance scent perception, consequently boosting purchase intention.
Mat Baxter’s Huge turnaround job | Contagious – interesting perspective on his time at Huge. What I can’t square it all with is what we know about marketing science and declining effectiveness across digital media
On my LinkedIn, I couldn’t escape from the Cannes festival of advertising. Partly because one of the projects I had been involved in was a shortlisted entry. One of the most prominent films was Dramamine’s ‘The Last Barf Bag: A Tribute to a Cultural Icon’. It was notable because of its humour, which was part of this years theme across categories.
震災復興から生まれた刺し子プロジェクトをブランドに！ 15人のお母さんの挑戦！ – CAMPFIRE (キャンプファイヤー) – ancient Japanese craft – KUON and Sashiko Gals are part of a new generation of designers keeping the traditional Japanese technique of sashiko alive. And together, they are bringing the decorative style of stitching to our favorite sneakers (including techy Salomons!). Sashiko is a type of simple running stitch used in Japan for over a thousand years to reinforce fabrics. It’s typically done with a thick white thread on indigo fabric and made into intricate patterns.
Nationalism in Online Games During War by Eren Bilen, Nino Doghonadze, Robizon Khubulashvili, David Smerdon :: SSRN – We investigate how international conflicts impact the behavior of hostile nationals in online games. Utilizing data from the largest online chess platform, where players can see their opponents’ country flags, we observed behavioral responses based on the opponents’ nationality. Specifically, there is a notable decrease in the share of games played against hostile nationals, indicating a reluctance to engage. Additionally, players show different strategic adjustments: they opt for safer opening moves and exhibit higher persistence in games, evidenced by longer game durations and fewer resignations. This study provides unique insights into the impact of geopolitical conflicts on strategic interactions in an online setting, offering contributions to further understanding human behavior during international conflicts.
The West Coast’s Fanciest Stolen Bikes Are Getting Trafficked by One Mastermind in Jalisco, Mexico | WIRED – “Not so long ago, bike theft was a crime of opportunity—a snatch-and-grab, or someone applying a screwdriver to a flimsy lock. Those quaint days are over. Thieves now are more talented and brazen and prolific. They wield portable angle grinders and high-powered cordless screwdrivers. They scope neighborhoods in trucks equipped with ladders, to pluck fine bikes from second-story balconies. They’ll use your Strava feed to shadow you and your nice bike back to your home.” – not terribly surprising, you’ve seen the professionalisation and industrialisation in theft across sectors from shoplifting, car theft and watch thefts so this is continuing the trend.
OpenAI Just Gave Away the Entire Game – The Atlantic – The Scarlett Johansson debacle is a microcosm of AI’s raw deal: It’s happening, and you can’t stop it. This is important not from a technology point of view, but from the mindset of systemic sociopathy that now pervades Silicon Valley.
Apple Intelligence is Right On Time – Stratechery by Ben Thompson – Apple’s orientation towards prioritizing users over developers aligns nicely with its brand promise of privacy and security: Apple would prefer to deliver new features in an integrated fashion as a matter of course; making AI not just compelling but societally acceptable may require exactly that, which means that Apple is arriving on the AI scene just in time.
‘Rare, vintage, Y2K’: Online thrifters are flipping fast fashion. How long can it last? | Vogue Business – as secondhand shopping becomes increasingly commonplace, this latest outburst brings to light the subjectivity of resale. What determines an item’s worth, especially in an age of viral micro-trends and heavy nostalgia? Is it ethically moral to set an item that’s the product of fast fashion — long criticised for not paying workers fairly — at such a steep upcharge, and making profit from it? If someone is willing to pay, does any of it matter?
Chinese Antitrust Exceptionalism by Angela Zhang sounds exceptionally dry to the uninitiated. Zhang is a senior legal academic who works at the University of Hong Kong, which until recently got a front row seat to China disputes with both the European Union and the United States. Given the recent changes in Hong Kong where she lives, we may not see as frank a book of its quality come out of Hong Kong academia again on this subject matter if it was viewed to fall under the purview of ‘state secrets’. With the new security law that has come in, definitions have been left deliberately vague and wide-reaching.
So why is Chinese Antitrust Exceptionalism of interest?
If like me, you’ve worked on brands like Qualcomm, Huawei or GSK you realise how much of an impact China’s regulatory environment can have on your client’s success. Around the time I worked on one client, they were shamed on the evening TV news and some of their staff disappeared for questioning by the authorities. They then reappeared months later looking haggard and worn out. It is new important for everything from technology to the millions of COVID deaths that happened in China due to a lack of effective vaccines.
Zhang breaks down the history of China’s antitrust regulatory environment, how it works within China’s power structures and how it differs from the US model. The rise of antitrust was as much down to bureaucratic politics of the Chinese government.
What becomes apparent is that Chinese power isn’t monolithic and that China is weaponising antitrust legislation for strategic and policy goals rather than consumer benefit.
Zhang talks about how regulatory hostage taking and public shaming was a tool of the regulatory authorities from early on.
The book then looks at foreign reactions to Chinese government from EU investigations to current US-China trade restrictions and discusses how China weaponised its regulatory frameworks making ‘hostage taking’ trans-national in nature.
Last of it’s type?
Zhang’s book won awards when it first came out in 2021, and is still valuable now given the relatively static US-China policy views. More on Chinese Antitrust Exceptionalism here. More book reviews here.
Technonationalism as a term has started to spring up in Chinese policy discussions regarding technology trade with the US and China.
Technonationalism origins
Technonationalism is a term used by economist Robert Reich in 1987 to describe the relationship between technology and national security. Reich used the term in an article that he wrote for The Atlantic. It originally referred to the intervention of the Reagan administration in the United States to prevent the acquisition of Fairchild Semiconductor by Japan’s Fujitsu. Reich felt that the Reagan administration mis-understood the the technology problems faced by the US and blocking the Fujitsu-Fairchild deal was the wrong thing to do.
Elkor Labs photo of Fairchild Semiconductor exhibition stand.
The China effect
In English language usage, it started to be mentioned in publications as far back as 1969 and seems to have had two distinct peaks. The first was from the Brezhnev-era Soviet Union through to 1990. The second peak coincides with China’s rise.
From a Chinese perspective, strategic conflicts between major powers have revitalised the concept in the international political arena. Of course, this ignores China’s own actions and their perceptions by other countries:
Chinese government policies to promote economic independence and induce strategic dependence of other states across all infrastructure technologies – or as the FT calls it ‘Fortress China‘
Today, the competition between China and western democracies is focused on critical materials like pharmaceuticals and a range of strategically important advanced technologies.
These sectors include:
Electric vehicles (or as they are called in China new energy vehicles)
Drones, virtual reality,
Various type of machine learning ‘artificial intelligence’
Big data and data mining
Robotics and automation
5G networks
The Internet of Things (IoT),
Synthetic biology
This conflict is considered more severe than the US – Japanese semiconductor trade friction of the 1980s. But Japan and the US were largely aligned from a political, defence and economic perspectives during this time.
The technology related to disputed sectors are seen as key to the next generation of defense systems, industrial capabilities and information power China and western democracies.
Neo-liberalism & technonationalism
This implies that economics is an extension of defence rather than completely separate, as implied by the western neo-liberal laissez-faire approach to globalisation. This places company leadership dead set against the wider interest of their own western countries. During the cold war with the Soviet bloc western companies were much better aligned with their country’s interests.
Palmer Luckey’s Anduril represents a notable exception in Silicon Valley and its attitude is remarkably different to the likes of Apple or Microsoft.
Post-war Asian miracle model
While technonationalism as a term was given voice in the mid-1980s, one could consider the directed economy efforts by the likes of MITI in Japan and its counterparts in Taiwan and South Korea as being technonationalist in nature.
From this perspective, technonationalism played a crucial role in post-World War II economic and industrial policies, fostering domestic industries, promoting scientific and technological innovation. These polices propelled Japan to become a global technological power. Korea took a similar tack with Park Chung Hee’s compact with the chaebols and the Taiwan government was crucial in the roots of Taiwan’s dominance in semiconductors.
Back to the present
The current increase in technonationalism by China and western democracies means that international trade in many fields will continue to change due to national security concerns evolve. This is often masked in language such as de-risking, de-coupling and de-globalisation.
Welcome to my January 2024 newsletter which marks my 6th issue – bringing us to a half dozen issues in total. Here’s a quick video introduction that I recorded with HeyGen.
Dozen as a word in the English language comes from the french douzaine – meaning an assembly of 12 things of the same nature. This in turn was derived from roots in Latin. Weirdly enough the use of dozen plunged to a nadir in 1983 and then enjoyed steady growth to reach its most recent peak in 2018.
The sun rises reluctantly over the horizon every morning, disappearing each afternoon, but that doesn’t mean that inspiration stops. But each day is getting slightly more daylight here in London and in a few months we could be complaining about the heat.
Watch Registry – how a confluence of EU regulations and surging crime has driven a new category of online service.
Pebble – micro-blogging service Pebble went under in November last year. Here’s what we lost.
Loneliness – its impact and some of the solutions that are evolving to address it.
Backroom – how one of my photos went around the web and ended up in an online game.
Every old idea is new again – a mix of collective amnesia and the less than perfect memory of the web means that old ideas have their time as new creative.
Books that I have read.
Over the new year, I curled up on the sofa with 2034 by Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis. Ackerman and Stavridis plot out a political pot boiler about what a future war with China might look like. The realpolitik of the book feels real, the main issue would be the complete passivity of smaller powers like the United Kingdom and France. The rise of India and the fall of China as a global power at the end is an interesting commentary on the current Xi-led government. The book seems to set out to do a few jobs. First and foremost it’s a call to arms about American preparedness (it isn’t prepared). Secondly, it’s a warning about over-relying on technology, over base skills like astral navigation – something that the advertising industry could learn from as we fumble forward across AI, martech and adtech in a time of declining effectiveness. But the book also irritated me and pulled me out of of the story with magical thinking in Chinese technology and having every part of a plane including an ejector seat open to being hacked and disabled. I could imagine car manufacturers leaving their safety systems open, but would have thought that the military would have been more sensible about their safety equipment.
How Did Britain Come to This?: A century of systemic failures of governance by Gwen Bevan. How Clement Attlee’s administration solved issues of minimal government in the post-war period and these solutions held up until the early 1970s. How Margaret Thatcher’s solution of markets for everything suffered from market failures over the years. All of which resulted in geography as destiny in terms of social outcomes.
Among the Braves: Hope, Struggle, and Exile in the Battle for Hong Kong and the Future of Global Democracy by Shibani Mahtani and Timothy McLaughlin – an interesting portrayal of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement from the perspective of foreign journalists in the region. McLaughlin writes for The Atlantic and is based out of Singapore, Mahtani does a similar role for the Washington Post. The whole society movement of the protests is something that comes out in the books and makes me think that the authorities will have a longer term job to keep their illiberal agenda going. But on the flipside the American foreign policy looks weak and ineffective in the face of China. What most surprised me was how the authors uncovered details inside the government and the police force. Probably the most explosive allegation is that the Organised Crime and Triad Bureau of the Hong Kong Police were monitoring the WhatsApp group chat used by multiple rival gangs to organise the attack on Yuen Long train station. There is a large overlap between rural political committees in the Yuen Long area and triads. We know that the police did not prevent it, did nothing about it when it happened and conducted minimal prosecutions. Chief executive Carrie Lam was getting her news from the television rather than intelligence gathered using open source, human intelligence sources and ‘exquisite‘ means. Some members of the government related to mainland affairs seem to have had an indication of what was coming, but there is no evidence that Lam knew.
Things I have been inspired by.
Swiss International Airlines, the city of Geneva and the Grand Prix D’Horologerie de Genève did a classic PR stunt in October 2023. A flight crew member supervised by a watchmaker assembled a mechanical watch mid-flight between Geneva and New York at an altitude at 30,000 feet. In the idea you have precision, innovation, expertise, professionalism, quality and skill. A solid fusion of complementary brands, brand planning and creative ideation.
Unfortunately, the story seems to have been eclipsed by the Israel – HAMAS conflict in the Gaza region. The uncertainty of the news agenda illustrates the weakest point of a campaign relying purely on earned media.
Etsy and agency The Orchard nailed gift buying with their spot ‘Dad’. The insight that family members often don’t want gifts and are concerned about clutter or the ‘wrong type’ of gifts is on-point. There is the additional layer of thriftiness that comes from being part of an immigrant family – be they Irish or Asian.
The idea also had me reflect on the time I spent helping to sort through my late Uncle’s belongings on the family farm back home in Ireland. There were ‘new old stock’ ties still in their packaging and an Insignia aftershave / shower gel gift set from sometime in the early 1990s in his drawers. Stashed there after being gifted, but unneeded.
Thoughtful gifts are priceless.
While the ad is aimed at Christmas, I saw it as I thought about my Dad’s birthday. My own parents exhibit the traits of not wanting gifts and thriftiness. But in my case, no Etsy-sleuthing was required however, with a bit of cajoling he knew precisely what he wanted from the Toolstation catalogue. The collector gene runs deep in the Carroll family.
https://youtu.be/4VI6rgps_Bc?si=pHQpElVLc_KlDecI
The Orchard for Etsy
While a lot of London had their out of office on until January 15th, New Balance had their skates on previewing Scorpius, Rose Water and Medusa Azúl variants of the 1906R in association with Action Bronson. The clever thing that they have done is that each of the colour ways have a variation in brightness, appealing to sneaker heads of different temperaments. For me this was more exciting than Louis Vuitton’s collaboration with Timberland also announced this month.
7-Eleven Hong Kong did one of the first campaigns that merged generative AI techniques with traditional advertising production values including extensive use of green screens and wire work that would have been more at home in the fantasy martial arts films Hong Kong made famous.
4.5 billion years in an hour. A great way to bring data to life in a way that we wouldn’t otherwise be able to fathom. It also works well as a background for writing late at night as well. It did remind me of Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy for some reason, and that’s no bad thing.
I was looking at the underlying code on one of my flickr photo pages and came across this recruitment advert embedded in the code. I thought it was quite cleverly done in terms of targeting a technical audience.
A bit of a late find for me, the Computer History Museum held a 2-hour event interviewing key people in the development of the Apple Mac, in order to celebrate the 40th anniversary of its launch. There is so much that can be still learned today from their experience. You can watch it here.
Finally, Tom Coates shed more light on what we are likely to see platform-wise from a post-Twitter future.
Things I have watched.
It’s cold and dark and I make no apology for my films being unapologetically escapist and and entertaining to try and counterweight the drab conditions.
Something Wicked This Way Comes – Something Wicked This Way Comes was made in the UK during that many Disney fans describe as the studios ‘dark period’. From 1967 – 1984, the Disney family connection to the business was severed through deaths and a resignation. Film quality declined while shows and theme parks supported the business until Michael Eisner . Something Wicked This Way Comes has a fantastic cast including blaxploitation starlet Pam Grier, Broadway and Hollywood veteran Jason Robards and a young Jonathan Pryce, now better known as David Cartwright, former spook and River Cartwright’s grandfather in Slow Horses. The film is based on a book by Ray Bradbury. The film has a similarly surreal nature to Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory.
I sat and watched Wild Palms. I hadn’t watched it all the way through previously and I found it much more rewarding to watch than similar shows like Twin Peaks. There is that slight dissonance and discomfort you have watching it that reminded me of reading JG Ballard’s works.
The Criterion Collection released a sympathetic digital remastering of Frederico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. With a lot of similar projects the work adds little, but The Criterion Collection are no ordinary publisher and the film needed a lot of work. So much so, that it took donations from Gucci and government bodies to ensure that the work was done to a high standards. The results are right there on screen, the sound has had excessive background noise cleaned up as well. It isn’t excessively loud like the audio on the remaster of Sergio Leone’s crowning achievement Once Upon A Time in the West, but it does benefit from the clarity provided. The films commentary on the hollowness of the media industry is timeless as is its tour of Rome: ancient and modern.
Michael Fassbender’s Road to Le Mans – Porsche sponsored online film series that goes through Michael Fassbender’s journey to drive the Le Mans 24 hour race.
I am a huge fan of French police dramas from the 1960s to the present day and was really impressed by Netflix show Blood Coast. It features Olivier Marchal on some of the writing and directing duties. Marchal created Braquo, which ran for three seasons until 2016.
Not exactly something to watch, but the Hot Money: The New Narcos is an amazing high adrenalin podcast with the Kinahan family and the Dubai Super-cartel at the centre of it all.
Useful tools.
ABBYY Business Card Reader.
ABBYY Business Card Reader allows you to convert business cards into contacts.app entries on your iPhone or iPad – this then syncs with my Mac as part of iCloud services. While I don’t receive as many business cards as I used to, this is still a really useful time-saver.
WolframAlpha.
WolframAlpha is a handy shortcut for data points that Statista, WARC etc. doesn’t or won’t have.
Beeper.
Beeper is a multi-protocol messaging client. You can have Slack, LinkedIn, iMessage, WhatsApp and Discord all in one client. It works on both Macs and iPhones.
WaveAI Note taker.
Wave AI is an app that provides call note taking functionality using speech to text conversation. It is based on a freemium business model. Give it a try to see if it works with your style of working. An alternative to consider is Vienna Scribe, both seem to give better results than otter.ai
Portable second monitor.
When working away from the office or home, I have found a second monitor to come in handy. The one I use is from ASUS and comes with a protective cover that doubles as a stand.
Ok this is the end of my January 2024 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Gong hei fat choy for the forthcoming Chinese new year. It will be the year of the dragon on February 10th.
