Category: technology | 技術 | 기술 | テクノロジー

It’s hard to explain to someone who didn’t live through it how transformation technology has been. When I was a child a computer was something mysterious. My Dad has managed to work his way up from the shop floor of the shipyard where he worked and into the planning office.

One evening he broad home some computer paper. I was fascinated by the the way the paper hinged on perforations and had tear off side edges that allowed it to be pulled through the printer with plastic sprockets connecting through holes in the paper.

My Dad used to compile and print off work orders using an ICL mainframe computer that was timeshared by all the shipyards that were part of British Shipbuilders.

I used the paper for years for notes and my childhood drawings. It didn’t make me a computer whiz. I never had a computer when I was at school. My school didn’t have a computer lab. I got to use Windows machines a few times in a regional computer labs. I still use what I learned in Excel spreadsheets now.

My experience with computers started with work and eventually bought my own secondhand Mac. Cut and paste completely changed the way I wrote. I got to use internal email working for Corning and internet connectivity when I went to university. One of my friends had a CompuServe account and I was there when he first met his Mexican wife on an online chatroom, years before Tinder.

Leaving college I set up a Yahoo! email address. I only needed to check my email address once a week, which was fortunate as internet access was expensive. I used to go to Liverpool’s cyber cafe with a friend every Saturday and showed him how to use the internet. I would bring any messages that I needed to send pre-written on a floppy disk that also held my CV.

That is a world away from the technology we enjoy now, where we are enveloped by smartphones and constant connectivity. In some ways the rate of change feels as if it has slowed down compared to the last few decades.

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.

May 11, 2015
Drones in advertising and things that caught my eye this week

Pepsi has got in on drones in advertising before it all goes a bit lame and tired. Some really interesting projection mapping type effects as well

Drones in advertising builds on work that has been done since the Beijing olympics on the use of drone swarms for massed visuals that are complementary to fireworks and 3D projections

Audi advert: Kevin Smith, Jason Meyes. Enough said (oh and some cameos from actors who’ve appeared in Marvel comic film adaptations including pioneer Stan Lee)

Enterprise storage outfit Box.net have a great interview with Stewart Butterfield of Slack (and Flickr fame). Some interesting comments on how a GUI isn’t always the right interface for people who use keyboards. This is so right. I remember working on terminal screens when I worked in a call centre and the ease with which I could quickly tab around screens, rather than having to reach for a mouse to click a multitude of radio buttons. More design related posts here.

Scottish National Party member of parliament Mhairi Black gave an interview back in March. I found it interesting as it shows that kind of impact social media will have on future political careers, particularly when it it will provide greater clarity than the 2009 debate around David Cameron’s raving history. Imagine if you were presented at the age of 50 with selected fringe thoughts you had at 19 years old?

As Black notes:

My uncle summed it up when he said that, when he was a teenager, he just used to shout at the telly. My generation tweets and there is a record of it.

What adult doesn’t look back to things they said when they were 16 or 17 and go, ‘Oh my God?’

The difference is my comments are being dragged out for the whole world to see.

No trite social media analysis or fantastic technical wizardry just a great idea, client belief and a budget made 3M Korea’s Unforgettable Post-It Proposal

Finally Helios is a new Hong Kong film gaining traction in the Chinese box office. In the face of a lack of new Hong Kong actors coming through, it was interesting that the new blood came in the form of Korean boy band member Choi Siwon who also performs some of Super Junior’s mandarin repertoire

May 11, 2015
Nokia N900

This throwback gadget the Nokia N900 comes from before Nokia decided to go with Windows Mobile as its smartphone operating system. It had started to develop Maemo as a successor operating system to Symbian Series 60. Meamo was a Linux kernel based mobile operating system which owed its heritage to the Debian Linux distribution.

The N900 was the first phone which showed Nokia’s ideas in developing an alternative to the Android and iPhone eco-systems. Symbian was a powerful operating system, with true multitasking but there were issues that just tidying up the UI and introducing capacitive touch wouldn’t address. For a mature operating system, I had to reboot my Nokia phones surprisingly often, basic apps like the address book didn’t work if you had over a thousand contacts – so most sales people out there.

The predecessor of the Nokia N900 was the 770 internet tablet which was launched back at the end of 2005, which was the iPad before the iPad.

Trying to trial this device is a bit hard as it relied on web services such as an app store that no longer exists. Secondly it offers an experience comparable to an Android or iPhone powered by a processor that is several generations older, so you have to make allowances for the fact that the Nokia N900 can feel slow at times.

Let’s start with the industrial design. The phone is relatively thick, partly due to its keyboard and replaceable battery design feels good to hold.

The Danger Sidekick-esque slide-out keyboard which would be handy for the world of OTT messaging services like WhatsApp, WeChat and LINE. It isn’t a full keyboard like the Nokia E90 Communicator that I used to own but it is more usable than say a Blackberry Bold. The keyboard feels solid and stable.

The camera surround on the back has a stand that pops out for when you want to use the phone to watch content or as a glorified desk clock.

The dialler on the phone is easier to use than the iPhone and did what it came on the tin – its slight gradient feels like Apple pre-iOS7. Nokia’s HERE mapping service was responsive, it seems to be the one thing on the phone still supported.

Nokia’s Mozilla-based browser still works and provided an experience similar to modern smartphones, but slower (this is partly due to the processor inside the phone).

Now the Nokia N900 stands a testament to lost potential, the following Nokia N9 and N950, looked like polished products. Stephen Elop saw things differently and despite the Nokia N9 selling well in the few markets that he allowed it to sell, put the company on its fateful relationship with Microsoft. Presumably Elop and his team felt that they couldn’t sustain the innovation of Maemo, which would have required a move to Qualcomm processors away from Intel. Nokia had backed WiMax rather than LTE with Intel, so the company was on the wrong foot. The decline is now a matter of well recorded history with Microsoft having eventually taken over a much diminished phone business. Some of the N9 team went on to build Jolla – a small phone company that built a smartphone and tablet to showcase their SailfishOS operating system. It remains to be seen if other phone manufacturers will launch products using it. But it does offer consumers outside North America a more secure option to an Android handset. More gadget related content here.

May 6, 2015
Virtual cockpit & things from this week

Razorfish Berlin’s interactive brochure for Audi to promote the TT coupe’s virtual cockpit. I was reminded of an ad that Mercedes did where the phone became the rear view mirror of a car, emphasising performance. Also McDonald’s had used the mix of print and circuits with phones to create beat making place mats.

But I find the intersection of print and digital an exciting space, even if the virtual cockpit concept doesn’t appeal to me that much.

More related content here.

Leo Burnett Italy created an app for P&G’s Always brand that directly addresses the insecurity women may feel in an unfamiliar area at night time; it connects them with a friend, to protect them on your way home.

It is a smart play for the brand to maximise how it can be useful to consumers.

Celebrity music streaming service Tidal faced critics at launch, this was probably the best of them

I love this old video about Bell Laboratories’ complex in Holmdel, New Jersey that AT&T have put on YouTube as part of their efforts to digitise their archives. This is Silicon Valley before Silicon Valley

At the other end of the spectrum, Ogilvy Hong Kong for Hong Kong Clean-Up produced a campaign that puts DNA analysis into an Orwellian future.

May 3, 2015
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.

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.

But it soon became apparent that Apple had built a packing equivalent of a Winnebago RV for the watch.

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.

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.

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

April 27, 2015