Ged Carroll

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.

  • RSS dead nonsense + more

    RSS dead nonsense

    Is RSS Dead? A Look At The Numbers | MakeUseOf – interesting stats on RSS – a very-much alive format. RSS dead is nonsense, I use it everyday. It is invisible plumbing. Reports of RSS dead is due to the demise of Google Reader. I can’t recommend RSS reader Newsblur enough. More related content here

    Business

    Adidas Group Forecasts 15 Percent Annual EPS Growth Through 2020 | Team Business – interesting definition of open source

    China

    China Focus: Top political advisor highlights CPC leadership, “Four Comprehensives” | Xinhua – comprehensively building a moderately prosperous society, deepening reform, advancing the rule of law and strictly governing the Party

    Culture

    ‘We Came to Sweat’ Tells the Story of New York City’s Oldest Black-Owned Gay Club | VICE – interesting artefact of club culture

    Economics

    Chinas slowdown has suddenly become a “fiscal shock” | Quartz – interesting economic data, the property price change doesn’t surprise me, Chinas slowdown is likely to be temporary

    FMCG

    Kraft and Heinz Merger a Cost Cutting Story | Euromonitor International – cost cutting could also be from a marketing perspective

    Innovation

    Venture investor Bill Gurley predicts startup failure – Fortune – we may not be in a tech bubble, the venture capitalist said, but we’re in a risk bubble

    Luxury

    “Dressing down” is only a status symbol for the elite – Quartz – flagged up by our Becky

    Online

    Facebook Unveils Immersive 360-Degree Video for News Feeds | WIRED – interesting moves to come up with immersive (non game) content

    Philippines

    Homegrown smartphone brand beats Samsung in the Philippines | Techinasia – part of a wider story about how Samsung is getting rolled back out of high growth markets in smartphones

    Security

    Ex-NSA director: China has hacked ‘every major corporation’ in U.S. – CNN Money – strident allegations, I wouldn’t be surprised if the 5Is have also done the same thing

    Software

    Messaging Apps Offer Do-It-All Services in Bid for Higher Profits – NYTimes.com – interesting article on how WeChat and LINE are blazing the trail for western OTT messaging platforms in terms of innovation and business models (paywall)

    WeChat is how content goes viral in China | Resonance China – from a marketing perspective this confirms the decline in Weibo as a platform. It also provides challenges due to the lack of visibility for brands in comparison to Weibo

    What’s missing from this 13-year-old girl’s iPhone home screen? – Quartz – interesting but not necessarily scientific. It does make me wonder why color coding doesn’t happen in app groupings UI specs

    Technology

    No, Really, the PC Is Dying and It’s Not Coming Back | WIRED – dramatic title, 5 per cent drop in PC sales numbers. It ignores the role of the personal computer as a business workhorse and as a creative tool

  • rc is 11

    rc is 11. Well its 11 years since started under it’s own name. The first post under the rc moniker was ‘Are we too complex’ which was a brief cross post that pointed to a longer piece I wrote at The AlwaysOn Network on Dan Geer. Dan Geer is a computer security and risk management expert who did a lot of work around the economics of security and how this all relates to technological complexity. The AlwaysOn Network had been newly formed by Tony Perkins, a founder of dot.com cheerleading magazine Red Herring. At the time it was a kind of proto-social network and Huffington Post for digital thinkers. I met my good friend Ian Wood on it. The fact that rc is 11 has had me reflect on 11 years of writing, cultural and technological change.
    Apollo 11 Launch
    I had got into blogging mainly because I had Aljazeera as a client for a while. George W. Bush was about to send the US forces into Iraq after weapons of mass destruction and Aljazeera was a lot less respected in the west as a media outlet. I found it hard to get media coverage so decided to go directly to the prospective audience that we wanted to reach. We were seeding content on forums related to finance, currency and oil futures trading. I’d heard about this thing called blogging, which made sense exploring further while I was at it. The rest as they say is history.

    Some 11 years later, Always On is a more prosiac seller of networking events and op-eds, but less of salon style community compared to what it was back in the day. At the time it was built on a proprietary CMS by a company NetModular that has since disappeared into the ether of technology as other off-the-shelf social platforms came along.

    The blog went from exploration with a specific client end in mind to become an aide memoire and scratchpad for ideas. This exploration through writing inspired the name: renaissance chambara:

    • renaissance – as in renaissance man to indicate that the blog would cover a lot of different ideas
    • chambara – after my love of Japanese samurai films, in particular Akira Kurosawa’s work with Toshiro Mifune – I was curious about East Asian culture, the nascent Hallyu movement in Korea, Hong Kong and Chinese cinema and pretty much anything coming out of Japan

    Over the subsequent decade I got invited to contribute to two books and got at least two of my roles because of the content and prominence of this blog. Even though I never monetised it, it always seemed to contribute and pay me back in some way or another.

    Things have changed, social platforms, tools and gurus have come and gone. Media spend has risen in prominence and brand marketing has declined. What surprised me was the slow rate of change within the PR industry and time it took for media and ad agencies to gain the whip hand. I had expected that mobile and desktop experiences would be less divergent in nature as screens grew (I had been using a Nokia Communicator E90 in the late noughties) which meant that Google’s lead in search was much sharper than I expected.

    I never had a plan for the blog, it has always been in the moment. Blogging isn’t dead, this one now sits in a spiders web of social properties rather than front-and-centre. It is no longer a conversation but a contributor to dialogue that usually happens on Twitter. The posts are collated alongside other people’s work on my feed. The process has taken on a life of its own. I have note books were ideas germinate, tens of thousands of bookmarks of reference material and look at the RSS feeds from 954 blogs or websites for inspiration.

    This process forces me to be continually curious about my field-of-work.

    I have posted from three continents and some 11 or so countries. I got to explore my interest in East Asia by living in Hong Kong for a while as well as visiting surrounding countries. Looking at rc is 11 I don’t know if I will be writing the post ‘rc is 18’ or even ‘rc is 21’ in ten years time, but I don’t currently see any reason why I won’t.

    More information
    Are we too complex (hosted on Blogspot)
    AlwaysOn Network
    NetModular

  • Ghostly sounds + more things

    Ghostly sounds

    All the ghostly sounds that are lost when you compress to mp3 – this has been quite well publicised but there is something about it that sends shivers down my spine each time I listen to the ghostly sounds.

    Culture

    Benjamin Von Wong’s superhero series of pictures are amazing

    TJ Fuller’s animated GIFs of psychedelic animals are tremendous

    Gadget

    The Apple Watch Is Time, Saved | TechCrunch – watch as context dependent screen for iPhone

    Apple Watch vs. Samsung Smartwatch: No new Gear announcement at MWC | BGR – a lot of supposition here but it was interesting that Samsung kept all the limelight for the Galaxy S6 models

    Innovation

    BBC News – Technology helps visually impaired navigate the Tube – interesting where 2.0 project on the London Underground

    Japan

    A History Of Gundam, The Anime That Defined The Giant Robot Revolution – as if this needs any explanation. More Japan related content here.

    Marketing

    Wednesday. Hump Day. Peak of the week. – hump day promotion great way to bury the competition by O2

    StateOfPR – Research report – the key take out in the stateofpr research report for me was the stagnation in budgets, however this maybe due to the CIPR membership skewed towards NFP and public sector

    Media

    David Shing’s vision of a world united by tech: Media360Summit – Campaign Asia – the sixth biggest contributor to stress is media overload

    Online

    Adult content policy on Blogger – Blogger Help – Google looks to clean up Blogger which has become a bit of a spam nest. More related content here.

    Retailing

    Why has ASOS removed its guest checkout option? | Econsultancy – they must have data to back this up surely? Or they don’t value drive by custom? More related content here.

    Security

    When Strong Encryption Isn’t Enough to Protect Our Privacy | Alternet  – much of this is because the information about the communication is useful in itself. It provides the typography of networks, the nature of the communication. Frequency of communications indicates the relative strength of communication. Strong encryption is like an envelope, but the stamp, the address, the colour of the envelope, the way the address is written, the franking over the stamp and the return address all provide useful information. 

    Edward Snowden Citizenfour: The former contractor sparked a movement that’s winning the surveillance argument. | Slate – interesting analysis of the dynamics of the US privacy movement. Thi is going to have legs. The only thing that surprises me however, is that other people are surprised. It is a natural extension of the ECHELON network of the late 1990s.

  • Apple Spring Forward event

    Apple Spring Forward event

    I started this post a few hours after watching Tim Cook and company launch a number of product revisions  under the title of Apple Spring Forward. The most anticipated of which was the Apple Watch. I was in full Post Traumatic Apple Event Disorder mode. I have collated some of my thoughts about the event below and tried to order them into some sort of cogent narrative.
    Apple TV connections

    AppleTV

    The reduction of cost in Apple TV hardware at the Apple Spring Forward event was an interesting move. Apple has decided to go for market share rather than margin with the device and the incumbent HBO Now service might be just the catalyst to drive adoption. That Apple is leading with a HBO streaming service tends to imply that Apple has likely given up on trying to build its own ‘cable channel over IP’ offering. It does raise another interesting question about how other studios will want to handle their content in iTunes or via a an app similar to BBC iPlayer. Apple is passing on to consumers the cost benefits of using the older silicon design that powers the Apple TV. It also means that the Apple TV is the least powerful computer in Apple’s product range – including phones and tablets. The AppleTV is an egalitarian device rather a luxury brand product and a vote against widespread 4K adoption; unless the price discount is making room for a premium 4K capable device at a later date?

    Social Enterprise

    Apple’s moves at becoming a ‘social enterprise’ were interesting. For an organisation so polished at presenting itself to the outside world, the ResearchKit announcement and the case study with Christy Turlington felt awkward.  ResearchKit was delivered in a flat manner and didn’t explain how the product fitted in with Apple’s position on user privacy. Turlington’s appearance was like a particularly sycophantic Charlie Rose interview. There was a lot to talk about without having to ‘over-reach’ for celebrity endorsement.

    Apple needs to work harder picking the spokespeople to burnish its reputation, the nature of the projects and the deliver to be less cringeworthy. The very nature of the product and design story means that Apple already has a certain amount of implicit moral imperative and the company should be more in-tune with that.


    Apple Watch app
    Apple Watch

    I am deeply conflicted by a lot of the discussions around the Apple Watch, for a number reasons:

    I haven’t used an Apple Watch, but watching others use it in the demos made me think that it is fiddly and dare-I-say-it: hard to use. It could be un-Apple in nature

    Scott Galloway points to the Apple Watch and describes Apple as having transitioned to a luxury brand. The Edition watch maybe a luxury product, but not all of the Apple product range are luxurious – the AppleTV at a new price point of $69 implies ubiquity. This maybe a specific choice to get scale for the media content that other luxury Apple devices need to function. Just in the same way that quality newspapers couldn’t survive solely on sales to luxury consumers. What does this mean for those Apple customers who use the the devices as professional or creative tools?

    Much of the debate revolves around what luxury consumers want by people who can’t afford to buy the Edition version of the watch. Do the kind of luxury shoppers who wouldn’t care about a $13,000+ watch have a smartphone, or a smart person to organise their lives? An astute reader of Popbitch will soon realise that the celebrity accessory to have is a personal assistant, not a bejeweled Vertu. Secondly, not being available is a luxury as privacy and time are the preserve of the reach in an always-on world

    Many of the more positive predictions depend on the Chinese luxury market. The luxury market is changing in China. Luxury goods are used as tools in China; if you look successful, you are more likely to be successful in a culture that relies on high-touch personal relationships to facilitate business. However, consumers are becoming more sophisticated and moving away from at least some of the gaudier products. The Middle East may be a more opportune market for Apple.

    A second use case in the Chinese luxury market is that of a compact storage of value for capital flight or making a payment. The culture of payments for favours is being clamped down on my the Xi administration which has been made visible by a 20%+ drop in luxury watch sales. I don’t know the way plutocrats would likely jump on the gold Apple Watch.

    ‘Apple Watch is just an iPhone remote control‘ Craig Johnson senior analyst at Piper Jaffray – heard on Bloomberg TV. ‘Luxury watches are a store of wealth, an Apple Watch isn’t‘. Which is probably true for many people on Wall Street, but may not true for the truly rich.

    Apple MacBook

    The MacBook carried the biggest dissonance for me and was arguably the biggest disappointment of the Apple Spring Forward event. For long time Apple customers, MacBook means entry level laptop. They used to come white polycarbonate shells that matched the iMac G4 and Apple eMac. Instead the MacBook seems to reflect status:

    • A price point above the MacBook Air, but less powerful and less adaptable
    • Good battery life, but underpowered for many tasks
    • Three finishes including a gold colour that screams status in the iPhone line
    • A single port which made many of geek friends freak out with anger. The morning after one of my friends posted on Facebook about the single port: I am still angry. I use a Retina MacBook Pro at work and suffer from a lack of ports for external drives (including an optical drive), Ethernet, a secondary display and a card reader for multimedia work. The MacBook has a single port which replaces the MagSafe with a USB connection. For business users or creatives the machine is gloriously impractical and destroys their investment in things like the Apple Cinema display. I currently an Apple TV and have tried to screen-cast over Wi-Fi to it for presentations, it doesn’t like video at all. When I travel I usually present, for business users who travel regularly like me the MacBook feels like a pig-in-a-poke. Is the MacBook then decided to be a luxury consumer device?

    The trackpad which is being rolled out across other Apple laptop models looked attractive to me. The next generation of keyboard seems to be less convincing. I suspect its attractiveness will be inversely proportional to your touch typing speed due to the lack of haptic feedback from shorter key travel.  Despite the price point difference, I suspect that the MacBook is actually designed to cannibalise some Apple iPad sales as an executive toy – I don’t know whether it will.

    That’s my take on the Apple Spring Forward event, but I would be interested on your take on it.

    More information

    Post Traumatic Apple Event Disorder
    On Smart Watches, I’ve Decided To Take The Plunge
    The Watch Post
    Size Zero Design | 厌食症设计
    Questions I Have About Apple’s Business | Apple 业务挑战
    CES Trends
    Waking from an Apple Watch hangover « Observatory
    New Apple Stuff and You | The Wirecutter

  • Robot nation in China factories +more

    China’s Factories Are Building a Robot Nation – Caixin – it is amazing how manual things like smartphone manufacture is. Apple moved production to China because pick and place ‘robotic’ automated machines had been used in phone manufacturer, but couldn’t handle the jewellery like manufacturing. Pick and place had been used in Japanese consumer electronics manufacturing since the early 1980s. We’ll see if the China robot nation works out in manufacturing. More related posts here

    Google and Apple may be forced to pay more tax in Russia | Gigaom – it makes sense

    Pablo by Buffer – Design engaging images for your social media posts in under 30 seconds

    Satya Nadella is cleaning up Microsoft’s ‘dirty little secret’ (MSFT) | Business Insider – the challenge is how do you give enough cloud away to encourage trial and adoption. It was easier with package software or OS where you just targeted C-suite and management consultants. I don’t think is necessarily that negative a story for Microsoft

    Vince Vaughn and Co-stars Pose for Idiotic Stock Photos You Can Have for Free | Adweek – genius collaboration with iStockPhotos

    Fund that hasn’t picked a stock in 80 years beats 98pc of peers | SCMP – Voya Corporate Leaders Trust Fund

    What Is the Future of Chinese Trade? | Yale Global – interesting analysis of the Chinese economy

    Brands must target digital strategies to local culture in Japan | Luxury Daily – great insights from L2

    China manufacturing shrinks again in Feb. | WantChinaTimes – partly down to the timing of spring festival

    Chinese shoppers are angry that their luxury Japanese toilet lids are made in China | Quartz – which says a lot about ‘brand China’ for its own consumers

    AirCloset is a subscription fashion box startup with a twist | Techinasia – interesting wear-and-return model

    Panasonic Developing ‘VR Goggles’ – Nikkei Technology Online – interesting that they can be worn as glasses implying a major reduction in weight in comparison to competitors