Ged Carroll

Blog

  • Throwback gadget: SnapperMail

    Thinking about SnapperMail takes me back to end of 2001, I started to prepare for leaving my job at Edelman. This meant upgrading my home IT set up. I picked up an iBook. The iBook was Apple’s consumer-orientated laptop made from 1999 to 2006. Mine was a second generation ‘Snow’ laptop with a G3 processor, dual USB sockets and a combo drive which allowed me to watch DVDs and burn CDs.

    I used the move to go on the first version of OSX. The move also meant that I got a new email account, my default account to date. It had two key attributes:

    • No adverts, so it looked professional in comparison to having a Yahoo! or Hotmail email address and it wasn’t tied to an ISP.
    • IMAP support which allowed me to use my email account across different devices that syncs across the devices. POP3 downloads the  emails from the server to the device, so is ideal only for when you are accessing email from one machine

    My iBook was my only source of email access whilst I left Edelman, freelanced, and then eventually joined Pirate Communications. My first smartphone was a Nokia 6600, which I used alongside a Palm  PDA – l got this sometime around the end of 2003. The 6600 supported IMAP out of the gate, it was slow, but I was connected.

    The 6600 was eclipsed by Palm’s Treo devices which were a better device. I moved from the 6600 and a Palm Tungsten T3 combo to a Treo 600 smartphone in January 2005.

    The process wasn’t smooth. The Treo was sufficiently fragile that I got a translucent silicon jacket that worked surprisingly well with the keyboard and screen protector to look after the touchscreen. Software wise the Treo 600 was a step back from the Tungsten T3 PDA. The screen was smaller and the software felt sluggish in comparison. I had deliberately chosen the 600 over the 650 because I had previously worked agency side on the Palm account and been a long-suffering device owner so knew how crap they were at bug fixes on new devices. The media didn’t call the former Palm CEO ‘Mad’ Bill Maggs for no reason (just sayin’).
    snapperfish limited
    Unfortunately Palm had not been as progressive in comparison to Nokia with its default email client. The software didn’t support IMAP. Fortunately I used to follow Mitch Kapor’s blog and he had recommended SnapperMail: an app from a small New Zealand company SnapperFish.

    SnapperMail was a compact modern email client. It has a number of features that we would expect now:

    • It supported IMAP
    • It supported SSL client to mail box encryption*
    • it was really easy to use
    • You could work with attachments including zipped files**
    • There was no restriction on the file size of attachments, the only restriction was your email account rather than your email client

    This looks like the kind of technology you would have thought Palm should have done. At the this time Palm were competing against Microsoft Windows Mobile 2003, BlackBerry 6200 series, 7100 series and early 8700 series. Yet the default email client was back in the 1990s.

    *The full-fat application cost US$39.99

    **SnapperMail came bundled with HandZipper Lite which handled the compressed files and JPEGWatch Lite image viewer

    I used this alongside MetrO – a public transit directions app and QuickOffice Pro – to read Office documents as part of my modern smartphone experience. It wasn’t just me that loved SnapperMail, it was praised by Walt Mossberg back when he wrote at the Wall Street Journal.

    SnapperMail won two Palm Source (Palm’s software licence business) Powered Up awards in 2003. It was recognised as Best Productivity and Best of the Best Solution. More on Palm here. 

    More information
    SnapperMail Has Solid Software For Savvy Mobile E-Mail Users | WSJ
    QuickOffice
    MetrO – open source mass transit application
    PalmSource Welcomes Developers with Awards, New Tools; Announces New Licensees | PalmSource press room

  • Blockchain deals + other news

    The Dumb Money Is Chasing After Blockchain Deals | CB Insights – true enough. Warning incoming rant on blockchain. Blockchain has a relatively low transaction rate. Traceability is reliant on a reliable database rather than the decentralisation. You have better performing open source databases that aren’t dependent on the weakest link of the decentralised network. For really high translation rates you are better investing in an Oracle database and appropriate hardware support – either through a SaaS or in-house.

    Executive Shuffle at Cyanogen Amid Challenges – can Jolla step up or is it too on the ropes? Jolla has some interesting contracts with the likes of the Russian government for trusted mobile systems. Cyanogen sold purely on improvements in user experience, so Jolla’s security infrastructure has a clear benefit for enterprise users and carriers who don’t want a smartphone botnet.  Jolla also has a strong UX, it pioneered some tactile gestures and leveraged Nokia employees deep experience in mobile experience and understanding of consumer behaviour.  Jolla also has support on some Sony smartphones. The big issue would be the failure of Jolla to turn existing deals with handset manufactured into wide availability of consumer products. It hasn’t been alone in that respect. Both Cyanogen and Firefox OS had similar issues of distribution that would then aid adoption. More on Jolla here.

    Introducing 360 Photos on Facebook – every idea becomes new again. Back before the Internet there was QuickTime VR. This rolled on to the early net but the experiment was very patchy due  to the lack of bandwidth in comparison to today. Content and interaction wise there is clearly no difference from a the consumer experience between Facebook 360 and QuickTime VR. The question is how Facebook 360 goes forward, or if it just becomes a fad like QuickTime VR did before it?

  • The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

    It’s been nine years since Taleb wrote The Black Swan. Like Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man before it, The Black Swan is widely cited and paid lip service to.

    The timing of publication for Taleb was particularly pertinent as the book became popular as the financial system broke down in 2008. Some eight years later, the economy has limped along as financial issues were punted into the future, rather like a child kicking a can down an alley. Like the can, the financial issues are still here to be ran into. I thought it was time to re-read Taleb’s book.

    Taleb’s work is philosophical rather than scientific in its method. Although he avoids the talk show friendly cliches of Malcolm Gladwell or Seth Godin. Much of our world is based around the normal distribution, it is used by insurance companies and pension funds to access risk and longevity. Taleb points out that the really big changes that rock the boat often don’t fit neatly within these models.

    Taleb’s solution boils down to two things

    1. A defensive skepticism that would encourage the average person to question common wisdom and ask ‘what if’
    2. For those that can afford it, an offensive posture that asks ‘what if’ and has a mix of savings or investments most of which is put in very safe vehicles and 15 per cent or so on high risk speculative investments to take advantage of change

    Taleb’s work doesn’t seem to have had the impact that one would have expected just five years ago when it was quoted as a touchstone to modern life.

    Much of the excess and risk that had happened previously is happening again, despite a plethora of disruptive forces laid out in the media.

    Audiences are paying too much attention to listicles that go something along the line of ‘5 habits you need have to be like Bill Gates’. Where is the critical filter? More books reviewed here.

    More information

    McMansions Are Back And Are Bigger Than Ever – There was a small ray of hope just after the Lehman collapse that one of the most lamentable characteristics of US society – the relentless urge to build massive McMansions (funding questions aside) would have subsided
    The market’s most crowded trades could be causing dangerous bubbles – Business Insider
    Many Middle-Class Americans Are Living Paycheck to Paycheck – The Atlantic
    Economic Conditions Snapshot, March 2016: McKinsey Global Survey results | McKinsey & Company
    Andy Grove’s Warning to Silicon Valley – The New York Times – Mr. Grove contrasted the start-up phase of a business, when uses for new technologies are identified, with the scale-up phase, when technology goes from prototype to mass production. Both are important. But only scale-up is an engine for job growth — and scale-up, in general, no longer occurs in the United States. “Without scaling,” he wrote, “we don’t just lose jobs — we lose our hold on new technologies” and “ultimately damage our capacity to innovate.
    Crap IT means stats crew don’t really know how UK economy’s doing • The Register – and people make accusations about Chinese economic data…
    Return of ‘100% mortgages’ ease burden on Bank of Mum and Dad | FT

  • Fox + more news

    Fox

    Fox ‘Stole’ a Game Clip, Used It In Family Guy and DMCA’d the Original – Slashdot – either its automated software (likely YouTube’s automated scanning) or exceptionally shady business practices – both of which are plausible scenarios when it comes to Fox. Either way Fox won’t care

    Business

    In China, Uber faces battle to usurp Didi | FT – not surprising. Both companies have large investors behind them. Uber also has ‘non tariff’ barriers against it since it isn’t Chinese. More on Didi here.

    Nest Failure: How things went south once Google became Alphabet | BGR – interesting how the move to a holding group structure meant a big change in management culture. First Boston Dynamics, now Nest. Googlers I know are also complaining about the change in culture. They feel that they are disempowered in comparison to pre-Alphabet

    Design

    The Co-op returns to its clover-leaf logo from 1968 | Creative Review

    Economics

    What’s holding back China’s consumption growth? | South China Morning Post – Consumer sentiment has plunged in recent months, as the consumer sentiment index hit a 28-month low of 100 in March, versus 104.4 in February. Retail sales also increased more slowly than expected in April at 10.1 per cent, versus 10.5 per cent in March. – Government planned slower growth in manufacturing is trickling down to consumer behaviour. Chinese savings are pretty stable due to a poor social safety net. Until China gets a better welfare state you’re going to see China’s consumption growth be low.

    FMCG

    Chinese brands best performers in China: consumer goods survey | China Daily – interesting how Chinese brands have managed to ford the trust gap

    Lynx: can it convince consumers it’s about more than getting laid? | Campaign (UK) – nice summary and analysis of the Lynx/Axe advertising campaigns over the past few years (paywall)

    We know acne, we don’t know teens. – YouTube – nice bit of honest marketing by Clearasil

    US brands dominate through disruption | Kantar Worldwide – latest US BrandZ results

    In China, global brands are losing advantage | Kantar – higher confidence levels in product and their country mean that global brands have work harder

    Ideas

    Uber has pinpointed the moment you‘re most likely to pay for surge pricing — Quartz – feels really invasive but insightful

    Media

    ★ App Store Subscription Uncertainty – From Lauren Goode’s interview with Phil Schiller for The Verge, specifically regarding the new 85/15 revenue split after the first year of a subscription. I wonder how this would work for Netflix et al?

    News UK unveils new in-house agency powered by WPP and The & Partnership | Campaign Live – next move from single client agency to ‘in-house’ agency a la Unilever’s U Studio?

    ComScore Says People Prefer Ads in Podcasts Over Any Other Digital Medium | Adweek – surely these findings are positive for radio and streaming audio as well?

    Apple Music Enlists Designers to Curate Playlists, Starting With Alexander Wang | Racked – why isn’t this being sold as a branding opportunity?

    WTF are ‘dark posts’? | Digiday – surely this is a variant of online PR?

    ANA report alleges widespread ad agency kickback schemes – Business Insider – and this is a surprise because? Programmatic offers even bigger opportunities for fun and profit

    Online

    Why Britain banned mobile apps | GovInsider – cost centric rather than user centric?

    Report: People Are Spending Much Less Time On Social Media | Slashdot – not too sure how much store I put in Similarweb’s data

    Security

    Exclusive: Snowden Tried to Tell NSA About Surveillance Concerns, Documents Reveal | VICE News – there is something quite reassuring about the clod handed nature of the response to this

    Style

    Adidas Relies On Stars Not Soccer Teams To Sell Product | Business of Fashion – I would argue that would be the same for most boot brands, shirt deals are often not that profitable

    Technology

    Shipments of Chromebooks integrated with Google Play set to increase | DigiTimes – not great for Windows 10 consumer sales (paywall)

    Web of no web

    Olympic athletes will sport Visa’s new payment ring in Rio | Engadget – no radical leap forward in NFC

    Project Soli – Wave hello to Soli touchless interactions Soli is a new sensing technology that uses miniature radar to detect touchless gesture interactions.

    A former employee says Google’s smart contact lens is ‘slideware’ that exists only in PowerPoint presentations (GOOG, GOOGL) – not terribly surprising, power is the number one issue facing the device

    Wireless

    The answer to the question you’ve all been asking | Nokia – Nokia’s official announcement

  • Wednesday Campanella

    Haruka introduced me to WEDNESDAY CAMPANELLA『桃太郎』

    The videos are pretty far out but draw on Asian culture, hence peaches. More on Japan related topics here. The song writing is absolutely top notch as well. Well worth keeping an eye on WEDNESDAY CAMPANELLA for the future. There’s more to Japan than idol groups than the identikit model of K-pop, of which WEDNESDAY CAMPANELLA is a prime example of distinctiveness.

    Interesting video on entrepreneurial opportunities in China. Probably a bit optimistic as Credit Suisse is on the sell side of opportunities for foreign investors – just saying…

    Interesting way to approach content for a travel portal and a great bit of storytelling.

    The mag that captured 60s countercultural Japan | Dazed – check these photos out from Provoke magazine, Showa era FTW. These are just tremendous and shows a side of the counterculture revolution that was seldom seen here in the west. Its gives a bit of context of the scene that Yoko Ono came out of.

    I am not the greatest fan of Wired UK and prefer its US counterpart, but this documentary on Shenzhen is quite nice. It captures all the main elements of note about Shenzhen:

    • The Blade Runner type skyline of the Shenzhen central business district (CBD). You add in the hyper humid haze and it looks like a piece of Syd Mead architectural paintings. Buildings are lit up with massive LED screens advertising offices available for lease or cosmeticals and smartphones
    • The standard workshop-of-the-world tropes with factories that look aged in the tropical heat of southern China
    • Maker culture – this is notable in itself because of Chinese people generally not having hobbies which are often seen as a waste of time. But enough of that for another time
    • Business to business and business to consumer bazaars

    You can almost taste the South China humidity. If you liked this video its well worthwhile checking out Scotty Allen’s Strange Parts YouTube channel.