Ged Carroll

Blog

  • Nuon & other things

    VM Labs

    Remembering Nuon, the gaming chip that nearly changed the world—but didn’t | Ars Technica UK – it was interesting as a bet against commotisation of PC hardware rather like CDi by Philips by VM Labs. VM Labs Nuon processor looks more like a product of today as the pendulum in semiconductors has swung away from general purpose to tailored designs again. When computing power was the most important thing; general purpose made sense. The move towards computing power per watt changed the balance completely over time towards tailored semiconductors.VM Labs main problem was being ahead of their time.

    Ideas

    RISC vs CISC: What’s the Difference? | EE Times – interesting how architectures have become largely irrelevant over the past few years. It makes sense when one thinks about Apple’s move to Intel. It also says a lot for Intel’s potential opportunity in mobile applications; if Intel doesn’t manage to fumble the ball on chip design, or semiconductor fab process improvements

    Luxury

    LVMH diversifies into Chinese food as sales decline | WantChinaTimes – interesting move. Luxury goods were ‘tools’ of status as is food gifts and restaurants – smart lateral play by LVMH. More luxury related posts here

    Media

    Exactly what does Cannes celebrate? | canalside view – interesting prespectives on Cannes. Cannes comes across as a client knees up. It could be so much more by increasing the knowledge sharing at Cannes

    Microsoft Said to Exit Display Ad Business, Cut 1,200 Jobs – Bloomberg Business – one can only wonder what will happen in the phone business

    Online

    DuckDuckGo Blog : Play Ball! Live Scores for Every MLB Game – chipping away at Google piece-by-piece

    Security

    Sony Pictures: Inside the Hack of the Century, Part 2 – Fortune – a good reason not to register your Sony products because judging by this write-up of the Sony Pictures debacle

    These hackers warned the Internet would become a security disaster. Nobody listened. | The Washington Post – “If you’re looking for computer security, then the Internet is not the place to be,” said Mudge, then 27 and looking like a biblical prophet with long brown hair flowing past his shoulders. The Internet itself, he added, could be taken down “by any of the seven individuals seated before you” with 30 minutes of well-choreographed keystrokes (paywall) – more security related content here

    Technology

    OEM Conundrum – commoditisation, hyoer-competition

    Wireless

    EBN – Jim O’Reilly – Smartphone Saturation Becomes

  • My ‘Kindle brain’

    Kindle brain reminds me of a story of my friend. One of my friends had everything: a great husband second time around, a young healthy family, a nice house in a good neighbourhood and a great standard of living. I visited her when she was still on maternity leave and the afternoon went well, but one thing stuck in my mind: the concept of ‘baby brain’ – that she described where her thinking was somehow deficient and may be a liability in a work environment.  That phrase has stuck with me recently.
    Kindle 3
    Since moving to Hong Kong, I de-cluttered my life and sold or recycled the library of books I had built up previously, keeping on a small amount of them. My notes that I made in Moleskine books were scanned and stored in the cloud, you can see some of them that were used for blog posts like this on my flickr acount.

    My desire to read hasn’t stopped and Instead I have ended up buying new books electronically. I first noticed the change that was coming from my new reading habit when I found that I was reviewing less books on this  blog. The reason for that was quite simple; I was reflecting less on what I read electronically and was less engaged by it. Ideas were not having the same impact. What one article called ‘Kindle brain’.

    This phenomena has implications for electronic reference books and learning. It isn’t only books that people have noticed this effect. Business cards have made a comeback, from a previous future of ‘beaming’ contact details over IrDA or BlueTooth between devices. Artifacts seem to give content meaning and impact.

    More information
    Your paper brain and your Kindle brain aren’t the same thing | Public Radio International
    Why Startups Love Moleskines – The New Yorker
    In search of objects — Benedict Evans
    Rolodexes: A thing of the past? | Marketplace.org
    Rob Manuel » Blog Archive » In Praise of CDs

  • HSBC PMI + more things

    HSBC PMI

    HSBC will no longer provide one of the best gauges of China’s economy – Quartz – but hopefully someone else will step up to do the sponsorship instead. The HSBC PMI measure was the most reliable economic measure coming out of China that was wasn’t skewed by state-owned enterprises (SOEs). SOEs get easy state bank loans where as the private SMEs that the HSBC PMI looks at don’t have that advantage and so provide a ‘truer’ picture of what is actually going on. Does this mean a longer term difficult position for HSBC as well as transparent economic data like the HSBC PMI?

    China

    Born Red – The New Yorker – interesting profile of Xi Jinping

    Culture

    Check out MelodySheep’s album on Bandcamp. More culture related content here.

    483 lines by Seoul-based Kimchi and Chips is a welcome break from 3d projection mapping for interesting visualisations. It reminds me of the work Troika turn out

    Economics

    A generation from now, most of the world’s GDP will come from Asia | Quartz – get ready for the new order of things

    FMCG

    I was doing some research and came across the collaboration between MelodySheep and General Mills to remix Lucky Charms adverts. His interpretation shows a darker side to the kids hunting for Lucky Charms

    Innovation

    SoftBank Robot Pepper Sells Out in a Minute – Japan Real Time – WSJ – via Aldebaran Robotics (paywall) – much of this is about Japanese culture’s positive reception to robots as it is to the quality of Pepper itself. There are other robots that can fill a similar kind of customer service role. Its really worth reading about how Japanese consumers interacted with their Sony Aibo

    Japan

    This wonderful film of Tokyo by Brandon Li which somehow feels as if it should be a Guinness advert, partly due to the narration by Tom O’Bedlam

    It is interesting how the Guinness brand has came to own strong storytelling in advertising.

    Media

    Cannes: Google’s agency-sales head wants to push creativity – Campaign Asia – ZOO – Google’s creative agency butts up against agencies to get creative briefs (paywall)

    Online

    2015/16 Fixture List Released | Barclays Premier League – interesting that the FA are recommending match-by-match hashtags to build conversations on Twitter

    I have been using Ben Haller‘s Fracture fractal screensaver for almost as long as I have used Mac OS X (back when it was called Puma). Michael Clark has a site for images used creating Fracture called Fractal of the Day with achingly beautiful tripped out abstract images. The Mac has traditionally been a home to lots of passionate small software development companies who code thoughtful apps. These apps then build a passionate user community around them.  
    mandelbroitset

    Security

    GCHQ spies discredit targets on the internet – Business Insider – about what I would expect them to be doing. More security related posts here.

    Technology

    I, Cringely The U.S. computer industry is dying and I’ll tell you exactly who is killing it and why – I, Cringely – cloud computing is economics not innovation

  • Space dogyssey & more things

    Space Dogyssey

    Space Dogyssey – beautiful college student animated film. Space Dogyssey is interesting mixed media. A mix of stop animation  and cel animation 

    Roger Linn

    Great panel discussion with three great designers of electronic music instruments: Roger Linn (LinnDrum, Linn 9000, Akai MPC originator), Dave Smith (Prophet 5, MIDI inventor) and Tom Oberheim (Oberheim Voice synthesisers). The LinnDrum

    The Latin Rascals

    Great early mix from The Latin Rascals who were influential remixers, influential producers of freestyle tracks and makers of epic tape edits back in the mid-1980s. The Latin Rascals did amazing remix work, even for the likes of Bruce Springsteen, the Force MDs, the Pet Shop Boys and Duran Duran. They influenced and eventually worked with Arthur Baker and Civilles and Cole. One of the Rascals Tony Moran still produces and DJs.


    Canadian Caper

    Amazing psychadelic artwork drawn by Jack Kirby, that was used to sell in Argo to the Iranians and everyone else for that manner. Argo was a science fiction film project that the CIA used as a cover in order to get diplomatic staff out of Iran during the revolution. Kirby’s drawings were supposed to be concept art and the escapees were pretending to be location scouts. This operation went to be known as the Canadian Caper. It was adapted into a film featuring Ben Affleck called Argo. The original space opera envisioned by Jack Kirby never got beyond the artwork that I have linked to. You can read more about the Canadian Caper as the operation has since been called here.

    Syd Mead inspired animation

    Amazing Mobius / Syd Mead inspired animated video. More design related content. The vivid world that the animator creates is nothing short of stunning. The use of flat colour gives a kind of ‘anti-anime’ feel to the video. Instead it feels like I am looking at a Mobius graphic novel and hallucinating the movement on the page.

  • Daihatsu + other news

    Daihatsu

    Daihatsu Releases 3rd Model of Copen Sporty Minicar – Nikkei Technology Online – the Daihatsu customisable car, with manufacturer kits to change the vehicle appearance dramatically. Daihatsu is one of Japan’s smaller manufacturers with budgets dwarves by Toyota and VW, so this move makes a lot of sense

    Culture

    Chevrolet Issues Press Release Written Entirely in Emoji | Technabob – nice gimmick

    Design

    How It’s Made Series: Beats By Dre — Medium – pretty damning. What is particularly disheartening is the weights to make the headphones feel like they are of a higher quality than the really are. More design related content here

    Beats By Dre Teardown Finds Metal Included to Add Weight | Digital Trends – not terribly surprising but interesting analysis on the product.

    Media

    WPP, Daily Mail and SnapChat launch content agency Truffle Pig | Campaign – its like war, pestilence and famine coming together to form an agency. I would imagine that it could be a struggle to sell into clients, at least in the UK

    The Mayor vs. the Mogul – POLITICO Magazine – challenges of ethics that Bloomberg faces

    Security

    Why We Encrypt | Schneier on Security – another good read by Bruce Schneier

    Software

    The Web is getting its bytecode: WebAssembly | Ars Technica – interesting asm.js is actually a subset of Javascript than something completely new

    Technology

    Google opens up on its SDN | Network World – what might suit Google. won’t necessarily work in the enterprise data centre or the telecoms network. Organisation optimised products do inspire more general purpose open source products and this might be no exception.

    Web of no web

    Enter the video helmet – a 130 inch world of your own | TelecomTV – interesting product in terms of immersion. If this was fictional, one would have to ask if this was part of the ‘deck’ used by console cowboy Case in William Gibson’s Neuromancer?