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Showing posts from December, 2012

So long, 2012, we'll miss you!

After a busy 2012, the Amphibian is reclining on a beach in Vietnam, drinking cocktails out of a coconut. Normal service will resume on January 7th.

What I've been reading this week

I’m of the belief that participants in the TMT industry need to read widely in order to understand the present and future dynamics of the market. To that end, this post is a collection of the articles that have caught my eye. This week: Spotify for everything, social advertising only sort of works but everyone loves it, Apple returns to the US, Windows get sticky for Microsoft. US planned to nuke Moon in ‘50’s. Digital media This is a well researched article on whether a “Spotify for books” service could work. I’m undecided. I think that a subset of readers will find this a valuable service, but in the early days the subscription charge will have to be set high in order to create sustainable value. http://paidcontent.org/2012/12/05/can-a-spotify-for-books-really-work/ Meanwhile, the real Spotify has just passed the 5 million paying subscribers mark. That’s pretty impressive and suggests that annual revenue will be somewhere around $250M in the calendar year 2012. http

Effects of mobile on the economy

A few months ago I prepared an abstract for a paper on the effects of mobile technology on the economy. Since the requirement for the full paper has gone away, I thought I'd share as this summarises several previous posts I've done on the subject. Hope it's useful! Mobile is often referred to as revolutionary.  I agree, but not, perhaps for the reasons most regularly cited.  I’m not down on mobile technology. Smart devices have enabled greater scale and scope of communications between individuals, greater consumption of content, greater variety in that content. Five years ago, applications were the preserve of suits with laptops. Now they are a mega-industry in the making. A new media untarnished by the false dawn of the dotcom era. Androids are cool for the first time since Star Wars. Mobile has enabled all of this and still found time to revolutionise banking in Africa, catalyse the growth of the largest company in history and overthrow half a dozen regimes. Not b

What I've been reading this week

I’m of the belief that participants in the TMT industry need to read widely in order to understand the present and future dynamics of the market. To that end, this post is a collection of the articles that have caught my eye – a late posting this week as I was on holiday. Lucky me! This week: Apple and Amazon beat Microsoft on Black Friday, Volvo goes self-drive but Cambridge warns of robogeddon Digital media ITN launch a citizen journalism on Youtube. Perhaps one of the aforementioned citizens can post a story about why ITN would do that. http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/itn-production-s-citizen-journalism-youtube-channel-launches/s2/a551300/ Technology Jawbone were one of the first companies to launch a wristband activity monitoring product. Seems like they’re still learning. http://www.fastcodesign.com/1671325/jawbone-up-20-ambitious-beautiful-and-still-fatally-flawed#1 Tiresome tech wannabe Will.i.am launches an add on gadget that turns the iPhone into a c