Versatile Amphibian

I’m still easing myself back into my weekly blog after a long absence. To that end, here’s a brief roundup of stories from the TMT industry that caught my eye this week. This week: Deep web trembles as Feds shutter Silk Road, Google’s transformation into design leader, Facebook Wi Fi launches, 3D printers hit UK high street, cold brew in the home finally a reality Traditional business models I like that Apple outdoes Google as Executives pick of the most innovative companies – their design dictatorship is probably more attractive to the average CEO than Google’s chaotic approach. I’d love to see who made it into the long tail of the survey. Chances are that those are the true innovators. http://www.businessinsider.com/most-innovative-companies-in-the-world-2013-9 Twitter has announced its IPO, initially for a fairly modest $1Bn. Notable that it’s still loss making despite over 200 million users. Trouble with Twitter is that it will be much more difficult to generate lo...

I think 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: outsource consolidation leads to stifled yawns, China quashes salt rumours, fibre gets faster and why the iPhone won’t get any bigger. New business models Another hacking story, this time aimed at the BBC’s ability to feed satellite news into Iran. Although somewhat effective, the attack has been foiled, but given the Iranian regime’s weak electronic warfare capabilities versus the rest of the world, you can but imagine how effective an analogous Chinese or Russian effort would have been. http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/03/14/us-iran-bbc-idUKBRE82D00820120314 Perhaps this was therefore a good market in which to sell an encryption company – News Corp just offloaded NDS for $5Bn – I expect that money will find its way into another large content acquisition. For ...

I’ve just returned from a week in Tokyo. Having just recovered from the jet lag, I thought I’d share some experiences and impressions about media and technology landscape. The first thing to say is that Tokyo is a beautiful city. It’s very clean and for the most part rather peaceful. This is helped by the nature of the traffic. Besides the ubiquitous Toyota Crown taxis, almost every other car was either a hybrid or a tiny Kei car – a glimpse into the future of European cities as fuel prices rise and taxes on gas guzzlers become ever more punitive. Beautiful or not, this year’s earthquake has had significant effects on life in the city. Since the well publicised issues with their generation capacity began, Japan has suffered with undersupply of electricity and this is manifest in the fact that none of the offices I went to were using their air conditioning. Something I hadn’t really appreciated is that modern office blocks are so well insulated that even the body heat of those inside cr...