Skip to main content

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 (short) post is a collection of the articles that have caught my eye in the last week.

This week: Yahoo! tumbles into random buying spree, 3-D printed firearms, hacking vehicle networks & USSR's space laser near miss...

Media

Can YouTube's paid channels succeed? This blogger thinks so... I'm not so sure, but I guess they've got as much chance as NetFlix from a user experience point of view and perhaps the federated model that enables brands to set their own prices and packages within a familiar user interface will work. I'm not convinced, but I doubt it cost much to set up, so it's worth a try! http://paidcontent.org/2013/05/11/pay-to-play-can-youtube-succeed-with-its-paid-channel-subscriptions/

An interesting perspective on the future of gaming. Arguably the writer has a vested interest in his world of small software developers dominating the industry coming to pass; personally I think AAA titles will continue as they are, likewise consoles. They remain relevant for a subset of the audience, in the same way movies do relative to TV. The real question is how large the casual gaming market can grow. http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/12/what-games-are-there-is-no-iron-throne-of-games-any-more/

Google's game services APIs will doubtless help in that endeavour... http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/05/how-googles-game-services-api-will-convince-devs-to-make-better-games/

A fascinating look at the most popular brands on Facebook in Asia - Blackberry in Indonesia; Nescafe in Philippines. Shows how different user desires are country-by-country. http://wearesocial.sg/blog/2013/05/top-facebook-pages-asia-apr-2013-part-1/

Sigh. Yahoo!'s absurd, scatter-gun acquisition strategy looks set to claim another victim. I like Tumblr and I can't see it's brand of unregulated stream of consciousness photo blogging fitting into Yahoo!'s cleaner-than-thou corporate image. http://gigaom.com/2013/05/16/yahoo-wants-to-buy-tumblr-will-facebook-swoop-in-at-the-last-minute/

Technology

I wonder whether Microsoft has an operating system strategy anymore. If so, they could have fooled me. The Start button is allegedly reappearing in the next update for Windows 8. It's a shame. Win 8 is pretty good. I mean, I'd never buy a PC, but it's still not bad. Like a Mac from 2005. http://winsupersite.com/windows-8/maybe-they-should-just-call-it-windows-78

That said, Microsoft are still a really innovative company - witness their work in machine learning - they just struggle to bring things to market. The transition from disrupter to institution has been very hard for them. Google and other glamorous tech' leaders will soon go through the same challenges. http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/24/4260614/microsoft-research-rick-rashid-smartwatches-contact-lens-display

I'm very bullish about field of vision computing, and, since I've recently taken up swimming after a 20 year hiatus, I'd probably be in the market for a heads up display to monitor my training. http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/16/instabeat-is-revolutionary-hud-for-swimming-goggles-you-can-back-on-indiegogo/

A Google Glass imitator. It looks dumb though. Fail. http://www.slashgear.com/recon-jet-hands-on-15282311/

Vehicle networks and self-driving are other areas I believe will shortly revolutionise society. But they aren't without their challenges. The US Government is investigating the area of vehicle cybersecurity. Good plan. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/17/usa_car_network_security_research/

Americans 3-D print a gun. It was only a matter of time I suppose. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22421185

Business models

Invention and innovation have been sadly lacking from education for many years. This MIT open innovation pilot that enables kids to build stories and games online is a small but exciting way of changing the paradigm. http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/scratch-two-released-0514.html

I'm a cracked record when it comes to the fact that people and organisations must (and are compelled to) live their brand all the time. Here's 30 business cards that suit their owners. Some great ideas! http://mashable.com/2013/05/16/crazy-business-cards/

Just for fun

Nice article on the space arms race that never was... thanks to one line of erroneous code! http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/05/the-soviet-response-to-star-wars-that-never-was/



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Impacts of a handset leasing model on mobile telcos

Following yesterday's post, here's some related thinking on the impacts on operators of handset leasing. Handset sales represent around 25% of operator revenues in a typical European market, but generate only around 5% of margin. It may therefore be the case that the scenario described would lead operators to a more profitable structural model than exists today. Oil companies are consistently and acceptably profitable, despite being (literally in some cases) the ‘dumb pipe’ that operators are so desperate to avoid becoming. One of the reasons for the oil majors sustained profitability is clear focus on their role in the value chain – to supply the fuel that enables transportation, relying primarily on location, then brand and finally product innovation to compete. BP or Shell do not need to subsidise the purchase of a car in order to drive consumption of fuel because consumers are ‘hooked’ on it (it gets them from place to place) and there are many credible car manufacturers an...

Differences between Industrial and Digital businesses

Since I'm stuck on a Eurostar crawling through western France I thought I'd use the downtime to share this table I've made on the differences between Industrial and Digital companies across the main business functions. A strange insight into how my mind works... but hopeful a useful summary!

Value drivers for telecoms retail

I've been doing a really large number of driver trees recently - we've taken to using them on every project to get really into the guts of value creation for businesses and thus decide where to focus initiative development (How To Win, if you're keeping score). Anyhow, I had to pause for thought recently to work out how to represent the subscription aspect of telecoms retail for a client. Since it took me a minute, I thought I'd share... its lack of elegance suggests that its not quite right, although it was enough to demonstrate that there was a certain lack of coverage in the initiatives that my client was pursuing and thus spark a debate. Enjoy.