Tag: Serial

Thought Starters

The Fletcher School at Tufts University has researched which countries have the most evolved digital economy and which ones are growing there’s the fastest. The report in the Harvard Business Review provides a valuable look at which countries are on the up and which ones are seeing their lead decline:

Digital ReadySteve Wildstrom profiles Cyanogen’s position in the smartphone sector which is currently dominated by Android and Apple’s iOS. Cyanogen is touted by some as providing a third ecosystem, particularly in markets where AOSP (as opposed to Google branded Android) dominates.

MIT’s Technology Review has looked at the use of bitcoin as currency which suggests that it’s not making significant inroads against traditional fiat money despite all the media attention. That being said, I’m still a strong believer in cryptocurrencies’ innovative potential, although as the underlying technology is employed in different domains:

Bitcoin use

Another report in the Harvard Business Review points this time to the considerable advances society has made in increasing the resource efficiency in extraction and manufacturing industries. Unfortunately these efficiencies are more than counterbalanced by increases in population and increasing consumption:

Resources

In another report in the MIT’s Technology Review, the publication profiles what it sees as the top 10 technological breakthroughs for 2015. Among the innovations profiled are Magic Leap, nano-architecture, internet of DNA and Apple Pay.

Josh Elman argues that startups should not focus on monetisation initially, arguing that entrepreneurs should be focusing on growth and engagement.

Marcy Goldman provides a valuable defence of self-publishing, arguing that it shouldn’t be seen as the poor cousin of going through a traditional publisher in this current era.

Following on from a recent look at my favourite podcasts is a panel discussion looking at the format including David Carr of The New York Times, Sarah Koenig, host and producer of Serial and Alex Blumberg, creator of the podcast StartUp and founder of Gimlet Media:

The featured image is a mural by Pejac found on Street Art Utopia.

Thought Starters

Content that has caught my eye recently or got me thinking, which includes coverage of enterprise technology, changing nature of interaction on the internet and citizen journalism among other subjects.

Recent data breaches at Sony, Target and Home Depot point to serious security issues within large enterprises but Steven Sinofsky points to the move to cloud infrastructure and other developments as addressing many of these concerns in the near future. It’s also worth reading Sinofsky’s look at trends within the workplace in 2015 for Re/code, taking a closer look at cloud and hybrid cloud solutions, email, tablets and mobile device management among other matters.

Ben Bajarin takes a closer look at the emergence of the mobile internet,  pointing to its dominant role in China, with Western markets likely to follow. Ignore at your peril.

Complementing Bajarin’s analysis is Chris Dixon’s coverage of the move from a search to social centric model in what he describes as a move from a pull to a push model of the internet:

Social Media

The Lending Club IPO has placed a spotlight on the emergence of peer-to-peer models within the financial sector. The Economist’s comparison of the costs of the Lending Club versus traditional channels illustrate why Lending Club and other peer-to-peer operators are seen as a disruptors:

Lending Club

The sharing economy has taken a lot of stick for what some critics has described as providing an unfettered form of capitalism. The Nation posits an alternative model of the sharing economy in which associated technologies enable a more collective model of business:

Sharing Economy

Serial reignited my interest in podcasts even if the show didn’t manage to maintain its early momentum. EJ Dickinson compared reporting of the case on the podcast to that on Reddit, with the latter providing a valuable indication of the value of citizen journalism.

Hannah Kuchler covers Pew Research Center’s study into the Ferguson riots, pointing to the long delay in television news’ coverage of the event when compared to social media:

Ferguson

A pair of Morgan Stanley analysts experiences with the much lauded GoPro point to the fact that there are likely to be limits to the success of the action sports video camera:

1) Our feats as equity research analysts provoke way fewer jaw-dropping oohs and ahhs than the world’s top motorcycle freestylers

2) it is way easier to shoot hours of raw video content (the hardware capabilities are great) than it is to create anything that is even remotely digestible

3) the video editing and creation process is incredibly laborious—it took nearly 8 hours of work to create a sub-2 minute video—even as GoPro’s Studio helped ease the process (we didn’t have to match soundtrack to video, Studio’s [software provided] templated clip lengths and transitions, while providing a general storyboard outline).

Bloomberg reports on how the American economy is becoming increasingly independent of the petroleum sector with an interactive infographic – worth a look:

OIL

The Economist profiles the emerging middle class in developing societies as more of the world’s population finds themselves emerging from poverty:

Middle Class

Joseph E. Stiglitz looks at the emergence of China as the pre-eminent global economic power and what this means to the U.S.

The featured image is mural by Patel in Rio San Juan, Dominican Republic and found on StreetArtNews.