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✏️ My blog posts
Cameras that understand: portrait mode and Google Lens. Link
🗞 News
Amazon bought Eero, one of the leading startups selling mesh wifi access points for the home (you put multiple units throughout the house, which automatically connect to each other, giving better coverage). Amazon bought Ring last year, and obviously already has Alexa: Amazon is building a strategy around connecting and controlling devices in your home, perhaps for prosaic things like letting in delivery people, but more fundamentally because Amazon wants to plumb your home for Prime - to own the last ten yards of physical distribution. Link
Amazon has launched a private label cosmetics label. There is no product that people will not buy online. Meanwhile Amazon is systematically working its way through every part of the retail strategy book from the last century, including, yes, private labels. Link
FedEx will try to help retailers compete with Amazon with next-day delivery. Fedex and UPS are obviously nervous of Amazon's moves into last-mile delivery. Meanwhile any brand selling online has to match as much of Amazon's logistics offer as possible (but without putting themselves in Amazon's hands), but it's really hard to do this without Amazon's scale - Fedex might help, but still doesn't have the integrated, start-from-zero model. On the other hand, the more that e-commerce moves from commodity products to experience, the more that vendors want to own the logistics and deliver a unique, un-Amazon experience - the commodity brown Amazon box doesn't work as well. Link
With Amazon and a bunch of startups working on unmanned retail checkout, Walmart says they gave up because they couldn't solve the theft problem. Link
The New York Times now has more revenue from digital - mostly the pay wall - than print. Remember when a pay wall was an obviously stupid idea? Link
It appears that US mobile operators have been extremely lax in how they sold access to location data, with almost anyone (including random 'bounty hunters' - yes, these still exist in the USA, in the 21st century) able to track anyone they wanted. Link
Angela Ahrendts, Apple's head of retail, is leaving after 5 years. Link
Spotify is buying two podcasting companies, Gimlet Media and Anchor. Podcasts (and email newsletters) are taking off in a big way and Spotify is both diversifying beyond music per se and trying to get more direct control of content. Link
In case you missed it: Jeff Bezos and the National Enquirer. Link
🔮 Reading
Google is now doing 'federated' machine learning: training global models based on data that never leaves your phone. Link
The UK government has published a review (The "Cairncross Review') on the economics of the online news business, with particular focus on the competitive dynamics of online advertising. Link
Good status update on VR from Oculus. Link
How DTC brands see the purpose of stores ('rent is the new marketing'). Link
Analytics in fashion. Link
How criminals work around the security intended to make a stolen iPhone unusable: from bribing Apple employees to demanding passwords at gunpoint. Link
Useful framework from Ericsson on IoT. Link
Joi Ito on the risks of machine learning (especially where poorly-understood) perpetuating existing biases. Link
a16z's Frank Chen on the state of AI. Link
a16z: 16 Mini-Lessons for Startup Founders. Link
Useful Credit Suisse primer on the mechanics and economics of share buybacks: how they work, how they're different to dividends and how they're the same, and how a company chooses which and whether to do. Link
Intriguing essay on light switches. Tech that works disappears. Link
Research on the importance, meaning (and over-hype) of 'fake news'. Link
Ex-Cons Create ‘Instagram for Prisons’ Link
😮 Cool things of the week
This week's superhero movie has a fun website that pays homage to the web of the mid 1990s. Link
The BBC archive has the best vox pop ever. Link
ColouriseSG, a nice ML-based project: upload your old family photos and it will face a go at colourising them. Very good results, mostly. Link
📊 Statistics
Okta's annual survey of business apps. A good sample of what tech-forward companies are using. Link
Apparently Amazon is now spending as much on advertising and marketing as P&G or Unilever. Link
Qualitative Ofcom study of what UK children are watching and why. Link
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