Sunday, June 30, 2013

Alexander Lebedev set to avoid jail in 'hooliganism' trial

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/28/alexander-lebedev-avoid-jail-hooliganism-trial

The Russian media magnate Alexander Lebedev looks set to avoid prison after a surprising twist to the final day of his trial on charges of hooliganism and battery for punching a fellow businessman.

Lebedev was charged in September 2012, a year after he punched Polonsky during the filming of a TV chatshow. He has insisted from the start that the case against him was fabricated, motivated by overzealous law-enforcement agencies eager to punish him for his campaign against corruption and his co-ownership of Novaya Gazeta, Russia's main investigative newspaper.
Lebedev called on a list of famous backers, submitting character reports written by John Malkovich, Elton John and Hugh Grant begging the court for leniency. His lawyer, Henry Reznik, is Russia's most famous advocate and used his booming baritone to impress upon the court the heft of Lebedev's reputation.
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Technopolis TV - Jonathan Margolis

http://howtospendit.ft.com/gadgets/30263-not-just-a-pretty-face

This brilliant Bluetooth watch lets you receive emails and monitor calls – on a daylight-defying screen
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Friday, June 28, 2013

Viral Video Chart: Barack Obama sings, Doctor Who's Matt Smith thanks fans

Watch the president cover Daft Punk's Get Lucky and the actor pen a farewell note in our rundown of the top online clips
1. Barack Obama Singing Get Lucky by Daft Punk (ft. Pharrell)
Better than the POTUS's version of Let's Stay Together?
2. No, I'm not going to the world cup
Brazilians kick off in protest video
4. Pepsi Max & Dynamo present: "Bus Levitation" #LiveForNow
One way to beat overcrowded transport
5. Matt Smith thanks fans Doctor Who (21 June 2013)
Featuring a freshly shorn Matt Smith
7. What is the Shortest Poem?
The last word on verse
8. KHQ Reporter Lindsay Nadrich Swears On Live TV - June 21st, 2013 
Double F-bomb – not surprisingly, not safe for work
9. ibis Snuggling Bunnies
OK, it's an ad – but the bunnies give cats a run for their money
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Education technology - Catching on at last

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21580136-new-technology-poised-disrupt-americas-schools-and-then-worlds-catching-last

The idea that technology can revolutionise education is not new. In the 20th century almost every new invention was supposed to have big implications for schools. Companies promoting typewriters, moving pictures, film projectors, educational television, computers and CD-ROMS have all promised to improve student performance. A great deal of money went into computers for education in the dot.com boom of the late 1990s, to little avail, though big claims were advanced for the difference they would make.
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Thursday, June 27, 2013

The Russian economy - Sputtering

http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21579877-slowing-growth-reflects-structural-failings-kremlin-not-tackling-sputtering

The Kremlin cannot just wait for a global upturn and no obvious fixes are to hand at home. In the 2000s the lingering effects of the 1998 devaluation made Russian goods attractive at home, and unused capacity from the Soviet era let firms produce more with little new investment. Oil wealth was redistributed via consumption. This worked, says Natalia Orlova of Alfa Bank, only until Russia had no more spare capacity: “no one in power prepared for the end of this model in advance.”


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Monday, June 24, 2013

Popular Demand - US Media in Numbers

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/06/24/business/media/24mostwanted.html?ref=media

Fans rush to buy their favorite TV series and movies as soon as they are available. Top 10 titles released the week of June 8 include “Identity Thief,” starring Melissa McCarthy.
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Friday, June 21, 2013

Viral Video Chart: Channing Tatum, The Hobbit and James Gandolfini

Upcoming silver screen releases Anchorman 2 and Kick-Ass 2 are previewed and a hospital boss turns Superman

Guardian Viral Video Chart. Compiled by Unruly Media and tweaked by Janette

2. The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug
Smaug-asbord of entertainment




6. Danny MacAskill's Imaginate
The ride of his life

7. Kick-Ass 2 Official Theatrical Trailer #2
Masked and having a ball

8. No, I'm not going to the World Cup.
Why Brazil shouldn't be hosting the footie festival


10. Project Loon: The Technology
Hot air? Spreading internet access via balloons

Source: Viral Video Chart. Compiled from data gathered at 14:00 on 20 June 2013. The Viral Video Chart is currently based on a count of the embedded videos and links on approximately 2m blogs, as well as Facebook and Twitter.
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Lunch with the FT: Goga Ashkenazi - by Simon Kuper

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/b011a812-d8da-11e2-84fa-00144feab7de.html#axzz2WsUs8R00

Ashkenazi was born Gaukhar Berkalieva in Kazakhstan in 1980 but grew up in an apartment building for senior communist officials in Moscow. Her father was an engineer who sat in the Soviet party’s Central Committee under Mikhail Gorbachev. “To be completely honest with you, yes, I lived in privilege.” Aged eight, she packed off her red bicycle as a gift for the poor American children she learnt about at school. She was 11 when the Soviet Union dissolved. However, her parents, like most senior communist officials, didn’t exactly plunge into poverty. Aged 13, she joined the first generation of post-Soviet children to go to British boarding school. Despite being suspended for kissing a boy in her room, she got into Oxford to study modern history and economics. At university she spent so much time socialising in London that she left with a third-class degree. “I’m probably more British than anything else – though obviously not,” she muses. She may have in mind reports that she was recently stopped at the border trying to enter the UK on a Panamanian travel document, which she said involved an administrative error.
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Thursday, June 20, 2013

Cannes Lions five minute interview


Most recent

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The emerging-brand battle - The Economist

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21579791-western-brands-are-coming-under-siege-developing-country-ones-emerging-brand-battle

THE past 20 years have seen a massive redistribution of economic power to the emerging world. But so far there has been no comparable redistribution of brand power.Fortune magazine’s 2012 list of the largest 500 companies by sales revenue included 73 Chinese firms, more than from any other country except the United States, with 132. Yet Interbrand’s 2012 list of the 100 “best global brands” included not one Chinese firm.

However, in “Brand Breakout”, a new book, two academics, Nirmalya Kumar and Jan-Benedict Steenkamp, argue that developing-country firms are swiftly learning the art of branding. A few emerging-market brands have already gone global: it is hard to watch a football match in Europe without having “Emirates” burned onto your retina. More are on the way: Haier of China (white goods), Concha y Toro of Chile (wine), and Natura of Brazil (beauty products). Westerners feeling besieged by the rise of the developing world comfort themselves with the thought that they still hold the high ground of premium-priced branded goods. But they should be in no doubt that emerging-market contenders are mounting their warhorses and readying their battering-rams.

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Media empires are becoming more focused & shareholders like it

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21579823-media-empires-are-becoming-more-focused-and-shareholders-it-breaking-up-not-so-very

RUPERT MURDOCH, the billionaire founder of News Corporation, recently filed for divorce from his third wife, Wendi Deng. This is not the only break-up he is going through. On June 28th his company will split in two—shares in both parts began trading this week—with most of its lucrative film and television assets being hived off into a new group, called 21st Century Fox. The rump News Corp will be left with newspapers and other lower-growth businesses (see article).


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The new middle class revolution: Facts and figures

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22951558

Hundreds of millions of people around the world are escaping poverty and becoming middle class. The explosion of new consumers in China, India and other economic powerhouses is changing the global balance of power.

To launch a season of reports on the New Middle Class, BBC News invites you to take a trip around the world to see where the new middle class is emerging.
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Wednesday, June 19, 2013

How the world's population has changed

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/06/daily-chart-10

THE world in 1950 looked very different from how it does now. Europe was home to 22% of the world's 2.3 billion people. Germany, Britain, Italy and France all counted among the 12 most populous countries. But strong economic growth in Asia coupled with high fertility rates in Africa have caused a big regional shift in the global population. The UN's latest World Population Prospects expects the world to grow from 7.2 billion people today to 9.6 billion in 2050. This is 300m more than it had previously estimated, and reflects increases to the fertility rates in sub-Saharan countries such as Nigeria and Ethiopia, and other populous countries. More than half of the extra 2.4 billion people in 2050 will be African. India will swell to 1.6 billion people; it is on track to overtake China in 2028. China's population will peak in 2030; India's is predicted to do so around 2063. By 2100 the UN forecasts the population to reach 10.9 billion—and still be rising. It will also be much older. The median age is forecast to rise to 41 years old from 26 today, and around 28% of the world (almost 3 billion people) will be over 60.

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Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Five great British TV ads

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/jun/17/five-great-british-tv-ads

In the third of a special series of Ad Breaks celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, we have selected five classic UK commercials that might have won the Grand Prix but didn't
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Who drinks most vodka, gin, whisky and rum?

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/06/daily-chart-9

ASIA'S growing middle classes are driving demand in the global spirits market. According to IWSR, a market-research firm, consumption last year grew by 1.6% to 27 billion litres—and China, the world’s biggest market, quaffed 38% of that. The national liquor,baijiu, accounts for a whopping 99.5% of all spirits consumed there, so China does not even feature in rankings of the best-known internationally consumed spirits, below. The most popular of these is vodka, mainly because it is drunk in copious amounts in Russia. Russians downed nearly 2 billion litres of the stuff in 2012, equivalent to 14 litres for every man, woman and child. (Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Russians are among the biggest drinkers in the world, according to the most recent World Health Organisation data.) The Filipinos' taste for gin can be attributed in part to good marketing and to the spirit's long-established toe-hold in the local market. Ginebra San Miguel, a firm that makes the world's two best-selling brands, started operations there in 1834.
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Social media is an underused opportunity for luxury brands

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media-network/media-network-blog/2013/jun/14/social-media-opportunity-luxury-brands

In the week that the world's largest advertising company announced aglobal partnership with Twitter, and a month after Facebook revealed that it attracts 1.1 billion active users each month it should be clear by now that the online social space has become part of the fabric of daily life. Yet brands and marketers are still not making the most of the opportunities social media presents them with.

 The signs are there that things are starting to change. Following Burberry's pioneering Art of the Trench campaign in 2009, which saw the brand's Facebook page swell to more than a million fans after a dedicated effort to engage with consumers on a creative level, other high-end names are beginning to follow suit.
This year saw Porsche commemorate reaching 5m Facebook likes by allowing fans of the car manufacturer to help design a special model of the 911 Carrera, perfectly harnessing the collaborative and creative spirit of cognitive surplus that social media encourages. Meanwhile, Louis Vuitton offered a live-streamed show from Paris fashion week, which included the option for their Facebook fans to share their favourite clips with the wider community.
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Monday, June 17, 2013

Popular Demand - US Media in Numbers

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/06/17/business/media/17mostwanted.html?ref=media

Procter & Gamble led companies in ad spending in the first quarter, with ads for Bounty, Cover Girl, Pampers and dozens of other consumer products.
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Sunday, June 16, 2013

Women are finally taking over from the Mad Men

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/opinion/danny-rogers-women-are-finally-taking-over-from-the-mad-men-8651500.html

Why are women taking over from the macho Mad Men? De Groose believes it is because the marketing/media world has fundamentally changed in nature. Whereas 10 years ago commercial media was still characterised by big money deals and confrontational pitches, it is collaboration and integration of great ideas that now cuts the mustard with successful brands.
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Saturday, June 15, 2013

Apple follows others into the booming bit of the music industry

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21579479-apple-follows-others-booming-bit-music-industry-i-dreamed-stream

Streaming services are trying to turn one of piracy’s main attractions—unlimited consumption—into a business. Labels and artists, originally worried that streaming would hurt digital downloads, have started to sing a different tune. Fees from streamed songs are a small fraction of those from downloads (let alone from physical CDs), but if a song catches on, it can be played obsessively, and all those pennies in the jar add up. Spotify is now second only to iTunes as a single revenue source for the main record labels.
Mobile-device makers are keenly adopting music streaming as a way to differentiate their products. But the providers of streaming services also have their sights on an even bigger music-player: the car. Americans spend around two hours a day listening to radio, much of it while they commute. As streaming services become integrated with cars’ infotainment systems, drivers will use them more. And then the battle will not just be between streaming and downloading providers, but with radio stations, which risk getting tuned out.
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Friday, June 14, 2013

Priced out of Paris - By Simon Kuper

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/a096d1d0-d2ec-11e2-aac2-00144feab7de.html#axzz2WGRrGW3P

There is a wider story here. The great global cities – notably New York, London, Singapore, Hong Kong and Paris – are unprecedentedly desirable. At last week’s fascinating New Cities Summit in São Paulo, the architect Daniel Libeskind said: “We live in a time of renaissance … cities are coming back to life, after a long neglect.” Edward Luce chronicled the urban revival in last Saturday’s FT Magazine. However, there’s an iron law of 21st-century life: when something is desirable, the “one per cent” grabs it. The great cities are becoming elite citadels. This is terrifying for everyone else.

“The capture by a very small number of cities of a lot of the excitement and wealth produced by the system – this is a problem.” Outside these hubs, things are less desirable. Most western cities have lost manufacturing. Market towns struggle as small-scale agriculture fades. A few secondary cities (Lyon, Denver, Bristol) thrive. Most don’t. Even cities as prominent as São Paulo, Moscow or Johannesburg may prove too violent or congested to succeed. “You also have cities that simply die – Detroit,” adds Sassen. But if they’re out in the sticks, nobody powerful will hear them scream.
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Viral Video Chart: PS4 vs Xbox One at E3, iOS 7, Photoshop, dogs in cars

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/jun/14/viral-video-chart-ps4-xbox-one-e3-ios-7

Guardian Viral Video Chart. Compiled by Unruly Media and tweaked by Dugald
2. Photoshop Live - Street Retouch Prank
One way to shorten the wait
3. #PubLooShocker 
Anti-drink driving ad with real impact
4. Apple Introducing iOS 7 - Official Video
Jony Ive brings 'order to complexity'
5. Sad Dog Diary
Hound dog blues
6. Evolution of Get Lucky
Disco through the decades
7. Wind In My Ears
Air of the dog
9. Radio Four in Four Minutes - Jake Yapp
Breathless take on an institution
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Vladimir Putin’s Russia - Battles over the river

http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21579486-even-relaunched-political-movement-may-not-lift-vladimir-putins-ratings-battles-over-river

Having lost the support of the urban, educated class, Mr Putin has tried to cement his less educated and more conservative electorate by fanning intolerance and anti-Western sentiment. The congress of the Popular Front coincided with the passage of laws against “gay propaganda” and “blasphemy”, which were accompanied by homophobic attacks in front of the Russian parliament. In forcing this socially conservative agenda on the country, the Kremlin is trying to brand its opponents as propagandists of homosexuality and blasphemy, even though the opposition’s biggest concern is about corruption.

At the same time, Mr Putin has himself tried to adopt the anti-corruption slogans of his opponents and even targeted some officials. Yet so far most Russians see this merely as a confirmation of corruption. To persuade them otherwise would require real arrests and purges within the Kremlin’s inner circle, something Mr Putin has so far resisted for fear of provoking a revolt. He may still change his government and prime minister quite soon. Nor does it stop him going after some powerful regional bosses, as the recent arrest of Said Amirov, the mayor of Makhachkala in Dagestan, who has survived 15 assassination attempts, shows. But whether the Popular Front can become the real thing or will remain a Kremlin fake is open to question.
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Ad break: Tango flexes its muscles, Old El Paso turns Desperado

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/jun/13/ad-break-tango-old-el-paso-chevy

The soft drink is back with a typically in-your-face campaign and Danny Trejo spices up a food advert in our review of new work
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Superman v Spider-Man

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21579478-comic-book-characters-continue-conquer-box-office-superman-v-spider-man

“MAN OF STEEL”, the new Superman film, opens on June 14th in America and some other countries. In the film, Superman dons his cape and (spoiler alert!) saves the world single-handedly. Turning comics into films has produced superheroic profits. Since 1978, when the first Superman epic came to the big screen, DC Comics, which besides Superman has the rights to Batman, Catwoman and others, has seen its films gross nearly $8 billion worldwide.
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Google buys Waze

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21579468-purchase-israeli-start-up-shows-allure-online-maps-street-plan

On the internet such maps are valuable assets—which is why Google has paid just over $1 billion for Waze, a five-year-old Israeli firm. Waze, the creator of a traffic and navigation app for smartphones, was much sought after. Apple was rumoured to have been interested. And before Google swiped it, Facebook, which lacks maps of its own, was said to be close to a deal. Talks reportedly failed because Waze’s team did not want to move to California. Announcing the takeover on June 11th, Brian McClendon, head of Google’s maps business, wrote that Waze’s product developers would “remain in Israel and operate separately for now”.

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Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Technopolis TV - Jonathan Margolis

http://howtospendit.ft.com/gadgets/29133-inspect-a-gadget

Jonathan Margolis explores a US store packed with crazy and cool products
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Cannes Lions classics: animals in advertising - video

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/video/2013/jun/12/cannes-lions-classics-animals-in-advertising-video

In the second of a special series of Ad Breaks celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, which starts on Sunday, we have selected five classic ads featuring animals. The Rolo and Cadbury ads featuring an elephant and a gorilla respectively both won a Grand Prix at the festival while Guinness's horses won gold; VW's dog won silver and Carling Black Label's squirrel secured a bronze
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Cannes Lions classics: humour in advertising - video

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/video/2013/jun/11/cannes-lions-humour-video

In the first of a special series of Ad Breaks celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, which starts on Sunday, we have selected five of the funniest commercials to win prizes at its annual awards. Classic British ads for John Smith's, Orange and John West sit alongside an Old Spice ad from the US and a French ad for Canal Plus
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Newsweek - The New Mrs Putin....?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2013/06/12/alina-kabayeva-could-be-the-next-mrs-putin.html

The documentary, and its timing, seemed to confirm Kabaeva’s ascent—the hourlong film portrayed her as Russia’s queen, its main heroine, and a shining example for all modern Russian women. It praised Kabaeva for her feminine qualities, patriotism, and strong character, and for being a good example for little gymnasts, Russia’s future champions.
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The music industry - On-demand touring

http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2013/06/music-industry

TALK about the music industry these days is fairly grim. More people may be listening to more music than ever before, but no one seems to know how to make money out of the business. So what can be done about it? This was the question before the entrepreneurs and developers who gathered recently at the SF MusicTech Summit, a twice-yearly event in San Francisco.

Much conversation was devoted to improving the live music experience. Fans still crave going to shows, yet increased digital access has led to slumps in live concert attendance. Complacency is a factor (why leave the house when music is readily available from the web?), but many complain that the process of acquiring tickets is increasingly frustrating. Among this sea of optimistic entrepreneurs, developers, coders and flaks was Zoe Keating (pictured), a cellist and one of the few musicians to speak at the event. Her story is a hopeful one. Ms Keating has criticised streaming services for how little they pay in royalties; she reported on her blog that she averages $0.0033 per play on Spotify. Yet Ms Keating is not struggling to pay the mortgage on her Northern California home. She nets between $200,000 and $300,000 annually, largely through live performance.
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Tuesday, June 11, 2013

US Media in Numbers

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/06/10/business/media/10mostwanted.html?ref=media&_r=0

Radio stations in the top two markets, Los Angeles and New York, have a lot of overlap — hits are hits. Songs by Rihanna are popular on half of the top 10 stations.
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Sunday, June 9, 2013

Eye on the ball: Review by Simon Kuper

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/9a403a08-cea8-11e2-8e16-00144feab7de.html#axzz2Vk0JNXgn

Jimmy Connors is one of those tennis players who stick in the memory: a ham actor who talked to crowds, screamed at umpires and chased down impossible balls until he was 40. He had rivalries with two of tennis’s most intriguing characters, John McEnroe and Björn Borg, and was engaged to Chris Evert. So you start this book eager to find out: what was everyone really like?

But 400 pages later, you still don’t know. In Connors’ analysis, he and McEnroe were angry because of “Irish blood”. He admits to having no idea why Borg walked out of top tennis aged 26. When Connors has an affair and his wife asks him why, he replies: “I don’t know.” McEnroe and Andre Agassi pioneered the emotionally intelligent tennis memoir, but this is not it. That’s a shame, because there is an excellent story hidden in this book: a working-class kid breaking into a posh sport just as it was entering its 1970s rock-star era.
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Saturday, June 8, 2013

How the west has won - By Simon Kuper

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/65957900-cd75-11e2-90e8-00144feab7de.html#axzz2VbhrjgoC

I noticed it visiting Moscow last month. Most western expatriates I met there had come for money (the Muscovite “salary bonus” and “tax bonus”) and had parked their wives and children back home. Meanwhile, rich Russians were sending their children to British boarding schools and American colleges. Neither group seemed to see their future in the country that paid them.

China and Russia won’t easily gain more global cultural influence, unless they become English-speaking democracies. For now the west rules the global conversation. That matters. Although many dictators admire the Chinese political model, their subjects mostly prefer democracy. You don’t see anyone in Cairo, or for that matter New York, taking to the streets to demand that his country be led by an unelected communist party with a history of mass murder.
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Friday, June 7, 2013

Russian retailing - A Magnit for investors

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21579023-retailer-doing-well-business-unfriendly-country-magnit-investors

STANDING in front of a bank of display screens in Krasnodar, Alexander Barsukov, an executive at the Russian grocery chain Magnit, can see that a hypermarket in Nizhnekamsk, a town of 230,000 people 1,900km (1,200 miles) away, is running low on “Group A” products—ones such as bread and milk that account for 20% of stock but 80% of sales. Mr Barsukov has the store manager notified to restock the shelves; a “control call” will follow up in 40 minutes. The point is to “catch mistakes fast,” he says.

 It is this combination of advanced IT systems and efficient logistics that has propelled Magnit to the top of the Russian food-retail industry, a fast-growing, $300-billion-a-year market that is now Europe’s largest. In April, for the first time in its 15-year history, Magnit bested its competitors by posting $4.3 billion in quarterly sales. Long the underdog, Magnit has become an investors’ favourite: its share price has nearly doubled over the past 12 months.

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Viral Videos: Game of Thrones' Red Wedding, Breaking Bad, Fifa 14

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/jun/07/viral-video-chart-game-of-thrones-red-wedding

George RR Martin says he likes GoT viewers to be afraid, and Samuel Jackson plays Walter White in this week's rundown

2. George R.R. Martin Likes His Fans To Be Afraid
The power behind the Thrones
10. Just Checking 
Cereal cutie
Source: Viral Video Chart. Compiled from data gathered at 14:00 on 6 June 2013. The Viral Video Chart is currently based on a count of the embedded videos and links on approximately 2m blogs, as well as Facebook and Twitter.
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