Here’s a summary of interesting stories I’ve seen over the last week. I try to concentrate on the stories which aren’t necessarily mainstream.
Banking
Let’s start with some good news! ING ran a trial of contactless charity donation boxes. The trial resulted in average donations doubling old-fashioned cash collection tins. I think the new donation box design could be improved, but it still encourages generosity to charities. bit.ly/2ykXaMC.
Apple is close to launching their person to person payments service. It’s purely proprietary – which means only Apple users will be able to send and receive payments. I predict Apple Pay Cash will have a bigger cash stockpile this time next year than many high street banks. This is because users will keep their received cash on their device, simply because it will be easier than transferring it into a bank account. https://t.co/agcKxKigJx
BBVA has seen a 135% annual usage increase in their mobile apps. They now plan to port 92% of their products to mobile (they’re currently at 82%). https://t.co/NLtxTNWyaW
I commented, in full agreement, on this blog post: “Blockchain is a new way of thinking?” Yes, Blockchain is about changing business models before adopting the technology. https://t.co/9DkZC8P4pp
And finishing this section on a more sombre note, 74% of UK bankers surveyed by Avanade believe “human interaction will not be necessary in retail banking in the next 10 years.” according to this report (a download from Avanade). There are some other gems in there too. https://t.co/qDWnsGhgEz
User Experience
This is a great blog article: “From Clapping to Likes, and Back Again” – a history of audience metrics. https://t.co/vghlf5FWJ4
Why brands who implement gamification should be tapping into our childhood passions. The article describes why gamification works (and sometimes fails). As an industry, I think we’re sometimes guilty of overplaying the gamification model. https://t.co/PVQT8f3ZHH
Sport
NFL balls now have a tracking chip inside – just think of the data that will soon be available. https://t.co/Avlf8aE7rK
Quote of the week: “Nobody engineers a rights market auction quite like the Premier League” https://t.co/TXnCnTYURj
Transport
VW will build electric versions of all its 300 models by 2030 (but 2 years ago they also said that their cars could do 50mpg). This isn’t the Chinese whispers of when Volvo announced by 2019 all cars will be hybrid – and the press misreported the story as all Volvos will become electric by 2019. https://t.co/qks1UD9k4R
Security
CCleaner is the software which can remove unnecessary settings to optimise your computer. It’s extremely popular – the software has been downloaded over 2 billion times. Which was a real shame when the company who writes the software found some malware inside it. The malware collected some information about computers (as opposed to personal details) and sent this information to a central server. The company claim that by immediately working with the police they managed to shut down the central server straight away. https://t.co/iJPvmkNEsH
Technology
AWS (Amazon Web Service) will launch per-second billing for Linux in October. The elastic cloud just became even more flexible. https://t.co/gHDAT3MPSA
SAP acquired Gigya. For $350M!!! Gigya is a single sign-on platform for third-party websites. I thought SAP’s purchase of Hybris a few years ago was excellent. But I don’t see how Gigya fits into SAP. https://t.co/605o2uclmA
Microsoft will be releasing Office 2019 next year. I can see your excitement already. My top wishes:
- PowerPoint becomes more like Keynote. By comparison, PowerPoint is archaic
- Outlook learns from Gmail or any of the online email providers. Searching is still poor across large mailboxes (I have every email since 2001)
Worldpay has developed an SDK for IoT shopping https://t.co/IsMt5laf0A
Hospitality
A nice financial comparison between Just Eat and Deliveroo –two very different commercial models. https://t.co/WyWhB0fLN3
My Blog articles
On the way home from work one night I thought “Has Google ever sold advertising on its homepage?” This space must be the premium advertising space on the Internet. It’s the Times Square of the Internet. Only much, much busier. https://bradbox.com/blog/google-homepage-advert/
I went to the InsTech London September event. There were 19 insurance start-ups or new technologies strutting their stuff. It was a good event, and if you work in insurance, look out for the next event. https://bradbox.com/blog/instech-london-september-2017/