Central London office space take-up soars to highest level since 2014 January 7, 2019 Fresh evidence of the capital’s thriving office space market has been brought to light today, with new figures showing that take-up in Central London last year soared to its highest level since 2014. Property agents are forecasting that the boom in London’s letting activity will likely carry on into 2019, as supply shortages and persistent [...]
Brexit, ad fraud and #MeToo – what does the future year hold for the marketing industry? January 7, 2019 We are out of the cold December of 2018, and have now entered the, well, even colder January of 2019. Last year was a momentous one for the marketing industry – there was the fall and rise again of adland stalwart Martin Sorrell; the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) finally came into force; [...]
Honesty: Coming to an office near you January 7, 2019 Last year, after reading Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life, I wrote a column about lying. While Peterson’s book argued that one should always tell the truth, I countered that, in a work environment, such philosophy was unrealistic. Honesty can get you fired. I would know. “What did you think about my speech?” my boss [...]
CES 2019: Tech firms set to chase Vegas lights for gadget bonanza January 6, 2019 This week marks the dawn of CES 2019, an annual trade show held in Las Vegas where startups and tech giants alike debut some of the world’s hottest new gadgets. Following on from last year’s most popular trend, voice assistants and artificially intelligent products are expected to take centre stage. Samsung is thought to be [...]
Alexa: Tell me why I can’t have a flying car like in Blade Runner January 4, 2019 Bad news: it’s 2019, and that means we are now living through the year in which the original Blade Runner film was set. Released in 1982, Blade Runner has some interesting ideas about 2019. Yes, it’s a post-apocalyptic dystopian hellscape where sentient bioengineered robots (“replicants”) must be hunted down against a backdrop of a dying [...]
Android apps send user data to Facebook without consent, report shows January 2, 2019 Almost two dozen popular Android apps automatically send user data to Facebook as soon as they are opened in a potential breach of data protection laws, a new report by Privacy International has revealed. An analysis of 34 Android apps showed 61 per cent of apps automatically transfer data to Facebook, even if the user [...]
Here are all the predictions I got wrong in 2018 December 21, 2018 I should have given up making predictions in June 2017. Three months earlier, I had spoken at a conference on Brexit and suggested that the best way forward for Theresa May would be to call a snap election and strengthen her negotiating hand. I don’t know how the Prime Minister got word of my advice, [...]
Twitter shares slide as company dubbed ‘Harvey Weinstein of Social Media’ December 20, 2018 Shares in Twitter are down 12.6 per cent as the social media giant heads towards for its biggest one-day fall in nearly five months. It comes after a report from Citron Research said the technology company “has become the Harvey Weinstein of Social Media”, following a damning Amnesty International study. The human rights charity said on [...]
For Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google, 2018 was the year when trust in the tech giants evaporated December 20, 2018 The Faangs (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google-owner Alphabet) have been the darlings of the stock market for years. These tech giants have helped to change how we shop, communicate, work – even how we watch movies. But as they have grown in size, fears have also grown, especially about what they may do with so [...]
Facebook shares down after investigation reveals true extent of data-sharing with other tech giants December 19, 2018 Facebook’s shares fell 6 per cent today after an investigation revealed the company gave big tech companies far greater access to users’ personal data than it had previously admitted. The social media giant let Microsoft’s Bing search engine see the names of virtually all users’ friends without their permission, according to reports. The New York [...]