Yes that’s right. I said Sheffield. The place made famous for steel production, having a football team named after a day of the week (that’s Wednesday for those not in the know) and Sean Bean.

Earlier this month Electronics Weekly reported data compiled by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) which showed that the University of Sheffield has now overtaken the University of Cambridge for engineering research income by almost 10 percent.

This is pretty significant.

Cambridge University and its superb track record of engineering research, technological discoveries and inventions was the unquestionable driver behind the formation of Silicon Fen. Many of the successful companies to emerge from the area started as Cambridge University spin-offs or were started by its graduates and academic staff. The process, known as The Cambridge Phenomenon, has been going on in earnest since the1960s and given rise to the likes of Acorn Computers, ARM, CSR, Plextek, TEAM Consulting, TTP, Sagentia and Cambridge Consultants to name just a few.

Clearly HESA’s data is an indication of the world class nature of the University of Sheffield. The University’s own press release about the data claims that it is one of the largest providers of engineering research and education in the UK operating across all the main engineering disciplines and claiming world-leading capability in areas as diverse as semiconductors and pharmaceuticals.

But what really fuelled Silicon Fen’s rise wasn’t just a world class university, it was also helped by its highly networked community and innovative financing. As well as Silicon Fen this model seems to be working well for other UK innovation hubs e.g. the likes of Silicon Roundabout (Shoreditch) and Silicon Southwest (Bristol/Bath).

If Sheffield, and the talent coming out of the University in years to come, get it right and follow the successful Silicon Fen model, I predict it won’t be too many years before every electronics PR in the UK will be tootling up the M1 towards Sheffield, the epicentre of the world renowned Silicon Wednesday, rather than the usual jaunt along the M11.

You heard it here first!

(Photo courtesy of andrewbasterfield).

With the global Xbox teams and world’s tech media descending on Seattle it was bound to be big news from the start, but we can’t help the feeling that maybe what we got has left us a bit flat.

The lines between the gaming and entertainment worlds have become steadily more and more blurred over recent years with existing consoles clambering to be the first to add new apps like BBC iPlayer and YouTube. Xbox One however, seems to have taken this to a whole new level, promising an ‘all-in-one, entertainment centre’.

Designed to sit squarely at the centre of the living room the new console not only boasts an added Blu-ray drive and Skype functionality but will become the first device of its kind to host an exclusive live-action TV series based on its best selling Halo franchise, directed by Microsoft fan, Steven Spielberg no less.

Combine this with a five-year deal with the US National Football League, which will allow sports fans the ability to catch up on stats and replays, it seems the focus from the start was more viewing than gaming related content.

It is a bold move. Traditionally Xbox has a history of affinity amongst the most hardcore of gamers. With titles like Halo, Call of Duty and Gears of War all showcasing on the platform it has become the choice of millions around the world. How then does the new ‘entertainment centre’ keep them happy?

Although the unveiling of the console itself came within minutes of the keynote, it was a full 30 minutes or so before any mention of games. Even so, the attention was more on Kinect (not a favourite of many traditional gamers) than core titles.

The Kinect will receive an upgrade, meaning it will be so responsive it can ‘even track your heartbeat’, showing the commitment to making this a real gameplay accessory is there, but is this enough to satisfy the most hardcore fans? Maybe new titles from Ubisoft, Activision and EA will add to the appeal, alongside the latest Forza 5, direct from Microsoft studios.

With E3 fast approaching, Microsoft has, like any good consumer tech PR would, left some of the details till another day – most notably price and availability dates.

We would anticipate this may form part of its traditional opening keynote in LA but overall the long awaited first unveiling should score a thumbs up for the casual gamer. However, we might want to avoid the Twittersphere for hardcore gaming fans if we were an Xbox exec.

A quick disclosure: I used to work on the UK PR for Yahoo! and continue to have a positive, although I’d like to think well informed and rounded, opinion towards the company and brand. And with that experience, I can say timing these two announcements together was a better PR move than I ever saw come from the company first hand.

A second disclosure: I love Tumblr. It’s not about over-sharing your personal life, one-upmanship, internet point scoring, or flooded with geeky tech talk. A genuine community, driven by creativity, humour and way more than the one joke repeated blogs that get picked up on twitter.

So as you would expect, I have a predisposition to hoping that all Yahoo!’s promises will be kept. But I also think there’s more than sentimentality to that hope.

Big numbers

Firstly, this deal does make sense business wise. $1.1 billion is a big number, but so is 184 million, the number of users Tumblr had at last count. It’s more than Instagram has now, and a lot more than Instagram had at the time of its Facebook acquisition. Not that that comparison necessarily justifies the spend, but it helps put it in perspective. Yahoo! is a $26 billion dollar company with around 170 million US users on a downward trend, as opposed to Tumblr’s 184 million global users, on a steep upward one.

Be cool

From the PR manoeuvring it’s easy to dissect that this move is in part one to address Yahoo!’s image, as I’d argue was the main motivation behind the Summly acquisition. But that isn’t to say that Yahoo! cannot learn from Tumblr’s culture. It’s a very successful business already, and the reason that creative culture has been cultivated among the community is hugely down to the team behind it. It makes sense for Yahoo! to allow them to continue with their successful formula for gaining engaged users and help them with their efforts to monetise it.

Track record

OK, so this all sounds a bit like we’re back in March 2005, when Yahoo! bought Flickr. Which is why relaunching the new Flickr at the same time as announcing the deal is the best possible thing Yahoo! could do to allay Tumblr users’ fears. Yahoo! nearly ruined Flickr not by interfering, but by quite the opposite, by a complete lack of involvement in developing the site. It was basically left alone for five years, which is a very long time in internet years, and fell behind in terms of design, user experience and mobile strategy.

Now Flickr has relaunched with a great new look, a decent mobile strategy (the area Instagram was threatening to eat its lunch) and a huge one terabyte gift to its users. The worry, if there is one, is not Yahoo! intefering. It is that Yahoo! will leave Tumblr too alone, and not give it the resource to keep building a better product. It is also worth mentioning that Tumblr has had a pretty poor track record for down time, it is a site with huge user figures and relatively low levels of investment thus far. That resource that Yahoo! can offer could be very handy.

I have a lot of faith in Yahoo! CEO Marissa Meyer, even the small things like the excellent new Yahoo! Weather App have been early indicators that she is taking the right approach with the company. There is every reason to believe this deal will be a good move for both Yahoo! and Tumblr.

photo credit: aaronparecki

Also known as inductive charging, the advantages of wireless charging simply in terms of convenience are obvious; no fiddling around with plugging power cables into the handset. Industry leading mobile tech giant Qualcomm is putting its weight behind the initiative and is particularly keen to address one of the barriers to its wider adoption: wireless charging is still only possible when the device is placed on a mains powered charging pad.

Such innovation could go some way to encouraging more mobile device makers to adopt the technology. But exactly which wireless charging technology should they adopt?

Therein lies the biggest challenge for wireless charging technology and, for that matter, any technology destined to be embedded into mobile devices. In specifying a new technology for a mobile device, which might be on the market for a few years and produced in millions of units, a handset maker wants to be confident that they and end-users will have a device that is compatible with other peripherals and devices that use the same technology. Nobody wants to have different charging pads for each device.

A mobile device manufacturer may embed the first generation of a technology at a higher cost to give its products a competitive leading edge, but its continued use in future products will depend on a few factors: lowering the cost, reducing its footprint when embedded, guaranteed availability of the necessary components from multiple sources, and constantly improving performance and reliability.

All of these factors are ultimately the result of investing in a technology’s development and a result of the volume production that comes from a technology being widely adopted across an industry – and that means standardisation. At the moment, there is no de-facto standard for wireless charging.

Enter the Alliance for Power, which has the potential to bring this long overdue technology to real fruition. It may need to attract a higher volume of members, but those members already on board are significant.

So that’s sorted then. I’ll wait.

Unless you live in the 18^th Century and make your own clothes, then chances are this is something you face on at least a reasonably regular basis.

The good news is that a new scheme could see you picking and choosing the things you buy on a bespoke basis before they’ve even been produced, thanks to a new service that takes advantage of the current crowd-funding trend.

This new approach to shopping could see retail channels flipped upside down, with ideas for new products coming straight from the consumers. But it also might bring hope to the floundering retail industry.

Lack of imagination

We’ve all heard about how the high-street retail industry has had a rough time over the last few years. Stories of year-round sales, declining profits and the disappearance of household names from the high street, have become depressingly familiar to all of us.

Typically, the finger of blame has been squarely pointed towards the economy, but this also obscures the fact that there are more factors contributing towards the sector’s decline.

One, often overlooked, factor is the lack of imagination going into new-build retail developments.

For every Trinity, Leeds’ triumphant new shopping development, there’s a Trinity Square, Gateshead town centre’s long-awaited £150m response to the Metro Centre, which promises Sports Direct and CEX amongst its confirmed tenants and an off-the-shelf, this could be any new, grey-and-yellow retail area in the UK design.

I can hardly wait…

While the latest facts suggest most of us still treat shopping as a social activity and prefer to touch products before we buy them, developments like this are doing nothing to stem the plummeting finances of offline shopping.

Therefore, high-street bosses are craving any innovation that brings something new to retail, whilst helping to bridge the offline and online markets.

New lease of life

Pretail (see what they did there?) is a new collaborative process that brings together product designers and consumers, with start-ups and entrepreneurs presenting their product ideas to the world with a request for funding.

Further down the line, we could see consumers proactively suggesting ideas for products they’d like to see to the community, which would be a revolution in the longstanding supply and demand model of retail.

For most consumers it’s rare to be the first to get their hands on a product, but pretail can give them that thrill.

With instant feedback, only the best products with real demand will make it off the drawing board and onto the shelves. The model also gives a boost to independent and new designers, who hopefully will inject a combination of creativity and innovative business sense into the retail design community.

Back on the streets

But can an online service have a positive impact on the world of traditional, bricks ‘n‘ mortar retailers?

There’s plenty of potential for this service to birth a pretail hypermarket or Apple-style ‘destination store’ for specific wares. Off the top of my head I can also think of a number of existing department stores that could do well to revitalise their business by adopting a fresh approach to how they buy their products.

Whatever happens, high-street retailers need to keep working on making their in-store offerings fresh when trying to appeal to modern consumers. But the only way they can hope to have a serious impact on their stores’ falling profits is through innovative concepts like pretail, as well as others such as utilising consumers’ tablet devices in-store. Then, and only then, will consumers perhaps start to view the retail industry with renewed confidence.

Some of the world’s biggest automotive players – such as Toyota, Daimler and Lotus – played important roles in Tesla’s evolution. For example Panasonic, in the same league as Japanese electronics giants like Sony and Toshiba, has been helping develop the Model S’s critical lithium-ion battery technology for Tesla over the last 3 years. In fact, in spite of the widely discussed criticism that the BBC’s Top Gear gave Tesla in 2008, such levels of engineering and backing meant the Tesla was probably always going to have a success story on its hands – and good luck to them.

Being realistic, I’m an old petrolhead but even I will probably never drive an electric car every day. In spite of the industry’s huge advances, the cost of desirable, high-performance, all-electric vehicles looks set to keep them in the pockets of the elite of the developed world – like The Valley – for the remainder of my lifetime. However, the specification of Tesla’s Model S – which looks every bit like a current Jaguar or Lexus – is spectacular, and a great reminder that automotive technology certainly isn’t standing still.

Hopefully in 5 years Tesla’s success will be used to demonstrate where borrowing the best developments from others, rather than developing everything from scratch, changed an industry.

UBM Tech continues to be a focal point for analysis of the international electronics industry, and Alex is a significant figure in this world. He is a true investigative journalist and, as the Brand Director for what could be described as a changing brand of EETimes, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s taken stock and decided to go back to doing what he’s proven himself to be great at: being one of the leading editors in the industry.

Although he was in Europe recently, blogging about Embedded World, I can’t see more than a handful of articles or blogs written by Alex in the last year on EETimes – and this feels like a waste. Whenever he has deployed his journalistic skills of late, it has been to great effect. For example, his recent analysis of Intel’s CEO change and speculation of how this reflects the company’s strategic shift and competitive threats, demonstrated his experience, his contacts, and his industry insight.

Yes, UBM is updating and streamlining its organisation in line with the needs of the changes in the electronics industry, and in line with the changing face and role of the media. But I wouldn’t panic that this is a sign of trouble at UBM Tech, nor that it signals the end of electronics journalism – the expertise needed to understand and credibly report on the industry will never be replaced by generalist technology publications. Instead, UBM is almost certainly making these changes to reflect wider changes in the industry and its strategy is such that it doesn’t need to lose its incredibly strong team of journalists.

If the rumours are true, we wish Alex well and hope he lands on both his feet. But, if this all turns out to be idle speculation, then let’s hope we see EETimes put Alex’s skills to fuller use.

These days just because someone launches a social network, doesn’t mean they have designs on being the next Facebook (well, maybe in their deepest desires). What they are increasingly tapping into is the trend towards niche social networks. These could be online communities that focus on a particular feature, as Instagram does with photo sharing and slide.ly does with sharing music and photos, or social networks that cater for a specific group of people, united by common interests, beliefs or demographics. Sure you could start a group on Facebook or LinkedIn, but there are many reasons why that’s not always enough: we are a more innovative bunch than that, we may have concerns about privacy and we want a more personal approach than Facebook can bring us (ad targeting doesn’t count).

Which leads me on to the next trend. Ever since the birth of the Internet, issues around privacy and authentication have been omnipresent. It used to be that anonymity was part of the attraction of the Internet, and to some it will always remain so. But due to the dangers this presents to potential victims of unscrupulous and malicious users, there are many organisations seeking to make the Internet a safer place through verification.

As online trust and reputation impacts on real world commercial success, online communities are increasingly seek ways to authenticate their users. Only last week airbnb announced that they will be vetting their 4m users to ensure they are who they say they are – I’m confident we can all see the benefits in avoiding a dodgy stranger kipping in your spare room, or sharing your car!

Unii is a new social network launching today (client) that taps into both of these trends.  Aimed squarely at undergraduate students who want what goes on at uni to stay at uni, the network protects students from the prying eyes of parents – or potential employers – by verifying them using their university email addresses.

Beyond the privacy issues, Unii will provide students with all the features and services they need to ease their transition into higher education, such as finding accommodation, joining and managing societies and finding placements and jobs. It does all this whilst making it easy for students to connect with others from their course, campus, or other UK universities, who are also sharing the same student journey. I certainly wish there had been something like this when I landed in Sheffield as a student [redacted] years ago, not knowing a soul and with nowhere to live.

Sadly that predated Facebook and widespread use of the Internet.

There is a lot to be said for knowing your customer niche and focusing on creating an experience that constantly delights them, rather than trying to be all things to all people, so it’ll be exciting to see how the niche social network space develops in the coming months.

At 9.17am this morning – ironically just as we in the office were all leafing through the morning papers, reading rumours of his impending retirement – the club’s @MUFCOfficial Twitter feed sent out a simple tweet: “Sir Alex Ferguson retires. #ThankYouSirAlex”.

According to Pocket-Lint, the story was mentioned 1.4 million times and the #ThankYouSirAlex hashtag used over 100,000 times. What struck me, though, was not the speed with which it spread, but rather how this breaks from the traditions of sports media coverage.

English Premier League football loves to hold press conferences at any opportunity they can, holding them before and after every single game they play, when they make a new signing, when they have big news or if they just have something to say. To put it in perspective, a lot of technology companies still dream of holding a few a year, and they usually will have to release a new product to justify it.

Not content with just spreading rumours they’d heard from every well-connected source they could find the night before, the crème de la crème of national sports journalists will have been reaching fever pitch at the thought that they might be the ones to break the news exclusively. But the media world doesn’t seem to work like that anymore – particularly if you have the brand awareness of Manchester United.

The Guardian Media Monkey blog makes a great point in an article about this same topic, that football journalists could do worse than to follow the official twitter feeds of the clubs they’re interested in to gain an inside scoop. That got me thinking about what relevance this might hold for PR.

Firstly it’s a prime example of how important running a twitter feed for your clients is. There’s something almost comforting about the thought that a company can truly break its own news to the world, rather than relying on media sources as its one and only channel of communication.

However, whilst Manchester United might have broken the news, it was the usual media outlets that made their tweet spread like wildfire. A brand must therefore command its own social media presence, making sure they have a good idea who it is that follows and interacts with them and, perhaps most importantly, who the influencers are they ultimately want to reach.

With such a huge story breaking on Twitter – and subsequently almost breaking Twitter – it makes me wonder whether the tech world itself isn’t too far away from huge product announcements and CEO changes being announced on social networks, rather than via the usual trade shows or press releases. It’s not a threat to tech PR, quite the opposite; it’s a massive opportunity.

Bitcoin, the decentralised digital currency may be associated with being the drug dealer’s best friend, but it’s caused quite a stir in the non drug-dealing world too this month, reaching a record high before suffering a sudden crash, causing a halt to Bitcoin exchanges. Mistrust towards banks and the Eurozone crisis has led to Bitcoin growing in popularity among libertarians, entrepreneurs and, notably, drug dealers or illegal gambling rings. However, the currency, created by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto, seems to have suffered a crash every week since 2013 began. As the use of digital and mobile payment methods continues to rise, Bitcoin will become an alternative solution that it is certainly worth keeping an eye on.

We Are Hunted joins Twitter – 12^th April

Twitter announced its acquisition of music service We Are Hunted in mid-April to a mixed reception from the technology world. It’s an interesting development for the microblogging giant and takes Twitter into different territory, as we saw with the acquisition of Vine, which saw video becoming a bigger part of the life of a tweeter. However, the more cynical among us have compared it to Spotify’s service that allows users to see what music their friends are listening to – just in a slightly messier way. Whatever your thoughts, Twitter’s continuing ventures into the multimedia sharing industry are interesting developments and a sure sign for users and brands that rich content is being shared more and more.

Google releases Person Finder in aftermath of Boston Marathon explosions – 15^th April

The Boston Marathon is, of course, not a technology story, but almost inevitably one of the world’s technology giants stole some column inches with the release of a helpful new solution that was intended to assist families and friends find missing marathon runners in the ensuing chaos of two explosions. The tool allowed those affected to search for missing people and share information of their whereabouts, potentially providing peace of mind to friends and family that a loved one was alive and well. Of course, any kind of publicity that comes off the back of such an event has the potential to leave a bad taste in people’s mouths if it is interpreted as exploitative. However, Google’s contribution was timely and almost altruistic and should be seen as such. It makes perfect sense for a company of Google’s search capabilities to provide a solution to such problems.

Semiconductor equipment market shrinks – 22^nd April

Reports from Gartner showed that spending on semiconductor manufacturing, usually a useful guide to the long-term outlook for the chip industry, shrank by 16% in 2012 – falling to ‘just’ $37.8 billion. Although it might seem to suggest a significant decline in the chip market the reality is a bit more mixed. Certainly the slump in sales of traditional computer products, particularly in developed markets, has hit semiconductor manufacturers. The other complicating factor is that it is thought that some manufacturers are delaying investment in new equipment until the next generation of machines are available for commercial production. However, new mobile and tablet product sales are rising sharply – but not enough to cover the decline in other product categories. That said the recent results from ARM and TSMC in April show very encouraging signs for the chip market – and are seeing high growth in developing and developed markets. As always it seems the outlook depends on where you choose to look.

The Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill today receives Royal Assent – 25^th April

The ERRB bill, now passed in the UK, has been dubbed by The Register as the ‘Instagram Act’, taking an ironic stab at the photo sharing app that last year provoked outrage by suggesting users photos could be reused without repercussions once they were shared and made public. It effectively reverses the existing UK copyright law in the sense that if information identifying the user is unattached from a piece of content, the work is considered ‘orphaned’ and consequently fair game for commercial exploitation. The ERRB will affect amateur and professional illustrators and may lead to them being more cautious about sharing their own produced content on social networks.