news | Strife in Turkey highlights restrictions on freedoms

Suicide bombers attacked a peace rally in Ankara, Turkey on Saturday, killing at least 97 and injuring dozens more. The bombings come in the midst of nationwide turmoil, as Turkey prepares to hold snap elections on November 1st. Opposition leaders have accused the Turkish government of using the current political climate to censor and restrict news coverage and curtail freedoms of speech and of the press.

Saturday’s attack is the third of its kind, following an attack at another political rally in Diyarbakir that killed four in June, and an attack that killed 33 in Suruc in July.

opinion | Introducing the PocketWatch

Magical.

Revolutionary.

Inherently familiar.

Whenever we set out to build something with the latest technology, we want it to be a device that makes you think money is no object in the relentless pursuit of rampant consumerism. We painstakingly created a groundbreaking device that’s immediately attractive and intimately familiar—a device you can read just by looking at it.

Introducing the PocketWatch. Everything old is new again.

opinion | Android's sudden Stagefright

Of all the talk about the Stagefright exploit, its most sinister aspect is the delivery: all it takes is the phone number of the target. An MMS is sent to the victim with the payload as part of a video, and the attack takes over even if the message is not read by the user. Worse, elevated privileges mean any trace of the attack can be removed before the user is aware of the problem.

I'm currently tracking the Stagefright exploit on Android with considerable interest (and, I'll admit, a modicum of trepidation). While I think many of the fears about widespread attacks on the "billions" of Android devices are largely unfounded, I also think the exploit is simple enough and thus serious enough to warrant attention from Android users.

news | Financial Times acquired by Nikkei for £844m

Japanese media company Nikkei acquired the FT Group from current owner Pearson for £844m (US$1.3m) in a deal announced earlier today. When finalized, the deal will bring the British business newspaper Financial Times under the control of Japan’s largest media company, adding to an already impressive but largely domestic media empire spanning radio, print, and television broadcast companies.

analysis | It's all Greek to me. Capital controls explained

The government of Greece is considering drastic measures such as the use of capital controls to stabilize its economy should the country default on its debts and begin to leave the European Union. As bailout negotiations between Greece and Eurozone leaders continue to stall, financial analysts and experts are considering the once untenable idea of capital controls.

The term saw airplay in headlines as recently as December 2014, when Russia considered (but ultimately did not implement) capital controls after the Russian Rouble tumbled in value, sparking a crisis so large that multinationals like Apple temporarily ceased its sales in the country. Capital controls were used to great effect in Cyprus when it experienced a financial crisis in 2013. Now, capital controls have become a part of the Greek "doomsday" scenario if it were to leave the European Union and its common currency.

opinion | The geopolitical case for Greece

As the Greek debt crisis reaches its peak, headlines from around Europe and the world scream for the swift departure of Greece from the European Union. Whispers of a breakup have even been heard in the German Bundestag, where it was once an inconsiderable option.

There is undoubtedly a strong case for a Greek Exit. Greece currently owes €1.5bn in loans to the International Monetary Fund by the end of June, with an additional €3.5bn due to the European Central Bank in July. With default on the horizon, the country remains in financial limbo; bank runs and capital controls are now considered realities to plan for rather than purely academic exercises.

While the markets have held mostly steady, analysts believe most of it is attributed to confidence in an 11th hour deal, (which ironically reduces the impetus to act). But if Grexit really became reality the EU would not come crashing down overnight, and the world will not be plunged into a crisis. The financial repercussions are unlikely to reverberate beyond Brussels. Some are even hoping (perhaps naïvely) that a Grexit is the crisis to end all crises, that once Greece leaves, stability in the Eurozone will be restored and it will never face another squabble among its members.

But the decision must not be made solely on cost.

As counterintuitive as it may sound, the decision for keeping Greece inside the Eurozone should not be viewed as a purely economic decision, but as a geopolitical one.

analysis | Not the product, but the idea: Why New Coke failed with consumers.

New Coke.

Nothing else continues to evoke such fear and wonder in the world of marketing than these two words. It was an unmitigated disaster, a cautionary tale of poor planning whose very mention conjures powerful images of corporate hubris gone awry.

The quintessential marketing failure of the 1980s, New Coke was a popular name for a product heralded as the reformulated replacement of Coke, one designed to appeal to changing consumer tastes and counter sliding market share. But its eventual failure and phaseout raised an uncomfortable question the soft drink behemoth, The Coca-Cola Company, had never before confronted:

What were they selling?