Posted by Williams Helde Staff

The Buzz: January 14th, 2013


The executive summary of the top things to be aware of this week.
 

  1. Digital Activist Aaron Swartz Dead At 26
    • Digital activist Aaron Swartz is dead after committing suicide at the age of 26. While not everyone may know the name, we’ve all felt the benefits of Aaron’s work. He was a child prodigy, a digital genius, co-founder of RSS, a co-founder of Reddit, and faught for all of us to protect our freedoms on the Internet. We send our condolences to Aaron’s family and friends.
    Read more
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  3. Gartner and the IDC Release PC Data
    • HP, Dell, Apple, Lenovo, and Acer take the top 5 spots for Q4 2012 PC sales. HP, Apple and Lenova saw an increase in sales while Dell and Acer saw significant decreases. This all comes at an interesting time where the lines between PCs and tablets are increasingly blurred.
    Read more from Gartner
    Read more from the IDC
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  5. Samsung Galaxy S Tops 100 Million Sales
    • Samsung’s Galaxy S line, the best selling phone in the world, topped over 100 million units sold, an astonishing figure given the relative immaturity of the smartphone market. This further displays a growing consumer trend towards smartphones and mobile technology.
    Read more
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  7. Coca-Cola Addresses Obesity
    • In their new ads, Coca-Cola directly addresses obesity and their role in the equation. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of the spots themselves, although I do appreciate the effort Coke is making. What do you think?

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  9. Tiger and Rory Tee Off In New Nike Spot
    • Reminiscentof the old Jordan v. Bird commercials. Pretty fun. Check it out.

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  11. CES 2013: A Look Back
    • We talked a lot about CES last week. While I personally found the event slightly underwhelming, there were a few highlight. More or less, there were a lot of TVs that were either far to expensive for anyone to afford, TVs with features that nobody will ever use, tablets of all ridiculous sizes, crazy app-enabled gadgets that sound great in theory but not in real life, and a bunch of people trying to figure out what the heck to do with Windows 8. No game changers in my eyes.
    Read more
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  13. Facebook Has An Announcement
    • A bird, a plane? Hopefully a redesigned interface. Maybe a phone. Probably something less exciting. No idea what it is, but stand by for more!
    Read more
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  15. Online Spending Tops $100 billion in 2012
    • For the first time ever, digital sales topped $100 billion, over 20% of all ad spend. I remember the day’s of trying to convice clients to marketing online at all. It’s amazing how far we’ve come .
    Read more
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  17. The Return Of RIM?
    • I’ll believe this when I see it, but RIM’s stock jumped about 10% with talks of their new smartphones and Blackberry 10 OS. Wishing them the best, but not holding my breath on this one.
    Read more
Williams Helde Staff
About the Author

Williams Helde Staff

Seattle-based Williams Helde helps build active, healthy brands through marketing communications, PR, advertising and design.