Consumer Reports: “Amazon’s agreement to buy the wireless router manufacturer Eero could make it easier for homeowners to manage a wide array of wireless devices, like smart thermostats and video doorbells, according to analysts and Consumer Reports’ in-house experts. But some of them expressed concern over how often high-profile startups get bought by the tech… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: E-Commerce
Why data, not privacy, is the real danger
NBCNews: “While it’s creepy to imagine companies are listening in to your conversations, it’s perhaps more creepy that they can predict what you’re talking about without actually listening…First, understand that privacy and data are separate things. Your privacy — your first and last name, your Social Security number, your online credentials — is the unit… Continue Reading
Shoshana Zuboff on the Age of Surveillance Capitalism
The Intercept: “…An unavoidable takeaway of “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” is, essentially, that everything is even worse than you thought. Even if you’ve followed the news items and historical trends that gird Zuboff’s analysis, her telling takes what look like privacy overreaches and data blunders, and recasts them as the intentional movements of a… Continue Reading
Building habit not pageview matters most for keeping subscribers
Poynter: “As online advertising lags, many local news organizations are shifting their strategy to focus on reader-based revenue models, especially digital subscriptions, as a path to financial sustainability and greater community service. That pivot is redefining the goals for many news outlets. Rather than chasing viral “clicks” to boost ad revenue, they are trying to… Continue Reading
Want to Stop Fake News? Pay for the Real Thing
The New York Times – “Facebook and Google have been brutal to the news business. But this primarily reflects a failure of imagination. The tech giants are the world’s best distribution platforms and could be an answer for journalism instead of a grave threat. As readers have shifted to digital sources, the two companies have… Continue Reading
Thieves of Experience: How Google and Facebook Corrupted Capitalism
Los Angeles Review of Books – Nicholas Carr’s review of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism – The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power By Shoshana Zuboff To the Googles and Facebooks of the world, we are neither the customer nor the product. We are the source of what Silicon Valley… Continue Reading
FAA looks to ease drone flight rules
FCW.com: “The Federal Aviation Administration will give commercial drones more freedom to operate over people and grant longer flight times under proposed new rules. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao announced the proposals at the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting on Jan. 14. The initiatives include a draft rule proposal to allow drones to fly at night… Continue Reading
Pew Report – Facebook Algorithms and Personal Data
“About half of Facebook users say they are not comfortable when they see how the platform categorizes them, and 27% maintain the site’s classifications do not accurately represent them. Most commercial sites, from social media platforms to news outlets to online retailers, collect a wide variety of data about their users’ behaviors. Platforms use this… Continue Reading
Once-revolutionary smartphone is losing its power to amaze and maybe its singular hold on our lives
WSJ [paywall] The Big Hangup: Why the Future Is Not Just Your Phone The once-revolutionary smartphone is losing its power to amaze—and maybe its singular hold on our live: “Steve Jobs took to a stage a dozen years ago this week to introduce a revolutionary new product to the world: the first Apple iPhone. That… Continue Reading
Fakespot determines the trustworthiness of reviews using artificial intelligence
“Growing suspicious of online reviews? So were we. Fakespot provides consumers with a new way of filtering product reviews to find out what real users are saying about the products you want to buy. Our proprietary technology analyzes millions of product reviews, looking for suspicious patterns and incentivized reviews. We then weed out the reviews… Continue Reading
Devices That Will Invade Your Life in 2019 (and What’s Overhyped)
The New York Times – A.I. that responds to your voice. Next-generation wireless networks. If this year’s biggest consumer technology trends have a familiar ring, there’s a reason for that. “But as is often the case, there will also be plenty of talk in the coming week about overly optimistic tech that you would do… Continue Reading
Economists calculate the true value of Facebook to its users in new study
Corrigan JR, Alhabash S, Rousu M, Cash SB (2018) How much is social media worth? Estimating the value of Facebook by paying users to stop using it. PLoS ONE 13(12): e0207101. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0207101 “Facebook, the online social network, has more than 2 billion global users. Because those users do not pay for the service, its benefits… Continue Reading
