As developers for tablets and smartphones we like to keep abreast of the latest mobile technology developments . This is a daily digest of mobile development and related technology news gathered from the BBC, the New York Times, New Scientist and the Globe and Mail to name a few. We scour the web for articles concerning, iPhone, iPad and android development, iOS and android operating systems as well as general articles on advances in mobile technology. We hope you find this useful and that it helps to keep you up to date with the latest technology developments.
Opinion: iPad Air 2 demo highlights power of 64-bit mobile computing
Apple’s demo for the iPad Air 2 during its latest keynote event was hugely impressive. As the company often does during its live presentations, it invited two developers on stage to highlight not only their apps, but also the power of the new iPad Air 2. Although all the technical details are not yet fully known about the powerful new custom 64-bit A8X chip, Apple did reveal some impressive numbers. But numbers aside, if you ever held any doubts about the benefits of Apple going 64-bit for the iPhone and iPad, the performance capabilities of iPad Air 2 as demonstrated should put them to bed.
Facebook Tells DEA To Stop Operating Fake Profile Pages
ALICIA A. CALDWELL, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Facebook wants assurances from the Drug Enforcement Administration that it’s not operating any more fake profile pages as part of ongoing investigations.
Facebook’s chief security officer, Joe Sullivan, said in a letter Friday to DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart that law enforcement agencies need to follow the same rules about being truthful on Facebook as civilian users. Those rules include a ban on lying about who you are.
Sullivan’s letter was in response to a New York woman’s federal lawsuit claiming that a DEA agent created a fake online persona using her name and photographs stored on her cellphone.
In court filings, Sondra Arquiett said her pictures were retrieved from her cellphone after she was arrested in July 2010 on drug charges and her cellphone seized. Arquiett said the fake page was being used by DEA agent Timothy Sinnigen to interact with “dangerous individuals he was investigating.” Arquiett is asking for $250,000 in damages.
“Facebook has long made clear that law enforcement authorities are subject to these policies,” Sullivan wrote. “We regard DEA’s conduct to be a knowing and serious breach of Facebook’s terms and policies.”
Facebook also wants the DEA to confirm that it has stopped using any other fake profile pages it may have created.
“The department has launched a review into the incident at issue in this case,” Justice Department spokesman Brian Fallon said in response to a request for comment. “That review is ongoing, but to our knowledge, this is not a widespread practice among our federal law enforcement agencies.”
The Justice Department initially defended the practice, arguing in an August court filing that while Arquiett didn’t directly authorize Sinnigen to create the fake account, she “implicitly consented by granting access to the information stored in her cellphone and by consenting to the use of that information to aid in … ongoing criminal investigations.”
Last week the agency announced it would review whether the Facebook guise went too far.
The case was scheduled to go to trial this week, but court records show it has been sent to mediation.
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Follow Alicia A. Caldwell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/acaldwellap
Amex web page promotes Apple Pay, adds directions for linking cards
Financial services and credit card issuer American Express has posted a new web page on its site, extolling the benefits of Apple Pay and instructing users on how to add their cards to the Passbook-based payment system. The mobile payment system is designed for the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus (now expanded to include the latest iPads for online or in-app purchases only) and will be formally rolled out on Monday, alongside the release of iOS 8.1.
Verizon Wireless Service Goes Down In Parts Of New York City [UPDATED]
Some Verizon customers in New York City were involuntarily taken off the grid on Friday night when the wireless giant experienced an outage in the Big Apple.
Multiple people tweeted about the service interruption:
It’s not just you — Verizon service is down, at least in Lower Manhattan.
— Ethan Klapper (@ethanklapper) October 17, 2014
Verizon Wireless down in New York, USA: Verizon Wireless has gone down today in New York, USA. We have receive… http://t.co/5bslYGzTXV
— Tech World Tweets (@techworldtweets) October 17, 2014
Can’t call or text in NYC right now. #Verizon is letting me down
— Hayley Yudelman (@hyudes) October 17, 2014
Apparently Verizon service is down in NY metro area because of a tower outage in Mineola. Chat guy says could be one hour, two tops.
— Christina Crapanzano (@ChrisCrapanzano) October 17, 2014
Looks like #verizon is down in NYC
— Sergey Smirnov (@sergeydgr8) October 17, 2014
Lol Verizon cell service is completely down in NYC. #great
— Morgan Maguire (@Morgan_Maguire) October 17, 2014
Verizon wireless down in NYC. Awesome.
— Brooke Hammerling (@brooke) October 17, 2014
According to Reuters, the issue hit at least three boroughs, with the company receiving over 700 outage reports as of 5:52pm Eastern Time.
A Verizon spokesman told HuffPost that the company is aware of issues and is looking into it.
UPDATE [8:42pm Eastern Time]: Verizon Wireless has provided the following statement to HuffPost:
At 4:15 p.m. EST this afternoon, we experienced an equipment failure affecting our 1x and 3G voice and data service in parts of Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. Our 4G LTE data service was fully operational. Service for our customers was restored this evening.
A Gravity-Defying Way To Store Even More Beer In Your Fridge
Finally, finding room in your fridge for both a six-pack of beer and that large pizza won’t be next to impossible.
A product design engineer living in Charlotte, North Carolina, has figured out a way to easily and securely suspend bottles from the top of a fridge using magnets, freeing up empty space in your fridge for whatever else it is you consume.
The device is simple enough: an eight-inch plastic strip outfitted with a row of three extremely strong neodymium magnets. Those magnets are encased in steel cups, to focus their magnetic strength. The strip is held to the fridge by a high-grade adhesive tape that works at low temperatures.
Each bottleLoft strip contains three powerful magnets.
The product is called bottleLoft, and its creator, Brian Conti, is using Kickstarter to bring his invention from prototype to market. With 23 days to go, he’s more than halfway to meeting his $20,000 goal and plans to ship the products by January 2015.
Worried something might shake the bottles loose? Conti confronts such concerns head-on in a video on his Kickstarter page that shows him lifting a 10-pound barbell using only a single bottleLoft strip. He claims each magnet can hold up to 4.8 pounds, while the standard 12-ounce beverage only weighs 1.2 pounds.
As long as it has a metal cap, you can hang it on bottleLoft.
Conti is something of a Kickstarter master. He has already successfully funded four other projects and started his own magnet-based company, Strong Like Bull Magnets.
(h/t Digital Trends)
Our Obsessive Relationship With Technology
I am an inveterate people watcher, which is probably why I started college thinking that I was going to be a math teacher and ended up getting my degrees in psychology. For the past 30+ years, as I have studied the “psychology of technology” I have always taken a strongly positive view about the impact it has on our culture and all of my writing has been in service of seeing how we can make the most of these marvelous inventions. From the beginnings of the Internet, to the rapid rise of the WWW, laptops, smartphones, tablets and more, we now have the world at our fingertips whenever we want and wherever we might find ourselves.
Lately, however, I have witnessed something that profoundly troubles me. WE CAN’T SEEM TO KEEP OUR FACES OUT OF OUR SMARTPHONES FOR EVEN A MINUTE OR TWO. Some people call it an addiction. Others call it an obsession. But, there is an important difference between the two. Addiction means that you are trying to get your brain to release neurotransmitters that we have learned signal a pleasurable experience. Obsession also involves neurotransmitters but those chemicals are associated with symptoms of stress and anxiety. When we are addicted to something we strive for the pleasure it brings. When we are obsessed with something we strive to reduce the anxiety molecules in our brain. Personally, I think that our constant obsession with technology–obsession being an anxiety-based disorder–is mostly about reducing anxiety and very little about gaining pleasure. Just as Jack Nicholson kept doing repetitive activities in As Good As It Gets, we seem to be doing the same with our smartphones.
For example, how many times have you seen someone pat their pocket and smile, having been reassured that their phone was still safely nestled close at hand? How often have you experienced “phantom pocket vibrations” where you felt a tingling near your pocket area–or wherever you keep your phone–only to discover that rather than the alert or notification you “thought” you just received what you felt was just some neurons near the surface of your skin randomly firing? A few years ago I would have just reached down and scratched that itch. Now I am supremely disappointed that it is only an itch.
Walking around Times Square on vacation I could not find one person who was not gazing into a phone, even those who were traveling with others. My friends around the world tell me that they see the same behaviors. The other day in the dining room at my campus I watched a young woman eating lunch with her supervisor pick up her phone while he was talking and check her email. And the more interesting part is that he kept on talking to her and didn’t seem slighted at all.
Last summer I took a road trip with my youngest daughter and visited some of the most beautiful scenery in the US traversing four western national parks. One day we hiked all the way up to Inspiration Point only to find that since there was a cell tower up there nearly every hiker was looking down rather than out at the magnificent vista. And those who were looking were busily snapping pictures instead of simply looking and experiencing the magnificent views. I doubt whether they can have the same experience of nature through that small lens. Will those who were taking videos get the same enjoyment by reliving the views rather than experiencing them? Will they even watch those videos again?
Another interesting and somewhat troubling observation is that many young people, and a lot of older ones too, carry their phone in their hand. I often ask them why and the answer is always the same: “So, I know immediately when I get an text or an email or someone posts on social media.” I guess taking a second or two to take that phone out of a pocket or purse is not soon enough in our tech-rich world.
And I find it amusing (and somewhat disconcerting) that people make excuses to escape whoever they are supposed to be spending time with so that they can check in with other people who may not even be real-life friends. I like going out to dinner with friends and am bewildered at how many people put their phone on the table and if it vibrates they interrupt whatever is going on to tap a few keys and return to the conversation often asking, “What did I miss?” Some people call this FOMO–Fear of Missing Out–but by choosing to not miss out on their virtual social world they are missing out on their real social world right in front of their face.
Another view of our obsession is evident as bedtime nears. People use their phones right up until they turn out the lights even though all of the research shows that this leads to suppression of melatonin and difficulty sleeping. Three fourths of teens and young adults sleep with their phone next to their bed either with the sound on or on vibrate and awaken several times a night to check incoming alerts. This disrupts our sleep cycle, which then impairs the all-important processes that our brain requires for its nightly housekeeping.
I am still a believer in the major benefits technology brings to our world but I sincerely hope that what we are seeing is just another pendulum swing where we become so excited about something new that we want to use it obsessively and as time passes we become less captivated and use it less often until the next new thing comes into our world and the pendulum swings again. But the observer in me shakes his head and wonders whether the pendulum has reached its apex yet and, if not, what that will do to our relationship with the world and the “real” people who inhabit it. I remain optimistic.
The Digital Divide: Are You Intimate or Inanimate?
Remember the 1987 PSA about kids and drugs? A father finds drug paraphernalia in his son’s closet and questions him about where he found the drugs, how he even KNEW about drugs. The boy starts in with the standard excuses and finally explodes I learned it from watching you, Dad!
It was a groundbreaking commercial back in the day when stirrup pants were the rage and Bon Jovi was on the stereo and Dirty Dancing was in the theaters.
Here we are, a zillion years later, and things have changed. And stayed the same. Thankfully, stirrup pants are considered a no — but Bon Jovi gets better looking every year, and lines from Dirty Dancing are still quoted regularly (right now you are saying to yourself “Nobody puts Baby in the corner” — admit it).
There is one thing about the drug PSA that hits home in today’s modern world. Actually, it’s a phenomenon that’s always been there. Children learn from their parents. Period. You can tell them what to do over and over and over again, but it’s really by watching that they learn. We’ve all witnessed toddlers ‘cooking’ like mommy or mimicking their father’s voice or copycatting something on television.
Why, then, are we so surprised that the teens in the world are attached to smartphones? Addicted to their devices? Aren’t we, too, “just checking Facebook” or “sending a quick text” or “making a call” when we are with our children? Aren’t we teaching them by example?
A recent article by Jane Scott, a pediatrician of 20 years, shines a light. When she entered her exam room, both a father and his 2-year-old son were scrolling through their smartphones (apparently this 2-year-old had his own device which…well…wow) and barely acknowledged the doctor. After her exam, Dr. Scott told the boy that the reason his ears hurt was due to a double whammy of an infection. The child immediately “picked up his phone and pushed a button. ‘Siri,’ he asked carefully. ‘What ear ‘fection?’”
Dr. Scott was shocked — and sad — that this little person had turned to an operating system disguised as a fictional person instead of his living, breathing father sitting next to him. Why? Dr. Scott has her own thoughts on the subject, although a study by Boston Medical Center seems to support her reasoning. According to the Boston study, 40 out of 55 caregivers at a fast food restaurant used their devices and their “primary engagement was with the device, rather than the child.” I think the word here is distracted.
Parenthood is not an easy job, and the few minutes parents of young children get to themselves is precious. I know, because I’ve been there. Anyone with small children has been there — that moment when you think if I don’t get 13 seconds to myself I am going to lose my mind. And parents need that. Everyone needs that. Really.
The bigger issue is how we interact with our children when we are, in fact, trying to interact with them. Are we constantly on our iPhone, checking work email or Facebook or whatever?
Technology is not going away, so it’s our job to use it wisely, and, by doing so, teach our children how to use it wisely. There is a place for technology — it’s just not at the very tip top of the list. I hate sitting with my son, a smart, attractive, interesting young man who lives way too many miles away, whom I rarely see and happen to think the world of, tapping on his cell phone. I want to say HEY — OVER HERE! I AM YOUR MOTHER. I AM BUYING YOU DINNER! I TAUGHT YOU TO RIDE A BIKE. I THINK YOU ARE, BY FAR, THE MOST INTERESTING PERSON IN THE UNIVERSE AND NOBODY WILL EVER LOVE YOU THE WAY I DO.
I don’t say that, of course, because he would be horrified and I would be on the first bus to the asylum (or perhaps he would text Uber for me?), but if I am feeling that way about his lack of attention, what would he be feeling about my lack of attention? And, more importantly, what would he be feeling about my lack of attention if he were still three years old and thought I was still magical?
Along with our many, many other jobs as parents, we have to model a healthy relationship with technology. We want to have a real relationship with our children so they can forge real relationships with others. I don’t know about you, but I am hoping for grandchildren some day. If I don’t teach my children how to connect with the human race, I may miss my chance. Sitting around the Thanksgiving table with a bunch of little iPhones just doesn’t have the same je ne sais quoi, does it?
Here are a few tips on ways to form intimate relationships with people instead of dependent relationships on inanimate objects:
When you are with your children, be WITH them. Don’t just put down your smartphone, put it away. Once it is out of site, it’s less likely to distract you and shows your child that he is the priority.
Say out loud to your child, “I am going to do some work (schedule a dentist appointment, call a friend, etc.) in a bit on my cellphone, but right now I really want to spend some time with you. Tell me about your day.”
Create boundaries around technology and apply the rules to everyone, including you and the other members of the household. If you’ve agreed to a no phones at the table rule or devices off by 9 pm, it should apply to everyone, not just your children. (Revisit the “I learned it from watching you, Dad” commercial when tempted.)
Teach your children the art of conversation by practicing with them. Ask open-ended questions of them and answer their questions to you thoughtfully and thoroughly. Skip the one-word answers or the distracted “uh huh” when you are with them.
When you do, in fact, call them on their phone, set the expectation that they should answer or call you back. Too often phone calls receive a text in return. Why? Text is easier, safer and less taxing than a phone conversation. But, if your child is taking the easy way out of making a connection with you, imagine how difficult it will be for them to make a conversation with a stranger.
Keep private information private. What might seem cute or funny or endearing to you (Your 8-year-old son dressed up in his sister’s dance costume! Your 3-year-old is finally potty trained! Your high-schooler made the chess team!) is not for public consumption. Show your child you respect him by using discretion at all times.
Most parents are hoping to instill a strong sense of self-esteem in their children. We want them to be capable, responsible, happy, healthy members of society. Sitting with heads buried in laptops or eyes scanning phones tells them that we think very little of them. We devalue them. And someday they will be gone and we will wish for more time with them. And then we’ll be listening to that “Cats in the Cradle” song and just kicking ourselves! Save yourself the pain and be present now. When it counts.
The 5 Best Free WordPress Plugins to Promote Your Blog
The plethora of free WordPress plugins are one of the biggest reasons why WordPress is my favorite blogging platform. WordPress is also very easy to customize to your preferences. Blogging is a great marketing strategy with many additional benefits and the free WordPress plugins below can make it easier to promote your blog.
1. Mailchimp
Building a mailing list is a great way to build engagement with readers. Mailchimp is my preferred email marketing product. The Mailchimp WordPress plugin enables you to embed an email sign up form on your WordPress blog. Once you start building your email list, you will have an audience to send your content or products too. A mailing list allows you to retain the audience you acquire. You can learn more about Mailchimp by watching my free video tutorial video here.
2. Pretty Link
According to the the plug in’s developer, Pretty Link enables you to “Shrink, track and share any URL on the Internet from your WordPress website. Unlike other link shrinking services like tinyurl, budurl, and bit.ly, this plugin allows you to create short links coming from your own domain!” Pretty Link is great for masking affiliate links and for verbally pointing people to a certain page. For example, if you are doing a Podcast or public speaking gig, you wouldn’t want to point people to a really long complicated web address, or even tell them where to search. Make it as easy as possible for people by creating an easy to pronounce and read address.
3. Google Analytics
According to it’s developer, “This plugin makes it simple to add Google Analytics to your WordPress blog, adding lots of features, eg. custom variables and automatic clickout and download tracking.” Google Analytics is one of the most essential tools for anyone who is serious about blogging. It enables you to track and analyze all the traffic you get on your site so that you can tailor your future content and promotion strategies. If you use Google Analytics and WordPress, you will need this plugin.
4. Yoast WordPress SEO
This plug in makes it easier to search engine optimize each of your blog posts. It’s one of the most popular WordPress plugins and is extremely easy to use. No need to have any programming skills, or even any advanced SEO knowledge, this plugin provides an easy to use interface for entering data that will help you rank higher on Google. This plugin alone is one of the biggest reasons to use WordPress instead of another blogging platform.
5. SumoMe
SumoMe is a great tool for marketers that has a variety of valuable applications. The List Builder application allows you to display a customizable pop up window to viewers of your blog. The pop up window is a great way to build your email list and it integrates with Mailchimp and other email marketing products The Share application is similar to Digg Digg, but with a sharper design and you can choose not to display how many times the page has been shared. You might not want to display how many times it has been shared if the number is low (it would make you look unpopular). The Share application is a great way to get more shares and shares are a great way to get more traffic.
The Smart Bar is similar to another popular blogging tool called HelloBar. It allows you to create a highly attention grabbing graphic bar at the top of your site. You can use the bar to drive email sign ups or traffic to something you want to highlight. SumoMe has a few other great applications and they seem to be constantly adding new ones. SumoMe is a very comprehensive plugin with a ton of value.
Conclusion
WordPress’ ecosystem of plugins are part of what make it such a valuable blogging platform. The above free WordPress plugins are my personal favorites. They can be used to get more traffic to your site, including: building your mailing list, getting more social shares, and increasing your search ranking. If you want to learn about how to install and use WordPress plugins, check out my video course, here.
Sorry, You're Still Stuck With Cable For Now
There was much celebration earlier this week when HBO said you would soon be able to access the network’s programming without having to pay for a TV subscription. One day later, CBS announced a $6 monthly service that will stream most of its live programming, as well as past and current shows, over the Internet.
Analysts have called this the beginning of the great unbundling — the dawning of an age where we’ll be able to pick programming a la carte and choose what we want to watch, rather than having to pay each month for hundreds of channels we don’t.
It’s “the first crack in the dike,” Michael Davies, a co-founder and senior partner at Endeavour Partners, a firm that consults for broadband, media and content companies, told The Huffington Post after HBO’s announcement Wednesday. “If HBO will go, then pretty much everybody else will go in due time.”
But it will probably be a while yet before people cut the cord en masse so they can hand-pick from the growing number of Internet-delivered offerings. The cable bundle is still tightly bound, and it’s far from coming apart completely. Live sports programming, for one thing, remains a huge draw. CBS’s new service, which for now is only available in 14 cities, won’t offer Thursday and Sunday NFL games.
And depending on what you subscribe to, an unbundled world could wind up being pretty pricey. HBO hasn’t announced how much its new service will cost, but The Information, a technology news site, has reported it’ll be around $15 a month. Some observers have pointed out that once you add up your Netflix, Hulu Plus, HBO and CBS subscriptions, plus whatever additional networks come to offer standalone services (ESPN on its own could cost as much as $30 a month, according to one analysis), you could be paying more per month than it would cost to get a premium cable subscription.
Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw, citing data from Hudson Square Research, reports that it would cost over $100 a month to subscribe to Netflix, Hulu, HBO, CBS, the Tour de France, WWE wrestling and three of the four major pro sports leagues. And that’s on top of what you’re already paying for Internet.
“If you want all the sports, you should just get cable TV,” Daniel Ernst, an analyst at Hudson Square Research, told Bloomberg.
But at least you’d have the ability to choose another way to get programming — and choice is not something consumers have had a lot of when it comes to TV subscriptions. Cable bills have jumped a whopping 97 percent over the last 14 years, and that doesn’t include fees, taxes or promotions, according to SNL Kagan, a media researcher.
Other networks that are said to be considering offering similar streaming products include Univision and Showtime (owned by CBS). You can already get subscriptions to MLB TV (though local games are blacked out), and ESPN and the NBA recently reached a deal to allow out-of-market games to be streamed online.
Executives at Verizon and Dish Network have also talked about offering Internet-only TV options that could have more flexible packages. These services are all geared toward millennials, who are much less likely than their parents to have cable — one recent report found that nearly a quarter of Americans age 18 to 34 don’t pay for TV.
These developments are great for consumers. As media companies navigate this changing landscape, customers will have more choice, and that’s never a bad thing. Networks have seen the rise of Netflix — which now boasts over 50 million members worldwide — and to a lesser extent Amazon Prime Instant Video and Hulu, and they’ve realized they can no longer sit on the sidelines as these services grow and TV subscriptions decline.
And don’t fret for the Comcasts and Time Warner Cables of the world — you know, those companies that come in last place every year in consumer satisfaction surveys. After all, they’re the ones we pay each month to pipe the Internet into our homes. And we all know which way those prices go.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this post misstated the monthly price of CBS’s new service.
The Internet and the End of 'Things'
The “Internet of Things” is everyone’s new favorite buzzword. This increasing interconnectedness (is that a word?) will lead to the end of various “things” that at one time were commonplace. In the next twenty years we will see the virtual disappearance of many everyday physical items, including books (more ebooks will be sold in the US next year than paper books), paper currency and most single-use consumer electronic (does anyone even need an alarm clock anymore?).
Like the remote control (yes, there is an app for that) and business cards (how are these still a thing?), there are many physical items in our lives that will disappear in the year to come. The three soon-to-be obsolete things that I want to focus on are the key, the mail, and physical crime.
The Key: I am an angel investor in KeyMe, a startup that makes digital copies of your keys to help avoid lockout charges. I did this even though I believe the decline of the antiquated pieces of metal we all carry around in our pockets is inevitable. We’ve been using keys for centuries. There are currently 700,000 copies of keys made every day (down from nearly a million a few years ago), but soon biometrics, digital access points or some other technology that no one except Google has thought of yet, will give us entry to places and things.
The trend began in the automotive market: about 70 percent of the 250 million vehicles in the US now have an electronic entry with a push button start. The average replacement time for a car is four years, which is why the key market for cars has experienced a rapid and significant change. The hotel key card underscores this trend. Hotels made the change due to the cost of key replacements — when was the last time you got a physical key when checking in? Offices have the same dynamic with constantly changing tenants and employees; key cards now dominate office doors.
The physical key’s last great bastion of strength is the home. Electronic entry points represent less than 0.1 percent of the residential market, but the cycle time for home locks is more than 25 years. As costs of digital access points continue to drop more and more homes will be made and refurbished without metal keys. Once declining revenue force enough locksmiths out of business, how long until the companies making key cutting machines disappear? Once the machine makers go out of business, spare parts for existing machines will become scarce (3D printing of parts will partly offset this effect). This “tipping point” (I tried, I really, really tried not to quote Malcolm Gladwell) will come slowly due to the home replacement cycle, but at some point thereafter the physical key as we know it will be gone. So enjoy your keys while you can and use KeyMe to keep a digital copy and avoid exorbitant lockout fees.
The Mail: We recently moved into a new office with a spectacular view of the The Farley Post Office in Manhattan. Looking at this magnificent right acre building in midtown Manhattan made me think about the time when this building was the bustling heart of our interconnectedness (yup, I checked, it’s a word). It is now a beautiful museum of an antiquated and eventually dead form of communication.
The United States Postal Service traces its roots to 1775 during the Second Continental Congress, where Benjamin Franklin was appointed the first postmaster general (Ben was the Elon Musk of his generation). It has approximately 600,000 employees (3rd largest employer in the US behind the federal government and Wal-Mart), 31,000 locations (post offices) and revenue of about $66 billion… and loses about $6 billion a year. The volume of mail sent has declined by 10 percent over the last three years. While we are sending less mail, it’s the type of mail that we are sending that reinforces the death spiral.
Letters have become emails. Birthday cards are now Facebook wall posts. Event invitations are Paperless Posts. Bills are increasingly sent electronically. Magazines deliver themselves directly to your tablet. What type of mail are we still getting? Well, two years ago the amount of mail that is “junk” passed the 50 percent mark and is still rising fast. The 10 percent decline of total mail over the last few years will accelerate as all bills and magazines move to electronic distribution. How often will you check your mail when 90 percent of it is junk (sadly no spam filter on your mailbox)?
Soon the infrastructure to support the delivery of the mail will get too expensive. Given the important role the post office plays in today’s society, it will exist well beyond its economic viability, but at some point in our future, the trends seem to point to the inevitable disappearance of mail.
Physical Crime: Technology has already had tremendous impacts on crime in society, from increasing the tools that police use to fight crime (watch the first season of The Wire to understand how bad the police technology used to be) to making crime less lucrative. When all devices are connected to the web, their value significantly diminishes in the eyes of a criminal: why would someone steal an iPhone with a kill switch that cannot be used or sold? Why steal a car that shuts itself down and alerts the police to the car, and your, location?
Cameras are proliferating and increasingly digital (the Big Brother debate notwithstanding). If you’re caught on camera committing a crime, and facial recognition software brings the police right to your door, how long until you stop breaking the law? In twenty years will someone rob a person with no cash and a device that requires two biometric entry points, all while the robbery is caught on six different cameras? Sadly all forms of crime and violence are not subject to technological disruption in the near-term, but most types of personal and property crimes will face this shifting balance of benefit versus cost. Criminals are mostly rational actors (crimes of passion obviously don’t apply), and when the costs are rapidly increasing (likelihood of getting caught) and the benefit (value of selling what you steal) rapidly decreasing, some types of crime will be all but eliminated.
So while the “Internet of Things” will bring many new things into our lives, this bright new future will force us to say goodbye to some very familiar aspects of our everyday lives. We can debate how long it will take for these items to disappear, but I think we can all agree that at some point, these things will be history.
What other things do you think future generations will only be able to see in a museum?
Oversharing: Are We Relinquishing Our Right to Anonymity?
A few days ago, I read Jeffrey Toobin’s article “The Solace of Oblivion” in The New Yorker. It revolves around our right to anonymity (in Toobinsian speak, the “right to be forgotten”), if we even have the right to it at all. After reading what Toobin had to say about privacy matters, I began to think about the consequences regarding both the existence and the lack of anonymity. Do we have the right to be anonymous or does it interfere with our country’s commitment to freedom of speech?
When does our right to privacy become a violation of someone else’s freedom of speech? In the US, we feel a societal obligation to share everything that happens in our personal lives through social media: we share pictures, ideas, music and life events among countless other tidbits of life we feel are necessary to publicize. This idea of over-sharing is not only present within standard social media: news websites will essentially publish anything in our content-obsessed society. BuzzFeed recently came out with “28 Things People Obsessed with Peanut Butter Will Understand,” and “Bruce Jenner Lets His Hair Down.” These become hard-hitting headlines worthy of publication. There is nothing wrong with this, but if we continue to celebrate this type of authorship, isn’t it hypocritical to crave anonymity when we are basically stealing it away from ourselves? We are giving credit to absolutely everything, which makes our right to anonymity something of a ghost.
In other countries, especially those in Europe, the right to privacy is a strongly upheld institution. Laws are in place to protect people from the common exposure of their private matters through digital platforms. In one instance, the people of Europe filed a lawsuit against Facebook for violating data protection laws. More than 25,000 Europeans came together to support this lawsuit. However, in the US, emphasis put on maintaining privacy is so often ignored because we fervently emphasize freedom of speech. By this, I mean that we have adopted a mindset of “if you put it out there, anyone else has the right to look at, use and share that information.” Is this right? Yes, once information is posted online it becomes visible to the public; however, does that give other people the right to exploit that information? Almost everyone in the US is guilty of this hypocrisy: for example, “I don’t want everyone to see my own naked body but I have no problem Googling the leaked iCloud photos of celebrities.” Did those celebrities give us permission to stare at their naked bodies? Or is it OK to look at them without permission because they were leaked onto a public platform? By violating someone else’s privacy, aren’t we just becoming undeserving of our own?
Toobin brings up the case of Nikki Catsouras, a girl who was decapitated in a car accident. The pictures of her dead body were leaked by employees of the California coroner’s office and are now circulating around the Internet. Extreme legal measures were taken by the Catsouras family to get these pictures taken down, but were not successful. The California Highway Patrol would not give up the copyright to the photos; therefore, the websites that posted the pictures were not legally required to take them down. Is this a violation of the Catsouras family privacy, or an example of freedom of speech being exercised appropriately?
The example of Nikki Catsouras’ case is a lapse in the US government’s protection of our privacy, but we cannot blame the government for taking away our anonymity in all cases because we have surrendered our privacy on so many platforms. We have choices. We can choose what to post or publish and this will affect the way the government chooses to handle matters of personal privacy. We can control what we share and how we share it. What we cannot control is how thoroughly our government will protect our right to privacy when it becomes a matter of someone else’s right to freedom of speech. In order to protect the privacy of people like Nikki Catsouras we must rethink our societal devotion to sharing. The photos of Nikki were originally leaked because employees thought it would be a funny Halloween prank to send the gruesome pictures to their friends. The photos were shared and shared until the Catsouras family’s right to anonymity became irrelevant even in the eyes of the US government. It is in our control to emphasize the importance of our right to anonymity and to balance privacy with freedom of speech.
The plot thickens: let’s say someone is raped but decides they do not want to file a police report because they know that as soon as they do, their situation becomes public information. Instead, the person chooses to maintain their anonymity. While many people might think this is crazy (who wouldn’t want to convict their rapist?) others care more about total personal privacy. It doesn’t seem like that big of a deal: there aren’t any consequences for deciding against filing a police report, right? Wrong. Victims of rape in New York City are incentivized to surrender their anonymity: the drugs administered to a person after a rape (antiretroviral drugs intended to reverse the onset of HIV/AIDS) are extremely expensive and are only paid for if a police report is filed. Combivir, one of the antiretroviral drugs prescribed in post-rape scenarios, is currently being sold as a prescription drug for an estimated $752.64. The patient is responsible for paying for this drug unless they choose to file a police report. This means that if you choose to retain your anonymity, you are not eligible to the same rights as someone who chooses to expose their situation. While this is a good proposition in the sense that it increases the chances of arresting and prosecuting the rapist, the government is essentially taking away the right to life from those who choose to hold on to their anonymity. For NYC rape victims, choosing privacy means also possibly choosing a deadly disease unless you can personally afford the medication to prevent it.
Of course, the government puts in places these rules so that justice can be served and the criminal can be caught. For the victim, it comes down to a choice between punishing the rapist and being rewarded with free treatment, and choosing personal anonymity from the crime. Should the people choosing privacy not get the same treatment? In this case, anonymity is being sacrificed not in the face of freedom of speech, but in order to promote justice and eliminate as much crime as possible. The government has the correct motive: we all want to catch the bad guy. But do we want to catch the bad guy so badly that we are willing to publicize a lot of extremely personal information? The answer is in the eyes of the beholder and neither position is right or wrong. What is wrong is denying rights to someone because they choose to remain anonymous.
This is the great thing about freedom of speech: aren’t we exercising the right to its full extent when we choose to not say anything?
Comcast Sued By Man Who Says He Lost Job After Complaining About Awful Customer Service
A California man claimed earlier this year that a nightmare customer-service experience with Comcast caused him to lose his job. Now, he is suing the cable and Internet giant for $1 million.
Conal O’Rourke, 50, filed a lawsuit in federal court in San Jose on Thursday accusing Comcast of, among other things, defamation, breach of contract and illegal disclosure of his personal information to his employer.
The lawsuit follows a yearlong dispute between O’Rourke and Comcast over bad service. Earlier this year, O’Rourke alleged that Comcast complained about him to his then-employer, leading him to be terminated from his job. Comcast has publicly apologized for the terrible service, but denies that it asked for O’Rourke to be fired.
Conal O’Rourke says complaining to Comcast cost him his job. (photo by ABC 7 News).
In 2012, O’Rourke moved from Connecticut to San Jose, California, to take a job with the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. In early 2013, he began subscribing to Comcast to get cable TV and Internet at his condo.
The problems with his service began almost immediately, according to O’Rourke’s lawsuit. The suit alleges that Comcast overcharged O’Rourke and spelled his last name as “O’Kourke,” causing his bills to arrive late. After a few months of this, O’Rourke claims he discussed the issues with an assistant manager at a local Comcast store. Yet after his meeting, he continued to be overbilled, the lawsuit says.
Things got worse for O’Rourke in late 2013. “When Mr. O’Rourke was out of town, Comcast shipped him 12 random pieces of Comcast equipment,” according to the suit. The company then “proceeded to charge Mr. O’Rourke almost $2,000 in fees for equipment that he had neither requested nor wanted.”
The suit says that O’Rourke returned the equipment and received a refund. A Comcast agent and a Comcast manager said at the time that his billing issues would be resolved, the suit claims, yet the overcharging continued.
In February 2014, O’Rourke decided to step things up after receiving a phone call from Comcast’s collections department saying he was two months late on a payment, a charge O’Rourke denies. At this point, the suit says, “O’Rourke had been a Comcast customer for a year and had not once received a bill in which he was correctly charged.” Fearing that his credit would be damaged, O’Rourke contacted the office of Comcast’s controller, its chief accounting executive.
What happened during and after O’Rourke’s call to the controller’s office is disputed: According to O’Rourke’s lawsuit, he described the problems he’d had with his bills and complained that no one from Comcast customer service seemed to be able to help him. Less than an hour later, the suit alleges, Comcast Controller Lawrence Salva called a partner at PwC and said that O’Rourke had tried to use his employment with the firm as a negotiating tactic in the dispute with Comcast, which is a client of PwC.
O’Rourke denies mentioning his employer on the call with Comcast.
Comcast, for its part, admits only that it contacted PwC about one of the accounting firm’s employees. According to an August 2014 letter that Comcast sent to Maureen Pettibone Ryan, O’Rourke’s lawyer, “Comcast communicated to PWC that a person claiming to be a PWC employee had called our chief accounting executive’s office with complaints … and yelled at our employees who tried to assist him.”
O’Rourke’s suit claims that immediately after the alleged phone call to PwC from Salva — who is himself a former PwC partner — PwC called O’Rourke and forbade him to talk to Comcast, saying Comcast was “very angry” and a “very valuable” client. The cable and Internet provider pays PwC $30 million a year for consulting services, according to the lawsuit.
The following day, the suit claims that PwC launched an ethics investigation into O’Rourke, based on O’Rourke’s alleged attempt to use his job with the company as leverage in his fight with Comcast. About ten days later, PwC fired O’Rourke for an ethics violation.
“Mr. O’Rourke’s claims are without merit,” said Comcast spokesperson Jennifer Khoury in a statement to The Huffington Post. Khoury’s statement acknowledged that there were “clear deficiencies” in the customer service that Comcast provided O’Rourke, but said the company “had nothing to do with PricewaterhouseCoopers’ decision” to fire him.
“As part of this investigation, we have listened to recorded calls between Mr. O’Rourke and our customer service representatives and his treatment of them and language is totally unspeakable,” the statement said.
Theodore Barna, a spokesperson for PwC, said in a Friday statement to HuffPost that his firm “terminated [O'Rourke's] employment after an internal investigation concluded that Mr. O’Rourke violated PwC’s ethical standards and practices, applicable to all of our people.”
“Mr. O’Rourke’s violation of these policies was the sole reason for his termination,” the statement added.
According to Ryan, O’Rourke has asked that the recordings of his calls with Comcast be made public, but Comcast has not acquiesced. Presumably, the recordings would settle the question of whether or not O’Rourke name-dropped PwC in conversations with Comcast agents.
Comcast has a notoriously poor reputation for its customer service. In a survey of 70,000 consumers earlier this year, Internet service providers and cable companies were found to be the two most hated industry sectors in the United States. Comcast ranked as the second most-loathed company in both categories.
O’Rourke’s lawsuit charges Comcast and Salva (who’s also named as a defendant, but whom Khoury said was declining to comment) with violating the Cable Communications Policy Act, a federal law that prohibits cable companies from disclosing personal information about their customers without the customers’ permission. The suit says that Comcast violated the law by telling PwC about O’Rourke’s complaints.
In addition, the suit accuses Comcast of defamation based on the allegation that the company told PwC that O’Rourke had tried to use his position as leverage. According to the lawsuit, Comcast either knew that was false or didn’t bother to ascertain whether or not it was true.
Comcast is also charged in the lawsuit with violating the California Business and Professions Code by, among other things, “unfairly and persistently overcharging [O'Rourke], and retaliating against him.”
Ryan, O’Rourke’s lawyer, told HuffPost that her client is still unemployed. He now uses DirecTV as his cable provider.
CORRECTION: This story has been corrected to reflect that Comcast’s collections department contacted O’Rourke in February 2014 through a phone call, not a letter.
Facebook Fight Led To Fatal Shooting Of 3-Year-Old Amiracle Williams, Detroit Police Say
DETROIT — A Detroit Police Academy graduation began on a sorrowful note Friday, as new officers and their families mourned for a toddler killed in an act of “senseless violence” a day earlier.
The ceremony, held at Greater Grace Temple, included a moment of silence for Amiracle Williams, the 3-year-old killed in a shooting Thursday that officials say was sparked by a fight on social media.
In his speech to the graduates, now tasked with policing the city, Detroit Police Chief James Craig said he stood in front of them “with a heavy heart.”
“When we think about the loss of our young angel, Amiracle Williams, the tragedy of someone so young … we fight for all, we fight for our young,” Craig said.
Four others were wounded in the shooting on Detroit’s east side, Craig said after the ceremony. Amiracle’s mother, 40, father, 47, and sister, 17, were injured in the incident, which took place in front of the Williams’ home on Mogul Street near Hayes. One of the suspects, a 22-year-old black male, was also shot and injured.
Amiracle’s father is believed to have shot one of the victims, Craig said.
A dispute on Facebook culminated in a confrontation outside the Williams residence, where several young women had a physical fight Thursday afternoon, police said. The father, observing the fight, “felt his daughters may have been in some sort of danger and responded by shooting one person at the scene,” Craig said.
After the first shooting, a second individual took out a machine gun and began to fire repeatedly, striking Amiracle and her three family members, he said.
As of 3 a.m. Friday, police had two suspects under arrest: the alleged second shooter, a 23-year-old black male, and the alleged driver of a getaway vehicle who had been shot in the incident. Craig said the alleged shooter had an outstanding warrant for his arrest for a felony charge in Virginia. At least one of the men has been involved in local gangs, he said.
A TEC-9 machine gun was recovered as part of the police investigation.
“[The shooting was] a decision made by a coward, once again, another coward that goes out and engages in senseless violence,” Craig said. “We will continue our focus on eradicating violence, and certainly dismantling these street gangs here in Detroit.”
The Detroit Police Department is still investigating the incident.
Honing in on Innovation in Princeton: Tiger Labs
Bert Navarrette skydives (regularly), rides mountain bikes, runs companies, and has four children. you might think that keeps him busy enough.
But you’d be wrong.
This Harvard-educated entrepreneur grew up in Princeton, where he attended the Boychoir School before prepping at Delbarton School in Morristown. He has also spent considerable time in Silicon Valley on venture capital trips and later walking down Nassau Street, thought there was no reason why it couldn’t be the kind of tech hub that University Avenue in Palo Alto had become.
He had worked with the Princeton University Entrepreneurship Club and watched it “explode” in popularity in the mid-2000s, so he and business partner Jason Glickman decided to start Tigerlabs in 2012 and secured its first investors that fall.
A young entrepreneur in Tigerlabs
Part business accelerator, part venture capital fund, part mentoring center for aspiring entrepreneurs, Tigerlabs, at 252 Nassau Street on the second floor, the old Princeton Review site. Tigerlabs had been at 20 Nassau Street, and even rented space at the Tiger Inn, a Princeton University eating club, before moving to its curre