Showing 1 - 7 of 7
YouTube ramps up ads, moderation
Life, James Hein, Published on 01/03/2023
» If this was a YouTube video you would have to sit through up to 30 seconds of ads before you could even start. YouTube seems to be stepping up its advertising while at the same time providing less service. I still use it because it has things I'm interested in, like Chinese martial arts series and info on music products I like. If I'd written this using ChatGPT you would not see some of the material because the trust and safety filters on the AI product have repeatedly been found to be biased towards the US political left in the content it will return. Some people associated with ChatGPT have acknowledged this but it remains to be seen if anything will change.
Seamless synchronicity
Life, James Hein, Published on 11/09/2019
» As I was walking to work thinking about this week's column, I did a quick self-inventory. I was listening to On Liberty by John Stuart Mill through my noise cancelling headphones. The audio was being sent by Bluetooth from my Samsung Galaxy S10 5G phone that I was also using to play a location-based game, Ingress. This was being fed my position by satellite and receiving information from the internet via my phone's data connection. Occasionally I would pull down the notification tab to see what was on for the day and who had tried to contact me via a number of social-media services.
Surprisingly, your personal data isn't safe with Facebook
Life, James Hein, Published on 10/10/2018
» Facebook has been in the news recently having large numbers of public profiles harvested by marketing conglomerates. Estimates from this incident alone range from 50 to 90 million users and there may be a lot more. The "more" part comes from the user search and account recovery features that may have been abused to scrape up to 2 billion or more accounts. In other words, if you are on Facebook and have any kind of public profile someone has more info on you than you might like. The feature has since been turned off but not before a lot of information went to the marketers.
Disney has first mobile board game
Life, AKIN, Published on 04/05/2016
» Disney recently launched its first mobile board game, Disney Magical Dice, available in 155 countries.
Niche-specific software
Life, Sasiwimon Boonruang, Published on 17/09/2014
» Home-grown software designers have been keeping up with the trend for mobile applications which cater to specific age groups or are aimed at people who share a common interest.
Misunderstood and the Mac experience
Life, Graham K. Rogers, Published on 27/08/2014
» Last week, the Apple video Misunderstood won a Creative Arts Emmy Award. The advertisement features an apparently-dysfunctional teen who is more engaged with the family than first seems when it appeared last year.
US eyes Google antitrust settlement
AFP, Published on 17/12/2012
» US regulators are likely to conclude a lengthy antitrust probe of Google's dominance of Internet searches with a voluntary settlement, news reports said Monday.