Insights

Communication and Technology news
Sonos pushes back Google Assistant support to next year
2018-11-01

The Sonos One and Sonos Beam launched with Alexa, but one of their biggest features was support for Google Assistant down the road. Assistant was originally supposed to launch in early 2018, but considering radio stations are already prepping their Christmas playlists, it looks like that’s not going to happen. In a...

Google’s Sergey Brin didn’t know who Gloria Steinem is
2018-11-01

Larry Page and Sergey Brin also reportedly struggled to answer a question about who their female role models were. Sergey Brin may need to Google Gloria Steinem.Read Full Story

“Homecoming” creators learned on the job to turn a podcast into a TV series
2018-11-01

Eli Horowitz and Micah Bloomberg talked with Fast Company about how they learned to embrace their creative blind spots as first-time showrunners. Hollywood is tapping the podcast well as a budding source of IP, with popular shows like Serial, Welcome to Night Vale, and Limetown getting picked up by HBO, FX, and...

How Ted Cruz plans to beat Beto O’Rourke: Play it simple
2018-11-01

Data science, Facebook, targeted TV buys, and a laser focus on core GOP voter blocks may just win the day. If the polling is actually accurate this year, Ted Cruz is the favorite to win the surprisingly competitive Texas Senate seat over progressive challenger Beto O’Rourke on November 6. If that occurs, it...

Google Walkout: Why employees are making these 5 demands
2018-11-01

These are the changes Googlers want from their company. Today, thousands of Google employees walked out to protest the company’s approach to sexual harassment and general fairness. Following reports that the company let male executives accused of sexual misconduct leave with multimillion-dollar exit packages...

Why poor teens haven’t abandoned Facebook
2018-11-01

A Pew Research study published earlier this year showed that, statistically, a large number of teenagers from families with lower-than-average annual income still use Facebook. While 36 percent of teens from families making $75,000 or more per year, and 56 percent of teens from the $30,ooo-$74,999 range said they...

Netflix to release its Oscar contenders in theaters before streaming
2018-11-01

Netflix’s new releases are headed straight for the cinema. The streaming platform announced the move on Twitter, marking a seismic shift in their business model. Netflix has released original content in theaters before, but this will be the first time the films are not simultaneously available on the site. ROMA...

‘Blockchain’ is now more popular than ‘cryptocurrency,’ according to Google data
2018-11-01

It’s not the flippening everyone has been talking about, but Google search data reveals people are finally starting to show more interest in blockchain than cryptocurrency. Following the massive hype cycle at the end of last year, Google Trends suggests the term ‘blockchain’ is gradually becoming a more popular...

October in Africa: Egypt stifles tech innovation, Google gets busy
2018-11-01

The Egyptian government has had a busy time of late, shutting down taxi app mergers, taxing e-commerce platforms, and enforcing digital media regulation laws. Rumors have been swirling that Uber and regional equivalent Careem might be set to merge in Egypt, but it’s not going to happen. That’s because regulators...

Twitter is finally bringing back its chronological timeline
2018-11-01

After years of complaints, it seems Twitter is finally listening to its users (about this one issue). Twitter, it seems, may have actually listened to its critics–at least about one feature. Yesterday, the  platform’s official Twitter account tweeted that it’s testing a new way for users to...

Google employees around the world have already begun walking out in protest
2018-11-01

Today employees are taking part in a companywide protest in the name of fairness and respect. The Google walkout has already begun. Employees are taking a stand against the company, in light of recent reports that Google learned about multiple sexual misconduct allegations against Android founder Andy Rubin, and...

Tim Berners-Lee: Facebook and Google may have to be broken up
2018-11-01

“I am disappointed with the current state of the web. We have lost the feeling of individual empowerment and to a certain extent also I think the optimism has cracked.” The father of the web has told Reuters that the internet’s biggest tech giants, Facebook and Google, may have to be broken up...

Pentagram taps celebrated sound designer to be its newest partner
2018-11-01

Yuri Suzuki joins one of the world’s most prestigious graphic design firms. Today, sound designer and artist Yuri Suzuki is joining Pentagram as its 24th partner, pushing the prominent firm outside of traditional graphic design. He will be working with other Pentagram partners in London on branding and other...

The big business of Instagram Story design
2018-11-01

Alfonso Cobo saw the potential in Stories early on. Today, his template app has 11 million users, and he’s launching a design agency focused on Stories alone. Every day, 400 million people open up Instagram and flip through Stories, the app’s short, ephemeral photo and video updates from people they...

Twitter is finally giving our chronological timelines back
2018-11-01

We might finally get what’ve been asking for from Twitter: a chronological timeline. The company tweeted saying it’s testing a button to display tweets by post time, instead of showing an algorithmically picked feed. According to Jack Dorsey, the company’s CEO, this feature is currently available to only a small...

WhatsApp VP confirms ads are coming to the ‘Status’ section
2018-11-01

The day we’ve been fearing is on the horizon: WhatsApp is getting ads. For real, this time. In a comment to several publications in India. WhatsApp Vice President Chris Daniels confirmed that the popular messaging app will be placing ads in the Snapchat-like Status section: “We are going to be putting ads in...

The LaCroix of cannabis? The marijuana market bets on beverages
2018-10-31

Cannabis startups envision a not-too-distant future in which consumers seek alternative refreshments during happy hour. As the cannabis industry continues to go more mainstream, entrepreneurs are on the lookout for the next niche market. Edibles have been done every which way, CBD-infused lotions and body care...

Zuck gets an international joint summons from Canada and the U.K.
2018-10-31

They want answers about the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The Facebook CEO received the summons from parliamentary committees in both countries today, reports TechCrunch. Both the U.K. and Canadian parliamentary committees want Zuckerberg to answer questions about Facebook and the Cambridge Anylitca data scandal from...

Kanye’s done with MAGA and Twitter is done with Kanye. A eulogy for the former artist.
2018-10-31

On Tuesday afternoon, Kanye West pedaled back on his recent inflammatory statements and infatuation with Trump. It probably did not go as well as he expected. For a certain substrata of Twitter, Tuesday afternoon felt a lot like Schadenfreude Christmas.Read Full Story

How Women Who Code is making sure women aren’t pushed out of tech jobs
2018-10-31

As the organization’s ranks swell to over 137,000, Women Who Code is not only helping individual women, but also companies as they groom leaders. You would think that holding both undergraduate and master’s degrees from Stanford (the latter in computer science) would make finding a job in tech a cinch....

Social media mobs are worse for society than the people they shame
2018-10-31

Back in 2013, Justine Sacco was getting ready to visit her family in South Africa, and before she boarded her flight, she made an insensitive joke on Twitter: “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” By the time her flight was over, she had become the world’s leading trending topic,...

Scandal-plagued Facebook comes up short on user growth, but profits are still soaring
2018-10-30

Facebook’s latest earnings report comes in the shadow of several rotating scandals related to data privacy, fake news, and faulty metrics. Facebook reported sky-high profits today despite a number of rotating scandals related to data privacy, fake news, and faulty metrics.Read Full Story

These Texas voting machines reveal a basic truth about bad design
2018-10-30

Texas voting machines are switching votes and state officials are trotting out a familiar excuse: Users are to blame. In Texas, some voters using Hart eSlate machines have reported that the machines suddenly changed their votes. The state’s secretary of state Rolando Pablos claims that the problem is due...

280 characters on Twitter hasn’t been a game changer after all
2018-10-30

Doubling the available character count has not fundamentally changed the nature of tweeting. For years before it happened, people debated whether it should. And when Twitter finally did double the maximum length of a tweet–which it did a year ago today–some of us were skittish about such a fundamental...

Do you need a professional solution for Email Marketing? We recommend AWeber Pro!

More details