Month: March 2014
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Metadata privacy + other news
How the NSA Can Use Metadata to Predict Your Personality | DefenceOne – Despite assurances that metadata is free of content, new research shows that it can be highly personal. This debate on metadata reminds me of three examples. The first one was by AOL Research, which back then was headed by Dr. Abdur Chowdhury. AOL Research…
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Messaging’s middleware moment
Back in the mid-1990s, middleware was a way of describing how layers of software were connected together in enterprises to provide functions and tailored outcomes. At around the same time, Microsoft was at its most dominant and almost missed out on the web as a nascent platform. In fact the first edition of The Road…
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Web-of-no-web
The web as we know it was built on a set of underlying technologies which enable information transport. Not all information is meant to reside in a website to be surfed or queried. Instead much of the information we need relies on context like location, weather or the contents of your fridge. Web technologies provided…
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Bassline + more news
Bassline Bassline: The UK Dance Scene That Was Killed by the Police | VICE United Kingdom – Bassline was a Sheffield-specific scene. Sheffield has had a history of birthing electronic music genres. The most notable one for me was the bleep techno scene from the late 1980s. Bassline built on the trends that came before…
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Prosumption realised
Origins of prosumption The idea of consumers being the producers – prosumption; or at least being part of the process within a modern industrial context was envisioned back in 1970 with Alvin Toffler’s book Future Shock. Toffler was influenced by technological progress as consumers started to be more involved in the delivery of their own services…
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Be Marlboro + more news
Be Marlboro Health groups call to end “Be a Marlboro” campaign | Marketing-Interactive – I grew up with ‘Marlboro Country’ billboards showing the cigarette to be the poison of choice for the middle-aged cowboy taking a break. Be Marlboro was a much need revamp of the Marlboro brand. Modern-day UK Marlboro man could also be…
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The Tizen Post
BusinessInsider published an interesting article about Samsung, the Tizen mobile operating system and Apple. Some of the assertions in the article looked over certain facts about Tizen. What is it? Tizen is a mobile operating system based on Linux, in this respect it shares common ground with Firefox OS, Ubuntu for smartphones and Google’s Android…
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Nu Skin + other news
Nu Skin Faces Troubles in China – Financial – Beauty – WWD.com – “Investors are waiting for more details on the size and scope of Nu Skin’s troubles in China. During an earnings call on March 3, Nu Skin president and chief executive officer Truman Hunt told Wall Street analysts, ‘We elected to voluntarily suspend…
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Divergence
Whilst smartphones and tablets may look like general purpose devices that support convergence; what is actually happening is that divergence is taking place around different fault lines, understanding those fault-lines is key. Context The rise of smart watches and wearables, regardless of how these designs are currently failing, recognise that just the right information at…