Gmail reads my emails. … so they can serve me targeted ads. Amazon analyzes my book buying habits. …to serve me up ads via recommendations. Facebook studies my posting habits and likes. …to sell my profile to advertisers so they can target me with ads. Google collects and analyzes my search habits. …to serve me […]
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Tag Archives: Internet
Why Tech Companies Love Patents & Hate Copyrights
February 19, 2013 
3 Comments
Technology companies adore patents. They gobble them up like Pac-Man snacking on digital pellets. And they use the patents like clubs to bludgeon everyone and anyone who dares “to violate” them. Patent battles are making headlines everywhere. As a recent Boston Globe article noted: “Patents have become a costly and controversial part of the business […]
Read moreConsider the Source
December 11, 2012 0 Comments
We have a humorous saying at the office: “It must be true. I read it on the Internet.” The reason this saying is so damn amusing is because, well, the Internet lies a lot. And the problem is that lots of people believe what they read – without checking the source. This is the result […]
Read moreThe Myth of Information Overload
September 18, 2012 2 Comments
Yes, my email inbox is out of control. Some days I simply can’t keep up with deluge. I follow too many people on Twitter. My feed sometimes resembles the falling numerals from the movie “The Matrix.” Facebook has gone from just friends to colleagues, acquaintances and, well, for lack of a better term “others.” So […]
Read moreSocial Media = Closed Networks
August 9, 2012 4 Comments
By now every has likely heard about Twitter suspending the account of journalist Guy Adams of The Independent for the crime of rankling NBC’s collective ego by disparaging the network’s Olympic coverage. Adams tweeted out the corporate email address of a NBC executive as part of his ongoing complaints about the coverage. Twitter flagged the […]
Read more3 Scary Facts about the Internet
May 29, 2012 3 Comments
Ah, the good ole friendly Internet. Hanging with your pals on Facebook. Tweeting funny quips with co-workers. Shopping for books on Amazon. Reading blogs. And, of course, stumbling upon child pornography, criminals stealing your credit card information, and viruses infecting your laptop, malware infiltrating your personal information and spam bursting your email inbox. Ah, […]
Read moreGetting Rational on SOPA
January 25, 2012 0 Comments
The debate on the Stop Online Piracy Act (known as SOPA) has jumped the shark. SOPA and its companion bill Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) were both shelved recently by Congress and the Senate after a frenzied protest by dozens of websites and Internet companies including Google, Wikipedia and Facebook. The goal of the bills […]
Read moreWhat the Heck is SOPA?
January 18, 2012 0 Comments
If you’re online today – or on Twitter or Facebook – you’ve likely seen the acronym SOPA. You may have also noticed that several website including Google, Wikipedia and Yahoo have altered their sites to protest SOPA. Check out the blacked out Google logo above. What’s going on? SOPA stands for the Stop Online Privacy […]
Read moreHow Facebook Explains the (Online) World
September 23, 2011 2 Comments
Welcome to the Internet. It’s now called Facebook. This week Facebook made a series of announcements – a “life” timeline, streaming movies and music, doing rather than “liking” and the ability to group friends into categories just to name a few of the changes. Facebook has finally transformed itself into a customized and personalized replacement […]
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HighTalk by George F. Snell III is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at hightalk.net.
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