Twitter recently announced the rollout of Twitter blue, a subscription service with several new features, but one of which is an UNDO button for your tweets. People have been asking for an edit button for many, many years. But it looks like “UNDO” is about the best that Twitter’s going to give us — a paid subscription service that will allow you to undo your tweets.
An UNDO button might not be what people wanted, but I think there are a couple of reasons why this is a significant upgrade and one that influencers are going to want to have.
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Have you ever suspected that perhaps the helpdesk guys are making fun of you when you call them up? Are they using some terms that don’t seem to relate to your particular problem, but everyone on the other end of the line seems to be chuckling?
Well, then perhaps they’re making a little bit of fun at your expense. If you want to be in on the joke, look out for these terms!
If the support person tells his friends that he has got another BFU (beefoo) on the line, well, that might mean that they think you’re a Brain…
I don’t read much science fiction, but when Neil Stephenson publishes a new book, I always read it. In “Fall or Dodge in Hell,” Stephenson provides a half technothriller book (like Reamde) and half fantasy rewrite of Paradise Lost. His books are always long, engaging, and make you think. However, unlike his other books, it was only the first part of the story that I found to be engaging.
The first part of the book has some interesting/scary ideas about America’s future. Most of the book is set 20+ years in the future, and there are two Americas: modern, well-run…
Another platform I’ve been experimenting with is Arist, which lets you design and offer delivery courses via a text messaging platform (SMS, WhatsApp, or even Facebook Messenger).
Arist was initially targeted as a service for corporations to use in onboarding new employees. Instead of having two days of employee training, you might have one day, and then over the next 20 days, you would receive a text message each day telling you more about your new employer or job function. …
This year, I’ve decided to go all-in on any service or device that will make me more productive, without worrying if it has some small cost. For the past two months, I have been using Otter.ai, which is a service that will transcribe audio and video files into text. After a simple setup to integrate with Dropbox, I have an excellent system for turning audio and video files into Microsoft Word and PDF files.
I now have an “Otter” folder in Dropbox. When I drag audio and video into this folder, Otter.ai detects the new file and transcribes it. About…
Zoom is the company and verb of 2020 and continues to dominate the video conferencing marketplace in 2021. Considering the scaling and support Zoom had to roll out to accommodate millions of new users, you might think they would have little time to innovate. But Zoom is zooming ahead to lots of new features and ways to use its service.
On innovation is a new platform called On Zoom (on.zoom.us), which allows content creators (called hosts) to provide classes, group events, and workshops. …
Newsmakers is an excellent, relatively short book that examines the use of AI in journalism. Artificial intelligence is already writing stories in papers such as The Wall Street Journal and can do much more. This book provides an introduction to AI with a focus on implications for the newsroom. Specifically, Mr. Marconi looks at the ethics of AI journalism and how the Wall Street Journal and other outlets are dealing with the issues raised. He also addresses AI-created problems for journalists, namely, deep fakes and differentiating between real and AI-generated photos, videos, audio, and reporting (Search for “Deep Fakes” on…
Never one to pull his punches, Professor Galloway lays out the problems of democracy, education, and capitalism in this short book that predicts what a post-Corona future holds for humanity. Unlike Fareed Zakaria’s book, Galloway offers lots of opinions about why our systems of capitalism, the government are screwed up and what to do about it.
Galloway examines many different areas of our world, from big tech and retail to elections and higher education. A “class-traitor,” tenured-professor Galloway reserves his harshest criticism for higher education and his profession (still not sure that Mike C. …
Well-written and organized, but not a lot of predictions or insights (in my opinion). This might be a great book if you have not been reading the news for the last couple of years and needed to know what are the big trends that will shape the future in the post-covid world. It is more of a state of the state discussion of where various issues stand and why they will be important in the coming years. Good analysis, but I had expected more insights about the future from Zakaria.
Perhaps the most interesting/clear point that the author makes is…
How your government incentivizes and regulates internet service providers (ISPs) — or if it takes on that role itself — determines the speed and quality of your connection and the degree that your online activities are restricted or surveilled. The Internet is truly a network of country-defined ISPs, each with its distinct capabilities and limitations.
But all that is about to change as several planetary-scale ISPs come online this year. Using a new generation of fast-flying low-earth-orbiting (LEO) satellites, space-based ISPs can offer broadband service to everyone on earth, without concern for oceans, mountains, deserts, or borders.
Internet from the Sky
