Whether we admit it to ourselves or not, and whether we like it or not, we’re being tracked all the time. Google tracks us, both on its pages and on other pages it has access to. Facebook does the same; it even tracks non-Facebook users. Apple tracks us on our iPhones and iPads.
Increasingly, what we do on the Internet is being combined with other data about us. Everything we do now involves computers, and computers produce data as a natural by-product. Everything is now being saved and correlated, and many big-data companies make money by building up intimate profiles of our lives from a variety of sources.
Tag Archives: technology
Learning from competition
Reacting well to competition requires critical analysis of your own product and its shortcomings, and a complete, open-minded understanding of why people might choose your competitors.
They’re not fanboys. They’re not brainwashed by “marketing”. Your competitors’ customers aren’t passing on your product because they’re stupid or irrational.
They’re choosing your competitors for good reasons, and denying the existence of such good reasons will only ensure that your product never overcomes them.
One of the reasons Apple has been able to quickly dominate so many markets is that their competitors have largely reacted defensively.
Supermarket Kiosk Knows What You Want For Dinner
American global technology company, Intel, and Kraft Foods company have collaborated on a virtual display concept intended to help shoppers decide what they should have for dinner.
Portable Speakers Now As Small As Credit Cards
The Card Speaker, designed by IDEA International, is a portable speaker system that operates for up to 5 hours on a 2-hour charge. No bigger than a credit card, the sleek speaker connects to any device with a 3.5 mm headphone plug, and charges via USB battery charge cable. Colors come in gold, silver, or black.
The story of Polaroid inventor Edwin Land
One of Steve Jobs biggest heroes is Edwin Land, the inventor of Polaroid. Former Apple CEO John Sculley describes a meeting they had years ago and how both Land and Jobs felt that products existed all along — they just needed to discover them.
37signals: The story of Polaroid inventor Edwin Land, one of Steve Jobs’ biggest heroes
The Most Popular Phone in the World
It has been said that more of the world’s population has access to a cellphone than to a sanitary toilet. But of the planet’s estimated 5 billion cellphone users, a privileged minority have smartphones; a paltry few, iPhones. If you spend hours thumbing through pages of apps, scoffing at less-than-perfect software upgrades and grousing about screen resolution and pixel density, it’s easy to forget that the very concept of a mobile phone is a miracle. It’s a device that shrinks your day to day world into a single point, making you simultaneously accessible to and able to access nearly everyone you know, instantly and everywhere.
The 100 essential websites
Here we go again… our latest list of the 100 best websites sees short attention spans, the rise of Twitter, more browser wars and celebrity gossip sites setting the news agenda
Abandoned Space Technology
Nothing seemed as modern as the space race, gleaming white rockets and cutting edge technology. Except that was decades ago, and some of the most spectacularly important pieces of technology have been left to rot. Soviet shuttle prototypes have been spotted in the most unlikely places, from the wind swept deserts of Bahrain to a river side dock, full of scrap metal, in a Moscow suburb.