Are you part of the new so-called ‘gig economy’? If you don’t know what the gig economy is, probably not, but even if not, you almost certainly know someone who is. According to recent statistics, 16% of the American workforce is working in the gig economy – that’s nearly 1 in 5 people. And at least one pundit factors smartphones and mobile apps into why the gig economy is growing.
Category: What Do You Think?
Move over, theatres and concerts – now you also have to buy a ticket to attend some restaurants, thanks to the restaurant ticket program Tock, developed by Nick Kokonas. Can’t make your seating? That’s ok, just as with concert tickets, you can also scalp your restaurant tickets on Craigslist, where some restaurant tickets are fetching as much as $250 or more a piece.
Teenager Cella (@cellla_ on Twitter) apparently really wasn’t looking forward to her new job at Jet’s Pizza in Mansfield, Texas. So much so that she tweeted “Ew I start this fuckass job tomorrow,” followed by seven ‘thumbs down’ emoji. Following that tweet, she was promptly fired, also on Twitter.
What is The Harlem Shake? That depends on whether you’re talking about the Harlem Shake dance, the Harlem Shake song, or the Harlem Shake video — by either Al B, Albee, Baauer, Bauer, Bauuer, or the Russian Army. And, the infectious internet meme doesn’t get any less complicated from there. But since the original Sunlight Harlem Shake, it has gone viral on YouTube (or uTube if you prefer) at breathtaking speed.
When Tyler Anderson posted shocking video detailing the violent aftermath that befell spectators as a result of Kyle Larson’s wreck on Saturday, NASCAR intentionally — but falsely — claimed copyright infringement which triggered the video being taken down by YouTube (or “utube” as the kids call it). The video was quickly replaced and, now, NASCAR admits it made the claim knowing no such copyright violation had occurred.
Once again Facebook, your friendly social media hotspot, is the target of marketers wanting and gaining access to your personal data — as a loyalty frequent shopper card program can use that data to cross-reference your likes and interactions to target your pocketbook. And all of it is correlated to you, personally, without so much as a choice to opt-in.
The concept of “The Internet Of Everything,” the notion that all products, people, and services communicate for the sake of personalization and efficiency, is more than just the wave of the tech future. It could mean very big business. According to Cisco Systems, the concept is worth $14 trillion in revenue over the ten years.
We don’t know what his return policy is, but French citizen Philippe Dubost’s resume, which looks like a fake Amazon page, complete with fake Amazon reviews, has quickly become an Internet sensation. Residing in Paris, the web product manager designed PhilDub.com to look for a job abroad, as he is ready to travel.
How many times have you thought “Damn, if only I could get on the Internet right now! Where is the nearest public access wireless hotspot?” And how many times have you seen a homeless person standing on a street corner trying to raise some cash? Well, BBH Labs (the Bs stand for Bartle and Bogle and the H stands for Hegarty) have what they believe to be the answer: combine the two by turning the homeless into on-demand portable wifi hotspots. BBH debuted the so-called “Homeless Hotspots” at South by SouthWest (SXSW) this week, in Austin.
If you are a part of virtually any social network: Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and even Pinterest, you have likely seen either, “Joseph Kony 2012” or, “Let’s Make Joseph Kony Famous” meme’s cropping up everywhere. Who is Joseph Kony and why is everyone trying to make him so relevant?
With Facebook’s upcoming $5 billion dollar IPO, they must figure that they can do anything they want (like they didn’t before?). Of course, now that they will have stockholders they are going to have to focus even more on earning money, more than anything else, and of course they do that on the backs of their users.
Twitter made a surprising announcement that has the social media world buzzing. They announced that they would be censoring Tweets in certain countries, when requested to do so by officials in the specific country.
Slashdot, that ubertech, ubergeek site that we all know and love, has inserted “Ads by Google” Adsense ads into the Slash dot RSS feed for a while. Nothing wrong with that. But lately some of the ads have been really racy. Take, for example, this ad (see screen capture below) for the online dating site Anastasia Dates, at AnastasiaDates.com
Google + or, as it is known more fully, the Google+ Project, is Google’s foray into creating a true social network. So what is Google+? As the awesome comic XKCD puts it, it’s like Facebook, but it’s not Facebook, making it a win-win, according to some.
Earlier this month, the NATO Rapporteur (and we explain what that is) released a draft report addressing, among other things, the scope and impact of the leaking of the Wikileaks documents by Private Bradley Manning, the threats and actions by “hacktivists” (activist hackers engaging in “hacktivism”), including the hacker collective known as “Anonymous”, and what counter-measures NATO and other such bodies might take.