Why I unplugged my home landline phone

Every form of electronic communications has been ruined by marketers and scammers.
People today can’t find peace from frequent phone calls, texts and emails from businesses and individuals trying to sell you something or worse, scam you. They interrupt your day, waste your time and annoy you.
This week, I unplugged my home landline phone because of non-stop spam calls.
I looked into blocking the callers from my service, Verizon, but the callers use too many different numbers, probably through spoofing.
Unfortunately the callers are still leaving hang-up voicemails on my service. The voicemails last a couple of seconds before the disconnect. And I have to manually delete them.
My wireless service, AT&T, and my Apple iPhone do a better job of blocking or silencing suspicious unknown callers. But I still get quite a few spam or phishing texts though.
And don’t get me started about email. My two personal email accounts have been clogged with junk email. I have to devote a lot of time to clearing them out occasionally.

Photo: AT&T-branded two-line corded speakerphone. (VTech)

What CES 2021 can learn from other virtual conferences

I have attended every CES conference in Las Vegas since 2000 and was disappointed when the coronavirus pandemic turned CES 2021 into an online-only show. I understand the reasoning for the change but was still saddened by the news.
CES, still known as the Consumer Electronics Show to many, is a massive spectacle.
From the giant exhibit halls full of exciting technology and devices to the promotional stunts of companies trying to make a splash, it must be experienced firsthand.
Beyond the expo floor, there are keynote speeches by major industry figures, panel discussions about trends, and private parties galore, all taking place in the crazy city of Las Vegas.
Shrinking all that down to a computer screen is bound to disappoint.
I can’t speak to the impact on the business-to-business nature of the show, but I can address it from my perspective as a journalist.
Based on what I’ve seen from covering some online conferences and corporate press events these last few months, I have some opinions about what CES 2021 needs from a news perspective.
First, as the premier technology-focused event, CES 2021 needs to be best-in-class in terms of its online format. That means the best video and audio production and streaming, the best website organization, the best scheduling tools and more. Based on the CES website from past shows, I’m not confident they can pull this off.
Second, CES 2021 needs to consider that people aren’t going to sit at their desks all day. After all, the same pandemic that brought Zoom teleconferencing to prominence also led to the term “Zoom fatigue.”
When I’m covering CES in person, it gets my undivided attention for a week. I don’t get much sleep during the show because there is so much going on. That won’t be the case with a virtual show. Stuck in my office, I’ll have other demands for my time and attention, not just CES-related stuff. So, CES 2021 should be a more focused show.
The CES 2021 keynote presentations should learn from Apple’s recent online events. Apple’s WWDC keynote and fall product launch event used slick, cinematic videos. Those videos were both entertaining and informative. They were available to watch at a scheduled time for news value and then available for on-demand viewing.
I would envision the back-to-back press conferences of CES 2021 media day to be just like that as well. High-quality prerecorded videos trump the novelty of being live. Again, on-demand playback is critical in case viewers have scheduling conflicts.
Interviews with newsmakers as well as panel discussions on major trends and issues should be live, however. Plus, I’d love to see a real-time feedback mechanism so you can read what other viewers think during the video presentations, even if it’s just funny asides in a Twitch-style chat format. Once again, these live videos should be available later for on-demand playback.
Companies should have the ability to do live presentations of their products from the virtual expo floor. These should be scheduled throughout the conference. This is especially important for companies that don’t get slotted for media day.
The first test of what CES organizers are capable of will come on Oct. 15 when the Consumer Technology Association holds its CES Unveiled conference. It canceled two in-person events in Europe for one all-digital event. The in-person events had been scheduled for Oct. 7 in Paris and Oct. 15-16 in Amsterdam.
CES 2021 is scheduled for Monday Jan. 11 through Thursday Jan. 14. Keynote speakers already announced include AMD Chief Executive Lisa Su and Verizon Chief Executive Hans Vestberg. Both have delivered keynotes at in-person CES shows.

Related reading:

Freed of CES, It’s Time to Get the Consumer Back Into Consumer Electronics (Ray Hartjen; Sept. 16, 2020)

What Will A Virtual CES Look Like? (TWICE; Aug. 30, 2020)

What will a virtual CES 2021 be like? (Tech-media-tainment; Aug. 1, 2020)

Giant 2021 Consumer Electronics Show In Las Vegas Cancelled By Covid-19, To Go All-Digital (Forbes; July 29, 2020)

CES 2019 buzzword of the show: 5G

The top buzzword at CES 2019 was 5G, the abbreviation for fifth-generation cellular networks. You’re going to hear that term a lot in the year ahead as wireless carriers rollout their high-speed, low-latency broadband networks.
CES, the world’s largest consumer technology trade show, ended Friday after a week-long run in Las Vegas. It featured keynote presentations from AT&T and Verizon, media briefings from wireless chipmakers Intel and Qualcomm and host of other companies explaining the impact of 5G on various industries.
Runners up for buzzword of CES 2019 included 8K and smart.
This year’s show saw the major television makers like LG and Samsung unveil 8K TV sets, which have twice the resolution of today’s 4K TVs. But a lack of native content for the sets will delay adoption of the super-high-definition televisions.
Smart “everything” was another key theme at the CES 2019. The show saw the introductions of scores of smart products from home appliances to oddball items like smart toilets and smart sofas.

CES buzzwords through the years:

2010: Green
2011: Smart
2012: Ultra
2013: Super
2014: Curved
2015: Wearable
2016: HDR (high dynamic range)
2017: Voice
2018: AI (artificial intelligence)
2019: 5G

This year’s CES also saw some non-traditional companies exhibiting. They included farm equipment giant Deere & Company, consumer products maker Procter & Gamble, plant-based meat substitute innovator Impossible Foods, and unbreakable pantyhose maker Sheertex.
CES 2019 attracted about 180,000 attendees and more 4,500 exhibitors covering more than 2.9 million net square feet of exhibit space, the Consumer Technology Association said Friday.

Related articles:

Week in review: CES 2019 coverage (Jan. 12, 2019)

Photos: 5G promoted at the Qualcomm booth, Intel booth and by Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg. (Photo credits: Patrick Seitz and Consumer Technology Association).

Flickr, Tumblr and disappearing online content

Online content can disappear for a number of reasons.
Sometimes a company goes out of business and its servers go dark. Other times an organization changes its content management system and deletes all the older content.
And sometimes a company changes its business practices. That was the case recently with Web 2.0 firms Flickr and Tumblr.
Under new owner SmugMug, Flickr decided to scrap a plan that offered a terabyte of free online storage for photos. (Former owner Yahoo implemented that plan.) Flickr now limits free accounts to 1,000 photos. It is promoting unlimited storage, ad-free, for $50 a year.
I’m a paid Flickr user for my family photos. But I also had a free account for photo collections for Tech-media-tainment. I’ve deleted photos from that account to stay under the 1,000-picture limit. I don’t want to pay for two accounts and Flickr wouldn’t let me add the free account to my paid account.
A lot of photos from free accounts, including many shared in the Creative Commons, will be lost when Flickr implements its new rules on Jan. 8.
Multimedia blog Tumblr announced Dec. 3 that it will soon ban the posting of “adult content.” Its definition includes media that depicts “real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples, and any content — including photos, videos, GIFs and illustrations—that depicts sex acts.” The ban takes effect on Dec. 17.
Tumblr, now owned by Verizon, said it will still permit “exposed female-presenting nipples in connection with breastfeeding, birth or after-birth moments, and health-related situations, such as post-mastectomy or gender confirmation surgery.”
Also, it promised to allow “nudity related to political or newsworthy speech, and nudity found in art, such as sculptures and illustrations,” and written erotica.
Having been on the receiving end of Tumblr’s heavy-handed enforcement of copyright claims under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, I don’t trust them. They refused to hear my fair use claims or give me back the content they deleted from my blogs.
Users are reporting posts incorrectly marked as adult content by Tumblr’s filters. Posts including Pokemon, dinosaur art, and TV show screengrabs have been flagged under the new policy, Business Insider said.
Reason magazine notes that the actions of Tumblr and social media sites to ban adult content comes as governments worldwide are applying pressure on internet services to shut down porn online.
The Free Speech Coalition denounced Tumblr’s actions against adult content. It said the ban will hurt groups that dispense sexual health information, LGBTQ communities, sex workers and others.
“The loss of these platforms isn’t just about business, it’s about the loss of vital communities and education — and organizing,” the FSC said.

Snapchat, Yahoo not built to last

Google’s recent decision to shut down its social network, Google Plus, got me thinking about which internet services are built to last and which aren’t.
I’ve used a lot of internet services over the years and quite a few didn’t survive. In most cases, there were competing services available to fill the gap. In the case of online content, those failed websites just disappeared.
When I think about online services that likely won’t stand the test of time, two come to mind: Snapchat and Yahoo.
If Snapchat disappeared tomorrow, I don’t think anyone would really care. The multimedia messaging app for smartphones is getting its butt kicked by Facebook’s Instagram. Snapchat user growth has stalled and parent company Snap has made a bunch of missteps.
Instagram just surpassed Snapchat as the most-used social media app among U.S. teens, according to Piper Jaffray’s latest semiannual Taking Stock With Teens Survey.
In its third-quarter report last week, Snap said it had 186 million daily active users, down 1% compared with the prior quarter. So, it looks like the service has peaked.
As for Yahoo, it was fading for years when Verizon Communications bought Yahoo’s core internet businesses in June 2017. I’ve noticed a marked decline in the quality of Yahoo’s services including Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Finance over the past few years. The Verizon purchase didn't stop the decline.
Verizon rolled the Yahoo assets into a new company with the former AOL and called it Oath.
Last week, Verizon said Oath revenue fell 7% year over year to $1.8 billion in the third quarter. It also acknowledged that it is unlikely to meet the longer-term targets it set for Oath.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Verizon ends up selling off Oath piecemeal. After all, in April, it sold Yahoo’s Flickr photo-hosting service to SmugMug.

Celebrities as honorary tech executives making a comeback

Several years ago, there was a short-lived trend toward tech companies giving celebrity spokespeople executive titles. It was derided as a marketing ploy and eventually died off. But now it’s back.
At CES 2018, Chinese electronics firm Huawei (pronounced wow-way) announced that actress Gal Gadot is its “chief experience officer.”
“In this new role, Ms. Gadot will help shape the company’s brand experiences and play an active role in listening to and providing ongoing ideas to inform how Huawei will bring the best experiences to its consumers,” Huawei said in a press release. What a bunch of mumbo jumbo.
TechCrunch summed it up well in its coverage of the announcement.
“These sorts of titles are often little more than ceremonial, of course, and Gadot’s involvement with the company could ultimately amount to simply appearing in ads and posting her Huawei-related experiences on social media,” TechCrunch writer Brian Heater said.
Gadot earlier this month was also named global ambassador for Revlon’s Live Boldly campaign.
Her appointment at Huawei follows several other celebrities getting roles at tech companies in recent months.
In October, British music tech startup Roli named producer, songwriter and performer Pharrell Williams as its chief creative officer. Williams also will invest and become a co-owner of Roli, Business Insider reported.
In November, Verizon’s Oath, the company formed from AOL and Yahoo, announced a board of advisers filled with famous athletes and models.
Professional tennis player Serena Williams is chairing the board. Other board members include Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson, singer Ciara, rapper Chuck D and supermodel Karlie Kloss, according to Fierce Cable.
Last year, Wired published an article on the last wave of celebrities as tech executives. (See “The Brief, Bumbling Tech Careers of Alicia Keys, Lady Gaga, and Gwen Stefani.”)
In 2013, mobile phone maker BlackBerry named singer Alicia Keys its global creative officer.
“The move was part of a short-lived trend in which legacy tech businesses struggling for reputational bling named celebrities as creative directors,” Wired writer Jessi Hempel noted. “In 2005, HP brought Gwen Stefani on as a creative director. In 2010, Lady Gaga landed the job of creative director at Polaroid. In 2011, Will.i.am was the director of creative innovation at Intel. In 2012, Microsoft brought on Jessica Alba as creative director to promote its Windows Phone 8. These roles were all touted as far more involved than the mere celebrity pitchman. The artists promised, to varying degrees, to dive into the business.”
None of those business arrangements amounted to more than advertising and marketing deals.
The same is likely true for the current bunch of celebrity tech executives.

Photos: Actress Gal Gadot pitching Huawei smartphones.

Virginia man suffers loss after crash

When my Verizon FiOS DVR crashed recently I lost a bunch of TV episodes I was saving up to binge watch.
In hindsight, the incident did me a favor. I had too many shows on my watch list anyway. I decided after the crash that any show that isn’t worth watching within a day or two of airing probably isn’t worth watching at all.
By the way, my headline is a takeoff on the Onion parody news article titled “Devastated Family Struggling To Cope After Losing Everything On DVR.”
The shows I’m axing from my watch list include AMC’s “Humans,” TNT’s “Falling Skies,” NBC’s “Hannibal” and CBS’s “Extant.” The first show didn’t grab my interest after the pilot episode and I had grown bored with the latter three.

Photo: My new DVR, the VMS 1100, for Verizon FiOS Quantum TV. I used the crash of my previous DVR to upgrade to a more capable service.

Open letter to Verizon FiOS: Stop your annoying pop-up ads

Dear Verizon FiOS:
When I turn on my television set after a long day at work, I just want to watch TV.
What I don’t want is a bunch of pop-up ads that I have to click through to get to my shows.
For instance, when I press the DVR menu button after turning on my set, I invariably get a pop up ad from your guys trying to sell me a pay-per-view movie, a more expensive tier of cable service or some router.
Let me make this perfectly clear: I’m not interested in whatever you’re trying to sell me. I just want to watch the TV service that I’m paying you for.
Most websites learned years ago that pop-up ads are super annoying. So why are you doing them now?
If you want to promote things, do so in the ad sections of the TV listings page or DVR menu. Please don’t get in the way of what I’m trying to do.
Sincerely,
Annoyed Customer

What follows are some of the many pop-up ads I’m had to deal with lately on Verizon FiOS television.

Buy the FiOS Quantum Gateway!

Buy FiOS Quantum and get HBO free for a year!

Buy FiOS Quantum TV!
(See screenshot up top.)

Get more DVR storage with FiOS Quantum!

Buy Internet device security service!

Join the Verizon rewards program! Connect your wireless devices to the home network!

Rent “How to Train Your Dragon 2”!

Thanksgiving movie sale!

Enough already.
 

Johnny-come-latelies with 2014 predictions

Some prognosticators were procrastinators with their 2014 predictions.
Here’s a round-up of interesting predictions for 2014 that came in after my last few articles on the subject.
Of course, we might not even finish the year since Norse mythology has the end of the world set for Feb. 22. The Viking apocalypse is called Ragnarok. (See articles in the Daily Mail and Mirror.)

Christian commentator Pat Robertson

Christian media mogul Pat Robertson made some 2014 predictions in an interview on CBN.

Economic crisis in China

“Sometime during the year there’s going to be some kind of a credit crisis,” he said. “And I think China is going to lead the way. That whole economy is like a house of cards. And when it starts falling, it’s going to affect the entire world.”

Iran gets a nuke

“I do believe the Iranians will have a nuclear device before the end of the year,” he said. “And (President) Obama is using a tactic of containment that’s not going to work.”

Problems for President Obama

“I think the president will be severely hampered. America is going to turn against him much more so than now as that Affordable Care thing starts biting hard as it is. He’s going to be discredited terribly.”
Robertson says Obama will avoid governing and instead devote his time to traveling.

Differing predictions on ObamaCare

While Robertson thinks ObamaCare will be a disaster in 2014, Byron Wien, vice chairman of Blackstone Advisory Partners, thinks the problem-plagued health care program will turn itself around.
“The Affordable Care Act has a remarkable turnaround,” Wien predicted. “The computer access problems are significantly diminished and younger people begin signing up.”

M&A

Apple will buy TiVo, predicts Dan Mirkin of Trade Ideas.

Liberty Media, Charter or Comcast will buy Time Warner Cable, predicts BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield.

Verizon will acquire Intel Media and launch the country’s first virtual cable TV service, Greenfield says.

Microsoft will buy one or two media companies, says Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute. The outcome of these moves will pave the way for further media purchases by non-media companies throughout the year.
“It’s going to open the floodgates and 2014 will be marked as the year that non-media companies started buying media companies and you’re just going to see it take off,” Pulizzi said.

Yahoo will buy Business Insider, predicts Chris Ciaccia, technology editor for The Street.
“(Yahoo CEO Marissa) Mayer has been acquiring talent, most recently David Pogue of the New York Times and Katie Couric,” Ciaccia said. “The two companies already have a close relationship, with Business Insider CEO and Editor in Chief Henry Blodget appearing frequently on Yahoo Finance programs.”

Jawbone, Fitbit or both will get acquired, Ciaccia said. Both play in the wearable technology and fitness device market. Potential buyers include Nike, which already makes the Nike Fuelband, and Under Armour, which acquired MapMyFitness for $150 million in November.

IPOs

Uber and Lending Club will go public, says Howard Lindzon of StockTwits.

Hillary Clinton won’t run for president

“Hillary Clinton decides not to run for President in 2016,” Blackstone’s Wien predicted. “She says her work with various Clinton non-for-profit initiatives is important and unfinished. Specifically, she explains that her health was not an issue in her decision. The Democratic race for the top seat becomes chaotic.”

Differing predictions on smartwatches

“Smartwatches are dead in 2014,” wrote Tim Bajarin, an analyst with Creative Strategies. “All attempts at creating a smart watch for the masses have failed. The ones on the market today only appeal to male geeks and ultra early adopters Although we may sell as much as 1.5 million smart watches in 2014, unless someone masters the issue of elegant design and style matched with non geeky technology, they are not going to be a product for the mass market anytime soon.”

But Avram Piltch, online editorial director for Laptop, sees things differently.
Smartwatches will “finally break through” in 2014, Piltch predicts. “In 2014, we expect Google and Apple to enter the smartwatch market in a big way. With Apple’s ability to leverage Siri and Google’s Google Now, both companies have assistant services that should work really well on your wrist, along with the ability to mass produce electronics at reasonable prices. Samsung will step up its game with a follow-up to the Galaxy Gear.”

Google Glass goes mainstream

Google’s computer glasses, Google Glass, will attempt to reach a larger audience in 2014. In 2013, the cyborg headsets were made available to early adopters for $1,500 each.
Dan Rowinski, mobile editor at ReadWrite, predicts that Google will announce a retail version of the device for $299 at its Google I/O conference in May.

Forbes contributing writer Mark Rogowsky thinks Google Glass will go commercial, but cautiously.
“Knowing that a full-on commercial launch of a low-priced Google Glass would be met with failure, Google instead releases Glass as a ‘Beta Edition’ for $699,” he predicted. “With a decent supply of apps, early adopters find the functionality very satisfying even while the battery life remains absolutely atrocious. Talk immediately turns to Google Glass 2.0, which is shown just months later, is much more stylish, but has very vague answers about the battery.”

Adam Kmiec, director of global digital marketing and social media, Campbell Soup Company, believes Google Glass “will flop, UNLESS the consumer version has a built in cellular connection.”

Snapchat crashes

At least two prognosticators predict that photo-sharing service Snapchat will crash in 2014.

“Snapchat will implode,” Kmiec says. “It will grow its user base, but won’t figure out how to monetize the platform. All the while, Facebook/Instagram, Twitter and Google will come up with extensions to their platforms that will provide the basic utility of SnapChat, but for a mass audience.”

The Snapchat valuation bubble will burst, The Street’s Ciaccia predicted. The popular messaging app that allows users to send messages to their friends and have them disappear within 10 seconds has been valued at $2 billion. It reportedly turned down a $3 billion offer from Facebook and a $4 billion offer from Google.

Photo: Fortune Teller windows by Flickr user Scott Swigart.