The year 2015 has not been boring in the tech world. Here are my top 10 events in the tech world this year.
10. Star Wars The Force Awakens: It’s the biggest money making movie of all time. Let techies and geeks rejoice!
9. July 8 Super Glitch: Do you remember July 8, when computer glitches caused United Airlines flights to be grounded, the NYSE to stop trading and the Wall Street Journal website to shut down? The cause of that historic mega glitch is unknown to this day(or so they say).
8. Mark Zuckerberg: After the birth of his daughter, the Facebook CEO and founder pledged to give away 99% of his wealth to make the world better for his child’s generation. I doubt a certain presidential candidate would do the same.
7. Company Mergers: More mergers happened in 2015 than any year in history. Dell bought EMC for $67 billion. Western Digital bought San Disk for $19 billion. Facebook gets Oculus for $2 billion. Free market competition isn’t dead, but it needs serious intensive care.
6. The Streaming Revolution: Prime time TV is dying, thanks to Netflix, Hulu, You Tube and other streaming sites. In 2015, even prime time shows became dependent on streaming. Netflix subscriptions crossed the 60 million subscription mark, and streaming original shows like Orange Is the New Black and Transparent took home Emmy awards.
5. Nice Techies Finish First: For instance, Sundar Pichai became Google’s new CEO. He has a reputation for being approachable, humble, and congenial. He surrounded himself with staff who are just the same. Could Pichai lead a nice guy revolution in tech leadership?
4. Amazon’s Best Year Ever: Their Amazon Prime service is booming. Their original show Transparent won an Emmy. They had the best Christmas season profits of any business ever. They’re leading the drone charge. Jeff Bezos is the 4th richest person alive today. What more can I say?
3. Bad News and Social Media: Let’s face it, not all the 2015 news has been good. There’s been terrorism, mass shootings, racial murder and brutality, international tensions, and natural disasters. Social media often captured such events in a way mainstream media never could.
2. Terrorist Recruit with Social Media: Unfortunately, ISIS and other terrorist groups use social media outlets to charm naive people into joining their deadly and sadistic cause. One time, ISIS put up a You Tube video of them serving children ice cream. How do we draw the line of shutting their communications down while keeping our online freedoms?
1 ?International Government Hacking: This year, the US, China, Russia, Turkey and other nations have accused each other of hacking and stealing military and government secrets. Some say the US is hacking their own citizens. ?With global tensions on the rise, do you see an end in sight for 2016?
Those are my events. What are yours? We at Computer Geeks wish everyone a Happy New Years Eve and please be safe and careful out there.
Google Chairman Eric Schmidt put himself in the front lines of one of the most intense Internet debates today. The debate is freedom of speech vs fighting terrorism, hate speech, bullying and other online ills.
In a NY Times op-ed, Schmidt suggested tools like spell-checkers to control tensions. These spell-checkers would keep hate speech and harassment in check. But in the same statement, he suggested stability and freedom of expression go hand in hand. Schmidt didn’t elaborate too much more than this. But Schmidt insists tech platforms like this should only target terrorist groups. Online speech is a hot issue in this election. Hilary Clinton called on Silicon Valley to find a way to stop ISIS‘s online communication. At a South Carolina rally, Donald Trump suggested we close the Internet on some level, and mocked those who would criticize this move in the name of free speech. The rise of terrorist groups like ISIL uses social media for recruitment purposes and to brag about their hideous atrocities. But that’s not all. There have been calls to stop those who use social media as a tool of hatred against others. This is what social media entities like https://computergeeksnow.com/2015/08/28/facebook-turns-a-billion/, Twitter and Google have been wrestling with for years.
On the other side, civil libertarians and free speech advocates have a valid point. Nobody, whether it be governments, social media entities, or hackers, should use terrorism or hatred as an excuse to trample on the civil rights of innocent Americans. On the other hand, something needs to be done to stop ISIS’s demonic propaganda online. The last thing these thugs need is to use the computer as a recruitment tool. So how do tech leaders balance that? How do we as online consumers balance that? Does Google Chairman Eric Schmidt have a point on these spell-checkers? ?Or is Schmidt going too far?
There’s still three weeks left until Christmas Eve. There’s plenty of shopping season left. But when you look at the last Black Friday, Amazon didn’t just win that race…they dominated!
According to a tracking app called Slice Intelligence Amazon accounted for over 35% of?online?Black Friday sales last week. Electronic retail giant Best Buy placed a distant second, only getting 8 percent of online sales. Rounding out the top five are Macy’s at 3.38 percent, Walmart at 3.35 percent and Nordstrom at 3.11 percent. That’s right: these three retail corporations only got a combined 10% of online Black Friday sales. Amazon itself bragged of it’s online success, claiming a record year for Amazon based product sales. Overall, Black Friday sales rose 7 percent. Some online stores, like Wayfair, tripled in Black Friday sales. This trend continued through Cyber Monday. Amazon did well here, too. But Cyber Monday 2015 was good to Ebay. Their online mobile sales increased 13 percent. Payment processing company Pay Pal says the biggest sales came from toys, electronics and cosmetics. In a statement, Amazon VP of Amazon Devices Dave Limp said millions will be playing with Amazon devices this year. Without giving specifics, hundreds of thousands of Kindle products were sold over this big shopping weekend.
What does this mean? Does it mean an improving economy? Maybe. But there’s a deeper meaning here. People are tired of long lines and fights at the store. More people have mobile devices than ever before. So these factors, and others, mean mobile holiday shopping is the trend of the future. Amazon is the first to cater to this trend, and they do so well. Other major retailers like Ebay are catching on. Then there’s Walmart. They got only 3% of the Black Friday online pie. Maybe it’s because so many of their customers are still in the long lines and wrestling over the last TV or crock pot. Walmart can make it a lot easy on themselves and their consumers by investing more time, effort, and advertising on online sales, especially mobile sales. Or does America’s biggest retailer like long lines and fights?
Yesterday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the healthy and successful birth of his daughter. He and wife Priscilla Chan named her Maxima. But it’s Zuckerberg’s letter to his newborn daughter that’s getting lots of social attention.
In his letter to baby Maxima, Mark Zuckerberg promises to make the world a better place for her and her generation. Mark and Priscilla wrote they would give most of their company shares (around $45 billion) to make the world a happier place. Zuckerberg will direct these stocks to ‘advance potential and promote equality’. He made this declaration official by filing it with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, though he intends to hold his majority voting power. He pledges to focus on issues like education, medical care, and making the Internet available to everyone worldwide. Zuckerberg joins other technology leaders who pledge to give much of their wealth to charities and worthy causes. This written promise is called Giving Pledge. Other signers of Giving Pledge include former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, and Oracle leader Larry Ellison. Zuckerberg and Priscilla back such promises. They’re building ‘The Primary School’ in a low income neighborhood in the Silicon Valley area. This doesn’t include the $120 million they’re pledging to San Francisco public schools.
First and foremost, we at Computer Geeks congratulate Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan on the birth of their daughter. I share Mark and Priscilla’s dream of this world being better for Maxima’s generation than it is for us. There’s a lot of work to be done in that area. You just can’t throw money at the problem. The initiatives they’re talking about will take years of hands on innovation, hard work and people skills. They can’t do it alone, either. It will take many, many helping and willing hands. I think the Zuckerbergs are up for the challenge. What do you think?
I know many of you are tired of hearing it, but we’ve got to talk about Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday sales. It’s an indicator of how the Christmas shopping season will go and possibly, how 2015’s economy will go.
Between Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday, retailers made 4.45 billion dollars online. But that’s part of the story. Over a billion and a half, about a third if those online sales, were processed with mobile devices. These stats are courtesy of Abode, who track 4,500 retail websites from mega global corporations to small businesses. According to IBM, basket sales (sales per person) on Black Friday/Thanksgiving Day increased 20% from last year. Electronics continue to lead the charge, especially items like smartwatches, LED TVs, Microsoft’s Surface Pro, and XBox video game systems. If you still do most of your online purchasing on desktop, don’t feel like a dinosaur. Desktop still leads the way in conducting online shopping. But trends are changing. In the next several years, more people will use mobile technology then desktop. Cyber Monday is tomorrow. Cyber Monday has traditionally been the Black Friday of Internet shopping. Adobe predicts- this Cyber Monday will be the biggest yet. Will Adobe be right?
First thing first: Just because Thanksgiving was such a good sales day doesn’t mean we should continue this nonsense. You’ve got the whole month to make money. Thanksgiving ought to be about family and friends and food . It should be no surprise LCD TVs lead the list of most popular electronics. I’ve seen many a Black Friday consumers carrying an LCD TV in reports. Two other trends: increased smartwatch sales tell me more are moving to smartwatch technology. Mobile online shopping increases tells me this method of shopping is now routine. What holds in store for Cyber Monday? And how do you think Small Business Saturday sales did?
“Three teenagers walk into an Apple Store.” I’m afraid this isn’t the start of a joke. In fact, there’s nothing funny about this story.
In Melbourne, Australia, three black male teenagers go to an Apple Store. The teens are from Sudan and Somalia. A white manager insisted these teens leave the store immediately. The manager was scared the teens might steal something. And because this unfortunate incident was caught on camera, it didn’t take long before the footage reached Apple CEO Tim Cook. Cook wrote an email addressing the sorry episode, calling it ‘unacceptable’. The manager and the company apologized to the teens. Cook reassured these values aren’t what Apple is about. The next day, a senior manager named Kate met with the young men. Kate told these guys, and their classmates, that they would be welcomed at the Apple Store Highpoint at anytime. The teens graciously accepted the apology and said, “It feels like we have justice now.” Cook believes what the first manager did was an isolated incident . He points out this particular store has employees from nine nations who speak 15 languages. Tim Cook closed his letter by stating customer service and respect are at the core of everything Apple does.
I like how Tim Cook and Kate handled this ugly situation, and kept it from getting uglier. I’m proud of these teenagers for choosing forgiveness over retribution. I’m glad the manager in question apologized. When I think about Tim Cook’s upbringing, this is the email we should expect. But this incident speaks to something way beyond business customs, rules, and respect. It speaks to an issue of the human heart. That man that turned away those kids only reveled what brewed in his heart. What you have hidden in your heart will eventually come out, and often times what comes out is brutal and nasty. We’re not going to rid ourselves, or the world, of racism through passing laws and policies, as necessary as these laws and policies are. Those are there to maintain order and fairness. But true change starts with the man or woman in the mirror. What’s in your heart?
