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The Comunicano for Wednesday February 22 2017

FEBRUARY 22 - ISSUE #28     UPS, like Amazon, is fascinated with what flying drones can do for their business. For normally silent UPS, their efforts with drones seem to be “taking off” in Florida the way Uber is testing driverless cars in Arizona. We lift off today with three items about UPS and their lofty ideas surrounding drones….those stories and a lot, lot more are all in today’s COMUNICANO. UPS tests drone deliveries, eyes future price changes WWW.REUTERS.COM – Share   UPS Tests Residential Delivery Via Drone Launched From atop Package Car PRESSROOM.UPS.COM – Share UPS works with truck-launched drone-maker Workhorse Group in latest test   Test demonstrates potential efficiencies drones can provide on rural delivery routes Unlike previous drone tests, UPS/Workhorse test incorporates drone delivery into day-to-day delivery operations   SportsTech Watch Exclusive: Facebook in talks to live stream one MLB game per week - sources WWW.REUTERS.COM – Share Facebook Inc (FB.O) is in talks with Major League Baseball to live stream one game per week during the upcoming season, which could be a key win as the social media platform works to offer more live sports, according to two people familiar with the situation. Amazon Watch Move over, Amazon: Here comes Walmart MONEY.CNN.COM – Share Walmart reported surprisingly strong growth in its e-commerce operations, thanks to its recent purchase of Jet and online grocery sales. Amazon plans to sell beer and wine at its new high-tech convenience store WWW.RECODE.NET – Share The Amazon Go store in Seattle also carries sandwiches, salads and snacks. Wireless Watch Verizon offers taste of 5G as it expands network trials WWW.CNET.COM – Share The company plans to offer 5G to some customers in 11 cities by midyear. It’s not full mobile wireless. Instead it’s a replacement for fixed broadband. Some subscribers of Project Fi are getting access to VoLTE on T-Mobile's network WWW.PHONEARENA.COM – Share Although it’s no longer a spring chicken, Project Fi is continuing to get updated with new features. The latest one? Official support for VoLTE calls… Odds & Ends Israeli glass tech can help car windows show ads WWW.TIMESOFISRAEL.COM – Share Startup Gauzy and Germany’s Daimler display film that allows projection of messages on windows while vehicles are parked An AI Hedge Fund Created a New Currency to Make Wall Street Work Like Open Source WWW.WIRED.COM – Share Wall Street is a Darwinian battle for the almighty dollar. But Richard Craib thinks his AI-powered hedge fund will soar if everyone can just get along. Apple has kept Steve Jobs promises with its new HQ WWW.COMPUTERWORLD.COM – Share Apple will open its new San Jose HQ just in time for WWDC 2017 Do you enjoy receiving this? Please share it:     Tweet     Share   Carefully curated by Andy Abramson with Revue If you were forwarded this newsletter and you like it, you can subscribe here.

The Comunicano for Friday February 17 2017

Last night I dined out using Feastly for the first time. It was the way to book seats at a “pop up” dinners across the USA. The dinner was the debut of former Herringbone LA chef Jason Witzl, who is in the process of opening up his own Cal-Ital place, Ellie’s, in DTLA. Not only was Feastly a cool app/service experience end to end, but the communal dining experience made it easy to make new friends, hang with old friends, eat very well and of course BYOB.  Alexa-can you come with me? So many times i wanted to take Alexa with me, so while Telzio had voice enabled access to my Amazon Echo first via their mobile app, almost a full year or so ago, there wasn’t a lot of use. Well the game just changed as Rain Labs has launched Reverb with apps for the Mac, iOS and Android. It’s all made possible by Amazon Voice Service.  As I wrote on the Xceptional Blog a few days ago, Amazon keeps looking more and more like a telco/information services competitor to AT&T, Verizon, H-P and more…. So with that, let’s dive into the news in today’s extended edition of Comunicano.

Facebook just changed its mission, because the old one was broken WWW.THEVERGE.COM – Share Facebook used to repeat its mission statement so often that most tech reporters could recite it from memory: “To give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.” And it’s…

Here are the details of Uber's disastrous public Q&A session with drivers on Facebook THETECHPORTAL.COM – Share In this Q&A session, the complaints against Uber varied from low fare prices, even lower earnings, and hated services like UberPOOL.

App Watch

Messaging Tech Expert: The Year Messaging (Actually) Matches its Hype WWW.PSFK.COM – Share Anurag Lal explores how messaging platforms function as productivity tools, encompassing a wider variety of services and capabilities.

White House Staff Are Using A "Secure" App That’s Really Not So Secure WWW.BUZZFEED.COM – Share Some senior officials are using a new messaging app that may not be as secure as it claims. “We would not recommend this app to someone…

23 Must-Have Alexa Skills for Your Small Business WWW.PCMAG.COM – Share Amazon’s digital assistant Alexa can help streamline your day-to-day business operations with voice-activated skills across communications, logistics, productivity, scheduling, and much more.

Money Watch

Uber Gives Restless Employees a Way to Cash Out WWW.BLOOMBERG.COM – Share With no public offering imminent, the $69 billion ride-hailing startup is buying back shares from longtime staff.

Airbnb buys Montreal-based Luxury Retreats to bolster high-end vacation offerings WWW.THEGLOBEANDMAIL.COM – Share Acquisition of Canadian company gives San Francisco firm access to luxury rentals

Verizon acquires Portland startup Skyward, a maker of drone management software WWW.GEEKWIRE.COM – Share Verizon is bolstering its efforts in drones with the acquisition of Skyward, a Portland-based startup whose software helps commercial drone operators in in

Daimler’s MyTaxi acquires Greek rival Taxibeat for undisclosed amount TECH.EU – Share Greek taxi hailing app Taxibeat has been acquired by German competitor MyTaxi, which is owned by Daimler. No financials have been disclosed.

Soundtrack Your Brand has raised $22 million for B2B music streaming WWW.BUSINESSINSIDER.COM – Share Soundtrack Your Brand thinks music streaming for business is worth billions.

Apple Watch

Apple Vowed to Revolutionize Television. An Inside Look at Why It Hasn’t - Bloomberg WWW.BLOOMBERG.COM – Share The company is testing a new Apple TV capable of streaming ultra-high-definition 4K. It may not be enough to take on Amazon and Roku.

Apple may cut the (charging) cord completely with the iPhone 8 WWW.COMPUTERWORLD.COM – Share As some industry experts wonder whether Apple will add wireless charging to its next iPhone, others believe it will go all in – cutting the charging cord completely, just as it cut the analog audio port in the iPhone 7.

Cool Things

The Piaggio Gita Is a Futuristic Helper Bot From the Makers of the Vespa WWW.WIRED.COM – Share Piaggio’s Gita follows you around. It goes with you, turns with you, stops with you.

A breakthrough in Alphabet’s balloon-based internet project means it might actually work WWW.RECODE.NET – Share The Loon project says these advancements shorten their timeline for deployment.

Private Astronaut Taxis by SpaceX, Boeing May Not Be Ready by 2019 WWW.SPACE.COM – Share NASA intends to put a backup plan in place in the event that SpaceX and Boeing are not ready to fly humans to space in 2019, according to a new report.

Where is Zealandia? Geologists say they have discovered eighth continent WWW.CSMONITOR.COM – Share A new study argues that a mostly submerged landmass about two-thirds the size of Australia meets all the usual criteria for a continent.

Odds & Ends

AT&T’s new, new unlimited data plan eliminates an annoying requirement WWW.WASHINGTONPOST.COM – Share The move comes days after Verizon launched its own competing offer.

Jack Dorsey: Twitter Lacked 'Focus And Discipline' For Growth WWW.FORBES.COM – Share On Wednesday, Twitter CEO Dorsey offered some insight into the source of Twitter’s user growth problem, which has haunted the company for years.

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The Comunicano for Wednesday February 15 2017

FEBRUARY 15 - ISSUE #23 HUMPDAY…….and there’s tons of NEW and that makes NEWSsurrounding new services releases that are making the rounds today from the likes of Facebook, Signal, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. They all have decided to unleash new “stuff” that changes the way we consume, communicate, create and deliver information today, and after a wave of non-news of late, it’s nice to see NEW back in the NEWS.. Let’s start with Facebook, which is going to become a bit more “annoying” as they start with sound on within their video news content. Their claim is more people prefer that, but thankfully there are ways to turn the audio off…Microsoft makes its biggest move to take on Gmail with a more complete Outlook Premium offer…In some cases I’ve included the official announcement as well as a news item about what’s new, in an effort to provide deeper transparency and insight.  After all that, there’s a few perspectives on the new data plan wars happening in the USA that’s waging between the mobile operators that will help you decide what plan and what changes are right for YOU….That and more are all in today’s COMUNICANO. New Release Watch New Ways to Watch Facebook Video from the Facebook Newsroom NEWSROOM.FB.COM – Share   Facebook is launching an app for Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV WWW.RECODE.NET – Share The new app will let users kick back and watch Facebook videos from the couch. Outlook.com Premium Comes Out of Preview WWW.THURROTT.COM – Share   Introducing Cloud Spanner: a global database service for mission-critical applications CLOUDPLATFORM.GOOGLEBLOG.COM – Share   Signal Adds Video Calls, Better Quality---And a New Privacy Tradeoff WWW.WIRED.COM – Share You’re about to be able to turn on new encrypted calling features. But you may also want to turn off one that could leak your metadata. Video calls for Signal now in public beta WHISPERSYSTEMS.ORG – Share   Yahoo Mail now syncs photos across devices and IDs who's calling on the phone VENTUREBEAT.COM – Share Yahoo views its mail service as being something more than standard email — its senior vice president for communications products Jeff Bonforte once described the inbox as “the database to the user.” Our lives reside in this software that tells us when not only someone messages us, but when our next meetings are, and it has become our main address book, replacing the paper version. Yahoo Mail Update: Never Guess Who’s Calling or... YAHOO.TUMBLR.COM – Share Yahoo Mail Update: Never Guess Who’s Calling or Email Yourself a Photo Again By Michael Albers, VP, Product Management Get excited! Two unique features are coming to Yahoo Mail: Caller ID and photo… Dataplan Watch Expect T-Mobile to Continue Inflicting Pain on Verizon and AT&T REALMONEY.THESTREET.COM – Share The carrier’s results and guidance show that its aggressive pricing is still fueling share gains, and that it’s not coming at the cost of profit growth or needed investments. Experts warn businesses not to over-buy on unlimited data plans WWW.COMPUTERWORLD.COM – Share Smaller businesses that think they could benefit from an unlimited plan from wireless carriers need to calculate their costs carefully. Your complete guide to choosing an unlimited data plan WWW.WASHINGTONPOST.COM – Share And how to make sense of the competing offerings now flooding the market. Unlimited plans comparison: Verizon vs. AT&T vs. Sprint vs. T-Mobile WWW.BUSINESSINSIDER.COM – Share Verizon and T-Mobile recently updated their respective “unlimited” data plans, so we put all of the offerings from the big four carriers head to head. Odds & Ends This sick Valentine's day ad shows people getting naughty with their phones MASHABLE.COM – Share OnePlus’s Valentine’s Day #LickofLove ad is extremely cringeworthy – be warned! How To Create A Killer Logo-Two Experts Weigh In WWW.STARTUPS.CO – Share   Do you enjoy receiving this? Please share it:     Tweet     Share   Carefully curated by Andy Abramson with Revue If you were forwarded this newsletter and you like it, you can subscribe here.

The Comunicano for Friday February 3 2017

 

FEBRUARY 3 - ISSUE #15 The big news, especially here in the Southland, is SNAP and their 3 billion dollar IPO. There’s lots of coverage on it, with some deep insight from the Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern and the Business Insider as well as the L.A. Times. The stories around the story is also interesting so there’s six for your reading pleasure.  Beyond SNAP, we have news about Google, Amazon, Facebook, Uber, the Sharing Economy, Microsoft and a bit more.  Lastly, next week is IT Expo Week in Fort Lauderdale. I’ll be there so find me in the media room, or up on stage on any of my three panels. That’s all in today’s COMUNICANO!!! Snapchat company's IPO filing might be L.A.'s biggest ever WWW.LATIMES.COM – Share Snapchat maker Snap Inc. filed papers to move forward with what’s expected to be the biggest initial public offering ever for a Los Angeles company and one of the highest valued in U.S. history. What’s So Great About Snapchat Anyway? WWW.WSJ.COM – Share As Snap Inc. files its IPO, here’s what grown-ups need to know about Snapchat, the social network millennials love so much. Upcoming Snapchat Lenses will be Able to "Interact" with Objects WWW.DIGITALTRENDS.COM – Share Work-in-progress Snapchat Lenses will reportedly “interact” with real-world objects and scenes, according to reports. Snapchat paid third cofounder Reggie Brown $158 million to disappear WWW.BUSINESSINSIDER.COM – Share Snap Inc. has disclosed that it paid a total of $157.5 million to settle with its ousted third cofounder Reggie Brown. Snapchat IPO: Inside Snap Inc.'s company culture WWW.BUSINESSINSIDER.COM – Share Thursday night’s filing of Snapchat’s IPO papers was the largest data dump we’ve ever received from the company. Here’s what we learned. Snap S-1 Filing WWW.SEC.GOV – Share   Uber Watch Uber C.E.O. to Leave Trump Advisory Council After Criticism WWW.NYTIMES.COM – Share Travis Kalanick plans to step down from the president’s council, after internal pressure from employees and a social media backlash. Sharing Economy Goes Mainstream in Business Travel — Skift Corporate Travel Innovation Report SKIFT.COM – Share   Odds & Ends The Best Drone Photography of 2016 WWW.CNTRAVELER.COM – Share You’ve heard it from us before: Drones can take your travel photography to (literally) a whole new level, offering a perspective on a place that has long been out of reach to most of us. As drones become more commonplace, it is harder to stand out. Amazon's advertising business is growing fast - WWW.BUSINESSINSIDER.COM – Share Amazon’s fastest-growing business is its advertising business, which is a direct competitor to Google and Facebook. Facebook’s AI unlocks the ability to search photos by what’s in them TECHCRUNCH.COM – Share Initially used to improve the experience for visually impaired members of the Facebook community, the company's Lumos computer vision platform is now.. How Twitter took on Trump's bot army—and won MASHABLE.COM – Share A small change got real people’s voices heard. Why augmented reality will be big in business first WWW.ECONOMIST.COM – Share The technology is coming. But it will take time for consumers to embrace AR With Chrome 57, Progressive Web Apps will appear in Android’s app drawer, settings, more 9TO5GOOGLE.COM – Share   Microsoft Outlook for iOS now supports add-ins like Giphy and Trello WWW.THEVERGE.COM – Share Microsoft is bringing apps and add-ins to its Outlook for iOS email application today. The software giant has partnered with Evernote, Giphy, Nimble, Trello, and Smartsheet to bring the first… Business Ops is the New Sales and Marketing Ops. Why Consolidation is Crucial to Your Bottom Line. MATTERMARK.COM – Share   We’re probably underestimating how quickly electric vehicles will disrupt the oil market WWW.VOX.COM – Share Unpredictably rapid growth happens pretty predictably. Catapulting Europe’s brightest FinTech startups from Singapore to Asia with The FinLab TECH.EU – Share FinTech startups are invited to apply for The FinLab’s accelerator programme in Singapore to help bring their ideas to market. Verizon Restructures Small Business Segment, Launches Verizon Business Markets WWW.CRN.COM – Share   Do you enjoy receiving this? Please share it:     Tweet     Share   Carefully curated by Andy Abramson with Revue If you were forwarded this newsletter and you like it, you can subscribe here.

The Comunicano Communique for Monday February 22nd 2016

The Comunicano Communique

Mobile World Congress started today in Barcelona. Usually I attend that event but the past two years I've skipped in as it's not a "startup" event really. Those take part around the fringes of it. The big stories coming out of it and from around it are really focused on two key forward looking areas. 5G which is as much a land grab as the mobile world has ever seen with patent holding giants like Qualcomm, Ericsson, Nokia and InterDigital all engaged in massive chess games while companies like FaceBook, Apple and Google look at things very differently. And the other story is the Apple vs. The FBI encryptionwar that has to have every despot led country leader just chomping at the bit for the skeleton key to emerge. Hardware and devices, which normally get the noise are less visible but wait a day, for news at Mobile World Congress is like San Francisco weather. Ask me in a minute. All that and more in today's Communique...read on..!!     5G Is a New Frontier for Mobile Carriers and Tech Companies On the outskirts of this sleepy commuter town just south of London, plans are underway to build the fastest cellphone network in the world. The work is being done at the University of Surrey, where a leafy campus is dotted with rundown brutalist-style buildings.     [continue...]     Facebook wants to do to 5G what it has already done to the datacenter Facebook wants telecoms operators and manufacturers to work with it on open designs for the next generation of wireless networks. Facebook's users are increasingly sharing their cat photos, videos, and other updates over wireless rather than wired networks.     [continue...]     Ericsson, Nokia offer contrasting timelines for 5G network upgrades BARCELONA Ericsson (ERICb.ST), the world's top supplier of wireless equipment, said on Monday it expects 150 million users to be on next-generation 5G networks five years from now, steering clear of an industry debate over whether network upgrades could start far earlier.     [continue...]     Dean Bubley's Disruptive Wireless: Google + GSMA announcement on RCS is no gamechanger As widely hinted in recent months, GSMA has tried to re-animate the RCS corpse once more, this time with Google playing the role of Dr Frankenstein. My initial take: Its announcement this morning ( link) is a bit of a damp squib.     [continue...]     Wireless's Future Belongs to VR and Cloud, Some Say The "Extreme Submarine" is a colorful installation at the booth of South Korean telecom operator SK Telecom here at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.     [continue...]     How the U.S. Fights Encryption-and Also Helps Develop It Agencies are developing encryption tools for secure communications, even as the FBI battles for access to an encrypted iPhone Researchers in London last year discovered an online jihadi handbook with instructions on sending encrypted instant messages that would be indecipherable to law enforcement.     [continue...]     Amazon Echo As A Medical Device? My initial impression of the Amazon Echo was that this is simply a Bluetooth speaker that looks like a portable humidifier with a little bit of artificial intelligence. The next thing I discovered is that the Echo always needs to be plugged in for it to work.     [continue...]     96% of Australian hotels offering 'free' Wi-Fi An industry wide survey of 3, 4 and 5 star hotels and serviced apartments by Tourism Accommodation Australia (TAA) has revealed that 96% of Australian hotels surveyed* offer some level of free Wi-Fi to guests.Tourism Accommodation Australia represents the interests of hotels, motels and serviced apartment     [continue...]     Rogers customers reporting WiFi calling is now enabled on the iPhone With the release of iOS 9 on September 16th, Rogers promised to launch WiFi calling, which was a long-awaited feature for iPhone users. However, upon updating the new OS customers were faced with errors when attempting to connect.     [continue...]     Cable could be losing its grip on your set-top box The Federal Communications Commission wants to liberate you from your cable company's set-top box. You probably didn't even realize you needed to be freed from this tyranny. But that's the message from FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, who is on a mission to make sure that consumers have choices when it comes to their set-top box.     [continue...]     The Top 10 Equity Crowdfunding Campaigns of 2015 - Crowdfund Insider Regulation A+ crowdfunding rules were released by the SEC in June of 2015, three years after these rules were initially introduced in the 2012 JOBS Act. The debut of the long-awaited regulations led to a flood of companies rushing to capitalize on this new method of funding.     [continue...]     The Untold Casualties of the Drone War Early one evening in November, Brandon Bryant, a former Air Force officer and perhaps the world's most famous drone program whistleblower, sits on the sofa in a Manhattan hotel suite, writing a letter to President Obama. A grey hoodie is pulled over his baseball cap, the sleeves half-covering a red dragon and Nordic tribal tattoos on his arms and hands.     [continue...]     Journalists under threat, from within Journalism is under threat from all sides. The last few years have been some of the most dangerous in history for journalists around the world; they have been killed, injured and detained in record numbers. But journalists are under threat from within as well, as some media companies seem content to eat their own.     [continue...]     Blogging Ain't Sexy But It's A Marketing Workhorse Blogging ain't sexy but it a rock-solid marketing workhorse. I recently got a pretty good lead from a company that I highlighted in a late-2014 blog post. In many ways, it was a much-needed shot in the arm about my commitment to blogging.     [continue...]     Homer Simpson: Disruptive Innovator On the May 15th broadcast of The Simpsons, Homer Simpson will be broadcast live for three minutes. It's not clear exactly what he'll say or do, but it will take place in real-time. More precisely, the actor who plays Homer, Dan Castellaneta, will be connected to motion-capture technology.     [continue...]     8 Startups Changing How Payments Work Join us in a city near you at Entrepreneur's Accelerate Your Business event series kicking off Feb 23. View cities and dates " Back in the day, making a payment as a business or a consumer was pretty straight-forward. You could pay by cash or check. Then came credit cards followed by debit cards.     [continue...]     The Full Dataset on What VCs are Thinking About Funding in 2016 | Bothsides of the Table Every year at Upfront we try to analyze the venture markets. We try to look at the sources of capital, the valuations, exits and trends. We use this try to draw some context that informs our funding decisions. Of course we fund companies in good markets and bad.     [continue...]

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The Sunday Paper Edition- The Comunicano Communique for January 31st 2016

The Comunicano Communique

Happy Sunday.....Facebook is going to disrupt sports and entertainment as we know it.  Forget TMZ. Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood. ESPNs SportsCenter. Facebook with live, streaming video is now a live new outlet for real time news, sports and entertainment. How are they a news outlet? First, with their move to Stadium, they have set themselves up as a news outlet in sports. By becoming a news outlet that affords them protection in the USA by the First Amendment. Next with photos and now live video, and their ability to aggregate and share content, they are going to be able to use their massive audience delivery platform to be a NETWORK, just like FOX, ABC, the BBC, etc. Third, their source material, at least in the USA can't be blocked, jammed or otherwise intercepted, thanks to the Communications Act of 1934 and 1996 with regard to unlawful intercept and blocking. That means all the money which stadium and arena operators have put into networking their venues so the "fan experience" is able to be one that's both "connected" and "socialized" also means they can't stop the content from leaving the building. As someone who grew up in pro sports and entertainment, Facebook is going to really toss a monkey-wrench/spanner into the whole rights issues game as today, anyone with an iPhone with those sharp and clear add on lenses, a good seat at a game and a steady hand, a cool voice, and knowledge of the sport will be a net caster...... Next is Instagram, another Facebook property. It's become the engine of endorsement. Think commercials, but with the power in the hands of those with followers. Given the whole "never corders" as YipTV founder Mike Tribolet calls them, and their growing up digital without cable tv or landlines, Instagram + Facebook video will be how the sub 20 year old generation of today and tomorrow gets their news, shapes trends and defines "cool." So if today's Communique has a "times are changing" or is all about "Changes", it's only fitting to bring some videos to the forefront about David Bowie, who was so much a driving force of change, not only in music, but as an icon for change in society. David Bowie's passing touched many. As someone who grew up in the many phases and faces of David Bowie era from the 60's to today, to see and hear the comments and performances by so many stars is touching and endearing. I've been collecting these the past few weeks, and have been moved by the performances of Madonna, Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Rick Wakeman and the comments of Jimmy Fallon. Having also seen all of the musical stars perform in their own right, it's always fun to watch and hear artists do cover versions of other artists material. Madonna's may not be safe for the children, or for some workplaces, but between hers and Elton's  and the Boss' comments about going down to Philly on "Greyhound bus" the historical impact of Bowie can't be better expressed....so kick back, and enjoy some good old fashioned "rock and roll" this Sunday morning. Have a view on the news today? Please let me know what you think....Andy Abramson     Expanding Live Video to More People-News From Facebook In December, we started testing the ability for people to share live video on Facebook, and it has been inspiring to see all the ways that people have used Live to connect with their friends and family. Today, we're excited to expand the ability to share live video to everyone in the U.S.     [continue...]     How Instagram Changed the Celeb Crush My back is turned, and I'm probably 12 years old, so the only thing I can imagine them doing is some sort of tight-lipped smooching. Maybe his hands are resting heavily on her shoulders. I'm resigned to my empty little corner of what must be a bed or a couch when I feel Joey's hand reach over and pinch my butt.     [continue...]     Techiest Super Bowl ever: Silicon Valley's stadium girds for the big game Levi's Stadium is one of the most high-powered venues in sports. On Super Bowl Sunday, we'll see if its network can handle the data-storm caused by throngs of smartphone-wielding fanatics.     [continue...]     Media Trends in 2016: Why I'll Be Watching the Underdog Forecasting the future is usually a fool's errand - especially in a fast-changing industry like media. But I recently recruited two brave colleagues to make their 2016 predictions for a new internal GE podcast, Marketing Decoded, and I loved our conversation so much, I wanted to share it.     [continue...]     The Best TV is Korean TV: A Guide to Awesome K-dramas Game of Thrones isn't on, you've finished Orange Is The New Black, and fall TV hasn't kicked in yet. You need something to get obsessed with. Allow me to suggest a Korean drama, or K-drama, as they're called.     [continue...]     Jimmy Fallon Pays Tribute to David Bowie Jimmy takes a moment to remember legendary entertainer David Bowie.     [continue...]     Madonna's Tribute To David Bowie Houston, Texas, January 12, 2016.     [continue...]     Elton John Tribute to David Bowie Private concert at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles Jan 13, 2016 to promote his new LP Wonderful Crazy Night. Elton describing hearing Bowie's 'Space Oddity' for the first time and his desire to have the same producers work with him in the early days.     [continue...]     Bruce Springsteen: David Bowie Tribute (Pittsburgh) Opening night of The River Tour 2016. Bruce performs Rebel Rebel as a tribute to David Bowie. Instagram: dustinjohns Twitter: dustinjohns     [continue...]     Rick Wakeman's Tribute To David Bowie - Life On Mars Rick Wakeman, pianist on the original Life On Mars, performs the song at Radio 2's piano in memory of David Bowie.     [continue...]     Obama Pledges $4 Billion to Computer Science in US Schools President Obama today pledged $4 billion in funding for computer science education in the nation's schools.     [continue...]     The worst thing about driving is about to change If you drive out to visit Disney's Epcot center in Orlando, Florida, you will arrive at one of the biggest parking lots in America. With room for 12,000 cars, it sprawls out over 7 million square feet-about the size of 122 football fields.     [continue...]     Amazon's rent-a-Buddhist-monk service causes controversy in Japan YACHIYO, Japan - In Japan, where communal ties to local Buddhist temples are fading, families have in recent years been able to go online to find a Buddhist monk to perform funerals and other rituals.     [continue...]     Five Leadership Tips During Executive Turnover This week hasn't been short on major corporate changes. On Sunday night, Twitter announced that four senior executives are leaving the company. It's the biggest leadership shakeup since CEO Jack Dorsey took over in order to breathe life back into the social media company.     [continue...]

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The Sunday Edition of the Comunicano Communique for January 24th 2016

The Comunicano Communique

Hello from COLD and CHILLY Miami. You read right. Cold and Chilly. It's only 46 degrees, and I'm staying INSIDE. The Marathon is running outdoors, but before the race began you could feel the chill in the air. Today's top story has to be the winter storm that is wrecking havoc all along the east coast, messing up transportation this weekend and potentially impacting travelers to this week's IT Expo in Fort Lauderdale....You've heard of rain outs in baseball and games getting called because of rain. Well here's one in hockey. The Islanders and Flyers game in Brooklyn was cancelled, DUE TO SNOW.  Ooops . I did it again. I proved YOU CAN make phone calls on Wi-Fi equipped airliners. Have a view on the news today? Please let me know what you think....Andy Abramson     Calling from 35,000 Feet Using Switch and Fly-Fi on Jet Blue JetBlue just became my favorite airline.....I'm flying my way to Fort Lauderdale and next week's IT Expo when I decided to try something that back in 2008, along with now Wall Street Journal Tech Reporter, Joanna Stern, caused quite a stir with AirCell and the GoGo team.     [continue...]     Battered by East Coast Snowstorm, Cities Face Digging Out The day after a blizzard covered New York City with more than 30 inches of snow in some parts, grappling with its sheer volume was the next order of business. At 7 a.m. on Sunday a travel ban imposed by New York State and city officials on Saturday afternoon was lifted.     [continue...]     Flyers-Islanders game postponed due to storm Posted: Saturday, January 23, 2016, 10:55 AM NEW YORK -- The Flyers' scheduled game against the New York Islanders Saturday night at the Barclay's Center in Brooklyn has been postponed. No makeup date was immeditely announced, but the team planned to go through with its morning skate at 11:30 a.m.     [continue...]     Shaquille O'Neal surprises Florida teens, officer with game of basketball | Fox News A former NBA superstar surprised a Florida police officer and a group of teenagers days after the officer was captured on video responding to a call of children playing basketball too loudly in the street and instead of breaking up the game, the officer joined them.     [continue...]     Amazon brings personalized sports updates, movie theater details to Echo - GeekWire Updates to Amazon's Alexa virtual assistant are coming in thick and fast, with Jeopardy! showing up on the Echo smart speaker last week and the ability to start your car coming in the future. This week, Amazon announced a couple entertainment-related abilities coming to the Echo.     [continue...]     LinkNYC's free Wi-Fi could threaten cellular carriers with Passpoint roaming, speedy connections As Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and others work to bolster their cellular networks in the heart of the Big Apple, they are now facing another competitor: New York City, which this week began offering public access to its small but growing network of LinkNYC-branded public Wi-Fi hotspots.     [continue...]     Google's free Wi-Fi launched at Mumbai Central Station Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu Friday launched a free high-speed public Wi-Fi service in collaboration with technology giant Google at Mumbai Central, the first station in the country to get such facility. Terming the facility as "world class", Prabhu said around 100 busiest stations across the country will be brought under the free public Wi-Fi service by this year-end, making it the world's largest such project.     [continue...]     How Facebook's Plan To Give The World Free Mobile Internet Went So Wrong On a Tuesday afternoon in May 2010, a Facebook program manager named Sid Murlidhar published a blog post announcing "another way for people to access Facebook anytime, anywhere." It was called 0.Facebook, literally a URL you could type into your mobile phone's browser that called up a stripped-down, quick-loading, text-only version of Facebook - accessible only as long as you were using a participating mobile operator.     [continue...]     FreeBee Data - Verizon's Sponsored Data Service is Out Verizon, the largest mobile operator in the US has unveiled its own version of Sponsored Data service, dubbed FreeBee Data, joining the likes of T-Mobile and AT&T. FreeBee Data will help businesses drive better engagement with mobile content, said Verizon. The service will be offered in two models, FreeBee Data 360 and FreeBee Data.     [continue...]     Live messaging is the future of online sales, says Grabble app boss Daniel Murray, co-founder of Grabble, an online shopping app dubbed the 'tinder for fashion', predicts 2016 will be the year for personalised services such as instant messaging for the 'busy or bored'. Grabble, an iPhone app that lets people browse the latest collections from fashion retailers such as ASOS and Zara, launched in 2014.     [continue...]     Dubai unveiling for Scots carbon fibre wheelchair A SCOTTISH business is to demonstrate a revolutionary new wheelchair at a leading Arab health exhibition in Dubai this week that it hopes will drive its exports in a key international health market.     [continue...]     Certify Releases its Third Annual SpendSmart™ Report on Current Business Travel Spending TrendsCertify Press Release     Certify Releases its Third Annual SpendSmart™ Report on Current Business Travel Spending Trends PORTLAND, MAINE, January 21, 2015-Certify, a leading cloud-based travel and expense management software provider, today announced the results of its third annual SpendSmart™ report for the fourth quarter and full year 2015.     [continue...]     CEO Advice from a New CEO - The Biz Stone Collection Usually advice for new CEOs comes from those who have made a career for themselves out of those three letters. I'm new to this particular C-Job having taken it on officially when Ben and I founded Jelly. I felt the time was right after working alongside CEOs over the last fifteen years or more.     [continue...]     This is how we will say goodbye to the rock-and-roll generation It was one of those waves. David Bowie died on a Sunday. Seven days later, it was Dale "Buffin" Griffin from Mott the Hoople and proto-rapper Clarence "Blowfly" Reid. Then Glenn Frey of the Eagles the day after that. And here's the thing about waves: Some are bigger than others, but they never stop coming.     [continue...]     On Wine. A tragedy. On wine. A Tragedy I'm a wine insider. I've met, or known, most of the big names in wine today; and from time to time, have had the honor to collaborate with them. I run a large-ish conference about wine communications.     [continue...]

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The Comunicano Communique-The Sunday Paper Edition for January 17th 2016

The Comunicano Communique

Sunday is the day I look more for the non-news articles and stories that make you think. Learn. Discover. Sure I toss in the occasional "fact" based news story but Sunday's are lazy days. Lean back. Relax. So today you're going to find what I call "The Sunday Paper." Back when I was a kid on Sundays, I would race downstairs for the Philadelphia Inquirer, pull the sports section for Dad, kill off the classified sections (want ads, car ads, for sale ads) rummage through the inserted circulars then give those to mom, and take the rest of the paper upstairs to read. News. Entertainment. Society. After I got through the news sections (National, Local, Community) dad and I would trade sections. I got the sports, he got the news,  and by 930 am on a Sunday I was done and out the door. That's the idea of these stories, plus something new.  Interesting web sites for you to know about.... Have a view on the news today? Please let me know what you think....Andy Abramson     SITES YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT I love MUSIC. For me, music is all about discovery. Back in the day of the "Sunday Paper" I would pull the circulars from Korvetts, Sam Goody and Peaches, figure out who had which new album the cheapest, and convince dad to drive to the store so I could score the latest LP. That was then. Today, we have iTunes, Pandora and Spotify and unless you want some vintage vinyl, or an out of print CD, you likely never go to the record store.. Likely, if you're a music junkie you know about SoundCloud. But do you know aboutBandCamp? Are you tuned in to the best DJ's from around the world on Mixcloud? These are just two sites that are where what's really happening in music is taking shape.     My Phone Notifications Took Over My Life. So I Turned Them All Off. This story is part of a 10-piece series for which HuffPost staffers agreed to experiment with improving their health and decreasing their stress on the job. It's also part of our monthlong "Work Well" initiative focusing on thriving in the workplace . Notifications: Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.     [continue...]     Why Entrepreneurs Shouldn't Waste Time On Personal Branding Back in 1997, marketing guru Tom Peters wrote in Fast Company, "We are CEOs of our own companies: Me, Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You." At the time, this struck me as liberating. In 2016, it doesn't.     [continue...]     The 11 digital tools I use every week as Head of Product User research and usability testing + UX TawiPay is a start-up on its way to the product-market fit, developing a comparison platform for international money transfer services. Our target users are expatriates, migrants, international students, etc. As Head of Product, one of my key role is to understand our users and to translate their needs into an easy-to-use and highly valuable product.     [continue...]     Among U.S. airlines, WiFi offered on 78% of available seat miles: Travel Weekly U.S. airlines continue to lead the world in in-flight WiFi coverage. Meanwhile, carriers throughout the globe are making connectivity in the sky more common. So says the Annual Global State of In-Flight WiFi report, authored by Routehappy, which ranks flight amenities worldwide.     [continue...]     Accenture points to uneasy consumer IoT adoption - Rethink IoT It looks like there will be a difficult few years ahead for consumer-focused IoT products. Accenture's Digital Consumer Survey polled 28,000 consumers in 28 countries about their use of consumer tech, and found that the declining demand for smartphones, tablets and laptops would not be offset by the rise in consumer IoT devices - as the next generation of devices will not initially grow quickly enough to replace the losses in today's consumer tech.     [continue...]     The New York Library has just released a treasure trove of incredible archive images to the Internet Searching for a 14th Century manuscript for a school report? How about an old baseball photo for your stash of sports memorabilia? You might try the New York Public Library's Digital Collections. Recently, the library made more than 187,000 digitized, public-domain items more easily accessible in the highest resolution available.     [continue...]     How Snapchat is getting serious about advertising Snapchat wants to get serious about advertising-and it's looking for some much needed help. The media company wants to build ad technology to automate its ad sales, and as part of the effort, Snapchat is looking at possible ad tech acquisitions to help bolster its in-house team, according to multiple sources.     [continue...]     10 Fast-Growing B2B Startups That Might Just Transform Your Business This Year As each new year begins, businesses search for ways to be more productive and successful than ever. Often this means rethinking processes and either adding resources or streamlining existing resources to save money. For many it can also mean finding new business partners to help them grow.     [continue...]     Tenacity One of the things I admire most in companies and their leaders is tenacity. I don't mean sticking with a failed idea for too long. That is a mistake I see a lot of entrepreneurs make in the Seed and Series A stages. That does nobody any good.     [continue...]     6 Machine Learning, AI, Analytics Trends To Watch - InformationWeek Big data and analytics are set for a big 2016, as more devices and types of software are connected and exchange information. Here are some considerations for businesses as they look to maximize the value of all this data.     [continue...]     26 great people spearheading change in tech investment Weary of waiting for change in the tech industry, these impatient instigators are making changes to what receives investment. Research shows diversity is good for business - take your pick from Harvard Business Review , Scientific American , McKinsey & Company and many more. Yet fundamental change in any industry can take time.     [continue...]     Jarich: Crowdsourced trends in telecom for 2016 Congratulations! It's just about mid-January, which means you made it safely through the holiday season, survived CES (if you went) and endured countless 2016 predictions pieces. This year, I held off on putting out my own predictions for a simple reason: I know a bunch of people who can do a better job than I can.     [continue...]     The Quick & Dirty: The Anti-Trends for 2016 or "Enough is Enough" I really wasn't going to do this piece: the standard trends piece for the new year. Last year I wrote about the distractions we can do without in 2015, and this year I decided to stay out of the game of predicting anything for 2016.     [continue...]     USA's Best and Worst Tippers: American Tipping Habits Last November, I spent the month in Europe traveling to some of the continent's most famous cities. Besides googling the normal amount of words like bathroom, check, wine, please and thank you in whichever foreign language needed at the time, I also searched for that country's tipping etiquette.     [continue...]

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The Comunicano Communique for Monday December 28th 2015

The Comunicano Communique

It's Monday, and I have to wonder how many people are really back to work versus being "at work" this week. Well, your trusty curator has been sniffing out the stories and making news myself in CommPro.Biz and realizing how great it is to not be traveling this holiday season.  Today we'll look at the best commercials and ads from 2015--love the Nike spot and the Atlantic spots--, read a piece about celebrity endorsements-good or bad, a rant from pal Dean Bubley and much, much more. Have a view on the news today? Please let me know what you think....Andy Abramson     2016 Predictions from An Early Adoptive Comms Pro - CommPRO.biz Editor's Note: CommPRO is reaching out to our community, asking the c-suite for 2016 predictions. We welcome your commentary. Please email By Andy Abramson, CEO/Founder, Comunicano, Inc. As the year comes to an end, and as our minds wander and look ahead to 2016, one cannot reflect on what's happened in 2015 to envision what the upcoming year may look like.     [continue...]     Zuckerberg compares free internet services to public libraries and hospitals Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has written a forceful defense of the company's plans to offer limited, free internet access in India, comparing Facebook's Free Basics service with libraries and public hospitals.     [continue...]     Amazon Shattered Records with an an Insanely Successful Holiday Season Amazon reports that it had an absolutely massive holiday season, the biggest ever in its 21-year history, hitting numerous milestones. The Seattle-based company added 3 million new Amazon Prime subscribers in the third week of December alone, buoyed by free two-day shipping-only two- hours in some areas.     [continue...]     Amazon Prime adds more than 3M new members in 1 week at peak of shopping season - GeekWire Amazon said tonight that it added more than 3 million new Amazon Prime members globally in just one week at the height of the holiday shopping season this year. It's the latest sign of growth for the company's $99/year free-shipping and video-streaming subscription service.     [continue...]     Mobile internet is now just the internet The Christmas holidays are the time of year when different generations of the family gather around the dinner table. So it's a perfect opportunity for a spot of tech anthropology. Here's how to do it. At some point, insert into the conversation a contemporary topic about which most people have strong opinions but know relatively little.     [continue...]     Dean Bubley's Disruptive Wireless: New Year Rant: 10 Awful Tech-Industry Terms to Stop Using in 2016     In the spirit of the holiday season and New Year, this is another list about 2016. There's a bunch of words and concepts used in the technology industry that make you look like a fool, or at least lazy and sloppy. They're often meaningless, duplicitously-used to "misframe" an argument, or just generally cringe-worthy.     [continue...]     10 of the Best Ads of 2015 For all the fear surrounding ad blocking, there are still a lot of people watching ads. Consider Geico's Unskippable pre-roll ad: It currently has more than 8.1 million views on YouTube. Or look to Android's ad featuring unlikely animal friends: It became the most shared ad of all time, with more than 6.4 million shares.     [continue...]     2016's Biggest Social Media Trends for Business This year, social media adoption hit a new high. Around the world, there are now more than 2 billion active social media users (growing at a steady pace of 25 percent a year). This means more people now regularly use social media than the entire populations of the United States and China, combined.     [continue...]     Unfortunate Celebrity Endorsements of 2015-They're No Slam Dunk! Many people may think that celebrity sponsorships are the holy grail of marketing, but are they really worth it? While stars can boost a brand's image temporarily, they can also be a horrible match for a company in the long term. As a result, many consumers end up viewing the brand as inauthentic-or worse!     [continue...]     6 Ways to Quit Bullet Points with Style 6 simple yet stylish design alternatives to the hated bullet point - to help you step up your presentation game.     [continue...]

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The Comunicano Communique Sunday Edition for December 27th 2015

The Comunicano Communique

The Sunday Edition of The Comunicano Communique is here. The idea behind the "Sunday Edition" is to curate more feature focused articles that can help you grow, think about how your business is run and identify trends in the world of business and technology. While the weekday editions tend to include more "hard news" the Sunday Edition will offer a greater mix of insight, perspective and opinion. I hope you enjoy it and, like the Sunday paper of days gone by, you read leisurely, without the pressures of the workday. Have a view on the news today? Please let me know what you think....Andy Abramson     How To Focus: 5 Research-Backed Secrets To Concentration A question a lot of us are struggling with these days is "how to focus." Concentration seems hard. Why does everyone joke about having ADD? There's a reason... Ed Hallowell, former professor at Harvard Medical School and bestselling author of Driven to Distraction, says we have "culturally generated ADD."     [continue...]     6 Reasons Why Bigger Is Not Better In Your Startup Many passionate entrepreneurs fight to add more features into their new products and services, assuming that more function will make the solution more appealing to more customers. In reality, more features will more likely make the product confusing and less usable to all.     [continue...]     The Freelancer Generation: Why Startups And Enterprises Need To Pay Attention Gone are the days of the 40-hour work week that kept us at work eight hours a day (I find that most startup founders or business owners in Silicon Valley work 50-60 hours a week). Freelancing is becoming the accepted norm of the startup world.     [continue...]     Drone jammers to guard top events The system can detect, track and disrupt the controls of any rogue drones (Christopher Furlong) SOPHISTICATED drone-jamming technology is to be deployed at major public and sporting events in the UK following a successful trial at last month's Remembrance Sunday parade, The Sunday Times can reveal.     [continue...]     Verizon Rumoured to Launch Premium Go90 with Zero-Rated Streaming Video Service Verizon will introduce a paid version of its Go90 video streaming service in the first quarter next year, according to Barclays in its report to its trading clients about Verizon. The new service will be similar to what T-Mobile is offering via its 'Binge On', allowing subscribers to enjoy unlimited video streaming without eating into their monthly data allocation.     [continue...]     2016: The year the freight industry goes online Uber was founded just six years ago. It's come a long way since. In its latest funding round, Uber was valued at $68 billion, more than Netflix and Twitter combined. But industries change slowly. With all the hype, Uber still just has 13% market penetration in New York, with traditional taxi companies responding by also going online.     [continue...]     The WiFi Scam That Could Steal Your Credit Card Info Hotel WiFi is one of the most important amenities these days. But it can also create serious headaches for travelers. Josh Roberts of SmarterTravel.com weighs in on the newest WiFi scam and how you can protect yourself.     [continue...]     Charities target social media influencers Charities are turning to online stars with large YouTube audiences, following an approach increasingly used by big brands to reach new donors and volunteers. The Make-a-Wish Foundation, for children with life-threatening illnesses, DigDeep, the non-p     [continue...]     11 Bitcoin Startups That Went Bust in 2015 This year was a time of further consolidation for the bitcoin industry. After what you might call a 'Wild West' period (when it seemed everyone with the urge was setting up their own bitcoin-based service), the space is now rapidly becoming more dominated by bigger, more professional outfits, often with serious funding to get them off to a solid start.     [continue...]     Top 10 industry highlights of 2015     As we step into 2016, ClickZ presents the most important news in digital marketing over the past year, such as Periscope's debut and Google's "Mobilegeddon." Looking back, 2015 was an exciting time to be in the digital marketing industry, with so many technology advances and product updates, as well as mergers and acquisitions.     [continue...]     The 25 Must-Download Apps of 2015 It's easy to get stuck in a rut using the same ol' apps day in and day out -- or maybe you're hoarding so many random Bejeweled Blitzes and fancy weather widgets you can't see the forest for the trees anymore. Either way, which new apps are actually worth a trip to the iTunes store?     [continue...]     A Holiday Perspective On Technology And Consumerism Holiday shopping, long a staple in American life, has undergone significant change over the past half century. The "Miracle on 34th Street" post-war tradition of heading downtown to Macy's or Bloomingdale's has evolved from quaintly old-fashioned to downright anachronistic.     [continue...]     Columbia House Counting On Vinyl Resurgence For Its Revival Millennials can be forgiven for not knowing about Columbia House because by the time they grew up this company had practically lost all of its importance that it held on to for decades. This mail-order service actually went bankrupt over the summer primarily because nobody wants to buy discs anymore when digital downloads and streaming have made life so much easier.     [continue...]     5 ways developers can exploit geospatial tech in 2016 Since the rise of geospatial technology, applications like Facebook, Uber, and Grindr, have enabled users to engage with their surroundings to connect with friends, book a room, or set up a date. But the application of geospatial technologies is really in its infancy.     [continue...]     Mark Cuban: I Don't Take Risks But I Sure Can Dance I've considered Mark Cuban a friend since September 1997, when I flew from New York to New Orleans to attend a broadcast news industry conference. At the event - the Radio Television News Directors Association convention - I came across a exhibitor then known as AudioNet.     [continue...]

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