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The Comunicano Communique for Monday March 28th 2016

The Comunicano Communique

Good Morning. It's a Monday and the stories today are going to help you do better business.  Take the changes going on in Social Media. Instagram. Snapchat. Facebook. News about each of them leads things off. Then there's growth. Netflix and Spotify both are changing the ways we consume entertainment. All that and more in today's Comunicano Communique. By the way, don't miss the API event of the summer in Las Vegas. "All About The API"......     Snapchat users now spend 25 to 30 minutes every day on the app, and it's trying to attract the TV money because of it Snapchat's photos and videos are famous for disappearing after a few seconds, but its users are spending as much as a half-hour every day playing with its app. The company is touting the time users spend on the app in its efforts to lure big brand advertising dollars away from television.     [continue...]     Instagram is changing - here's how to make sure your posts still get seen Rumour has it that Instagram 's new algorithm will be dropping tomorrow, resulting in a big change to the way posts are displayed. Rather than presenting users with a chronological list of posts, the algorithm will sort posts based on "the likelihood you'll be interested in the content, your relationship with the person posting, and the timeliness of the post".     [continue...]     Facebook's Safety Check malfunctions after Pakistan bombing Facebook activated its Safety Check tool to help people stay in touch after a deadly terrorist attack Sunday in Pakistan, but the feature strayed far afield from the carnage. Safety Check automatically sends Facebook users in an affected area a note asking if they're safe.     [continue...]     Spotify hits 30 million subscribers Spotify has 30 million paid subscribers, CEO Daniel Ek announced today in a tweet. This is the first subscriber update Spotify has given out since it announced it had 20 million subscribers days before Apple Music hit the market last June, and shows the increased competition has had little to no effect on Spotify's growth.     [continue...]     Netflix's Grand, Daring, Maybe Crazy Plan to Conquer the World Late into the night on St. Patrick's Day, Netflix hosted a makeshift "war room" at the company's Silicon Valley headquarters. Engineers and product wranglers sat loosely around a long, U-shaped formation of desks, monitoring diagnostics and Hipchat conversations. Linguists and translators patrolled a ring of television sets to check subtitles and dubs in a dozen languages.     [continue...]     Google To Open A Dozen New Data Centers To Take On AWS Google is planning to open 12 new data centers over the next 12-18 months. This has come just weeks after Google nabbed Spotify and Apple as its cloud customers. The huge cloud push by Google could see Google Cloud become its biggest growth engine a few years down the line.     [continue...]     Forget the Small iPhone. Is Apple Going Charger-Free? Apple might be ready to ditch some of its charger cords by 2017 with a plan to charge next-generation smartphones through the air. Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who has a track record of solid Apple hardware predictions, told 9to5Mac over the weekend that he thinks next year's iPhones will charge wirelessly.     [continue...]     Enterprise IoT rollouts still need outside assistance, but new software can help The industrial Internet of Things doesn't just show up in a box at the door ready to use. It takes integration to deploy IoT systems and get the maximum benefit. That's because IoT isn't one thing, but many linked together in pursuit of a business objective.     [continue...]     Japan's NTT to Buy Dell Systems for $3.055 Billion     NTT Data Corp., a unit of Japan's former telephone monopoly, agreed to buy technology services businesses from Dell for $3.055 billion. The acquisition was announced by the unit of Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp. in a statement to the Tokyo Stock Exchange Monday. The company didn't give a date for when it will acquire the Dell units.     [continue...]     The Inside Story of How Oculus Cracked the Impossible Design of VR Palmer Luckey has never used an Oculus Rift. That's what the founder of Oculus keeps telling himself as he unboxes the commercial version of the virtual reality system he invented. Opens the package. Takes out the few elements-the headset, the single cable that connects it to a computer, the small cylindrical infrared camera that tracks it in space.     [continue...]     Searching For Google CEO Sundar Pichai, The Most Powerful Tech Giant You've Never Heard Of The Consumer Electronics Show, universally known as CES, is a riot of technology. Held annually in the bleak Nevada desert town of Las Vegas, it is a great blinking din, jammed with screens, speakers, automobiles, whirling drones, blooping robots, e-cigs and e-cigs and ever more e-cigs, plus some 170,000 people bumping around inside a disease-ridden convention center.     [continue...]     Why the Most Talented People Copy - ReadThink (by HubSpot) We have an insatiable thirst for the new. In business, we want new products, new campaigns, and new ways of reaching consumers. The shiny object syndrome isn't just about being easily distracted. It's also the result of thinking that what is new - and seemingly unique - is better.     [continue...]

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The Comunicano Communique for Friday March 4th 2016

The Comunicano Communique

It's no surprise that this week the Amazon Echo is the darling of the news this week or that my pals at Telzio announced their start of integration with the Echo. Now we're seeing more and more reasons coming out about how voice is the next UI, of new line extensions to Echo. As someone who has been using the Echo since its beta stage, I've seen first hand how it makes my life easier. I'm turning lights on and off with the sound of my voice, ordering items from Amazon, scheduling an Uber. Over the summer while in Portugal, "Alexa" was keeping me abreast of the weather, the time and I was even able to stream Pandora due to the way Amazon has structured their network. The new additions to the line up are interesting, but what is really neat about the Echo platform is the voice control. If Amazon really opens up the Echo API, developers to include it in their apps, all of a sudden we may finally be free of the keys....Speaking of which, don't miss the API event of the summer in Las Vegas. "All About The API"......     Voice: The Next UI Layer Lately, I've been obsessed with the power of voice. Not voice as in self-expression (though important!), and not voice as in voice calls or - worse! - voicemail, but rather voice as the next major UI layer for software in the living room and beyond.     [continue...]     Amazon's Echo Dot, Tap, Alexa equate to Amazon Everywhere strategy Amazon is putting Alexa, the brains of Amazon Echo, in more places via the Tap and Echo Dot and now has formed a comprehensive smart home strategy that links up with e-commerce. The Echo was Amazon's surprise hit last year. Simply put, Echo has become the platform Amazon will use to jump further into the Internet of things.     [continue...]     Amazon's Ingenious Plot to Take Over Your Living Room When Amazon released the Echo in late 2014, people didn't quite know what to make of it. It looks like a speaker, but it listens to your voice, talks back, and can play songs, radio broadcasts, or podcasts on demand. It can also do some other, seemingly unrelated tasks, like telling jokes, checking your calendar, and buying stuff on Amazon.com.     [continue...]     Meet tech's new odd couple: the CIO and CMO When Akamai was laying the foundation for its digital business back in 2010, CMO Brad Rinklin had a relationship with IT, but it wasn't exclusive. Because the content delivery network provider had no CIO, Rinklin might call on IT for help tweaking a website or deploying a sales-enablement tool, but the marketing group often turned to cloud tools or outside service providers for the heavy lifting.     [continue...]     Instagram starts blocking 'add me' deeplinking for Snapchat, Telegram Facebook-owned photo-sharing platform Instagram is flexing its platform muscle by shutting down 'add me' deeplinking for some other social media services within its apps. Previously Instagram users were able to include 'add me'/'follow me' links in a website section on their profile page, directly linking out to any other profiles they had on third party social services' apps.     [continue...]     Facebook Plans To Open Messenger To Publishers At F8 In April Mobile messaging apps are usurping social networks as the shiny new platform through which publishers can distribute their content. Now Facebook is looking to join the fray with its own uber-popular messaging app. Facebook Messenger will soon let publishers distribute their content automatically through the social network's messaging service, according to three people familiar with the company's plans.     [continue...]     Spotify becomes first music platform to integrate with Facebook Messenger Music has arrived on Messenger. Facebook announced today that its mobile messaging platform now integrates with Spotify. The new feature, which is rolling out to iOS and Android users, is the first music integration for Facebook Messenger and allows people to share their Spotify songs or playlists directly within a chat box.     [continue...]     Yahoo exploring sale of $1 billion-$3 billion in 'non-core assets': CFO Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O) is exploring the sale of $1 billion to $3 billion in patents, property and other "non-core assets," its chief financial officer said on Thursday. Yahoo CFO Ken Goldman told the crowd at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference that a committee created to explore alternatives to the company's plan to spin off its core business is looking at quick sales of assets.     [continue...]     B&N is Shutting Down One of Its Top Three Digital Blunders on 15 March Barnes & Noble announced a slew of of closures on Thursday, including Nook Video, the UK Nook Store, and what had to have been one of B&N's greatest digital mistakes. B&N sent out an email on Thursday which informed users that the Nook's own branded app store was going away: Effective March 15, 2016, NOOK will no longer offer third party applications (Apps) for sale from the NOOK Store™.     [continue...]     Life and death in the App Store As last year began, the app developer Pixite held its company retreat at a converted Old West movie set outside of Palm Springs. They spent a few days dreaming about the future while eating barbecue and sipping whisky in the sun. But 2015 was not a good year, and by last month the company's dreams had narrowed to survival.     [continue...]

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The Comunicano Communique for Thursday March 3rd 2016

The Comunicano Communique

Another Slice of Life Time....Yesterday local L.A. startup, Telzio announced details of their efforts that integrate their telephone service with the red the red-hot Amazon Echo. Seems their timing was spot-on as today Amazon has two new devices that are Echo focused. Check out pal Rich Tehrani's account on just how exciting what Telzio is doing is....On other fronts, Los Angeles folks will appreciate the flat rate Uber Eats delivery for $5.00 that starts today. As someone who has used Uber Eats the last few months, no service delivers better, faster or cheaper...Also, news about Virtual Reality, some business tips, and more...so read away..     Telzio Customers Can Now Talk To Their Amazon Echo From Anywhere and Alexa, the Voice of The Echo, Talks Back Telzio has announced the successful integration between its cloud­based, business grade Voice­Over­IP telephone service and the Amazon Echo. The Echo is Amazon's Internet of Things (IoT) speaker device that reacts to voice commands like answering questions, playing music and controlling other smart devices, and Telzio customers can now talk to their Echo from anywhere.     [continue...]     Amazon's Echo Dot lets you put Alexa inside any speaker Alexa, meet my friends Bang and Olufsen Amazon's newest hardware product might look like a compressed version of the tall Echo speaker, but its place in your home will likely be very different. Today the company unveiled Echo Dot, which is basically an Echo without the big speaker housing.     [continue...]     Slack begins rolling out voice calls on Chrome and desktop Voice calls are coming to Slack, and they begin rolling out in beta today. Testing will start in Slack's desktop apps and in Chrome. Someone with administrative privileges has to enable them, but once they're turned on, a phone icon should appear throughout the app, allowing anyone to start a call with a specific person or with a group.     [continue...]     Now even your streaming TV and music will come in bundles like cable TV "There's only two ways I know of to make money: Bundling and unbundling." That quote was uttered by Jim Barksdale, then CEO of Netscape just before the company launched one of the most successful IPOs of all time and ushered in the first dot com boom.     [continue...]     Uber's GrubHub killer is finally in the US: The inside story on Uber's big bet on food Ordering food from UberEATS used to be a limited experience. You had seven choices during the lunch hour, not the full restaurant menus you'd see on competitors like Seamless or Postmates. Uber offered just one salad, one sandwich, a juice, a pasta dish, or other entrees depending on the day.     [continue...]     Uber now lets you avoid expense reports on business trips Uber is making it easier for you to use its service for business. The company has launched an auto-expense feature that's part of your business profile. With this feature, you don't need to worry about paperwork - Uber will automate the process and send a ride receipt to your expense provider.     [continue...]     Intel Eyes Augmented Reality Headset Intel is reportedly developing an augmented reality headset based on the company's RealSense 3D technology. Citing anonymous sources, the Wall Street Journal suggested the California tech titan will compete with products like Google Glass and Microsoft HoloLens. Unlike virtual reality, which places the user into a computer-generated scene, augmented reality (or mixed reality) superimposes data onto the real world via a headset display.     [continue...]     How to Stay Sane on a Business Trip A specific condition afflicts business travelers: Call it hotel gloom, an amorphous melancholy that seems to thrive in the perfectly serviceable hotel rooms of the $200-a-night-and-under variety. Al Jackson has experienced it many times. Mr. Jackson, 38, a stand-up comedian who has been touring for more than a decade, has stayed in Red Roof Inns and Wyndham hotels across this land.     [continue...]     2016 phishing trends report reveals new tricks, targets Business Email Compromise (BEC) is the type of spear phishing attack that saw the biggest increase in 2015. Here are 3 ways that the report says companies make it easy for scammers to pose as executives: Posting full names, titles and email addresses for executive team members on company websites Posting personal names, email addresses, and direct numbers in accounting/billing contact information Using consistent schemes for email addressing How many of these does your company do?     [continue...]     What Startup Accelerators Really Do The well-advertised boom in startups and venture capital in recent years has coincided with the emergence of new players in startup ecosystems. One of these, startup accelerators, has received a great deal of attention but also little scrutiny. Moreover, they are commonly misunderstood or mistakenly lumped in with other institutions supporting early-stage startups, such as incubators, angel investors, and early-stage venture capitalists.     [continue...]     Make Your Inbox Suck Less With These Tools Make Your Inbox Suck Less With These Tools When was the last time you heard someone say, "I love cleaning out my inbox"? Exactly. But, since we can't live without email, we might as well make the process as optimized and painless as possible.     [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 Comunicano Communique for Thursday January 28th, 2016

The Comunicano Communique

Check out today's stories.......lots of good reading that's thought provoking. And not ONE about the Trump-Fox feud. You can read that everywhere else.  Lots of really well written pieces on a variety of subjects that are relevant to many of you in different ways. Start Up? Got a few. Growing a business.. Yup there's some. Tools? Sure got 'em. What's coming up from the big players? They're there...and much, much more...so have a read, over coffee--yes, that's included. Have a view on the news today? Please let me know what you think....Andy Abramson     F.C.C. Proposes Changes in Set-Top Box Market WASHINGTON - The cable set-top box, long a scourge of consumers and a moneymaker for cable companies, appears set for a makeover. The Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday announced a proposal that would make it much easier for subscribers of cable and satellite television to pick the boxes they use to watch programming.     [continue...]     Aussie startup signs US deal worth up to $100 million Chief executive and co-founder of Unlockd Matt Berriman in New York. Photo: Adam Lerner A Melbourne startup which offers a "freemium​" ad supported phone plan has signed a deal with Boost Mobile in the United States which it expects to be worth over $100 million in revenue.     [continue...]     (Un)folding a virtual journey with Google Cardboard A year and a half ago we introduced Google Cardboard, a simple cardboard viewer that anyone can use to experience mobile virtual reality (VR). With just Cardboard and the smartphone in your pocket, you can travel to faraway places and visit imagined worlds.     [continue...]     Google reveals Cardboard virtual reality numbers, and VR films are the surprise winner Just one day after we highlighted Google's apparent interest in creating virtual reality hardware, the company came out on Wednesday to refocus attention on Google Cardboard by revealing some numbers around its adoption rate.     [continue...]     Mexico is having the grown-up conversation about marijuana that every country should have Mexican lawmakers this week launched a national debate on a topic that officials around the world have been struggling to address: marijuana legalization. Over the next three weeks, the Mexican Congress is holding a series of public hearings (link in Spanish) on whether and how to regulate marijuana.     [continue...]     Apple likely to debut iPad Air 3 at March event; new Apple Watch models revealed Apple is planning to introduce new iPad hardware at an event in mid-March, according to sources, with the most likely device being a new iPad Air. This new iPad with a 9.7-inch screen, presumably to be called the "iPad Air 3," will be launched alongside the a new 4-inch iPhone known as the " iPhone 5se" and a series of new Apple Watch models.     [continue...]     Siri, Alexa and Other Virtual Assistants Put to the Test WHEN I asked Alexa earlier this week who was playing in the Super Bowl, she responded, somewhat monotonously, " Super Bowl 49's winner is New England Patriots." "Come on, that's last year's Super Bowl," I said. "Even I can do better than that." At the time, I was actually alone in my living room.     [continue...]     New cloud storage options for Office mobile and Office Online - Office Blogs Today, we're making Office even easier for customers to use with cloud storage providers by adding real-time co-authoring with Office Online for documents stored in partner cloud services, extending our Office for iOS integration to all partners in the CSPP, and enabling integration between Outlook.com and cloud storage providers Dropbox and Box.     [continue...]     Box, Dropbox users can now edit Office documents together in real time Business users who rely on cloud storage providers like Dropbox and Box now have some improved tools in their collaboration arsenal, thanks to a set of integrations that Microsoft announced Wednesday. Starting Wednesday, Office Online users can work in real time on documents, spreadsheets and presentations shared inside Box, Dropbox, Citrix ShareFile and Egnyte.     [continue...]     Why are the elderly ignored by the tech industry? The tech industry needs to stop being so dunderheaded about technology for the elderly. For the past decade, the industry has been laser-focused on transforming life and work for one rocketing market segment: 25-year-olds with money. It has routinely avoided, underestimated or remained ignorant about the world's other rocketing market segment: old people and the family members who take care of them.     [continue...]     The end of app stores as we know them - Inside Intercom Uber isn't just killing the taxi industry. Its relentless approach to distribution and scale is also putting a nail in the coffin of app stores. Smart companies like Uber are rewriting the app distribution rulebook. Instead of being a bland icon lost amongst millions of others,... Read more     [continue...]     The Other Kind of Traction You Need to Get Funded One of the earliest lessons a new VC learns is about building consensus within a firm. No matter what the voting structure is in your partnership, I think every VC can think of a deal that they got completely excited about, only to have the deal crash and burn when they showed it to the rest of their team.     [continue...]     Coffee may not be as bad for your heart as you might think Drinking coffee regularly does not cause the heart to beat more, a new study has found. The findings go against previous studies which suggested that drinking coffee raises the heart rate, and have prompted the research team to call for clinical recommendations against caffeine to be reconsidered.     [continue...]     Food Testing Start-Up Looks to Stand Out With a New Wrinkle Nothing unnerves consumers more and drives them away from a restaurant, food or beverage faster than a flurry of headlines about people being sickened by dreaded bacteria like E. coli or listeria. Just ask Chipotle Mexican Grill, which has been scrambling to recover from a multistate E.     [continue...]     Every Imaginable Damn Startup Podcast Reviewed As a long-distance commuter, I listen to a LOT of podcasts. And given the explosion in podcasts on tech startups, it's hard to keep track of them all. There really isn't a good discovery source, although Product Hunt and The Podcast Wire come closest. So here's the survey we've been missing.     [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 Wednesday January 13th 2016

The Comunicano Communique

OOOH is today a news junkies kind of day. Lots of facts, thoughts, insight on many parts of the Internet online, connected and engaged economy. We'll start off with two events you need to know about. First is Google I/O and the second is Mobile Sunday at Mobile World Congress. Both are always high volume, major networking and lots of learning events, even if the learning is simply who you need to deal with this year. Moving on, you have some news stories and features that go deeper into what's going on...so READ ON. Have a view on the news today? Please let me know what you think....Andy Abramson     Google's I/O 2016 conference announced for May 18th-20th Google CEO Sundar Pichai just announced that the company's annual I/O developer's conference has been scheduled for May 18th through the 20th. The venue this year is a bit different than last time; it's Mountain View's own Shoreline Ampitheatre. In a tweet, Pichai said this will bring Google's major event back "to neighborhood where it all started 10 yrs ago."     [continue...]     Get ready, Barcelona: Tech.eu is co-organising Mobile Sunday this year; mark 21 February on your calendar  We're psyched to partner with Rudy De Waele, a veteran of the mobile industry if there ever was one, to co-organise the next edition of Mobile Sunday. Mobile Sunday is a high-level networking event that happens annually on the evening before the Mobile World Congress and 4YFN Conference madness starts in Barcelona.     [continue...]     Dean Bubley's Disruptive Wireless: VoLTE & WiFi-Calling are just excuses for telcos to avoid real voice/video innovation     Five years ago, I started talking about the Future of Voice, and then subsequently started running workshops with Martin Geddes on the topic. At the time, I found it quite hard to find the right people at telcos/service providers to talk to.     [continue...]     Why The Next Generation of Online Video Companies Will be Vertical | Bothsides of the Table Mitu Network is the largest digital media company for Latinos in the US and also targeting Mexico and South America. Founded in Los Angeles by Latinos to address the growing demand for short-form online video for Millennials it is probably single-handedly improving the diversity of the tech industry as the employee base is overwhelmingly Latino and proud.     [continue...]     VLC Now Available for Apple TV: Our First Impressions VLC is now available for the Apple TV. Just like every other version of VLC, the Apple TV version aims to play video files and streams in "their native formats without conversions". Felix Kühne, lead iOS developer for VLC, writes on his blog: Today, we are proud to announce VLC on the Apple TV.     [continue...]     How China's Huawei is taking on Samsung and Apple Chinese telecoms giant Huawei posted an eye-popping 70% growth in 2015. It is now beating HTC and Sony when it comes to market share in Europe and is third only to Apple and Samsung when it comes to global smartphone sales.     [continue...]     IoT Data Traffic Growth: As many machines as people roaming by 2020 Machina Research estimates that there are now 350 million cellular based connections worldwide, and this will grow to 1.3 billion over the next five years. However, the proportion of M2M connections accounted for by roaming is growing even faster. As a global provider of roaming services including billing and clearing to network operators, Starhome Mach is...     [continue...]     Banks need to become Lords of Data     I have a range of technologies I use, but get frustrated with them all. My Apple Watch is redundant, as is my Microsoft Surface, and I upgrade laptop and desktop every 18 months or so, largely to keep up with the demand for speed and reliability.     [continue...]     Verizon Accused of Routing Millions of IP Addresses for Cybercriminals US network operator Verizon Communications is routing over 4 million IP addresses that are currently in the hands of cybercriminals, researchers at The Spamhaus Project reveal. Spammers have been acquiring large ranges of IP addresses over the past few years to serve their nefarious purposes, as they can defeat spam filters by spreading sending patterns across a wide range of IP addresses.     [continue...]     Introducing Uber Trip Experiences Today we're excited to announce the launch a new developer feature called Uber Trip Experiences which connects riders with their favorite apps while they're on an Uber trip. Now developers can offer users of their apps new ways to enjoy themselves -- or get stuff done -- while they're on the road.     [continue...]     How to Fight Back Against Revenge Porn "Screenshot everything." That's attorney Carrie Goldberg's first piece of advice to victims of nonconsensual pornography, also known as revenge porn. Goldberg serves on the board of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative ( CCRI) and as a volunteer attorney for the organization's End Revenge Porn ( ERP) initiative.     [continue...]     The Deadline to Register Your Drone Is Approaching; Here's How to Do It The days of flying your drone through the sky moments after ripping it from the box, completely carefree and beyond the reach of Big Brother are coming to an end. Drones have become one of the hottest new technologies, part toy, part tool-they were one of the hottest holiday gifts this year, and garnered plenty of coverage at CES.     [continue...]     3 Helpful Online Advertising Tools Like it or not, Paid Search strategies can quickly turn into a game of out maneuvering your opponent. Which is why the team at TopRank Marketing is always integrating online advertising into digital marketing programs with a focus on out messaging, out strategizing and out bidding our client's competitors.     [continue...]     HookLogic's Most Popular Search Terms of 2015 HookLogic, headed by CEO Jonathan Opdyke (pictured left), has released an overview of the most searched terms on its network of ecommerce sites in 2015. This is in contrast to Google's most searched lists that don't mention the household consumer products-or even computers-that are on the HL list.     [continue...]

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The Comunicano Communique for Friday December 25th 2015

The Comunicano Communique

Merry Christmas....While today is a holiday, the start of a three day weekend or the start of a ten day break for many, I'm still reading and curating news articles.  Today's Comunicano Communique features of course a story on Google's Santa Tracker, as well as a few hard news items about Kickstarter, IBM's Watson and Amazon, plus a bunch of lists to keep you well informed over the coming days of some of the best ofs...so have a happy, safe, sane and sincere holiday, wherever you may be. Have a view on the news today? Please let me know what you think....Andy Abramson     The engineering elves building Google's Santa Tracker  SAN FRANCISCO---Google launched the start of its annual summertime I/O developer summit by championing Android's active user base of one billion and counting. It appears Santa Claus might be one of them. One of the internet giant's more charming projects, the Santa Tracker has become somewhat of a digital yuletide tradition over the last decade.     [continue...]     Kickstarter hires journalist to investigate campaign that failed to deliver to backers Failure is a part of crowdfunding. And Kickstarter is making a push to be more transparent about what that failure looks like and why it happens. Science and technology journalist Mark Harris announced this week that he has been hired by the Brooklyn-based crowdfunding platform Kickstarter to investigate and write an expose about why a crowdfunding campaign on its platform failed.     [continue...]     IBM Watson: AI For The Real World IBM Watson, the company's AI cognitive computing platform, has attracted an ecosystem of developers and users who are layering the technology on top of their own to make it even smarter. Here's an update on Watson's evolution and why IBM can confidently assure us it won't ever become HAL.     [continue...]     Amazon Seeks to Ease Ties With UPS As the clock counts down to Christmas, workers at United Parcel Service Inc. are busy hustling packages along loading docks and conveyor belts at its Louisville, Ky., hub-part of a costly, intricate system built in part to cater to Amazon.com Inc., its biggest customer.     [continue...]     35 Cool Social Media Facts Social media seems to have been with us forever. In fact Facebook has turned ten!...that is an eternity in tech. Social media is so old that the fun police have turned up and are threatening to ruin the party. The no rules and the dope smoking, beer swilling social media parties have started moving into the board room.     [continue...]     13 Asian Startups To Watch In 2016 2015 was an eventful year for the tech industry in Asia. Funding started to flow in India, which is expected to become the world's second-largest Internet market soon, while many tech companies in China, South Korea, and Southeast Asia also hit key milestones.     [continue...]     The European Startup Revolution has arrived The following is my (slightly edited version) foreword of a new book that is being released today. Written by one of our co-founders, Croatian entrepreneur / writer Ivo Špigel, and co-published by Tech.eu, we're extremely proud to present you with 'The European Startup Revolution'.     [continue...]     The 50 Best Podcast Episodes of 2015 A year's worth of highlights from an increasingly vibrant genre Please consider disabling it for our site, or supporting our work in one of these ways Subscribe Now > More than 300,000 podcasts exist in the world as of the close of 2015.     [continue...]     12 Travel Apps Worth Keeping in 2016 Recently I deleted dozens of travel apps from my iPhone. Many are great. They allowed me to research unfamiliar places, listen to audio tours and turn my photos into postcards. But travel is about tapping the world, not a screen, so I'm ending the year with an app purge.     [continue...]

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The Comunicano Daily for July 30th, 2015

The Comunicano Daily       Today's a run and gun day. Already had morning meetings, errands, walked the hills of Lisbon, had an amazing burger and am now into the "second" day. That's what's great about the concept of a WorkCation. That's where you can blend the idea of working someplace that some would want to be vacationing. I'll be writing more on that concept soon. Now into the news. T-Mobile is defying everyone, adding more customers and growing handset subscribers. The defections are coming from all other carriers, but the big war is at the bottom with Sprint and the pre-paid customers who realize the "uncarrier model" is for them. If this is sustainable is the big question....       T-Mobile blows away profit expectations as customer growth surges - CNET T-Mobile has shown it can win over customers at an impressive rate. Now it needs to prove that it can consistently make money doing so. If the second quarter's results are any indication, T-Mobile is off to a good start.     [continue...]       Amazon is going Top Gear crazy, and will be rivaling Netflix and Hulu in the original net content business. Where did you go "DEN-Digital Entertainment Network..."       Clarkson and 'Top Gear' presenters sign with Amazon for new car show Clarkson was fired from the BBC for physically attacking a member of Top Gear's production staff in March. Amazon said the new show, to be overseen by the trio's long time executive producer Andy Wilman, will be available on its subscription streaming service Amazon Prime next year and run for three seasons.     [continue...]       Up, up and away goes the Net if Google has it's loony way...       Sri Lanka to get blanket Web access via Google's Project Loon Sri Lanka is all set to receive blanket Internet coverage throughout the country after it penned a deal with Google to deploy its Project Loon across its territory. On Wednesday, Sri Lanka said it would become the first country in the world to provide a universal Internet service for its citizens through the deal with Google, which will do so using Loom air balloons.     [continue...]       Amazon keeps it's drone idea flying.       Amazon proposes drones-only airspace to facilitate high-speed delivery Amazon is proposing that a pristine slice of airspace above the world's cities and suburbs should be set aside for the deployment of high-speed aerial drones capable of flying robotically with virtually no human interference.     [continue...]       StubHub and Uber hook up..       StubHub lets eventgoers call an Uber from its app People love it when companies make things easier for them, and that's exactly what StubHub is doing today. If you use the service to buy tickets to events, like a live concert or sports game, you'll now be able to book an Uber directly from its iOS and Android apps.     [continue...]       Hotel guru Bob Rauch, who is partners with pal Joe Simone in a few San Diego hotels has a really good article today on the Art and Science of hotels.       The transformation of the hotel industry from art to science - eHotelier The hospitality industry has been evolving into a much more scientific industry for several years. The combined impact of shifting demographics and new technologies are the primary catalysts for this metamorphosis. The Internet provides consumers an opportunity to think of the hotels as commodities.     [continue...]       Changes at Citrix. Big changes. And Go To Meeting is on the block.       Citrix Will Replace Chief, Bending to Elliott Management The activist hedge fund Elliott Management has scored another victory in its battle with a technology company. Citrix Systems said on Tuesday that it had agreed to make several changes, including replacing its longtime chief executive and giving Elliott a seat on the board.     [continue...]       Survey says...there's still many not online in the USA.       A Steady Percentage of Americans Still Do Not Go Online, Study Says For the first 13 years of the decade, Americans embraced the Internet at a whirlwind pace. The percentage of Americans who use the Internet grew to 84 percent in 2013 from 52 percent at the turn of the century, according to data from the Pew Research Center.     [continue...]   We hope you are enjoying The Comunicano Daily. If you want to share it with friends, colleagues and co-workers, or even your wife, child or even someone you don't like, please do. They can join by visiting The Comunicano Daily signup page: http://eepurl.com/BFXkD