Tag Archives: Facebook Live

Weekly output: Verizon’s unlimited plan (x3), video-game economic impact, chatbots, broadband competition

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Presidents’ Day used to feel like a real holiday–preferably experienced while enjoying views from a chairlift somewhere–but Monday doesn’t feel like much of one. I’m facing an abbreviated workweek, thanks to my Friday departure for Barcelona to cover Mobile World Congress. On the upside, I’m about to spend a few days in Spain for work.

2/13/2017: How Verizon’s new ‘unlimited’ plan compares to the competition, Yahoo Finance

This workweek technically started Sunday afternoon, when Verizon announced that it would once again sell an unlimited–more accurately called “unmetered”–data plan. After I’d filed this post, I got to rewrite a quarter of it to catch up with T-Mobile lifting the two worst restrictions on its own “unlimited” plan.

esa-panel-screengrab2/14/2017: Achievement Unlocked: The Video Game Industry’s Economic Impact, Entertainment Software Association

The nice thing about moderating a panel with members of Congress: They are guaranteed to make you look timely. Rep. Pete Aguilar (D.-Calif.) had to duck out halfway through this discussion, just as Rep. Doug Collins (R.-Ga.) made his belated entrance. You can watch the conversation, also featuring Higher Education Video Game Alliance president Constance Steinkuehler, on Twitch (this is the first and probably the last time I’ll appear on that game-centric network) and see photos from the event at ESA’s Facebook page.

2/15/2017: A Chatbot Is Here to Help, FedTech

I filed this story about the potential of chatbots to ease federal-government services in a simpler time when a Facebook Messenger bot would walk you through sending a message to the president. The Trump administration shut that down; I don’t know why, as my e-mailed inquiry to the White House press office did not yield a response.

2/15/2017: Here are the catches in Verizon’s new plan, USA Today

My editors at USAT asked if I could file my column early, recognizing that something about Verizon advertising unlimited data was driving readers bonkers. The piece now has 27,788 Facebook shares, which suggests they had the right idea.

usat-facebook-live2/17/2017: Unlimited data! But at what cost?, USA Today

My USAT editors also asked if I could do a Facebook Live spot with tech and media reporter Mike Snider. This allowed me to see what USAT’s Tysons Corner newsroom looks like–yes, more than five years after I started writing for the place.

2/18/2017: Wireless carriers are fighting for your cash, and that’s good news, Yahoo Finance

While I was gathering string for a story on broadband infrastructure, I realized I already had almost everything needed to write a post about the wireless industry’s recent display of the benefits of competition–and the equally telling behavior of residential-broadband services that face few or no rivals.

Weekly output: gig economy, building a bot, pro tablets, social media vs. terrorism, video-chat apps

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It’s hard to believe that I only have one full work week left in this year.

12/5/2016: Why Trump is bad news for America’s freelancers, Yahoo Finance

This look at the increasing role of independent workers in the U.S. economy–and what nuking the Affordable Care Act without readying an effective replacement would do to self-employed types–really got started with one of the panels I moderated at Web Summit. Then a couple of new studies of the “gig economy” gave me good reasons to revisit it. Should you be tempted to click the “View Reactions” button at the end of the story, be advised that the comments are more spittle-flecked than usual.

12/7/2016: I built a bot, and now I want more bots, Yahoo Finance

On day one of the Future.Today conference I attended in New York, I got my overdue introduction to building a simple, scripted bot. The experience made me wish I could put bots to work for me instead of just having them exist as somebody else’s customer-service representative.

wirecutter-pro-tablets-guide12/8/2016: Can an iPad Pro or Surface Pro 4 Tablet Replace Your Laptop?, The Wirecutter

This guide to pro tablets has been in the works for months–if you saw me at Google I/O in May and wondered why I had a Surface Pro 4, this is why. And after all those months of testing–and quizzing pro-tablet users about what draws them to these devices–I’m just not sold on the category. I am, however, sold on having my next laptop be a convertible model that I can use folded up in a tablet mode.

12/8/2016: Social media vs. terrorism, Al Jazeera

The interview–as usual, with me overdubbed into Arabic–that was originally scheduled for Wednesday in NYC happened the next day in D.C. The subject was the initiative Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft announced Dec. 5 to share digital fingerprints of terrorist media that each could then use to scrub those files from their networks. I said that deciding what messages count as recruitment messages will be tricky. What, if, say, people circulate vile lies about a child-sex-trafficking ring run out of a D.C. pizza restaurant that lead one nutcase to show up at the place with an AR-15? Does that count as terrorist propaganda under this initiative, or do the messengers have to be brown and Muslim?

12/11/2016: How to choose the best video-calling app, USA Today

A question I got for my October talk to a local retirement community’s computer club led to this column.

Weekly output: ECPA reform, Facebook video, iOS 10, Outlook’s “J”

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My fourth Online News Association conference wrapped up last night. This event stands as an outlier in my travel schedule: I pay for my conference badge in addition to my travel costs. (That’s also true of XOXO, but I’ve only gone to that twice.) I think it’s a justifiable expense in light of the things I learn and the connections I make. Plus, ONA allows a rare chance for a work-from-home writer like me to hang out with a large group of non-tech journalists, much as I once did in the Post’s newsroom.

9/14/2016: Congress could blow an opportunity to fix a major email privacy issue, Yahoo Finance

This story about the prospects for reform of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act is one I could have written at any point in the last few years–my 2012 Disruptive Competition Project post linked to in the piece, sadly enough, still holds up.

yahoo-finance-facebook-at-ona-post9/15/2016: Facebook outlines its plan to insert ads into Live videos, Yahoo Finance

The onstage interview of a Facebook executive that opened ONA yielded some news about the social network’s intentions for live video–but did not offer much practical help for journalists trying to avoid invisibility on Facebook.

9/16/2016: Pros and cons of iOS 10, WTOP

I did this interview via Skype from my Airbnb lodging at 7:10 a.m. in Denver, which may explain why my voice sounded a little scratchy. Note that while I answered the host’s question about downgrading from iOS 10 to iOS 9 by saying that’s not worth it, you can do this for a limited time. But I still don’t recommend taking that step.

9/18/2016: If a sentence in an email ends in ‘J,’ it’s OK, USA Today

For years, I’ve been wondering why sentences in e-mails that looked like they were supposed be funny ended with a “J” instead of the obvious “:)” emoticon. The answer was a long-lived Microsoft Outlook bug that–maybe!–the company will fix now that it’s gotten a little more exposure.

Weekly output: Facebook Live and Flash, Facebook Trending (x2), sharing-economy privacy, Tech Night Owl, iPad keyboards

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I’m at the start of two weeks of a ridiculous travel schedule. I flew to Boston this afternoon to cover the cable industry’s INTX convention, Tuesday night I’m off to SFO to spend the rest of the week at Google’s I/O conference in Mountain View, Saturday I come home… and I won’t spend much time there before getting back on a plane. More about that in next Sunday’s recap.

USAT Facebook Live post5/9/2016: Flash makes one of its last stands on Facebook Live, USA Today

As I wrote in my Facebook post advertising this story, I’ve yet to do anything with Facebook Live video. Should I?

5/10/2016: Facebook Trending news, Al Jazeera

The Arabic-language news channel had me on to discuss the Gizmodo report that Facebook’s Trending list of headlines suppressed some conservative sites. My first take was that the sorry record of accuracy at the likes of Breitbart.com and the Drudge Report invited skeptical treatment, but talking about this on camera got some wheels turning in my head.

5/10/2016: Some sharing economy companies share too much of your information, Yahoo Finance

I always enjoy reading the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s annual “Who Has Your Back?” accounting of how tech firms say they’ll answer government requests for your data (see my writeup of last year’s report), and this year’s mostly-uncomplimentary look at “sharing economy” firms was more interesting than usual.

5/11/2016: There are worse things than manipulated ‘Trending’ stories lists, Yahoo Finance

This is the post that resulted from those wheels turning in my head. The comments, as you can see, were neither friendly nor persuasive. There’s a broader conversation to be had about the detachment many Republicans seem to be having from observed reality on subjects like climate change and evolution, but I guess a story’s comments thread is not the place for it.

5/14/2016: May 14, 2016 — Adam Engst and Rob Pegoraro, Tech Night Owl

I talked with host Gene Steinberg about Facebook’s Trending list and Apple’s lagging computer-hardware updates, among other issues.

5/15/2016: How to use or avoid hidden iPad keyboard options, USA Today

Once again, my own computing malfunctions served as column fodder. Writing this allowed me to offer a first-look review of Google’s Gboard iPad-keyboard app; as I type this, it’s the default keyboard on my iPad.