Tag Archives: Russian meddling

Weekly output: Coffee with a Journalist, free PBS streaming, Microsoft report on election meddling, Oracle buying TikTok

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After returning to the skies Friday, Sunday saw me return to a part of a bike trail I’d neglected for shamefully long–the Washington & Old Dominion trail west of Arlington. I’m so glad I decided to bike for longer than usual today.

9/8/2020: Coffee with a Journalist: Rob Pegoraro, Fast Company, OnePitch

I recorded my conversation with host Beck Bamberger in mid-August for this PR-service firm’s podcast. Listen in and you’ll learn a few things about how I work, where ideas come from and what sort of PR pitches I find of interest, or at least not annoying.

9/8/2020: You Can Now (Probably) Stream Your Local PBS Station For Free, Forbes

I came to this story a few days late, but so did everybody else, thanks to the apparent absence of any PR effort by PBS on behalf of its introduction of free live streaming of its affiliates in almost 90 markets. I updated the post after publication to note PBS’s quick addition of support for Apple TV as well as its iOS, Android and Kindle Fire apps and to correct one error in the original writeup.

9/11/2020: Microsoft: Hackers from Russia, China and Iran targeted the presidential elections, Al Jazeera

The Arabic-language news network asked if I could comment on Thursday’s report from Microsoft finding continued attempts by Russia, China and Iran to meddle with the election. As you may be able to tell from the background, I recorded this in an airport–Columbus, the midpoint of Friday’s 9/11 observance. Without a tripod handy, I realized I could use the outside pocket on the old United Airlines amenity kit I use to stash cables and chargers to hold my phone steady.

9/13/2020: Oracle buying TikTok, Al Jazeera

AJ’s English-language news network had me on live Sunday night to talk about the unexpected outcome of the Trump administration’s campaign to force a sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations: Oracle will make that purchase, despite its lack of experience running consumer apps, much less a social network. I don’t see how that can rate as good news for any TikTok user.

Updated 9/16/2020 to add my Coffee with a Journalist appearance, which I’d forgotten to add mainly because it had been that long since I recorded my spot. 

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Weekly output: Facebook diet, 8K TV, social-media hearings

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Another trip to Berlin for IFA is in the books, which means I’ve spent another year wondering when Berlin Brandenburg Airport–which was originally scheduled to open before my 2012 introduction to the show–will ever inaugurate scheduled commercial service.

8/28/2018: How to detox from Facebook, Yahoo Finance

I’d had the bones of this piece in mind since sometime after writing a similar how-to on reducing Google’s role in your life. I’m going to guess that most people didn’t install the Facebook Container extension for Firefox (although I am now running that on my Windows laptop), but I do hope that a good fraction of readers opted out of Facebook’s noisier mobile notifications.

Yahoo Finance IFA 8K post9/1/2018: Forget 4K TVs — 8K televisions are already here, Yahoo Finance

If it wasn’t obvious enough the last time I covered this topic: No, I really don’t think anybody should pay extra for 8K resolution, and if this entire format vanishes into consumer irrelevance as 3D TV did, I won’t be too sad. Meanwhile, I appreciated seeing Yahoo give this a little more publicity with a repost on Yahoo Sports.

9/2/2018: What to expect as Google, Facebook and Twitter face Capitol Hill lawmakers, Yahoo Finance

I wrote a curtain-raiser for Wednesday’s grillings of social-media executives in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. Based on how prior House interrogations of tech execs have gone, my expectations for the latter hearing are exceedingly low.

Weekly output: forced-redirect ads, broadband infrastructure, Russian indictments

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After a workweek that I interrupted for an overdue reunion with my skis, I have another abbreviated week coming up. On top of Monday being a holiday, early Friday evening I depart for Barcelona to cover my sixth Mobile World Congress show. If you have any questions about the state of the smartphone–especially outside the U.S. market–the next five days would be a great time to get them to me.

2/12/2018: Surfing the web can leave you open to ad hijackings. A browser fix has been slow, USA Today

I revised earlier coverage of “forced-redirect” ads that hijack your Web reading to note that Google had wound up not activating an advertised defense against this scam in January’s update to Chrome.

2/16/2018: Trump needs to do more to get more Americans online, Yahoo Finance

A year ago, even some skeptics of President Trump voiced cautious optimism that his vaunted infrastructure plan would include a broadband component. This week’s release of that plan–yes, over a year after he took office pledging to rebuild America’s roads, rails, airports and waterways–pretty much crushed those hopes. This post outlines some ways that this plan could have done better.

2/17/2018: Russian social-media indictments, Al Jazeera

For once, I was able to chase down a link to one of my appearances on the news network’s Arabic-language channel. If you can speak Arabic, skip to the 11:15 mark in this evening-news roundup and please let me know how intelligent (or not) the live translation made me sound about the Justice Department’s indictment of 13 Russians and the St. Petersburg troll factory that calls itself the “Internet Research Agency.”