Tag Archives: Signal

Weekly output: applied AI, open innovation, Mastodon updates, AI equity, 1Password, Signal, Eve Air Mobility, travel tech, travel tips

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After getting back from Brazil early Saturday morning, I’ve napped more than usual but have also spoken at an event in D.C., gotten in some gardening, and enjoyed a shorter-than-usual bike ride.

5/1/2023: Companies adopting AI need to move slowly and not break things, Fast Company

I wrote about how two companies I’ve covered elsewhere recently–the satellite-imagery firm Planet and the customer-support platform Intercom–have been deploying AI-based tools a little more cautiously than others.

5/1/2023: How open innovation can drive your organization forward, Web Summit

I led this somewhat-vaguely-titled roundtable discussion at this offsite conference the day before Web Summit’s programming schedule got into gear.

5/2/2023: Mastodon Makes It Easier for Beginners to Get Started, PCMag

I was going to write a reasonably short post about the federated social network Mastodon’s founder deciding that it was time to add quote-posting and text-search features–both of which had been historically unwelcome there–and then realized that PCMag hadn’t written much lately about Bluesky, another interesting, decentralized Twitter alternative.

5/3/3023: AI Can Give Us a Productivity Boost, But Will Everyone Get a Fair Shot at It?, PCMag

I wrote about the talk that Google’s chief design scientist Cassie Kozyrkov gave to close out the conference’s first day, which I found more enlightening than the conference’s description had suggested.

5/3/2023: Goodbye passwords!, Web Summit

I accepted this opportunity to interview 1Password CEO Jeff Shiner about that password-management service’s hopes for no-password passkey authentication, and then Google announced Wednesday morning that it had added passkeys as a login option worldwide.

5/3/2023: Building an app from the ground up, Web Summit

My second panel Wednesday had me interview Signal president Meredith Whittaker about how that encrypted-messaging app could avoid making the privacy mistakes of other competitors in that market.

5/5/2023: This Florida Startup Says It Can Make Electric Air Taxis Happen, PCMag

My longstanding interest in aviation led me to watch and then write up this Thursday-morning panel in which Eve Air Mobility CEO André Stein talked about Eve’s ambitions in electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing (eVTOL) aircraft.

5/6/2023: Will AI Eat Travel? (Clickbait Title for Session on Travel Tech), Frequent Traveler University

In my first appearance at this frequent-flyer gathering since March of 2020 (which feels like 10 years ago), travel blogger Stefan Krasowski quizzed me about the possibilities for conversational AI and many other tech topics. He’s a good onstage interlocutor and I enjoyed the conversation.

5/6/2023: The state of miles and points – what to expect in the next year, Frequent Traveler University

I closed out the day by joining this plus-sized panel featuring other FTU speakers, during which we answered audience questions about things like recent or impending devaluations among frequent-traveler programs.

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Weekly output: Pixel 5a repair, Spectrum One, defining AI, innovating through a crisis, Alexa ambitions, Comcast uploads, brain-computer interfaces, digital personalization, Microsoft supports Ukraine, Seaborg nuclear power, Facebook Oversight Board, Signal

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My last international trip of the year wrapped up Saturday afternoon with my last landing at Dulles Airport without a Metro station there in revenue service. And I have somehow already posted my Flickr album from this week’s Web Summit trip.

10/31/2022: DIY Demo: Just How Easy Is It to Fix Your Phone’s Shattered Screen Yourself?, PCMag

My recap of successfully replacing my Pixel 5a’s shattered screen using an iFixit repair kit was, as far as I can tell, the first story I’ve written to include the word “spudger.” It was also the first story in quite some time, maybe ever, where I lost a little blood in the research phase.

10/31/2022: Spectrum Adds New Bundle of Broadband and Wireless (Not Broadband and Cable), PCMag

We had to update this post to note a $5 rate hike to Spectrum’s non-promotional rates for residential broadband that went into effect Nov. 1–something that Spectrum’s PR person didn’t think to mention when answering my fact-checking questions about that service’s new promotion for bundled broadband and wireless.

My Web Summit schedule, as seen in the browser on my phone as I held it up in the Forum. 11/2/2022: Time to define AI, Web Summit

I got asked to cover this panel two and a half hours in advance after the original moderator had some unspecified flight trouble. It all worked out, thanks in large part to Dataiku CEO Florian Douetteau’s stage presence. #professionalism

11/2/2022: Recession busters: How to innovate through a crisis, Web Summit

This panel had a wide-ranging cast of characters: Andy Baynes, who worked at Apple and Nest before co-founding the consultancy GT; Kit Krugman, board chair of WIN: Women in Innovation and managing director for organization and culture design at co:collective; and Jasjit Singh, executive director of the Commerce Department’s SelectUSA office.

11/2/2022: More Than a Voice: Amazon Wants Alexa to Be an ‘Advisor and Companion’, PCMag

Amazon’s Rohit Prasad, senior vice president and head scientist for Alexa, led off the Web Summit main-stage schedule Wednesday morning.

11/2/2022: Comcast is upping upload speeds. But for now, you’ll need a premium bundle., USA Today

After years of hiding its slow upload speeds on a network-management disclosures page, Comcast has a better story to tell there–which it’s stepping on by making those faster uploads a privilege of a premium-service bundle.

11/3/2022: Hardware that can read your mind, Web Summit

I usually don’t bring props to my panels, but after getting invited to do this onstage interview with Neuroelectrics co-founder and CEO Ana Maiques, I almost immediately thought that a talk about brain-computer interfaces needed a tinfoil hat. Maiques liked the idea when we met backstage and I showed the aluminum foil I’d brought from the U.S., and a great conversation ensued.

11/3/2022: Making products that speak, Web Summit

This panel about digital personalization (featuring CI&T president Bruno Guicardi, BBC chief product officer Storm Fagan, and Chubb chief digital and chief risk officer Sean Ringsted) featured a stage that was noisier and warmer than average, and ending the panel at the 0:00 mark felt like a minor victory.

11/3/2022: Microsoft Pledges Digital Support for Ukraine Through 2023, PCMag

After multiple years of seeing Microsoft president Brad Smith warn in Web Summit talks of the risks of cyberattacks on civilian infrastructure, that executive returned to this conference to say the company would extend its digital support for Ukraine through all of 2023.

11/4/2022: This Danish startup wants to make nuclear cheap again—by putting plants on barges, Fast Company

This story started with my startup-pitch panel at TechBBQ in Copehagen more than six weeks earlier, when I found Seaborg’s presentation interesting enough to want to learn more. Then the ensuing weeks of travel got in the way of my moving forward with the piece while I needed more time than I expected to chase down an analyst type to provide some perspective.

11/4/2022: Facebook Oversight Board to Elon Musk: Do No Harm, Don’t Piss Off the Advertisers, PCMag

This panel happened the same day that new Twitter owner Elon Musk ordered mass layoffs at the company, and whoever at Web Summit picked this day for this panel may have been well-advised to buy a lottery ticket.

11/4/2022: New Signal Boss: We’re No WhatsApp, PCMag

After the speakers’ lounge and press center closed, I finished writing this post on a park bench outside the venue, where the event WiFi somehow kept working and let me file this before dinner.