Sunday, June 15, 2014


I don't care about the emails. What worries me is that no one seems to care that the IRS did not regularly backup a director's computer. Why were emails stored on her computer rather than on an email server? (Ease of evidence destruction?)
IRS Loses Lois Lerner Emails---What Tea Party Targeting?
Lois Lerner’s emails are missing, says the IRS. Remember Lois Lerner? The IRS probably would like to forget her, and no doubt her emails too. She was the former Director of Tax Exempt Organizations at the IRS. That makes her the IRS official at the center of the targeting scandal.
… The IRS has admitted to Congressional investigators that many of Lois Lerner’s emails prior to 2011 are missing. Oops. Her computer crashed. The IRS came up with 24,000 Lerner emails from 2009 to 2011. The IRS did this by getting emails from 83 other IRS employees that had cc’s of Lerner emails. But no one knows how many of Ms. Lerner’s emails are gone.


The (not so bright) future of the Internet of Things?
The Nightmare on Connected Home Street

(Related) The future is now...
E3: Xbox One ad is switching on Microsoft consoles
The ad - featuring Breaking Bad's Aaron Paul - has the actor say "Xbox On" near its start.
The instruction appears to trigger the machine's Kinect voice/motion sensor, activating the console.


Could be amusing, could be disastrous.
FCC Is Getting Involved in the Netflix 'Slow Internet' Spat
The FCC is continuing its aggressive course by wading into the fight between Netflix and internet service providers (ISPs) about what is causing slow internets. In recent weeks, Netflix has been (publicly) duking it out with Verizon through a campaign of direct shaming about the latter's alleged poor streaming speeds.
… FCC Chair Tom Wheeler said yesterday:
The bottom line is that consumers need to understand what is occurring when the Internet service they've paid for does not adequately deliver the content they desire, especially content they've also paid for." [Let's not mix “desire” with “paid for” Bob]
Rather than regulate, the FCC is merely fact-finding right now, looking into the agreements between the parties involved. But this specific dispute engenders many of the specific issues that the FCC has been pursuing as of late. And, for Wheeler, it sounds like it's a little personal.


Perspective. Apparently it doesn't pay to (behavioral) advertise. Who knew?
Online journalism is suffering print's fate
If you want the pithiest summation of the problem facing modern journalism, here it is: dollars in print, dimes on the Web, pennies on mobile.
That's advertising revenue we're talking about. Journalism is what economists call a "two-sided market": Media companies sell news and entertainment to you, and they sell you to advertisers. Outside of some specialty trade publications, subscriptions have never covered the cost of producing newspapers and magazines. In fact, they rarely exceed the cost of printing and mailing the things. The actual work of reporting has always been paid for by the advertisers.
… A decade ago, when I entered professional journalism and began earnestly discussing its financial future, there was a reasonable case that, eventually, digital advertising would be worth more than print advertising - you could precisely target it, after all, and measure its effects. As soon as we got better at building digital ad products and educated advertisers, in theory we'd be in better shape than ever.
That theory has, alas, been pretty well destroyed by the last 10 years. Advertisers still won't pay print rates for digital. Worse, the money that does get spent on digital advertising increasingly isn't going to news outlets; it's going to Google and Facebook and Yahoo.

(Related) Perhaps we would rather be amused than informed? (All I need is another 389,996 followers!)
390,000 Instagram followers give Mississippi mom a job
Stay-at-home mom Melissa Vincent did not expect to find herself heading out in a tiny plane on safari 8,000 miles from home when she and her sister started exchanging family photos on Instagram in 2011.
Nor did she plan on making a respectable income flying around New York in a helicopter with Dos Equis' Most Interesting Man in the World. But the Internet's new economy means that's exactly what the resident of Hernando, Miss., has been doing.
By exploring her artistic side and posting a ton of photos on Instagram as misvincent, she built up more than 390,000 followers, which is why today ad agencies pay her to attend their events and post photos.
… An entire ecosystem has come into being around people like Vincent, who have mega-followings on social media. Companies realize that hiring social-networking stars on Instagram, Pinterest or Twitter is a crucial way to reach customers.
With a plugged-in younger generation turning away from traditional ad spaces such as newspapers, broadcast television and magazines in droves, ads need to go where the eyeballs are.

(Related) This fits here too.
Meet Your Consumer In 2015 [Infographic]

No comments: