Trends

ANALYST CORNER

Uber Is Great Until It Leaves You Out in the Cold

Uber works great -- until it stops working, leaving your kid walking home alone on a cold and rainy winter night. Wireless technology opens up new avenues for innovation and excitement, with companies like Uber and Lyft. Most of the time, their technologies work just fine, but don't let your guard d...

As a high-tech industry analyst, I have worked from home for more than a decade. As someone who tracks new technology and is always on the lookout for a better communications solution, I migrated to a VoIP service through Vonage early after its introduction. The service was great. I had great call q...

B2B ad spending will increase 13 percent in 2018 to hit $4.6 billion from this year's estimated $4.07 billion, eMarketer has predicted. However, its proportion of all U.S. digital ad spending will remain unchanged at 4.9 percent, which implies growth in other digital ad spend areas as well. Desktops...

Sixty percent of the digital marketing professionals who responded to a recent survey reported difficulty in reaching their target audiences with messaging and content. Only 19 percent of those surveyed were "very familiar" with how automation could help drive marketing campaigns, according to the r...

The FCC on Thursday voted 3-2 to repeal Obama-era Net neutrality rules that prevented Internet service providers from blocking, throttling or otherwise giving preferential treatment to customers. Backers of the repeal characterized it as promoting greater technological innovation and freedom to cond...

A group of 21 leading technology pioneers this week penned an open letter to key congressional leaders asking them to pressure FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to cancel Thursday's planned vote to repeal Net neutrality. The process is severely flawed, they argued, and a rules repeal poses an imminent threat to...

GOVERNMENT IT REPORT

Feds: Cloud Cybersecurity Benefits Now Outweigh Risks

Many federal government IT managers used to be wary of the shortcomings of migrating to cloud technology because of potential data security problems affecting email, business systems, personal data records and, especially, national security operations. However, after the federal "cloud first" initia...

The latest price increases have come as Bitcoin increasingly has been recognized as a legitimate form of currency. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission last week announced that it would allow the trading of Bitcoin derivatives on the CME Group and CBOE Global Market exchanges.

ANALYST CORNER

GoGo's In-Flight WiFi Goes in Fits and Starts

Why is it that in-flight WiFi is almost always problematic? Every time I take a commercial flight, I sign up for the GoGo WiFi service -- and every time I am disappointed by something. My experience last week flying on Delta was no exception. After takeoff, I struggled to connect my iPhone. After sp...

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's long-brewing plan to repeal Net neutrality has the broadband, telecom and entertainment worlds at loggerheads. The commission's expected Dec. 14 vote could result in a complete rewrite of the script for the Internet's competitive landscape and consumer protection models. The ...

Product reliability and ease of use are key for B2B technology marketers, according to a recent survey of technology product and service decision makers in the U.S. Four hundred B2B tech buyers participated in the survey, conducted for Lavidge by WestGroup Research. Overall, 68 percent cited reliabi...

Snap aims to combat fake news on Snapchat by separating content from professional creators from postings by friends and family. Stories and Chats from friends will appear on the left side of the camera, while Stories from content creators, publishers and other members of the community will appear on...

Online sales hit a new record of $6.59 billion on Cyber Monday -- a 17 percent increase from the $5.6 billion in last year's sales for the day -- making it the largest online shopping day in history, based on Adobe Analytics data released Tuesday. Mobile shopping also broke records, starting with th...

U.S. retailers crossed a historic new threshold over Thanksgiving weekend as consumers set new records for e-commerce activity and embraced mobile shopping like never before. The record-breaking $5.03 billion spent online on Black Friday -- a 17 percent increase from a year ago -- was in line with ...

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